History Does Not Belong To Us; We

It Is One Of The Primary Motives Of Modern Art That It Wants To Abolish The Distance Which The Viewer, The Consumer, The Audience Maintain Vis-a-vis A Work Of Art. There Is No Doubt That The Leaders Of The Creative Artists Of The Last 50 Years Concentrated Their Efforts Mainly On Eliminating That Distance.

The Hermeneutic Consciousness, Which Must Be Awakened And Kept Awake, Recognized That In The Age Of Science Philosophy's Claim Of Superiority Has Something Chimerical And Unreal About It. But Though The Will Of Man Is More Than Ever Intensifying Its Criticism Of What Has Gone Before To The Point Of Becoming Utopian Or Eschatological Consciousness, The Hermeneutic Consciousness Seeks To Confront That Will With Something Of The Truth Of Remembrance: With What Is Still And Ever Again Real.

It Is The Tyranny Of Hidden Prejudices That Makes Us Deaf To What Speaks To Us In Tradition.

Unlike Seeing, Where One Can Look Away, One Cannot 'hear Away' But Must Listen ... Hearing Implies Already Belonging Together In Such A Manner That One Is Claimed By What Is Being Said.

For Both Art And The Historical Sciences Are Ways Of Experiencing In Which Our Own Understanding Of Existence Is Immediately Brought Into Play.