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380 pages
Published January 1, 1989
"... to understand, for a finite being, is to be transported into another life. Historical understanding thus involves all the paradoxes of historicity: how can a historical being understand history historically? These paradoxes, in turn, lead back to a much more fundamental question: in expressing itself, how can life objectify itself, and, in objectifying itself, how does it bring to light meanings capable of being taken up and understood by another historical being, who overcomes his own historical situation?"
"Instead of asking: On what condition can a knowing subject understand a text or history? one asks: What kind of being is it whose being consists of understanding?"
"It is in this sense, beginning with our introduction, that we have insisted that existence as it relates to a hermeneutic philosophy always remains an interpreted existence."