Another interesting article on understanding history poetically: http://http://www.ovimagazine.com/art/2363?PHPSESSID=7c14f3ddd66f920052c49aabdd5f42d1
A passage for thought:
Here is how the hermeneutical circle functions: my own self-understanding opens up history for me. In turn, when I understand history thus it has an effect on me by making explicit my implicit identity. Once I know what that identity is, what it means to be human, then I can come before the past not as its passive by-product but as a dynamic prosecutor. I can oppose my own identity to history and interact with it. Here history imitates life which is not passive as the Cartesian paradigm suggests (i.e., the extension of matter into space), but rather active and dynamic (the interaction of matter and spirit) as implied by the Vichian paradigm. Dante and Vico point the way. They dont merely supply us with information about historical processes. They do much more. They teach us, the readers to bring a self to oppose to history in dialogue, thus rendering us capable of having and experience of the self.
A passage for thought:
Here is how the hermeneutical circle functions: my own self-understanding opens up history for me. In turn, when I understand history thus it has an effect on me by making explicit my implicit identity. Once I know what that identity is, what it means to be human, then I can come before the past not as its passive by-product but as a dynamic prosecutor. I can oppose my own identity to history and interact with it. Here history imitates life which is not passive as the Cartesian paradigm suggests (i.e., the extension of matter into space), but rather active and dynamic (the interaction of matter and spirit) as implied by the Vichian paradigm. Dante and Vico point the way. They dont merely supply us with information about historical processes. They do much more. They teach us, the readers to bring a self to oppose to history in dialogue, thus rendering us capable of having and experience of the self.