PRELIMS - LESSON 3

• Time is understood in classical Greek philosophy as "the measure of motion (or change) as regards before and after" (Aristotle)
• Time is the measure of change whereby a particular being moves from one point to another
• Human life as subject to change or motion moves from one point (beginning) towards another (end)
• Temporality is the movement of human life that constitutes time and the basis for understanding human existence as temporal
• Man's ontological constitution is defined by time and duration as the condition of history
• Historicity emphasizes that the human being is a concretely existing individual who can be understood only insofar as he is a real physical body that has developed over time
• Being and Time (1927) by Martin Heidegger undertakes a hermeneutic of the Dasein
• Dasein refers to human existence seeking the answer to the question of Being
• Understanding and interpretation are fundamental modes of being human
• Understanding is the basis for all interpretation and operates within a set of already interpreted relationships
• Hermeneutics is the process of deciphering from manifest content and meaning to latent or hidden meaning
• Historical understanding is always connected to the present according to Gadamer
• According to Bultmann, historical knowledge is guided by the interpreter's preunderstanding and viewpoint.
• The historian is part of the field he is observing, and there is a relation between objective and subjective understanding
• Wilhelm Dilthey emphasized the importance of history in understanding ourselves and recovering a consciousness of historicality
• Historicality means understanding oneself through objectifications of life and that man's nature is not a fixed essence
• Man has the power to alter his own essence and is what he is in and through history
• History is ultimately a series of world views, and there are no firm and fixed standards of judgment for seeing the superiority of one world view over another
• A further consequence of historicality is that man does not escape from history, for he is what he is in and through history. "The totality of man's nature is only history."