Historical consciousness fails to understand its own nature if, in order to understand, it seeks to exclude that which alone makes understanding possible. To think historically [Historisch denken] means, in fact, to perform the transposition that the concepts of the past undergo when we try to think in them [die Umsetzung vollziehen, die den Begriffen der Vergangenheit geschieht, wenn wir in ihnen zu denken suchen]. To think historically always involves establishing a connection between those ideas and one’s own thinking.
--Hans-Georg Gadamer (qtd. in Nietzsche and Antiquity)
