Fruitful distance

The time gap between the reader and the text seems to be a problem, an obstacle in the way of interpretation. Gadamer (p. 297) rather views it as productive: “Temporal distance is not something that must be overcome. This was, rather, the naive assumption of historicism, namely that we must transpose ourselves into the spirit of the age, think with its ideas and its thoughts, not with our own, and thus advance toward historical objectivity. In fact the important thing is to recognize temporal distance as a positive and productive condition enabling understanding” rather than as “a yawning abyss.” It is not an abyss but “filled with the continuity of custom and tradition, in the light of which everything handed down presents itself to us.”

The course of events is itself productive: “Everyone is familiar with the curious impotence of our judgment where temporal distance has not given us sure criteria. Thus the judgment of contemporary works of art is desperately uncertain for the scholarly consciousness. . . . . Only when all their relations to the present time have faded away can their real nature appear, so that the understanding of what is said in them can claim to be authoritative and universal.” An event can be seen as a whole only from a historical distance.