We look to the history of the time of framing and to the intervening history of interpretation. But the ultimate question must be, what do the words of the text mean in our time.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Our job as writers and thinkers in the time is how to bring about the occasions that let people have that first-person experience - or the metaphoric experience that allows them to see human continuity as opposed to total threat, total willingness to do violence.
I study history in order to give an interpretation.
A time is marked not so much by ideas that are argued about as by ideas that are taken for granted. The character of an era hangs upon what needs no defense.
What is a moderate interpretation of the text? Halfway between what it really means and what you'd like it to mean?
I will come out with my interpretation. If I'm wrong, fine. It will become part of the debris of history, part of the give and take.
The way we make sense of a realistic text is through the same broad ideological frame as the way we make sense of our social experience or rather, the way we are made sense of by the discourses of our culture.
Surely it is time to examine into the meaning of words and the nature of things, and to arrive at simple facts, not received upon the dictum of learned authorities, but upon attentive personal observation of what is passing around us.
History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.
It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.
Whenever you do a new interpretation of a great, previous text of any kind, you always look for some kind of immediate significance right now.
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