Hans-Georg Gadamer on Aesthetic and Historical Consciousness

"The hermeneutic consciousness, which must be awakened and kept awake, recognized that in the age of science philosophy's claim of superiority has something chimerical and unreal about it. But though the will of man is more than ever intensifying its criticism of what has gone before to the point of becoming utopian or eschatological consciousness, the hermeneutic consciousness seeks to confront that will with something of the truth of remembrance: with what is still and ever again real." Hans-Georg Gadamer

"The eternal recurrence of new forms of unbearable servitude, and with them, new forms of resistance, demonstrates that human history is not a progressive march toward absolute knowledge, the demise of the state, or the end of history, but rather a constant struggle for our own subjugation, a battle that must be fought anew to establish our subjectivity, ourselves as subjects. Once we grasp the recurring nature of this struggle, only then will we recognize the task that confronts us today and in the future: to resist the ever-pressing forms of tyrannical power, that brutal desire for subjugation, and the ongoing, ever-renewed attempts to rule through fear, terror, and absolute domination." Bernard Edouard Harcourt