16000-23

The expression ‘history’ has various significations with which one view neither the science of history nor even history as an Object, but this same entity itself, not necessarily Objectified among such significations, which this entity is understood as something past may well be the pre-eminent usage. This signification is evinced in the kind of talk in which we say that something or other “already belongs to history”. Here’ past’ means “no longer present-at-hand”, or even “still present-at-hand indeed, but without having any ‘effect’ on the ‘Present’ “. Of course, the historical as that which is past has also the opposite signification, when we say, “One cannot get away from history.” Here, by “history”, we have in view that which is past, but which nevertheless is still having effects. Howsoever, the historical, as that which is past, is understood to be related to the ‘Present’ in the sense of what is actual ‘now’ and ‘today’, and to be related to it, either positively or privatively, in such a way as to have effects upon it. Thus ‘the past’ has a special double meaning; the past belongs irretrievably to an earlier time; it belonged to the events of that time; and despite that, it can still be present-at-hand ‘now'-for instance, the remains of a Greek temple. With the temple, a ‘bit of the past’ is still ‘in the present’.