This altogether simple matter, learning to read—the word of thinkers and poets—this simple preparatory schooling is what, in a very broad sense, is meant to prepare what I would like to say.
Thus, first: interpretation of texts, in order still to protect, to some degree, that from which I believe something preparatory might emerge somewhere. Second: the positive intention of learning to read—not merely for those who philosophize. One cannot think without thinking historically, in a very deep sense: learning to read, bringing word and language once again closer to the human being as such. There thereby arise both the great question and the differences in selection, and behind them stand, naturally, a very determinate intention, a task, and likewise very determinate necessities. From my teaching activity I can report the experience that, whenever I had interpreted a passage from Hegel’s Phenomenology, the students would say: now he is a Hegelian, and so forth.
But now to your question, concerning which we have argued for a long time and upon which we have still not reached agreement. It would be a misunderstanding if you believed that I assess philology negatively. Yet—and here I come to the sentence “Anything can be proven”—you say: only what is correct can be proven. Then I would have to ask: what do you understand by “correct”? I mean this: “Anything can be proven” means that, once a fact or state of affairs has been established and observed, there exists the possibility of positing certain presuppositions corresponding to it, from which the state of affairs can be inferred. This is how natural science proceeds, which, in accordance with Western linguistic usage, I understand under the name of science [Wissenschaft]. Philology, in this sense, is not a science. Modern natural science can always pose the question in such a way that the matter proves itself as correct. But who guarantees that the projection of nature operative within this science is not merely a very determinate aspect that yields such correctnesses whenever approached in this way?