People cannot live without hope; this is one of the statements I can defend without any reservations. - Hans-Georg Gadamer

The work of art that says something confronts us itself. That is, it expresses something in such a way that what is said is like a discovery, a disclosure of something previously concealed. The element of surprise is based on this. "So true, so filled with being" [So wahr, so seiend] is not something one knows any other way. Everything familiar is eclipsed. To understand what the work of art says to us is therefore a self-encounter.

What man needs is not just the persistent posing of ultimate questions, but the sense of what is feasible, what is possible, what is correct, here and now. The philosopher, of all people, must, I think, be aware of the tension between what he claims to achieve and the reality in which he finds himself.

Das Kunstwerk, das etwas sagt, konfrontiert uns mit uns selbst. Das will sagen, es sagt etwas aus, das so, wie es da gesagt wird, wie eine Entdeckung ist, d.h. die Aufdeckung von etwas Verdecktem. Darauf beruht jene Betroffenheit. «So wahr, so seiend» ist nichts, was man sonst kennt. Alles Bekannte ist übertroffen. Verstehen, was einem das Kunstwerk sagt, ist also gewiß Selbstbegegnung.