The Transfiguration of the Common Idea

..In fact history does not belong to us; we belong to it.
Long before we understand ourselves through the process of self-examination,
we understand ourselves in a self-evident way in the form of the immediate:
the family, society, culture, and state in which we exist.

The self awareness of an the individual is only flickering in the closed circuit of historical life.
This is why predjudices (pre-judgments) of the individual, far more than their experiential judgements, constitutes the historical reality of their being.