"We can ask primal questions, but we can never stand near
    the beginning. Our questions and answers are in part
    determined by the historical tradition in which we find
    ourselves. We apprehend truth from our own source within
    the historical tradition."

   "Our own power of generation lies in the rebirth of what has 
    been handed down to us. If we do not wish to slip back, 
    nothing must be forgotten; but if philosophising is to be 
    genuine our thoughts must arise from our own source."

   "The more determinedly I exist, as myself, within the 
    conditions of the time, the more clearly I shall hear the 
    language of the past, the nearer I shall feel the glow of 
    its life."

   "The freedom that can be attained in philosophizing cannot
    be handed down by the doctrine of an institution. Only as
    an individual can man become a philosopher."

   "Man... is not a self-sufficient separate entity, but is 
    constituted by the things he makes his own. In every form
    of his being man is related to something other than 
    himself: as a being to his world, as consciousness to 
    objects, as spirit to the idea of whatever consitutes
    totality.... Man always becomes man by devoting himself 
    to this other."

    - Karl Jaspers, "On My Philosophy" (1941)