Only when I have first understood the motivating meaning of the question can I even begin to look for an answer. It is not artificial in the least to reflect upon the presuppositions implicit in our questions. On the contrary, it is artificial not to reflect upon these presuppositions. It is quite artificial to imagine that statements fall down from heaven and that they can be subjected to analytic labor without once bringing into consideration why they were stated and in what way they are responses to something. That is the first, basic, and infinitely far-reaching demand called for in any hermeneutical undertaking.
Understanding is an adventure and, like any other adventure, is dangerous.
Just because it is not satisfied with simply wanting to register what is there or is said there but goes back to our guiding interests and questions, one has to concede that the hermeneutical experience has a far smaller degree of certainty than that attained by the methods of the natural sciences. But when one realizes that understanding is an adventure, this implies that it affords unique opportunities as well. Teaching that begins with questions is both a moral and a pedagogical choice. A teacher teaches with questions because she or he believes that it is a better way to teach, and a better way to be a teacher. The reason that our conversations are not great, and that we have no real community, is that we steadfastly refuse to ask the big questions, to try to seek answers to them in common.