levinas

There is no such thing as passive receiving of Tradition. He who receives, the disciple, is always _ must always be _ the scene of a creation. To receive is to create, to innovate! 'The petrification of acquired knowledge _ the freezing of spiritual things _ allowing itself to be placed like an inert content in the mind and to be handed on, frozen, from one generation to another, is not real transmission_.' Handing on is 'resumption, life, invention and renewal, a mode without which revealed thinking, that is to say, thinking which is authentically thought, is not possible.