 The method’s first contribution to (self-)understanding is roughly as follows. Someone who possesses his or her own distinctive concepts, beliefs, values, sensations, customs, art forms, and so on but does not compare them with perspectives that have lacked them altogether or possessed variant alternatives runs a grave risk of taking them to be universal and indispensable, and also of overlooking what is distinctive in their character. The genetic method counteracts both of these types of (self-)misunderstanding by making one familiar with earlier historical periods that have lacked the relevant concepts etc. altogether and with intervening historical periods in which they were indeed anticipated but only in forms significantly different from the form in which one possesses them oneself, thereby making it possible both to perceive the non-universality and dispensability of the concepts etc. in question and to compare them with others in order to reveal their distinctive character.