I agree that there's always going to be bias. I'd go one step further, even, with your comment about most important works being too difficult. Instead, I'd posi

I agree that there's always going to be bias. I'd go one step further, even, with your comment about most important works being too difficult. Instead, I'd posit that most important works have a bias in and of themselves. An implicit framework of thinking that needs to at least be partially understood before the work can be understood. The original intended audience of the work, separated by however much time and culture and expertise, is at an advantage here, because in theory they already shared some of that framework with the author. But the further separated you are from the culture that created a work, the harder it's going to be to engage with it in any meaningful way; you just don't speak the same language. So commentary and criticism and analysis and so on can serve as a useful bridge into the way of thinking that you'd need to really grok the primary source. It's probably impossible to get there completely, there will always be a bit of a gap. But the more secondary material you read, from as many perspectives as you can find (I do think this is very important, in addition to the critical thinking mentioned in the parent; even a very critical thinker, in a strange land, can be deceived into believing there is consensus on a matter when presented only with a single side), the better chance you have at being able to focus the center of the thing, with all the various lenses you've been given. At least, the center of it relative to your own set of biases!