Tradition is always problematical. The only way to precede is to continually appropriate and reappropriate it.
Tradition is a provocative force rather than a conserving force. It is the background that instigates all inquiry. It conditions one's knowledge, yes, but such that it hands down interests, prejudices, questions, and problems that incite knowledge. One cannot live in tradition passively. One must apply it to one's own.
Tradition is a set of practices governed by accepted rules seeking to inculcate certain values and norms by repetition.
Tradition is a set or sequence of conceptual hierarchies, held in place by a kind of violence. The task is not to do away with tradition, but to 'deconstruct it' to find its cracks and openings from which its basic presumptions are revealed and something new might emerge.