Dean Komel

The comparative study of the philosophical terminologies can be considered as an important contribution to the intercultural discussion in the contemporary philosophy. The main goal of such terminological investigations is to recognize different philosophic traditions and to found the basis for their dialog. The author examines the Slavic word for the truth »resnica«, which remains present only in the Slovenian language. The Slovenian language as well as the Slovenian philosophical terminology was only partly influenced by the Cyril-Methodian tradition and has retained a lot of terminological possibilities, which take their origins from pre-Cyril-Methodian time. The word »resnica« is examined first by etymology as well as by its historical presence in some other Slavic languages. The grammatical and semantic characteristics of the word are important to understand its philosophical context. In the last part of the article, the author analyses the terminological use of »resnica« by some Slovenian philosophers.

The purpose of the article is to present the outlines of the reception and the influence of Heidegger’s philosophy on the territory of former Yugoslavia. This reception and influence were in their essence co-conditioned by specific political, social and cultural circumstances in the region, which were throughout accompanied by “the syndrome of dehumanization”. The confrontation with Heidegger’s philosophy is therefore co-defined by the profoundly experienced crisis of European humanity. During both world wars the attempt of an overcoming of this crisis of humanity by the means of phenomenological and existentialist philosophy was the main focus of attention. The period after the Second World War is denoted by the linking of Marxism with Heidegger’s attempt to surpass philosophy as metaphysics through the perspective of the history of being; in this context we specifically discuss the Praxis philosophical school and the original philosophical thought of Vanja Sutlić. During the disintegration of Yugoslavia and in the period thereafter, besides the intensive appropriation of Heidegger’s thought through translations and interpretations, which also led to the thorough study of Slavic philosophical terminologies, post-Heideggerian ways of thinking came to the fore, together with the possibility for a new humanization within the wider European and global social framework.

The underlying premise of this essay is that the essential contribution of the hermeneutic turn in contemporary philosophy is the acknowledgment of a historical criterion of thinking, whereby the philosophical tradition is claimed by the question of its own truth. Philosophy, historically established by founding experience in truth, thus finds itself facing the open experience of truth, i.e. the truth as the coming about of the openness. Philosophical hermeneutics, as differing from hermeneutic philosophy, cannot limit itself solely to interpretative criticism. Rather, it must follow the opening of truth primarily happening in transit from thinking to language. And the moment of this transit is the question of ourselves.

Taken philosophically, Europeanness is the origin of intercultural encountering and understanding rather than some sort of substantial basis of common cultures. This of course doesn’t imply the negation of historical foundations of common European existence, which were the key determinations -- be they good or bad -- of its geography. However, these determinations remain obscure unless the horizon and the ground are constituted from the midst as the intercultural midst of the world. Intercultural evidence of culture reveals itself from within the midst of the world as the ground and horizon of mutual encountering

The question of the contemporaneity of Europe appears in the context of dialogue on the common European future, which, on the one hand is an achievement of the encounter of diverse cultural languages and, on the other, dictated through reflection on what is reestablishing the Europe of today as a world’s. Views on “opening the future” and “enabling development” cannot be mutually harmonized, since there is a lack of experience of contemporaneity in the jointing of horizons. From this experience also comes the common interest in European dialogue. The diversity of European languages does not prove to be an obstacle to reestablishing this dialogue, but its vital condition. It is, namely, the historically mediated possibility that brings the essential difference into the uniform process of the expansion of power without difference

Eden od osnovnih vzgibov razvitja filozofije v 20.stoletju je bil nedvomno poskus hermenevtične utemeljitve Geisteswissenschaften pri Wilhelmu Diltheyu, ki se je pri Heideggru zaokrenil v smer hermenevtičnega zasnovanja filozofije same in naposled doprinesel k uvidu, da znotraj filozofije ni več kaj začenjati, ter da je pristni kraj mišljenja treba določiti onkraj filozofije. Vendar pa se mišljenje, ki stopa čez filozofijjo v hkratnem sestopanju pod njo, nahaja na poti vmes, v neki vmesnosti, ki zase terja svoje razumevanje. Tako razumevanje predvsem zaznamuje »ukvarjanje s hermenevtiko«, ki se je v prejšnjem stoletju vsekakor pomenljivo preobrazila v filozofsko hermenevtiko. Kaj zaobsega ta oznaka izvemo šele, ko sežemo do tistega, kar naj bi bilo v njemu dosegu: sodobnost kot godišče filozofske hermenevtike.One of the basic incentives of the development of philosophy in the 20th century was undoubtedly the attempt at hermeneutic grounding of Geisteswissenschaften in Wilhelm Dilthey, which, in Heidegger, took the course of hermeneutic formation of philosophy itself and eventually led to the insight that there is nothing to begin with within philosophy and that the genuine place of thinking should be determined from without philosophy. However, thinking which transcends philosophy and descends under it at the same time finds itself on the way in between, in a certain midst, which calls for an understanding proper only to itself. Such understanding primarily determines “dealing with hermeneutics”, which in the previous century tellingly transformed into philosophical hermeneutics. What this designation actually embraces can only be realized after we have reached that which was in its grasp: contemporaneity as the going-on of philosophical hermeneutics.

To speak about works of art or the essential relevance of art for philosophy today is far from being an easy task, if at all possible. What needs to be called into question is this very possibility in its possibility – in both art and philosophy. The pretentiousness of the question is not related only to the fact that contemporary aesthetics and theory of art are fundamentally involved in distancing themselves from the inherited philosophical notions on art. Sooner or later, the appropriateness and scope of such restrictions turn out disputable. The weight of the question lies in the very manner of the process of artistic creation and the presence of artworks

The underlying premise of this essay is that the essential contribution of the hermeneutic turn in contemporary philosophy is the acknowledgment of a historical criterion of thinking, whereby the philosophical tradition is claimed by the question of its own truth. Philosophy, historically established by founding experience in truth, thus finds itself facing the open experience of truth, i.e. the truth as the coming about of the openness. Philosophical hermeneutics, as differing from hermeneutic philosophy, cannot limit itself solely to interpretative criticism. Rather, it must follow the opening of truth primarily happening in transit from thinking to language. And the moment of this transit is the question of ourselves.

Filozofija v zadnjih štiridesetih, petdesetih letih, nekako odkar je Heidegger odposlal svoje Pismo o humanizmu, razvija posebno »praktično teorijo«. Motrenja, ki izhajajo iz filozofske kulture, se prav zavoljo tega izhodišča skorajda nujno znajdejo v »filozofiji kulture«, ne da bi bil podan smoter. Nujnost take premestitve iz »prve« v »drugo« filozofijo prihaja namreč iz same nuje motriteljskega duha , ki je nekdaj vzniknil v kulturi filozofije, tej skrbi za dušo, in je brezdušno poniknil v nekem stanju, ki je filozofijo tako rekoč primoralo, da se prične ukvarjati s kulturo, z njenimi drobci, raztrganinami, zavržki, z nedoločnostjo, ki je postala splošna in pomeni veliko več kot pa le »nelagodje v kulturi«. Kajti, če kaj, potem danes ni več jasno to, kako kultura definira položaj človeka.In the last forty or fifty years, from the moment Heidegger sent his Letter on Humanism, philosophy has developed a special “practical theory”. Exactly due to these starting points, reflections stemming from philosophical culture almost necessarily find themselves in the “philosophy of culture”, without a given purpose. The necessity of such a transposition from the “first” into the “second” philosophy comes from the very need of the speculative mind , which at a certain point in time appeared in the culture of philosophy, this care for the soul, and soullessly died away in a certain condition which forced philosophy to tackle the culture, its fragments, raggedness, trash, indefiniteness, which has become a general phenomenon and means so much more than just a “discomfort in culture”. For if anything, it is no longer clear today as to in what way does the culture define the human condition

Phenomenology became established as a wide philosophical movement in the 20th century, without ever becoming unified as a direction in contemporary philosophy. The article attempts to rethink the central motivation of phenomenological thinking, which is expressed as an appeal »to matters themselves«. The main focus in this is devoted to an ear for the utterance of matters themselves, which directs us to the phenomenon of speech that allows us to talk of phenomena. Herder’s reflection on the origin of language provides possible guidance in this connection, insofar as it adopts the articulation of phenomena.

Undoubtedly, a great accomplishment of Husserl’s phenomenological philosophy lies in the fact that he was the first thinker who, by meditating on intersubjectivity, formulated the philosophical possibility through the thinking of culture in terms of intercultural encounters, and that, in this sense, he may have been one step further even from Heidegger, even though he was justifiably reproached by his student that he didn’t venture to overstep the ground of philosophical subjectivist tradition. However, Heidegger was well aware that Husserl’s concept of subjectivity is considerably different from that of the modern age. The argument speaking in favour of this is the possibility of discussing interculturality, which for modern philosophy proves unattainable in so far as it subjects the sphere of culture to the unifying form of subjectivity, without being able to consider it in terms of the constitution of the being-in-the-world– this, for example, being true for all Neo-Kantian theory of culture. By unfolding the universal horizon of the world, Husserl was, within certain limits, capable of giving thought to the relationship between the home world and foreign world as well as the possibility of mutual encounters of various cultural worlds. It is on this basis that we are trying to develop the hermeneutics of interculturality which concentrates primarily on the intermediate space of intercultural encounters and understanding

Phenomenology became established as a wide philosophical movement in the 20th century, without ever becoming unified as a direction in contemporary philosophy. The article attempts to rethink the central motivation of phenomenological thinking, which is expressed as an appeal »To matters themselves«. The main focus in this is devoted to an ear for the utterance of matters themselves, which directs us to the phenomenon of speech that allows us to talk of phenomena. Herder’s reflection on the origin of language provides possible guidance in this connection, insofar as it adopts the articulation of phenomena.

The situation today seems to come to a point where the historicity of philosophy as a way of thinking which responds to being can be easily done away with. The "hermeneutic address" reveals primarily the almost unbearable state of being unaddressed which speechifies without interruption. But where from do we take the supposition of a certain hermeneutic address in philosophy, and what makes it possible for us to expect it from the history of philosophy. The question is strangely connected to a reproach which is often addressed to philosophical hermeneutics, namely that its present condition cannot be related to its origin in Greek first philosophy. The hermeneutic problem would therefore comprise only philosophy in its historical lateness, while being absent in its earliness. This first of all means that the critique of the interpretative reason as the characteristic of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics and the skill of interpretation bearing the name Hermeneutics, have nothing in common; and secondly, all endeavors of relating Hermeneutics and hermeneia as a possibility given to us by the very god Hermes. Although it seems that there is nothing else to be added to the story, let us refocus our attention to the beginning and origin of Hermeneutics, which is usually related to the Greek word "hermeneia" and Greek god of rhetoric, Hermes