Kurt Walter Zeidler

FRANZ ROSENZWEIG: DAS „NEUE DENKEN“

In the following paper I will consider the question how has the understanding ofhistory transformed trough time, mainly concerning the development from the understandingfocused on necessity to that which prioritized the contingency. Thereby it can be seen how concentratingon language can turn philosophers away from the idea that history is ruled by certainlaws or principles. That which historically occurs cannot be adequately derived from generalnotions; instead – the man is the one who, by changing the usage of language, forms the history.While the classical (idealistically coloured) philosophy of history had announced the freedomaccordingly to criteria of mind, the postmodern philosophers of philosophy of history have beencriticizing that tradition and demanding deliberation of biased philosophical notions such as theone of the unique mind, because they think that such notions were also accidentally set up andthus have only historically conditioned plausibility. This critique was in the most radical mannerformulated by the Neo-pragmatist Richard Rorty, who by insisting on contingency of everythinghumane (including language) pointed out to the boundaries of the project of philosophy as thediscipline which establishes the knowledge.Schleiermacher’s project of the universalization of hermeneutics has been seen asthe very beginning of its modern history. By dividing the process of interpretation into two separate,but mutually dependent aspects: grammatical (objective) and technical, or psychological(subjective), Schleiermacher conceived the interpretation as a structurally dualistic, but fundamentallyinfinite process of moving toward the totality of sense. Different readings of Schleiermacherattribute to him either primacy of the linguistic or primacy of the intentional-psychological.The purpose of this work is to put Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics in a dualistic light, wherebywe can speak only about a mutual cooperation between two equally important aspects of theinterpretation. In such context the problem of subject is defined by its dualistic nature. Movingfrom one aspect of the interpretation to another, the place of subject reveals itself as essentiallyproblematic. Subjectivity is not considered in the terms of negation and self-determination, so inSchleiermacher there is a subject which constantly finds itself under the power of the objectivestructures (language, literal-artistic genres, tradition etc.). Therefore, the intention of this papersis to demonstrate that Schleiermacher’s hermeneutics, opposed to all critics of its romantic subjectivism,is not enough subjective. Subject is possible only as a borderline category.