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1. THE HERMENEUTIC-PHENOMENOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF HISTORICITYIN VIEW OF THE CRISIS OF THE NOTION OF TRADITIONDean KomelThe fact that being a European as such constitutes a fundamental value and a goal of thelife-world (Lebenswelt) of the majority of nations that today inhabit the geographicalregion of Europe, was significantly influenced by the evolution of phenomenology 1throughout the twentieth century. Even atrocities such as those committed during the twoworld wars and the most recent Balkan war cannot undermine the credibility of this lifeworld.However, one needs to question whether phenomenology, during its century ofevolution, has achieved an appropriate critical analysis of the goal value of Europe, aswell as of all the concepts which inhere to this value: “culture,” “sciences,” “arts,”“history,” “politics,” “freedom of religion,” etc. In order to be able to give an appropriateanswer to these questions, even if only approximately, it is necessary to elaborate a specialinsight into the cultural dynamics of the twentieth century, and above all, to draw a broadreview of the findings within the modern and contemporary phenomenological fields. Ofcourse, I do not anticipate that I will be able to deal with these tasks rapidly.If we accept the following thesis, according to which the development of contemporaryphenomenology intrinsically defines the European life-world and its set of values, whichdeveloped itself alongside history, then this once-allowed phenomenological fact requiresa systematic reflection on the typology of historicity as an active agent that is immanentin itself. In other words: if phenomenology took a decisive part in the formation of thedifferent meanings of historical culture and if it wants to carry this task even further, thenit is indeed imperative for phenomenology to develop its own sense of historicity. In orderto achieve this, I will try to discern a specific hermeneutic complement of phenomenology,both in the textual and the methodical sense.1Research in modern phenomenology nowadays extends its activities to several fields of knowledge:to philosophy, sociology, cultural sciences, aesthetic theory, theology, religion, psychology and theory ofscience. “The existence of phenomenology belongs undoubtedly to figures of thought of this last century,which it accompanied from its beginnings. In 1900 Edmund Husserl made a decisive breakthrough withhis Logical Investigations. “Something was born, which would be later on called ‘phenomenology,’ a factthat took its founder by surprise, as usually happens with every nascent theory.” Bernhard Waldenfels,Einführung in die Phänomenologie (München: Fink, 1992), 9. The instantaneous graphic display of somethingthought to be concrete represents the main characteristic of the phenomenological research method,which takes into account both the objective and the subjective aspects of knowledge. The breakthroughof phenomenology in the first half of the twentieth century, as initiated by Husserl, Scheler and Heidegger,is directly linked to the modern crisis of the notion of man as its own point of reference. Therefore, thephenomenological method only revealed its complete validity through the “post-modern” cultural movementsof the last decades. The very fact that the most significant representatives of phenomenology canalso be found outside of Germany, (e.g., in France with Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Levinas and Ricoeur, inItaly with Enzo Paci, in Spain with Ortega y Gasset, in Russia with Schpet, in Poland with Ingarden, inthe Czech Republic with Patoèka, in Slovenia with Veber, etc.) indicates explicitly the pan-Europeancharacter of phenomenology. In the foreground of the actual discussions surrounding phenomenology, thefollowing subjects come across more notably: mainly, the confrontation of the phenomenological methodwith structural, analytical and socio-critical methods, but also its contradistinction with the Europeanintellectual tradition, the various intercultural perspectives, democracy, individuality, with social environments,with religious and artistic wisdom, with the role of technology and the sciences in our modernsociety. In the effort to overcome a contemporary rationality, all of these researches are intrinsically boundby the attempt to develop a new type of thinking, which would not only take into consideration themultifaceted aspects of the notion of man as its own subjective point of reference but also in relation withits cultural and natural surroundings.189