[Andrzej_Wiercinski_(ed ... - WordPress.com

phenomenological development. The proposed hermeneutic complement should then beunderstood as a contribution to the creation of a cultural hermeneutics. Such a plannedcultural hermeneutics would have to regard the crisis of the concept of tradition asindicating the fact that all cultural appearances can be apprehended against the backgroundof a problematical understanding of tradition.We have already raised the issue of the relationship concerning philosophy and culturein the concepts of the unity of the world and the difference of the cultural worlds, and wesuggested at the same time that the main problem lies in the openness between unity anddifference. The relationship between phenomenology and cultural hermeneutics remainsto be observed in respect of its open viewpoint. The open viewpoint of culture meansperspectivity. A culture opens up perspectives in agreement with its fundamental viewpoint.When we compare philosophy with culture, we realize that, in contrast, the formeropens the Panorama. We used the names “Perspective” and “Panorama” in the stricthermeneutic-phenomenological sense. In doing so, we do not forget that the concept of“perspectivity” was philosophically already to be found in Leibniz and Nietzsche. Wecannot assert the same with regard to the concept of “Panorama,” which stems from theGreek pan-horao, which means “on the whole, to see everything.” Jakob Burchardtnoticed that the Greeks, who started this philosophy, had “panoramic eyes,” in other wordsthat they were “omni-seers.” This viewpoint of the opening of a totality -- a complement --is decisive for philosophy. However, this totality presents itself only within the quarrel ofperspectives. Greek statuary and literature, but also philosophy itself, are so many proofsof this fact. Let us only remember this historical and well-known example of the choicedecisionin the first philosophy by Aristotle.The extraction of the first philosophy, in the way we encountered it for the first timein Aristotle, later also in Descartes and Husserl, can be understood here as a philosophicalEuropology. By this concept, I mean the project of a European humanity in terms of thetotality of its culture, within the perspectives of theory, experience and poesis. Althoughin the twentieth century we experienced Husserl’s attempt to establish phenomenology asfirst philosophy, it seems to us, nevertheless, that within contemporary philosophy, namelyin all its tendencies, the effort toward the second philosophy asserts itself as a priority andalso (with it) another kind of Europology. This second philosophy should not only differfrom the first one by the fact that the former doesn’t subordinate the difference of culturalperspectives to the panorama, but also by the fact that it allows an openness between theperspectives of culture and the panorama of philosophy. 18 Notwithstanding how wedefine culture, it is nothing else than an openness of the life-world perspectives. On thecontrary, if we bear in mind philosophy’s immanent historicity, philosophy displays aconcern toward the totality. It is also an effort not to remain locked into one’s ownperspective, but to sense a reciprocal integration in the totality of the world. Only thatwhich opens us mutually and keeps us open can connect us -- the One like the Others.Thereby we could attain another view of tradition, which is active in the open.Translated by Etienne Charest18Manfred Riedel has recently called attention to the concept of “second philosophy” in his treatiseFür die zweite Philosophie (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1988). However, he did not elaborate itsystematically enough. He thinks that the second philosophy equals “hermeneutics in its practical purpose.”On the topic of our connecting the problematic of the first to that of the second philosophy, with the‘Europology,’ Riedel’s essay on “The Universality of the European Sciences as a Conceptual and anAcademic Problem,” ibid., 30–59, is particularly worthwhile; this “problem” is one that should -- in ouropinion -- be developed further, for an understanding of our time.202