The century of the Kantian lights
30
Apr
The eighteenth century was celebrated by many philosophers
as a century of Philosophy, it seemed that the Enlightenment had triumphed irreversibly, its idea of state, science as a way to remove man from darkness, at last everything seemed to go from strength to strength. First of all what was clarification for Kant, no doubt the greatest precursor, as Hegel was the synthesis of all idealistic philosophy of the Enlightenment.
Clarification (Aufklarung) would be the departure of man from his minority, of which he himself would be guilty, see that guilt here is not the Christian concept of deviation, but that of which the state would be the guardian.
So the minority is the inability to make use of his understanding without the direction of another individual, it is the perfect individualism, the man without the direction of any other individual, therefore only he is guilty of this “minority”, to depend on the other.
This is accomplished in the maxim of the categorical imperative: “he acts in such a way that his action can be universal”, and should not be confused with the golden rule: “do to others what you would like done to you”, because this includes the Other.
The idea that idealism has a golden thread leading to Platonism, which in turn can not be isolated from Aristotle’s “materialism”, is also mistaken in Gadamer: “The problem of historical consciousness,” whose The central point is precisely to separate idealistic and romantic consciousness from history, to reality.
The text of Plato’s Seventh Letter favors dialogue with the Other, the dialectical dialectic of facing opposites and knowing how to complete the so-called hermeneutical circle, where preconceptions can pass through a fusion of horizons and a later enlightenment that leads to new reformulation. Plato affirms in the Seventh Letter: “… only after rubbing so to speak, in each other, …. in these friendly colloquies of questions and answers … is that wisdom and understanding shine on each object … “(Plato 344 b-c).
For Gadamer, the Hermeneutic Circle, a true method of philosophizing, is a-Latvian, for: “Whatever Insight we may possess emerges in a finite human discourse, and therefore only partially … Our insights, in other words, are marked by our discursiveness. What is given to us is given from the concealment [léthe] and in a lapse of time back to it. Hence our human truth is a-letheia, never absolute. ” (GADAMER, 1980, pp. 103-104)
PLATO, Letter VII (Trad. Of the Greek and notes of Jose Trindade Santos and Juvino Maia Jr). Rio de Janeiro: PUC-Rio / Loyola, 2008.
GADAMER, H.G. Dialogue and Dialectic, eight hermeneutical studies on Plato, Binghamton, NY: Yale University, 1980, p. 91-123.
