Art, Myth, and the “Crisis Identity” in the Hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer

Abstract

The emergence of philosophical hermeneutics is associated with a period of the Western culture crisis. Hermeneutics had to respond to a shock caused by a sudden shift in the sphere of values. Gadamer’s intention was to face the situation and one of the ways to do that was to return to the so-called source experiences – aesthetic, religious, ordinary, and mythical. They helped to solve the problem of “the end of art” in the field of artistic actions and theories. Openly, or to some extent discreetly, hermeneutics uses both particular ancient myths and specific meanings that can be ascribed to them also in the concepts of identity of e.g. an artist or a participant. They reflect the discontinuity associated with the crisis. Pointing to myths as binding prefigurations allows interpreting them as narrations that give meaning and reason to human existence, thus defending a person against an internal disintegration.