Culturological hermeneutics and the dialogue of the contexts

Abstract

The article defines the interdisciplinary approach to the interpretation of the works of art and introduces the term "culturological hermeneutics". One of its main principles is the obligatory attention, paid to the culturological context of the work. In this way we can interpret the well-known "hermeneutic circle" that way: the understanding of the text is impossible without understanding the context, but the understanding of the context is impossible without understanding the text (or the body of texts). Such context is formed by the individual, intersubjective and intercultural factors.

One of the levels of such context is the cultural paradigm that forms as a result of the interaction of the historical and national (diachronic and synchronic) characteristics. Without understanding this paradigm we do not only lose the meanings of the concrete work of art, but waste the chance of understanding the other culture, as well as our own, that can be correctly understood and evaluated only in comparison with others.

Thus the theory of understanding should acquire new dimensions, turning into the culturological hermeneutics.

The author as a person, without losing their distinctive self, can be viewed as a representative of a certain cultural paradigm. Thus the recipient of the work of art, belonging to a different paradigm, appears in the situation of an intercultural communication. Such dialogue can be synchronic or diachronic.

In the most general meaning, there are three concentric circles of the synchronic culturological context: personal, social and universal. Here we mostly deal with the second. It is in itself has complex structure. Self-identification has different levels. One of the most important of them is the belonging to a nation. Among the characteristics that define a certain nation there are language, culture, historical memory, national myth, that together create the common intersubjective "horizon". One of the defining characteristics of an ethnoculture is its unique world-attitude that sometimes is called the cultural soul, ethos, cultural style etc. It is especially important, considering that in his days M. Kostomarov proved the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation on the material of the comparative study of mentality.

The foundation of the world-attitude is the mentality as "the culture’s unconsciousness". All these deeper levels of the social psyche shape the distinctive patterns that are studied by the representatives of the Cultural Morphology.

One of the main methods of studying this paradigm is the analysis of the unique configuration of the cultural universals. Such universals now have status of the major culturologic category. Still, there are different understanding of their status and function. For example, there is a discussion about the existence of the "second order" universals.

Generally the set of the universals is stable, but every cultural paradigm has its own pick of the universals and their concrete interpretation in culture. The historical changes are important, but the "core" of the national culture stays mostly intact, and provides the continuity of the tradition.

The most widely used term, connected with the cultural universals is the archetype. In many contexts we can view as its synonyms "idea", "eidos", "motif" etc. The artistic interpretation of the archetype leads to the emergence of the archetypal image, that combines general and individual traces.

The concept of archetype can be complemented with the concept of "signature" as the main archetype of a certain paradigm. It seems possible to suggest also the term "mythos" as the invariant plot of a certain culture that consists of its main mythologemes. As mythos is always diffuse, it needs reconstruction. O. Spengler came close to defining the mythos of the Faust Culture.

We can make a hypothesis that the closeness of the mythoi is one of the characteristics of the closeness of cultures, and thus the factor of the better of worse intercultural mutual understanding. In a sense, the culturological hermeneutics is a means of understanding mythos of a culture.

The intercultural dialogue as the dialogue of the ethnonational worlds happened throughout the human history. It can take different forms, both peaceful and aggressive, symmetrical and asymmetrical. Ukrainian culture for a long time was mostly a recipient. But in our time there is a hope that it will have a more active role in the mutual enriching of the different cultures.

Thus, as every work of art is created not in the cultural vacuum, we should note its context, including the whole paradigm. The understanding of the differences between the worlds of the author and the recipient helps to find their common traces, which leads to the understanding. The cultural-hermeneutic study aims at achieving this, turning the hermeneutical circle anti a spiral, that can bring us to the potentially never-ending in-depth studying of the work of art, ant through it – the human soul, culture and the world.