The Unifying Aspects of Cultures

SECTION:

Hermeneutic and Non-Hermeneutic Accesses to Cultures

Franson Manjali (J.N.U., New Delhi/M.S.H., Paris)
Ontology, Genealogy and the Hermeneutics of Nietzsche

Nietzsche adhered to the Heraclitean view that everything is in flux. Being is always becoming. (Heraclitus: Nothing is still; all is flux.) Though everything is becoming, philosophers have often tried to fix (the meaning of) being by means of language. This fixing, as well as the desire to fix meaning, Nietzsche saw as a function of power. Further, this fixing is an historically continuous process, and is reflected in the vicissitudes of language. Thus, in what we may call the Nietzschean hermeneutics, ontology and philology becomes a genealogy (of power). The paper explores the relevant issues along the above-mentioned terrains.

THE UNIFYING ASPECTS OF CULTURES

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