Den Neoklassizismus weiterdenken: Gadamer und die hermeneutische Reichweite des „Klassischen“

An attempt to redefine the “Classical” according to Gadamer’s Hermeneutics should be made in order to rethink the concept of Neoclassicism in view of today’s challenges. Gadamer elevates the Classical to “the effective-historical category par excellence” because the mediation between past and present, through which a traditionary content exerts an effect on the interpreter, who then develops its meaning, heats up in classics. The Classical is able to overcome historical distance, since classics address the present as if they were contemporaneous with it. Nevertheless, such superiority over time befits Classical only thanks to its free choice by the interpreter, who inherits the past by participating in his tradition. So, he lets shine the truth of his own “lifeworld”. Nowadays, insofar as our horizon encompasses no longer merely our past, but also fuses with the horizons of other cultures, Neoclassicism may be reinterpreted as a dialog between different “language-worlds”, from which a polyphonic tradition could arise.