The power of reflection

The article constitutes a part of a larger project devoted to a new assessment of the epistemological and institutional aspect of the sciences of man. In the first part, the author takes up the issue of criticism of a certain version of the concept of crisis (a kind of preliminary assessment, carried out from the position of psychoanalytical criticism of culture). In the second part, the author puts forward a hypothesis concerning the necessity to defend the speculative potential (tradition and the future) and subjects to a critical evaluation the existential and hermeneutic interpretation of “self-understanding” as a principle of the functioning of the humanities. In the third part, the author takes up the issue of the emancipating potential of humanities, juxtaposing the “work of reflection” with the language of axiology and instrumental reason.

The article constitutes a part of a larger project devoted to a new assessment of the epistemological and institutional aspect of the sciences of man. In the first part, the author takes up the issue of criticism of a certain version of the concept of crisis (a kind of preliminary assessment, carried out from the position of psychoanalytical criticism of culture). In the second part, the author puts forward a hypothesis concerning the necessity to defend the speculative potential (tradition and the future) and subjects to a critical evaluation the existential and hermeneutic interpretation of “self-understanding” as a principle of the functioning of the humanities. In the third part, the author takes up the issue of the emancipating potential of humanities, juxtaposing the “work of reflection” with the language of axiology and instrumental reason.