Abstract

The truth of Europe – the truth as thought through by the Greek-Christian-modern metaphysical history of Europe – is the truth of the identical: the one and only truth for all, and without it all that is left is fragmentation and an unsolvable conflict. The crisis of Europe as the crisis of philosophy, “the crisis of European humanity”, about which Husserl spoke in Vienna in May 1935, is the crisis of the Western understanding of reason, whose voluntaristic basic feature is dramatically clearly expressed: it shines secretively as the last substance of a certain rationality, which, however, has failed in fulfilling its task. The possibility of a renewed investigation of the relationship between truth and identity must therefore take into account hermeneutics of finitude and thereby set aside the metaphysical prejudice which sees finitude as a border separating man from the truth. Phenomenological-hermeneutic experience cannot avoid the openness for a finite truth, since truth can only be thought in terms of what shows and establishes itself in the worldly conversation of existences. Eventually, what remains unquestionable is the thought that the truth of conversation can only be a finite truth, which, however, cannot lead to a synthesis abolishing all differences. Quite the contrary: it eventuates as an event in which differences find their determination