Die Keplersche Wende der Hermeneutik

Kant’s “Copernican revolution” has attributed to the transcendental subject a central position that German idealism has then progressively emphasized and strengthened. On the contrary, Heidegger’s Hermeneutics can be considered as a new revolution, i.e. as a “Keplerian revolution”, because the hermeneutical subject is only one of the two centres of the orbit of knowledge: the position of the object is determined not only by the position of the subject, but also by the relation of the subject to Being (understanding). The co-operation of both these focuses (Dasein and Being) makes the path of knowledge elliptical and provides the Heideggerian idea of truth as composition of Hiddenness and Unhiddenness with a new sense: the relationship to Being remains in every expression always unexpressed. The double focussing of the “hermeneutic cosmology” is described by referring to the semantics of the verb “to have”, which hints both to the field of existence and to practical philosophy (habitare, habitus). In this way, ontology can be elliptically deformed and translated into an “echeilogy”, a “science of having”.