GADAMER'S APPROACH TO THE PARADOX OF THE OPEN HORIZON OF ACTUALITY NATAŠA LAH 1 Summary: In the philosophy of Hans Georg Gadamer the beginning of modern art marks a break with the lore of self-understanding artistic contents and a need to expand the theoretical horizon into the realm of all human life and culture. Therefore, the actuality of modernity, as the new reality of oblivion, has confronted the hermeneutical demand for an open horizon based on “memory and reminiscence“ (Horizonterweiterung). This essay deals with the possibility of applying “practical philosophy“, which is also the mainstay of Gadamer's hermeneutics, as a proposal for the reconciliation of memory and oblivion, in a paradoxical meeting of past and future. This further refers us to a historical-active situation of incessant explaining (Erklärung), instead of which we should exit the historical context in order to reify the humanities, by relying on the self- understanding quality of language and alphabet (Verständnis). To arrive at the words of what has been said within the lore is to achieve an understanding that leads towards action and must be active itself – deems Gadamer – thus breaking with the traditional comprehension of hermeneutics (as a teaching on method). However, the artistic lore arrives at the word not based on linguistics but rather on the anthropological foundations of game, symbols and festivals, always asking new questions, instead of answering the old theoretical challenges. Following the rules pertaining to the game of opening, of the lore that has been handed down through art, hermeneutics placed itself “between“ the distanced, historically conceived reification and the living affiliation to a certain tradition, hence building a bridge between memory and oblivion (tradition and modernity). Key words: Hans Georg Gadamer, appraisal of art, open horizon, actuality, hermeneutics as practical philosophy, critique of self-understanding 1. Hermeneutics between memory and oblivion Incited by a personal experience of coerced departure from his French homeland (lieux de mémorie) after the Revolution and by the post-revolutionary idea of damnation of memory (Damnatio memoriae), German naturalist and writer of French origin, Adalbert von Chamisso, wrote in 1813 “The Wondrous Story of Peter Schlemihl“. His hero Schlemihl, whose name – in Jewish and Talmud- based Yiddish tradition – denotes a man who has been forsaken by fortune, has sold his own shadow to the devil. Since the shadow represents Schlemihl's collective memory, the hero substitutes the social and private inconspicuousness of a shadowless man by working as a freelance scientist, a naturalist. Analyzing this literary work, philologist Herald Weinrich concludes: “What a happy and peaceable science is the one where, whether with shadow or without it, dwelling on past or forgetting 1 Nataša Lah, PhD, professor of Art Theory, Department of Art Theory, Philosophical Faculty, University of Rijeka, nlah@ffri.hr