La permanencia del pasado: lo clásico en el tiempo

Resumen

The idea behind this text is to exhibit some of the characteristics of a form of actualization of the past; more precisely, the movement of the Classic in history. Following Gadamer on the role of tradition as an element of understanding and the configuration of the present, as well as Hegel's model of the Classic in the development of art and aesthetics, the paper claims that there is a movement in the constitution of the classic, through which the past remains by itself summoning the present. Thus, the past remains through its own beliefs and forms of representation. This thesis postulates a criticism of the omnipotence of Enlightenment and some of its immediate discourses: the configuration of the truth as objective knowledge; the unidimensional method; the constitution of determined historical subjects as the only authorities over the configuration of the world. The abovementioned thesis is sustained by a study of the characteristics of the culmination of the Classic. The central point is an attempt to demonstrate that while modern philosophical discourse historizes certain categories as simple descriptive elements of the past, a second argument, based on a proposal which always attempts to find the interpretive aperture, should discover the normative validity in esthetic categories of the present reality. In this view, the past interprets and transmits itself as Classic in the present and future perspectives. Hence, tradition —in its classic form— brings configurations into the present which constitute themselves in real life, while theoretical and methodological criticism on many occasions do not take them into account, but rather avoid or belittle them.