Backgrounds of the Hermeneutics of Myth and Religious Experience in Luigi Pareyson

Abstract

This article approaches the hermeneutical relationship of Luigi Pareyson with the German and French existentialist experience (Jaspers and Marcel). This Italian philosopher, co-founder, together with Gadamer and Ricoeur, of contemporary Hermeneutics, builds his theory of interpretation based on an ontological personalism -not phenomenological- that states the revealing and expressive value of the person against Hegelian historicism. This personalism is reaffirmed in his studies of aesthetics (Teoria della formatività). The values of tradition, common sense and the performativity of true art constitute the return to the origin or ontological truth before any ideological formulation. These ideas find their origin and inspiration in F.W. Schelling.