Philosophy and Cultural Heritage. An Approach to Philosophy in Museal Contexts

Abstract

The following considerations form a philosophical approach to the meaning of cultural heritage. They are an attempt to answer the question, which position and task philosophy holds or may hold for this heritage. In a first section it is shown that there is no escape from the cultural heritage. For this purpose, it is resorted to the juxtaposition of «to have or to be» by the social psychologist Erich Fromm. Following this distinction, two basic approaches are sketched that precisely fail to do justice to the cultural heritage and to the way of dealing with it that is necessary for one’s own location in the world. These sketches serve as a background against which the significance of philosophy in and for the cultural heritage is discussed, in order to be able to grasp the appropriate approach to philosophy in museal contexts. As a result, museums are proving to be part of the philosophical heritage, at least in terms of possibility.