Abstract

On its path to understanding Ricœur’s hermeneutics uses distanciation which includes exiting of the subject of understanding through reading, listening and watching from one’s self, thus necessarily looking for some difference. In that difference we can recognize Derrida’s “différance”, which in its consequences leads in a completely different direction than Ricśur’s term distanciation. We can especially compare these authors in the common field of researching metaphors. If Ricœur considers a true metaphor only that which is alive, that is that which creates new meanings, and that which he infers from the contemporary theories of Black and Richards, then for Derrida in Mythologie blanche all philosophy is but a forgotten metaphoric expression, which leads foremost to its own death, and then indirectly to the death of philosophy. In an evermore globalized world, on the one hand borders and differences are being erased and on the other fundamentalisms are appearing, which are trying at any cost to show the superability of differences. In the contemporary European concept of merging, as in all maturation, upbringing and training have a great significance in the preservation of one’s own identity, willingness to understand others and common action. It seems that with the help of Ricœur’s term distanciation we could join that double demand. But, because of the fact that such a view on the field of upbringing and training could be lost again in the “new mythology”, which is considered the foundation of fundamentalistic closing, it is necessary that the process be supported with Derrida’s criticism