ABSTRACT
This essay discusses some rare aspects of the non-analytical (Continental) philosophy of the human sciences. It tries to show how these aspects are connected with the so-called 'legitimation crisis' of humanities. It is a bit difficult to speak about the modern human sciences and their legitimation crisis at least for two reasons. First, the subject is very general, and second, it is not clear, how to relate the legitimation crisis of modern human sciences to their institutional and cognitive crises. At the end of the sixties Walter J. Ong (1969) identified four main types of charges brought against these sciences: (a) the human sciences are not effectively related to extracurricular life, and they are not responsive enough to the global problems of modern societies as they are encouraging (in accordance to their main methodological principle of 'value neutrality') retreat from political activism; (b) in emphasizing the relativistic theoretical viewpoint they fail to investigate and to educate for emotional and intellectual sharing of all cultures; (c) they often represent their mode of critical analysis as a universal ideology, taking the place for political philosophy and theology; (d) they are insufficiently reflective about their cognitive aims, and, as a consequence, their cognitive structure resists the incorporation of new research subjects. Twenty five years after Ong's diagnosis Gunter Scholtz (1994) added three new types of charges: (a) the human sciences form the cognitive base of Eurocentrism as they impose Western cultural norms and standards upon non-European cultural traditions; (b) like the theories of natural science, the discourses of the human sciences are products of the 'epistemological foundationalism' and the 'logocentrism'; (c) although the human sciences are distinguished by peculiar forms of epistemic rationality, they are not able to prevent the instrumental Entzauberung of the world.
