Literary Sphere

In " The Depreciated Legacy of Cervantes " by Milan Kundera, the author discusses Edmund Husserl's concerns about the crisis of European humanity during the Modern Era. According to Husserl, the one-sided focus of European sciences, rooted in thinkers like Galileo and Descartes, reduced the world to a technical and mathematical object, neglecting the concrete world of life. This led to what Heidegger termed "the forgetting of being," where man became a mere thing to external forces. Kundera introduces a nuanced perspective, suggesting that the ambiguity of the Modern Era embodies both decline and progress. He argues that Cervantes, often overlooked by phenomenologists, played a crucial role in shaping European culture. While philosophy and science forgot about human being, the novel, starting with Cervantes and spanning four centuries, delved into existential themes. It explored adventure, the inner workings of emotions, historical rootedness, the ev...