• Journal of Ethics
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• no.76
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• pp.305-329
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• 2010

The problem of freedom is inseparably related to human life. It makes this not to be regarded as a problem restricted to the professional domain of ethics. It suggests rather that the problem of freedom is intimately connected with the philosophical groundwork for discussing the future direction of society, culture and science, and its regulative idea, a philosophical discussion which comes up inevitably with various social, economic and political problems, and problems related to the spirit of law. In this view, when we want to explain the problem of freedom as a fundamental one in reference to future direction of humanities and to find out a solution to this, our research only in accordance with the approach of history of philosophy runs into difficulties. The reason is that the problem of freedom has nowness together with historicity. Finding this problem to be a present one in our concrete human life, we can discuss it more meaningful under the methodological frame changed and developed by philosophical reflections since the modern age. And here I think a culturalistic approach reinterpreting hermeneutic insight and pragmatistic context methodologically can provide a pertinent clue for a theoretical work to investigate the problem of freedom and to find a solution to that because this approach considers historicity and nowness. For this purpose analysing truth intersubjectively and understanding freedom critically, this article tries to reconstruct symbolic interpretation and the concept of self constructed in community of language and action as a cultural horizon of freedom.