Hermeneutic dialogue with the unconscious: Exploring Jung and Neumann’s archetypal images in light of Gadamer’s aesthetic rationality: Exploring Jung and Neumann’s archetypal images in light of Gadamer’s aesthetic rationality

This paper aims to justify that the concept of “archetypal images” proposed by Jung and later developed by Erich Neumann is enriched when understood through the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Specifically, we will argue that Gadamer’s philosophy enables at least three things: to understand that archetypal images participate in aesthetic rationality (i); to justify that the tension between universality and singularity, from which the meaning of archetypal images emerges, allows to consider them as participating in the realm of practical reason (ii); and to interpret the relationship that, according to Jung, we must establish with these archetypal images in a hermeneutic-dialogical key (iii). The roadmap guiding our research is as follows: we will begin by explaining Jungian concepts “archetype” and “archetypal image” and analysing the tension between universality and singularity they entail. Then, we will explore Gadamer’s reflections on what the subject brings to every act of understanding—its horizon—and how these thoughts align with Jung and Neumann’s ideas. Once we establish the link between these thinkers, we will examine Gadamer’s premise that aesthetics is a mode of knowing (not mere subjectivism) and argue that this idea illuminates the practical rationality behind the symbolic-historical nature in which, according to Jung and Neumann, the unconscious reveals itself (archetypal images).