The Three Gates – Self-Biography, Myth, and Intercultural Self-Critique, Exemplified through a Philosophy of Aging

Overview
Contemporary aging is often reduced to biomedical decline, neglecting its role as a vital phase of Individuation.

This paper reclaims aging:
first, as an underexplored dimension of social pedagogy (Natorp) and cultural philosophy (Cassirer), viewing the life course not as functional decay but as a change of the individual's symbolic universe through the integration of unconscious dimensions of communal meaning (Gemeinschaft).
Second, this notion of Gemeinschaft prompts reflection on the relationship between cultural meaning and morality.
Third, the various implications of this notion of Gemeinschaft and individuation are explored in relation to intercultural dialogue — both regarding how aging is understood across cultures and the nature of the dialogical process itself.

From Personal Myth to Social Critique
The presentation moves beyond traditional gerontology by synthesizing autobiography and depth psychology. Drawing on Susan Rowland's work on (auto)biographical personal myths in Jungian literary theory, the presentation explores aging through the lens of the "personal myth."

From this starting point, the perspective is broadened: Goethe's Stirb und Werde and C.G. Jung's notion of individuation (or ‘Durchbildung’) — along with the possibility of a "prospective Gemeinschaft" arising from the integration of an unconscious communal dimension — are considered as possible openings of culture.

The implications of these ideas for what might be termed a critical-constructive cultural self-critique, and for the concept of morality, are then discussed.

Intercultural Hermeneutics & Global Aging
The final part of the presentation applies this framework to intercultural philosophy, taking Raimon Panikkar's diatopical hermeneutics as its starting point.
This is done, first by seeking homeomorphic equivalents of the aging process, through which the transition between life and death is reinterpreted via diverse cultural symbols of Stirb und Werde. Secondly, this new notion of Gemeinschaft — as constituted by conscious and unconscious dimensions and prospective possibilities for individuation through the integration of the "shadow side of culture" — is considered as a means of expanding diatopical hermeneutics, opening the way for deepening the constructive, self-critical attitude in the dialogical dialogue that Panikkar is aiming for.