I. Historical and Cultural Memory in the Evolving National and European Identity: Existential Identity and Memory of a Nation

The author affirms that the phenomena of history are always interpreted in the perspective of our future objectives. So, it is stated that the interpretation of nation's history is the recollection of our future. Projection of the future grants us both creative dynamism (picturesqueness), and possibility of death (existential departure). According to another thesis, creating and existence form two planes of human reality, which create a living environment interacting between each other. The author affirms that this environment is the background of becoming of both individual and the nation, and it changes together with the phenomena emerging in it. According to the third thesis, existential participant's space and time of existential participant - individual or nation - interact as his spiritual environment's components of his becoming. The author follows individual's and nation's analogy, which means rather interaction when creating a living environment than similarity. Additionally, analogy includes aesthetic (sensual) aspect, which appears when talking about existential creativity. So, it is stated, that openness and incompleteness of existence is being supposed by the representation of our bodily (sensual) ending, in other words, by aesthetic tragedy. According to the author, the small individual circle and the big one of a nation are coupled by aesthetic tragedy. According to the fourth thesis, the being of a nation becomes meaningful when a nation becomes a hero in the face of its death. The conceptions of M. Heidegger (being towards death), M. Bachtin (hero, polyphonic interaction), E. Husserl (spiritual environment, phenomenon), Aristotle (dynamism, formation) and Plato (analogy, participation) are used in the research.