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The Philosophy Of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology Of His Work
Paul Ricoeur is widely regarded as the foremost living phenomenologist. His writings cover a wide range of topics, from the history of philosophy, literary criticism and aesthetics, to metaphysics, ethics, religion, semiotics, linguistic structuralism, the humanistic sciences, psychoanalysis, Marxism, guilt and evil, and conflicts of interpretation. In similar format to the preceding 21 volumes of the "Library of Living Philosophers", this book contains Ricoeur's intellectual autobiography, critical essays by 25 leading philosophers, and Ricoeur's replies to these criticisms.
- GenresPhilosophy
262 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1997
About the author
Paul Ricœur
343 books479 followersPaul Ricoeur (1913–2005) is widely recognized as one of the most distinguished philosophers of the twentieth century. In the course of his long career he wrote on a broad range of issues. His books include a multi-volume project on the philosophy of the will: Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (1950, Eng. tr. 1966), Fallible Man (1960, Eng. tr. 1967), and The Symbolism of Evil (1960, Eng. tr. 1970); a major study of Freud: Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (1965, Eng. tr. 1970); The Rule of Metaphor (1975, Eng. tr. 1977); Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (1976); the three-volume Time and Narrative (1983-85, Eng. tr. 1984–88); Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (1986); the published version of his Gifford lectures: Oneself as Another (1990, Eng. tr. 1992); Memory, History, Forgetting (2000, Eng. tr. 2004); and The Course of Recognition (2004, Eng. tr. 2005). In addition to his books, Ricoeur published more than 500 essays, many of which appear in collections in English: History and Truth (1955, Eng. tr. 1965); Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology (1967); The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics (1969, Eng. tr. 1974); Political and Social Essays (1974); Essays on Biblical Interpretation (1980); Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (1981); From Text to Action (1986, Eng. tr. 1991); Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination (1995); The Just (1995, Eng. tr. 2000); On Translation (2004, Eng. tr. 2004); and Reflections on the Just (2001, Eng. tr. 2007).
The major theme that unites his writings is that of a philosophical anthropology. This anthropology, which Ricoeur came to call an anthropology of the “capable human being,” aims to give an account of the fundamental capabilities and vulnerabilities that human beings display in the activities that make up their lives. Though the accent is always on the possibility of understanding the self as an agent responsible for its actions, Ricoeur consistently rejects any claim that the self is immediately transparent to itself or fully master of itself. Self-knowledge only comes through our relation to the world and our life with and among others in that world.
In the course of developing his anthropology, Ricoeur made a major methodological shift. His writings prior to 1960 were in the tradition of existential phenomenology. But during the 1960s Ricoeur concluded that properly to study human reality he had to combine phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation. For this hermeneutic phenomenology, whatever is intelligible is accessible to us in and through language and all deployments of language call for interpretation. Accordingly, “there is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols, and texts; in the final analysis self-understanding coincides with the interpretation given to these mediating terms” (Oneself as Another, 15, translation corrected). This hermeneutic or linguistic turn did not require him to disavow the basic results of his earlier investigations. It did, however, lead him not only to revisit them but also to see more clearly their implications.
The major theme that unites his writings is that of a philosophical anthropology. This anthropology, which Ricoeur came to call an anthropology of the “capable human being,” aims to give an account of the fundamental capabilities and vulnerabilities that human beings display in the activities that make up their lives. Though the accent is always on the possibility of understanding the self as an agent responsible for its actions, Ricoeur consistently rejects any claim that the self is immediately transparent to itself or fully master of itself. Self-knowledge only comes through our relation to the world and our life with and among others in that world.
In the course of developing his anthropology, Ricoeur made a major methodological shift. His writings prior to 1960 were in the tradition of existential phenomenology. But during the 1960s Ricoeur concluded that properly to study human reality he had to combine phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation. For this hermeneutic phenomenology, whatever is intelligible is accessible to us in and through language and all deployments of language call for interpretation. Accordingly, “there is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols, and texts; in the final analysis self-understanding coincides with the interpretation given to these mediating terms” (Oneself as Another, 15, translation corrected). This hermeneutic or linguistic turn did not require him to disavow the basic results of his earlier investigations. It did, however, lead him not only to revisit them but also to see more clearly their implications.
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October 16, 2024
AN EXCELLENT ANTHOLOGY OF A WIDE VARIETY OF RICOEUR’S WRITINGS
Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) was a French philosopher whose work combines phenomenological description with hermeneutics. This 1978 volume was the first major anthology of Ricoeur’s works in English.
The Editor’s Preface states, “This anthology presents both a topical and a chronological view of the works of Paul Ricoeur. Included are selections which give the central themes of Ricoeur’s early phenomenology of the will as well as his most recent present study on Freud and on the Explanation/Understanding debate. This anthology also presents Ricoeur’s enormously wide philosophical interests, from psychoanalysis, linguistics, and the philosophy of language to writings on religious language and biblical exegesis. We were led to edit this collection by our desire to have something suitable to recommend to our colleagues who wanted to sample some of Ricoeur’s work and by the need for an inexpensive text which would allow our students to read widely in his philosophy.”
He states, “The unconscious… is always the background of my biography which I cannot put on the same level as transparent consciousness and which, moreover, I cannot reach without the mediation of a third person who must interpret it for me before I can reintegrate it into my field of consciousness.” (Pg. 9) He adds, “the reconciliation of the voluntary and the involuntary presupposes that they confront each other in the same universe of discourse.” (Pg. 10)
He continues, “By ‘subjectivity’ I mean the subject function of an intentional consciousness, such that I understand it as applying to me and to others; thanks to this mutual elaboration of knowledge of self and other, I arrive at true concepts of subjectivity, valid for man, my fellow. And that is why the phenomenology of the lived body is a phenomenology of intersubjectivity.” (Pg. 10)
He says, “Phenomenology only resolves the Kantian antinomy by carrying philosophical mediation back to a prereflective level which is prior to the antinomy; the antinomy manifests itself, then, as a cultural creation, contemporary with the advent of science; and its cultural creation is seen to be a conflict which is localized within a more fundamental relation of belonging, a belonging of man to the world. The antinomy does not receive an intellectual solution, but is located within the context of a more original ground.” (Pg. 71)
He suggests, “In this strict sense the question of being, the ontological question, is excluded in advance from phenomenology, either provisionally or definitely. The question of knowing that which IS in an absolute sense is placed ‘between parentheses,’ and the manner of appearing is treated as an autonomous problem. Phenomenology in the strict sense begins as soon as this distinction is reflected upon for its own sake, whatever the final result may be. On the other hand, whatever the act of birth, which brings appearing to emergence at the expense of being or against the background of being, is no longer perceived and systematized, then phenomenology ceases to be a philosophical discipline and falls back to the level of ordinary and popular description.” (Pg. 75-76)
He recalls, “I felt compelled to shift my interest from the original problem of the structure of the will to the problem of language as such, which had remained subsidiary even at the time when I was studying the strange structures of the symbolism of myths. I was compelled to do so for several reasons… First, my reflection on the structure of psychoanalytic theory; secondly, the important change in the philosophical scene… in France, where structuralism was beginning replace existentialism and even phenomenology; thirdly, my continuing in the problem raised by religious language, and… by the so-called theologies of the Word in the post-Bultmannian school; and finally, my increasing interest in the British and American schools of ordinary language philosophy, in which I saw a way of both renewing phenomenology and or replying to the excesses of structuralism.” (Pg. 88)
He observes, “For us who speak, language is not an object but a mediation. Language is that through which, by means of which, we express ourselves and express things. To speak of the act by which the speaker overcomes the closure of the universe of signs, in the intention of saying something about something to someone; to speak is the act by which language moves beyond itself as sign toward its reference and towards its opposite. Language seeks to disappear; it seeks to die as an object.” (Pg. 112)
He asserts, “It seems to me that philosophy has not only the job of accounting, in a discourse other than scientific, for the primordial relation of BELONGING between the being that we are and some region of being that a science elaborates as an object by the appropriate methodological procedures. It must also be able to account for the movement of DISTANCIATION by which this relation of belonging requires objectification, the objective and objectifying treatment of the sciences, and thus the movement by which explanation and understanding are called forth on the properly epistemological level. I shall stop at the threshold of this difficult investigation.” (Pg. 166)
This anthology provides an excellent overview of the many directions of Ricoeur’s thought, and will be of great help to those unfamiliar with him.
Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) was a French philosopher whose work combines phenomenological description with hermeneutics. This 1978 volume was the first major anthology of Ricoeur’s works in English.
The Editor’s Preface states, “This anthology presents both a topical and a chronological view of the works of Paul Ricoeur. Included are selections which give the central themes of Ricoeur’s early phenomenology of the will as well as his most recent present study on Freud and on the Explanation/Understanding debate. This anthology also presents Ricoeur’s enormously wide philosophical interests, from psychoanalysis, linguistics, and the philosophy of language to writings on religious language and biblical exegesis. We were led to edit this collection by our desire to have something suitable to recommend to our colleagues who wanted to sample some of Ricoeur’s work and by the need for an inexpensive text which would allow our students to read widely in his philosophy.”
He states, “The unconscious… is always the background of my biography which I cannot put on the same level as transparent consciousness and which, moreover, I cannot reach without the mediation of a third person who must interpret it for me before I can reintegrate it into my field of consciousness.” (Pg. 9) He adds, “the reconciliation of the voluntary and the involuntary presupposes that they confront each other in the same universe of discourse.” (Pg. 10)
He continues, “By ‘subjectivity’ I mean the subject function of an intentional consciousness, such that I understand it as applying to me and to others; thanks to this mutual elaboration of knowledge of self and other, I arrive at true concepts of subjectivity, valid for man, my fellow. And that is why the phenomenology of the lived body is a phenomenology of intersubjectivity.” (Pg. 10)
He says, “Phenomenology only resolves the Kantian antinomy by carrying philosophical mediation back to a prereflective level which is prior to the antinomy; the antinomy manifests itself, then, as a cultural creation, contemporary with the advent of science; and its cultural creation is seen to be a conflict which is localized within a more fundamental relation of belonging, a belonging of man to the world. The antinomy does not receive an intellectual solution, but is located within the context of a more original ground.” (Pg. 71)
He suggests, “In this strict sense the question of being, the ontological question, is excluded in advance from phenomenology, either provisionally or definitely. The question of knowing that which IS in an absolute sense is placed ‘between parentheses,’ and the manner of appearing is treated as an autonomous problem. Phenomenology in the strict sense begins as soon as this distinction is reflected upon for its own sake, whatever the final result may be. On the other hand, whatever the act of birth, which brings appearing to emergence at the expense of being or against the background of being, is no longer perceived and systematized, then phenomenology ceases to be a philosophical discipline and falls back to the level of ordinary and popular description.” (Pg. 75-76)
He recalls, “I felt compelled to shift my interest from the original problem of the structure of the will to the problem of language as such, which had remained subsidiary even at the time when I was studying the strange structures of the symbolism of myths. I was compelled to do so for several reasons… First, my reflection on the structure of psychoanalytic theory; secondly, the important change in the philosophical scene… in France, where structuralism was beginning replace existentialism and even phenomenology; thirdly, my continuing in the problem raised by religious language, and… by the so-called theologies of the Word in the post-Bultmannian school; and finally, my increasing interest in the British and American schools of ordinary language philosophy, in which I saw a way of both renewing phenomenology and or replying to the excesses of structuralism.” (Pg. 88)
He observes, “For us who speak, language is not an object but a mediation. Language is that through which, by means of which, we express ourselves and express things. To speak of the act by which the speaker overcomes the closure of the universe of signs, in the intention of saying something about something to someone; to speak is the act by which language moves beyond itself as sign toward its reference and towards its opposite. Language seeks to disappear; it seeks to die as an object.” (Pg. 112)
He asserts, “It seems to me that philosophy has not only the job of accounting, in a discourse other than scientific, for the primordial relation of BELONGING between the being that we are and some region of being that a science elaborates as an object by the appropriate methodological procedures. It must also be able to account for the movement of DISTANCIATION by which this relation of belonging requires objectification, the objective and objectifying treatment of the sciences, and thus the movement by which explanation and understanding are called forth on the properly epistemological level. I shall stop at the threshold of this difficult investigation.” (Pg. 166)
This anthology provides an excellent overview of the many directions of Ricoeur’s thought, and will be of great help to those unfamiliar with him.
September 24, 2015
I appreciate his analysis of the hermeneutics of symbols and philosophical reflections, existence and hermeneutics, and listening to the parables of Jesus.
November 1, 2015
I'm better for reading this. Awesome collection of essays.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews