Abstract

In this work I am attempting to accomplish two goals: to resolve the conflict between the hermeneutic of suspicion and the hermeneutic of recollection in the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur; and to show how the wounded Cogito may be reconstructed in concrete reflection as a kind of foundation for the subject. The two tasks become one in that a resolution to the conflict occurs not by choosing one interpretation over the other, but by integrating each interpretation into the reconstructed Cogito. ;In Chapter Two I examine how the hermeneutic of suspicion dismantles immediate consciousness as a foundation of the self, but in so doing reduces the self to an "economics of desire," a physicalist model which postulates energy exchanges as the basis for mythic-symbolic narratives such as dreams and religious beliefs. Chapter Three uses the critique of symbols according to the hermeneutic of recollection to argue that the meaning of the sacred is not reducible to the interplay of forces. I show that the conflict between suspicion and the sacred is only a provisional one, and that both hermeneutics are least likely to encourage a false consciousness, or idolatry of the narcissistic ego, when they are used together. ;In Chapter Four I make the connecting link between both interpretations in reflection, by exposing the dialectic between the self and the other in each hermeneutic. The symbol of the child provides a concrete example of the other revealed by the hermeneutic of suspicion, i.e., the infantile ego which grasps for gratification and control, and the other revealed by the sacred, i.e., the receptive child whose only power lies in its ability to elicit love