Paul Ricoeur

Numerous studies have demonstrated that adopted persons, and in particular adolescents, are over-represented in psychotherapeutic treatment settings. Traditionally, clinical approaches to the treatment of distressed adopted persons have focused on largely decontextualized intrapsychic or familial concerns such as attachment issues, the formation of a self-concept and identity, or failures in navigating developmental stages. ;From the point of view of ontological hermeneutics, psychological categories fall short of addressing broader cultural and philosophical dimensions, such as the experience of not "being-at-home-in-the-world," a sense (...) of alienation and insecurity in regard to taken-for-granted aspects of one's ordinary reality, and the impact of these factors on adoptees' sense of self, emotional state, and behavioral difficulties. This study examined the narratives of adopted adolescents and utilized Heidegger's hermeneutics to interpret their concerns and to generate new insights for clinical work with troubled adolescent adoptees. ;Eleven adolescent adoptees were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. Of these participants, 7 were in psychotherapy and 4 had never received significant treatment. Each participant's discourse was examined for salient themes, and interpreted using Heidegger's hermeneutic analysis of existential anxiety, and of human Being in general. The relationship of these themes to the concerns, distress, and symptoms of adoptees was discussed. ;The findings included a number of important themes, of which three in particular were related to the adoptees' distress when experienced. These themes were a sense of "homelessness," an experience of being different, not belonging, or of having fallen "out of everydayness," and a profound estrangement from generally taken-for-granted realities such as the security of parental relationships. As a result of these themes or issues, participants, particularly those involved in treatment, often felt anxious, ungrounded, and unworthy, and reported engaging in self-destructive behaviors. ;Based on these themes, potential interventions were discussed that accounted for the larger philosophical concerns of troubled adolescent adoptees, as well as their interaction with cultural dialogues about the self and confrontations with mainstream psychological prescriptions for becoming a person. In general, these interventions focused on strengthening adoptees' interpretive and philosophical faculties, and on increasing their tolerance of complexity and ambiguity. (shrink)

This volume makes available for the first time an encounter between Ricoeur and Castoriadis on questions of human creation, social imaginaries, history, and the imagination to an English speaking audience. As such it represents a highly significant resource for scholars, and a lively introduction to each of their thought for newcomers.

The essay’s argument is twofold: First, it contends that Ricœur’s articulation of the social imaginary in the Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, reveals a turn to a general theory of culture, which is best understood as a shift from a hermeneutics of culture to a cultural hermeneutics. This move forms part of his philosophical anthropology of “real social life.” The essay proposes it is epitomized in Ricœur’s changing reception of Cassirer. Second, the essay hermeneutically reconstructs the emergence of this turn (...) in Ricœur’s intellectual trajectory, and, in so doing, contends that it is connected to a rearticulation of both the phenomenological reduction and the symbolic function that took place in the mid- to late 1960s. Ricœur’s developing response to the phenomenological problematic of the world horizon underlies these further phenomenological-hermeneutic considerations. The essay concludes with a brief sketch of Ricœur’s understanding of the symbolic mediation of action as a reconfiguration of the hermeneutical actualization of phenomenological preconditions of the symbolic. (shrink)

Benefiting from certain concepts of contemporary Western hermeneutics,this paper reviews Zamakhsharī’s hermeneutical approach to the Qur’ān ashe expounds it in his magnum opus, Kashshāf. Criticizing the laterWittgensteinian model of language as a monadically opaque structure ofrules, Habermas defines the notion of ordinary language as a porous spherewhose rules are not precise and unequivocal. I have found both of thesemodels fruitful while interpreting Zamakhsharī’s linguistic-scholasticapproach to Qur’ānic hermeneutics. In the nexus of the Wittgenstein-Habermas contrast regarding the concept of ordinary language, I (...) interprethow Zamakhsharī, being a Persian Mu‘tazilite, gets interested in thelinguistic exploration of the meaning of the Qur’ānic text as an outcome ofthe process of his Arabicization. Furthermore, I show how the technicality ofZamakhsharī’s linguistic approach to the Qur’ān gives to his interpretationthe colour of objectivism. Finally, I explore that it is not only the linguisticobjectivism which one can find in Zamakhsharī’s Qur’ān exegesis ratherthere is an equally bright colour of the scholastic subjectivism in it. For, attimes Zamakhsharī’s interpretation appears to be characterized by theimposition of meaning on the Qur’ānic text as per the Mu‘tazilite creeds heis convinced with. (shrink)

Arturo Roig inscribe el ejercicio del filosofar en la geografía de su función crítica. Crítica que es comprendida como una forma de pensamiento que se cuestiona a sí mismo y que considera no sólo los límites y posibilidades de la razón, sino también la realidad humana e histórica de un sujeto que se constituye en un "nosotros". La filosofía, así entendida, es un saber de vida. La función utópica se presenta como tarea para este saber de conjetura y para una (...) filosofía que sirve a la vida. Roig devuelve con ello el valor epistémico que tiene el plus lo axiológico, no verificable como hipótesis científica. Arturo Roig inscribes the exercise of philosophizing in the geography of its critical function. Critique that is understood as a form of thought that questions itself and considers not only the limits and possibilities of reason, but also the human and historical reality of a subject that becomes a "we". Philosophy, thus understood, is a knowledge of life. The utopian function arises as a task for this knowledge of conjecture that serves to life. Thus Roig gives back an axiological dimension as epistemic value to this knowledge. (shrink)

The essay argues that narrative approaches to human personhood which conceptualize the goal of human personhood in terms of the fulfillment of a capacity for self-constitution by means of deliberate choices tend to make inordinate and inhuman claims for human agency. The narrative approaches of the psychoanalyst and psychoanalytic theorist, Roy Schafter, and of the theologian and ethicist, Stanley Hauerwas, illustrate this. Both thinkers implicitly deny the permanent vulnerability of human agency in the area of the appropriation of narratives. In (...) the case of Hauerwas, this also implies a denial of theneed for God’s grace in the area of the appropriation of narratives. The work of the philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, serves as a contrast to Schafer and Hauerwas and demonstrates that a narrative approach to human persons does not need to make inordinate claims for an autonomous human capacity for self-constituion. The last part of the essay shows how the rejection of the need for God’s grace in the area of the appropriation of narratives is connected to a rejection of the idea of innocent suffering. (shrink)

This article defends the thesis that the reflection which Ricœur conducts on the notion of testimony is not one research topic among others, but forms one of the keys to understanding the Ricœurian project as such. The notion of testimony enables one to get beyond the polarity of description and ascription, in order to return to the question of the real. Through an examination of the quadruple grammar of testimony that Ricœur proposes and its context in the dialogue with historiography (...) and theology, the article advances the thesis that with testimony, we broach the limit point of hermeneutics, a “non-interpretable” at the heart of interpretation. This “non-interpretable” acquires a quasi-transcendental status, because it allows interpretation to broach the thing it is dealing with and not another interpretation. Lastly, it will be important to show how Ricœur’s thought on testimony also reflects an ethics: this ethics prohibits treating the testimony as a mere source, referring to a positivity, but as a trace, within an experience, which as such is unrepeatable. (shrink)

In this essay I revisit Ricœur’s famous greffe in light of Husserl’s method. In other words, I try to highlight the anti-idealist interpretation of phenomenology exposed by Ricœur in his early project and in some later works, in order to present the necessity of the graft of hermeneutics onto the worn out body of western reflexive philosophy. This surgery has a radical effect on the “Subject”: far from provoking a “rejection crisis”, the hermeneutical graft provides the Cogito with a new (...) heart, and gives new life to Ricœur’s homme capable – the ultimate character of his long philosophical journey. The essay closes with an alternative interpretation of this “capability”. (shrink)

This collection of essays is dedicated to the prolific career of Paul Ricoeur. Honoring his work, this anthology addresses questions and concerns that defined Ricoeur’s.

RESUME L’hypothèse que tente d’esquisser cet article est que l’idée ricœurienne d’une médiatisation dynamique des contradictions de l’imaginaire social présuppose une corrélation originaire de l’idéologie et de l’utopie qui ne peut elle-même être comprise qu’à partir de l’événement de l’institution d’un imaginaire social constituant. Dans un premier temps, l’article s’efforce de cerner ce qui fait la spécificité de la théorie ricœurienne de l’idéologie et de l’utopie comme « pratiques imaginatives », en soulignant à ce titre l’influence déterminante des thèses de (...) Jacques Ellul sur l’idéologie. Puis, dans un second temps, il s’engage dans une analyse régressive qui conduit de la réappropriation ricœurienne de la conception dialectique de l’idéologie et de l’utopie exposée par Mannheim à l’idée d’un fondement événementiel de ces deux formes opposées de l’imaginaire social. Mots-Clés : Evénement, idéologie, utopie, Ellul, Mannheim. ABSTRACT This paper attempts to sketch out the hypothesis that the Ricœurian conception of a dynamic mediatization of the contradictions of the social imaginary presupposes an original correlation between ideology and utopia, which can itself be understood only from the event that institutes a constitutive social imaginary. The first part of the paper marks out the specificity of the Ricœurian theory of ideology and utopia in terms of “imaginative practices”, underlining the determining influence of Jacques Ellul’s theses on ideology. The second part tries to develop a regressive argument, starting from the Ricœurian re-appropriation of Mannheim’s dialectical conception of ideology and utopia, and leading back to the idea of an event foundation for these two opposed forms of the social imaginary. Keywords : Event, Ideology, Utopia, Ellul, Mannheim. (shrink)

LA QUESTION DE L'IMAGINAIRE SOCIAL ET POLITIQUE.

Starting from a genesis of the concept of narrative identity, this article attemps to interpret the constitution process of our narrative identities through a systematic and synthetic review of the main contributions of the Ricœurian theory of imagination, from Freedom and Nature to Oneself as Another. In its complex imaginative constitution, narrative identity can then be characterized as a poetico-practical mix that mediates and puts in a dialectical relation two distinct functions of the imagination: a poetic and a practical one, (...) which are themselves enlivened by a dialectic and an internal duplication. (shrink)

A travers une analyse des concepts d’affirmation originaire, d’attestation et de reconnaissance, cet article tente de reconstituer le sens et les motivations du cheminement réflexif qui conduit Ricœur de L’Homme faillible à Soi-même comme un autre et à Parcours de la reconnaissance . Pour ce faire, il s’efforce d’abord de montrer ce qui fait la continuité profonde, de problématique et de méthode, du projet anthropologique ricœurien; afin de dégager ensuite les difficultés centrales liées à l’idée d’une constitution poétique du soi, (...) qui conduisent Ricœur à réélaborer les concepts directeurs de son herméneutique du soi. A la lumière du dialogue constant de Ricœur avec la philosophie de Nabert, il tente enfin de montrer comment les concepts d’attestation et de reconnaissance trouvent, pour l’essentiel, leur genèse dans un approfondissement de la notion d’affirmation originaire, lui-même prolongé par une réflexion sur le témoignage.  . (shrink)

L'excellent Document de la Commission biblique pontificale " L'interprétation de la Bible en Église " (1994) mentionne le philosophe protestant Paul Ricœur au rang des penseurs herméneutiques indispensables à l'intelligence de l ...

Dans le troisième volume de Temps et récit de Paul Ricœur, nous trouvons une proposition relative aux responsabilités éthico-politiques de l´historien –et, a notre avis, des professionnelles en général de l’Histoire- a partir de la distinction espace d’expérience/horizon attente due a Reinhart Koselleck. Dans ce travail nous proposons, d’abord, ce qui nous semble fondamental dans cette proposition et qui fait référence (en la disqualifiant) a la notion d’utopie. D’autre part, on analyse les textes les plus importants de Ricœur sur cette (...) notion; et, en fin, on propose qu’on peut lier une ligne spécifique de pensé développée en Amérique Latine avec la proposition de Ricœur, pour la complémenter, prolonger et même la corriger.  . (shrink)

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;The reconstruction of Paul Ricoeur's philosophical project presented in this thesis endeavours to bring together his various ideas concerning human willing in order to assess the contribution they are able to make to contemporary Christian theology. This critical assessment identifies the field of concepts and issues that comprise Ricoeur's Kantian account of willing; it also challenges his reliance on a paradoxical account of the human subject as being both (...) temporal and non-temporal. ;Ricoeur's dual-aspect account of willing assumes that the human subject is not merely passive in receiving the intuitions of experience but is actively involved in the constitution of objective experience and in the self-recognition of human freedom as 'a captive free will'. Human freedom, then, can only be adequately understood in terms of the symbolism of 'captivity' and 'deliverance'. For Ricoeur it is the Judaeo-Christian 'myths' concerning the origin and the end of evil which uniquely symbolise the experience of deliverance from captivity by representing Jesus Christ as the decisive figure of hope for a transformation of human consciousness and circumstances. ;However, at the same time as offering this positive assessment it is argued that Ricoeur's dual-aspect account of human willing--privileging, as it does, the conceptual hypostases of 'the temporal' and 'the non-temporal'--is founded upon a transcendental idealist problematic. In order to go beyond adherence to an abstract and possibly mystifying view of 'the non-temporal' the ultimate emphasis in this thesis is placed upon the transformative and transignifying possibilities of the dual reconstructive process which both constitute and are constituted by Ricoeur's 'hermeneutics of suspicion' and 'hermeneutics of faith'. An authentic faith--and thus the paramount condition of an authentic theology itself--depends, in Ricoeurian terms, upon both a critical and restorative reconstruction and reconstitution of the human bond with the sacred. (shrink)

In this contribution to Text Matters, I would like to introduce gender into my feminist response to Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology of the capable subject. The aim is to make, phenomenologically speaking, “visible” the gendering of this subject in a hermeneutic problematic: that of a subject’s loss of confidence in her own ability to understand herself. Ricoeurian hermeneutics enables us to elucidate the generally hidden dimensions in a phenomenology of lost self-confidence; Ricoeur describes capability as “originally given” to each lived (...) body; but then, something has happened, gone wrong or been concealed in one’s loss of confidence. Ricoeur himself does not ask how the gender or sex of one’s own body affects this loss. So I draw on contemporary feminist debates about the phenomenology of the body, as well as Julia Kristeva’s hermeneutics of the Antigone figure, in order to demonstrate how women might reconfigure the epistemic limits of human capability, revealing themselves as “a horizon” of the political order, for better or worse. (shrink)

As narrative conceptions of selfhood have gained more acceptance within various disciplines including philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences, so too have these conceptions been critically appraised. Chief among those who are suspicious of the overall viability of ‘narrative identity’ is the philosopher, Galen Strawson. In this paper, I develop five arguments underlying Strawson’s critique of narrative identity, and respond to each argument from the perspective of the hermeneutic phenomenology of Paul Ricœur. Though intuitive, I demonstrate that none of Strawson’s (...) arguments are cogent. The confrontation between these two figures highlights a deep conceptual disagreement about our epistemic access to the self, which has thus far gone unrecognized in the Anglo-American discussion, so that it raises a new problem for the metaphysics of personal identity. (shrink)