In this article, I examine the discourse around evil from the perspective of philosophical anthropology. Through an analysis of the religious symbolism of evil and an associated quest for a complete study of being, I intend in this article to explore fresh ways of establishing the relation between our rhetorical practices of evil and moral responsibility. I draw on Ricoeur’s work on the primary symbols of evil, which can be seen as a means for clarifying and extending our understanding of (...) evil and moral responsibility. I employ the concept of “the double intentionality of symbol” to advance an expressive-performative model of speaking about the full shape of moral responsibility. At stake in my paper is the possibility of recognizing the need to valorise subordinate resources of knowledge that might prevent us from studying and responding to the elusive reality of evil in intellectual abstraction. (shrink)

Comment penser la possibilité pour une conscience de faire le mal, de commettre une faute qu’elle sait répréhensible ? Reconnaissant à la fois la longue tradition qui avant lui s’est intéressée à ce problème éternel pour la philosophie et la théologie, Ricœur ressent le besoin de revenir sur cette question en même temps qu’il juge nécessaire de donner à sa démarche phénoménologique un tournant herméneutique. Afin de comprendre ce choix, nous proposons ici une synthèse critique de La symbolique du Mal, (...) second tome du cycle de la Philosophie de la volonté de Ricœur ; y seront exposées les principales composantes de sa démarche ainsi que les grands moments de ses conclusions. Nous espérons par notre travail montrer pourquoi le problème du mal, plus particulièrement l’expérience de la faute, empêche de penser une subjectivité pleine, maîtrisée et transparente à elle-même. Pour cette raison, l’herméneutique semble s’imposer comme démarche pour appréhender le sujet brisé par la faute, et pour comprendre la juste valeur des symboles par lesquels cette expérience a été exprimée. (shrink)

Although most scholars trace the Liar Paradox to Plato’s contemporary, Eubulides, the paper argues that Plato builds something very like the Liar Paradox into the very structure of his dialogues with significant consequences for understanding his views. After a preliminary exposition of the liar paradox it is argued that Plato builds this paradox into the formulation of many of his central doctrines, including the “Divided Line” and the “Allegory of the Cave” and the “Ladder of Love”. Thus, Plato may have (...) been the first to formulate the view that Graham Priest calls dialetheism, roughly, the view that some contradictions are, in an illuminating way, inescapable and true. The paper argues that Plato builds this Liar paradox into the formulation of his signature views because he holds that the attempt by finite human beings to theorize about transcendent realities results in the simultaneous necessity, and impossibility, of transgressing the limits of language—leading to the paradoxes. Finally, it is argued that the existence of these paradoxes in these Platonic doctrines is the direct result of an intrinsic hermeneutical circle in Plato’s aforementioned signature views. (shrink)

In cognitive psychology, a false memory refers to a fabricated or distorted recollection of an event that did not actually happen. Both ‘memory-distortion’ and ‘false memory creation’ refer to the processes of recollection in which the recollected events are not actually happened. This paper has three aims: to examine Ricoeur’s analysis of memory and imagination; to explain and reinforce the constructive role of memory; to show in what manner the first two aims lead to the conclusion that the phenomena of (...) ‘distorted or false memory creation’ are reproductive because the nature of recollection is constructive in the sense of representation of past. In this regard, Ricoeur’s trajectory not only displaces the essential structure of memory and imagination behind the curtain of their distinction and connection, but also contributes to the debates in cognitive psychology. (shrink)