Abstract

The article analyzes Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the self and his concept of capable man, with particular reference to Oneself as Another and other late writings, where he develops a conception of the dialectic between self and other through a comparison with Husserl’s and Levinas’s perspectives. Ricoeur’s focus is on the acting subject, so that vulnerability is conceived with reference to the capabilities of the self. But since Ricoeur’s conception involves the recognition of the vulnerability of the other, which, however, occurs through mediation, his hermeneutics of the self could be developed into a hermeneutics of otherness that also considers the immediacy of the ethical call of the other.