Abstract

Modernity has always blamed the authority of tradition for hindering emancipation while at the same time affirming, for fear of abstraction, the creative energies of traditions. Can the Enlightenment’s abstract universal character be overcome without succumbing to the dogmatism of the appeal to Tradition? Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical project aims at surpassing this opposition by forging the concept of living tradition in which history and universal find a new articulation. This paper brings to light the originality of the dynamic relationship between present and past elaborated in Ricoeur’s philosophical hermeneutics.