This paper argues that Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy attempts to reopen the question of human transcendence in contemporary terms. While his conception of language as self-transcending is deeply Husserlian, Ricoeur also responds to the analytical challenge when he deploys a basic distinction in Fregean logic in order to clarify Heidegger’s phenomenology of world. Ricoeur’s commitment to a transcendental view is evident in his conception of narrative, which enables him to emphasize the role of the performative in literary reading. The meaning (...) of the self in time provides Ricoeur with a discursive basis for distinguishing his own position from that of Kant and other philosophers in the transcendental tradition. (shrink)

In this paper we will try to show how Gabriel Marcel understands the junction between the self and the other as appears in his reflections on the opposition freedom-gift, on his critique of Sartre’s philosophy of freedom, and on metaphysical implications of love. These three approaches point out a way that leads to understand man’s tension between selfhood and alterity, in the heart of a fundamental communion which refer, ultimately, to the divine. Therefore, metaphysical and religious discourses are constantly crossing (...) but, instead of revoking value to Marcel’s philosophy, this double rapport teaches us a way of attending religious symbols and testimonies in order to get close to the meaning of human experience. (shrink)