Abstract

The paper aims to analyse the use made of Hegel in the work of Paul Ricœur. Hegel is constantly called upon as an interlocutor in Ricœur’s writings, but he is denounced as often as he is approved of. Hegelianism is a temptation, for Ricœur, because Hegel proposes a philosophy of mediation, and because mediation is also the horizon of Ricœur’s project. At the same time, Hegelianism is deceiving, in Ricœur’s view, insofar as it holds that it is possible to get around the hard work of practical, iterative mediation. But there is probably a misunderstanding in Ricœur’s interpretation of Hegel’s “absolute knowledge”. Hegel actually does not try to transgress the limits of possible experience, but he wants to think of the unification of opposites within experience.