Abstract

This article contemplates a succinct historical, systematic and critical examination of practically the whole of Ricoeur's philosophical writings. It gives a summary of Ricoeur's philosophy (Part I), collects the scarce elements of his metaphysical perspectives (Part II) and ultimately makes a tentative endeavour to gauge the possible nature and meaning of his still unfinished philosophy. 1. BRIEF SURVEY OF RICOEUR'S PHILOSOPHY The first section discusses the necessity and the possibility of a provisional parenthesizing of the fault and the Transcendence. A purely intelligible and phenomenological analysis of the will can according to Ricoeur only refer to a purely intelligible noema of will, viz. to the fundamental possibilities of human will. Therefore the author desires a provisional suspension of ir-rational evil and mythic innocence and consequently of the meta-rational Transcendence. This methodical and doctrinal decision dictates the threefold structure of his will-philosophy : an eidetic and existential description of the neutral will-structures (an eidetics of will), a description of and a reflection on concrete guilty existence (a symbolism and empirics of evil will), and finally the metaphysical, poetic reflection on fallen man fascinated by a personal and creative Salvation (a poetics of will). The historical and psychological background of this twofold neutralization is formed by young Ricoeur's strong resistance against the disastrous results (absurdity of human existence and agnosticism) of an originally supposed „ontologization” of culpability with Kierkegaard, Jaspers and Heidegger. The second section commences with the pure, Husserlian eidetic description of the voluntary and the involuntary : willing implies a decision from bodily motives, a carrying out with the help of the body and all this on condition of agreeing with the necessity in and outside man. However, as a result of notional splitting up and ideal aloofness inherent in noematic analysis, Ricoeur continues his description via a method of active participation in the prereflective and integrally willing existence, inspired by Marcel. Although this existential analysis restores the intellectual dualism -under the influence of reflection the original unity of the incarnated Cogito falls asunder into subjective and objective thought, into spirit and matter -, nevertheless it brings to light a more subtle, ontological dualism. For there is always a tension : in the deciding existence between hesitation and choice, between a rationally considered decision and a voluntaristic haphazard dictate, in the executing existence between exertion and resistance, and in the intention of acquiescence between acceptance and refusal. Passing on from what appears before and thanks to the willing Cogito, the author concludes from these eidetic and existential descriptive results : subjectivity in general is fundamentally bipolar. The Cogito does not create (Husserl), but only inaugurates reality . The next section delineates the analysis of human fallibility. This phenomenological description at the beginning presents a strong Kantian transcendental character, so that, thus secured against subjective introspection, Ricoeur disposes of an objective guide for the notional reflection on the pre-philosophically given fallibility of the mythic „ mixture” of the soul (Plato) and of human „ misery" (Pascal). The grounds of fallibility according to Ricoeur lie in an ever unsuccessful mediation between finitude and infinity respectively in knowing, acting, and pre-eminently in feeling ; in brief, in the non-coïncidence of man with himself. The last section dedicated to an enquiry into the nature of evil commences with a purely comparative, phenomenological description of guilt-symbols confronted with psycho-analytic criticism of religion. First comes the phenomenological analysis of the primary symbols of stain, sin and guilt, in which evil is successively acknowledged „in itself”, „before God” and „before guilty self”. Then follows a morphology of the most representative myths or secondary symbols : the Babylonian cosmic myth of primitive evil, the Greek tragic myth which imputes evil to the evil god, fate and hubristic-generous man, the Jewish Adamic myth with man as bearing the chief responsability for evil, and anally the Hellenic Orphic myth which makes the body responsible for evil. Over against the neutral description of the Sacred in the phenomenology of religion Freudism places a functional interpretation, over against the inexhaustible truth of the symbol the illusion of religion, and over against the return to the Sacred the return of the repressed in the religious phenomenon. Thus the symbols lend themselves to a double interpretation : on the one side an analytic and regressive hermeneutics leading to the unconscious and on the other side a synthetic and progressive interpretation, polarized by the ultimate. Since, however, the philosopher cannot permanently entrench himself behind an attitude of neutrality with regard to the true myth, a second stage obtrudes itself, viz. an engaged description of the myths of evil. This exegesis demonstrates that the Hebrew myth of primitive fall owing to its complex structure and dialectic tensions, reaffirms the anteriority of evil from the cosmic, the fatalism of evil from the tragic and the exteriority of evil from the Orphic myth, from which the limitation of a purely ethical view of life becomes evident. For man on the one side appears as guilty in so far as he perpetrates evil and on the other side as a victim in so far as he yields to an ever-already-existing wickedness : it is the ethic-tragic conflict in the consciousness of guilt. Finally the tensions hitherto revealed in the ethic-tragic consciousness of guilt and between the hermeneutics of the phenomenology of religion and the psycho-analytic interpretation, as well as the philosophical justification of Ricoeur's betting on the primacy of the Adamic myth claim a last stage, viz. a philosophical reflection. These three charges the author wants to perform at the same time by trying to understand and elucidate fallen man „ from” the symbols and especially „from” the Jewish myth ; viz. fallen man as he appears in psycho-analysis and criminology, in political and social philosophy and history, in the rational symbols of original sin and the „servum arbitrium”. Thus in the first place there is an inquiry into the nature of Augustinian and Kantian reflective thought, which indeed elucidates man's guilt but which forgets man's connection with the totality of being, so that the author switches over to a critique of speculative thought. Dialectic speculative thought, however, undervalues the specific negativity of evil and the gratuity of reconciliation, as a consequence of which Ricceur ¡ finds himself confronted with the task of thinking a meaning-full history, in which justice is done to the contingent character of evil and salvation. 2. SOME PERSPECTIVES OF RICOEURS POETICS OR ONTOLOGY Ontological dualism as well as the ethic-tragic conflict have in Ricceur's mind no sense except from a surmised reconciliation, from a limit of unity which is the exponent of Kantian reason as a claim to intelligibility. Reason and feeling not only have an equally wide scope, but also constitute each other. For reason claims a sense that implicates a longing for total happiness, while feeling in its turn interiorizes, individualizes reason and anticipates a certain unity. But the conviction and the feeling of an ultimate unity do not constitute philosophy. Moreover the author cannot conceive the transition from the Cogito to metaphysics purely as a matter of intellectual explicitation, and certainly not of a theoretical awareness. Only by living guilt the Transcendence of a notional limit or epistemological index becomes a living Presence, Who creates freedom and liberates guilty freedom. Of this experience of Salvation there are no strict proofs but only indications. 3. SENSE OF RICOEUR'S UNFINISHED PHILOSOPHY The first section raises the question of the general nature of this philosophy. In our opinion it might most truthfully be defined as a reflective philosophy with a strong phenomenological-existential woof. For the following elements seem to be indisputably conformable to a reflective philosophy : the Marcellian active participation-method -of Biranian origin -, the description of fallible man inspired by Kant, the hermeneutics and the philosophical reflection upon the symbols, akin to Schelling, Fichte and Hegel, and finally the philosophical reflection, conceived as a rational and rigorous recuperation of a pre-established feeling which is also an heirloom of existential phenomenology. His Husserlian eidetic analysis of the neutral will has a distinctly phenomenological character ; this is also in a certain measure the case with the phenomenological description of fallibility and with the comparative and exegetic analysis of the symbols, and ultimately with the relation between philosophy and Christian belief (impossibility of a material neutrality but strict preservation of methodic autonomy). The next section attempts to define the uniqueness in Ricoeur's philosophy. A conspicuous quality of his work is the plurality of methods, so that the question rises spontaneously with the reader as to how far he is confronted with a methodic eclecticism here. Ricoeur is indeed of opinion that the philosopher cannot possibly obtain possession of his pre-comprehension with a quasi-uniform method. According to us it is his very patiently and stubbornly maintained strife for a rationally strict and coherent recuperation of his Christian experience of existence that induces him either to the application of another approach to promote the same pre-comprehensive datum to a more profound intelligibility, or to the transition to another domain of experience with a method adapted to it. Inevitably this pluriform method involves a certain voluminous explicitation of his experience of life which concurs with a reflective philosophy which in tracing human authenticity will apply the results of all the humanities, and at the same time agrees with an existential philosophy for which the road to be covered is an essential and indispensable factor in the gradual, historic becoming aware of rationality in philosophizing itself. Ricoeur's strict watch for coherence and systematization is evident not only from the thorough justification of each change of method and from the fidelity to his methodic agreements made before, but in particular from the notion of limit which plays an exceptionally important rôle in his philosophy. By nature a limit limits, but in limiting it bases and justifies the limited. Thus Ricceur seems to understand his manifold methods and view-points from a higher, personal aspect, i.e. from a richly differentiated, broadly elaborated and consciously limited and historical rationality, so that in our opinion there can in his case only be question of an eclecticism in a more brilliant sense. Perhaps Ricoeur's philosophy might be defined as a reflective philosophy of limits which implicates an overstepping of dogmatism and relativism and at the same time includes rigorous rationality and existential depth, consequently as a harmony of French and German genius. The last section finally tries to settle the question that is Ricoeur himself. Which are the possibilities and the chances of a wider spiritual development and of a more social, national and international justice for human liberty, proud, but deeply wounded by greed, ambition and lust of power ? What, considering the full power of evil, is the man and the God of such a history ? Ricoeur's question however is inseparably also practical : what can and must I do for the spiritual and material progress of man ? Ricoeur's astounding activity at congresses and meetings bears witness to this and most of all his personal interferences in delicate questions such as pacifism, decolonisation and Algeria. Thinking and acting, reflection and praxis border on each other but in this way also found, re-create and fertilize each other