Traces the decentered formulation of self at the heart of Paul Ricoeur's philosophy from his earliest works to his most recent.

This book is a careful study of writings by Paul Ricoeur from his early discussions of phenomenology, through the development of his hermeneutic philosophy, to recent texts on the self and the other. Venema identifies the development of a hermeneutical understanding of identity and selfhood as the central issue that belongs to Ricoeur’s work. He discusses the distinct phases that belong to that work, and the specific concerns that Ricoeur comes to address in those phases, in the (...) light of this issue. The hermeneutical treatment of identity and selfhood begins in a critique of Husserlian transcendental phenomenology. Venema develops that critique by focusing, not exclusively but significantly, on the first part of Ideas I. He argues that one finds in transcendental phenomenology claims to a self-transparent and independent ego whose achievements occur with necessity. A critique that discovers immanent problems in these claims is the first step that Ricoeur takes in moving toward a hermeneutical understanding of identity. A second step occurs when Ricoeur focuses on the significance of the imagination. Imagination mediates between the multiplicity of involuntary dispositions and the unifying function of voluntary capacity. It also mediates between the finitude of passive receptivity and the infinite effort to determine what is received with names. This effort, in turn, locates the self in a situation of power over others in a context that nonetheless also calls for the reciprocals constitutions of selves. Venema notes the anomalous character of this position. He claims that it continues to be present in related and basic ways throughout the development of Ricoeur’s work. The analyses of metaphor seriously attempt to exhibit the reciprocity of identity and difference and to contribute to a hermeneutic of reciprocal self-constitution. At the same time, parts of those analyses suggest a primacy of identity over difference in relation to language, selfhood, and Being. This undercuts the claim that selves are constituted through reciprocal relations with each other and with the world. The analyses of narrative uncover an understanding of identity as something that comes about insofar as narrative discourse configures and refigures temporal experience. At the same time the appropriation of narrative possibilities seems to presuppose a voluntary cogito that stands over against the flux of symbolic and narrative discourse. Finally, Ricoeur extends the discussion of identity expressly to include the problem of selfhood. Continuing to define identity in narrative terms, he insists on both the distinction between and the correlation of self-sameness and self-constancy in the identity of the self. However, the way in which his discussions of identity and selfhood combine a semantic analysis of selfreference with a pragmatic analysis of self-designation leads to problems that ultimately render his account of the self’s receptivity of the other inadequate or at least incomplete. (shrink)

Collected and translated by John B. Thompson, this collection of essays by Paul Ricoeur includes many that had never appeared in English before the volume's publication in 1981. As comprehensive as it is illuminating, this lucid introduction to Ricoeur's prolific contributions to sociological theory features his more recent writings on the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and issues, his own constructive position and its implications for sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Presented in a fresh twenty-first-century series livery, and (...) including a specially commissioned preface written by Charles Taylor, illuminating its enduring importance and relevance to philosophical enquiry, this classic work has been revived for a new generation of readers. (shrink)

This collection brings together twenty-two later essays by Paul Ricoeur under the topics of structuralism, psychoanalysis, hermeneutics, and religion.

This is a collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur which presents a comprehensive view of his philosophical hermeneutics, its relation to the views of his predecessors in the tradition and its consequences for the social sciences. The volume has three parts. The studies in the first part examine the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and the outstanding issues it has to confront. In Part II, Ricoeur's own current, constructive position is developed. A concept of the (...) text is formulated as the implications of the theory are pursued into the domains of sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Many of the essays appear here in English for the first time; the editor's introduction brings out their background in Ricoeur's thought and the continuity of his concerns. The volume will be of great importance for those interested in hermeneutics and Ricoeur's contribution to it, and will demonstrate how much his approach offers to a number of disciplines. (shrink)

With his writings on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, Marxism, ideology, and religion, Paul Ricoeur has single-handedly redefined and revitalized the hermeneutic tradition. _From Text to Action_ is an essential companion to the now classic_ The Conflict of Interpretation_s. Here, Ricoeur continues and extends his project of constructing a general theory of interpretation, positioning his work in relation to its own philosophical background: Hegel, Husserl, Gadamer, and Weber. He also responds to contemporary figures like K.O. Apel and Jürgen Habermas, connecting his (...) own theorization of ideology to their version of ideology critique. (shrink)

With his writings on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, Marxism, ideology, and religion, Paul Ricoeur has single-handedly redefined and revitalized the hermeneutic tradition. From Text to Action is an essential companion to the now classic The Conflict of Interpretations. Here, Ricoeur continues and extends his project of constructing a general theory of interpretation, positioning his work in relation to its own philosophical background: Hegel, Husserl, Gadamer, and Weber. He also responds to contemporary figures like K.O. Apel and Jürgen Habermas, connecting his (...) own theorization of ideology to their version of ideology critique. (shrink)

But is not the word "metaphor" itself a metaphor, the metaphor of a displacement and therefore of a transfer in a kind of space? What is at stake is precisely the necessity of these spatial metaphors about metaphor included in our talk about "figures" of speech. . . . But in order to understand correctly the work of resemblance in metaphor and to introduce the pictorial or ironic moment at the right place, it is necessary briefly to recall the mutation (...) undergone by the theory of metaphor at the level of semantics by contrast with the tradition of classical rhetoric. In this tradition, metaphor was correctly described in terms of deviance, but this deviance was mistakenly ascribed to denomination only. Instead of giving a thing its usual common name, one designates it by means of a borrowed name, a "foreign" name in Aristotle's terminology. The rationale of this transfer of name was understood as the objective similarity between the things themselves or the subjective similarity between the attitudes linked to the grasping of these things. As concerns the goal of this transfer, it was supposed either to fill up a lexical lacuna, and therefore to serve the principle of economy which rules the endeavor of giving appropriate names to new things, new ideas, or new experiences, or to decorate discourse, and therefore to serve the main purpose of rhetorical discourse, which is to persuade and to please. Paul Ricoeur is professor of philosophy at the Université de Paris and John Nuveen Professor at the University of Chicago. He is editor of Revue de métaphysique et de morale and the author of many influential works on phenomenology, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of language. His most recent work to appear in English is The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. He has also contributed "Narrative Time" to Critical Inquiry. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur was one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. In this short and accessible book, he turns to a topic at the heart of much of his work: What is translation and why is it so important? Reminding us that The Bible, the Koran, the Torah and the works of the great philosophers are often only ever read in translation, Ricoeur reminds us that translation not only spreads knowledge but can change its very meaning. (...) In spite of these risk, he argues that in a climate of ethnic and religious conflict, the art and ethics of translation are invaluable. Drawing on interesting examples such as the translation of early Greek philosophy during the Renaissance, the poetry of Paul Celan and the work of Hannah Arendt, he reflects not only on the challenges of translating one language into another but how one community speaks to another. Throughout, Ricoeur shows how to move through life is to navigate a world that requires translation itself. Paul Ricoeur died in 2005. He was one of the great contemporary French philosophers and a leading figure in hermeneutics, psychoanalytic thought, literary theory and religion. His many books include Freud and Philosophy and Time and Narrative. (shrink)

The configurational dimension, in turn, displays temporal features that may be opposed to these "features" of episodic time. The configurational arrangement makes the succession of events into significant wholes that are the correlate of the act of grouping together. Thanks to this reflective act—in the sense of Kant's Critique of Judgment—the whole plot may be translated into one "thought." "Thought," in this narrative context, may assume various meanings. It may characterize, for instance, following Aristotle's Poetics, the "theme" that accompanies the (...) "fable" or "plot" of a tragedy.1 "Thought" may also designate the "point" of the Hebraic maschal or of the biblical parable, concerning which Jeremias observes that the point of the parable is what allows us to translate it into a proverb or an aphorism. The term "thought" may also apply to the "colligatory terms" used in history writing, such terms as "the Renaissance," "the Industrial Revolution," and so on, which, according to Walsh and Dray, allow us to apprehend a set of historical events under a common denominator. In a word, the correlation between thought and plot supersedes the "then" and "and then" of mere succession. But it would be a complete mistake to consider "thought" as a-chronological. "Fable" and "theme" are as closely tied together as episode and configuration. The time of fable-and theme, if we may make of this a hyphenated expression, is more deeply temporal than the time of merely episodic narratives. · 1. It may be noted in passing that this correlation between "theme" and "plot" is also the basis of Northup Frye's "archetypal" criticism. Paul Ricoeur is professor of philosophy at the Université de Paris and John Nuveen Professor at the University of Chicago. Some of his works to appear in English are Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology, Main Trends in Philosophy, and The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays on Hermeneutics. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "The Metaphorical Process as Cognition, Imagination, and Feeling," appeared in the Autumn 1978 issue. (shrink)

_Criticism and Conviction_ offers a rare opportunity to share personally in the intellectual life and journey of the eminent philosopher Paul Ricoeur. Internationally known for his influential works in hermeneutics, theology, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics, until now, Ricoeur has been conspicuously silent on the subject of himself. In this book--a conversation about his life and work with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay--Ricoeur reflects on a variety of philosophical, social, religious, and cultural topics, from the paradoxes of political (...) power to the relationship between life and art, and life and death. In the first of eight conversations, Ricoeur traces the trajectory of his life, recounting the origins of his convictions and the development of his intellect against the tragic events of the twentieth century. Declaring himself the "son of a victim of the First World War," Ricoeur, an orphan, sketches his early years in the house of stern but loving grandparents, and the molding of his intellect under the tutelage of Roland Dalbiez, Gabriel Marcel, and André Philip. Ricoeur tells the intriguing story of his capture and five-year imprisonment by the Germans during World War II, where he and his compatriots fashioned an intellectual life complete with a library and lectures, and where he, amazingly, was able to continue his dissertation research. Elegantly interweaving anecdotal with philosophical meditations, Ricoeur recounts his relationships with some of the twentieth century's greatest figures, such as Heidegger, Jaspers, and Eliade. He also shares his views on French philosophers and explains his tumultuous relationship with Jacques Lacan. And while expressing his deepest respect for the works of Claude Lévi-Strauss and Michel Foucault, Ricoeur reserves his greatest admiration for the narratologist Algirdas Julien Greimas. Ricoeur also explores the relationship between the philosophical and religious domains, attempting to reconcile the two poles in his thought. And readers who have struggled with Ricoeur's work will be grateful for these illuminating discussions that provide an invaluable key to his writings on language and narrative, especially those on metaphor and time. Spontaneous and lively, _Criticism and Conviction_ is a passionate confirmation of Ricoeur's eloquence, lucidity, and intellectual rigor, and affirms his position as one of this century's greatest thinkers. It is an essential book for anyone interested in philosophy and literary criticism. (shrink)

Incredible originality of thought in areas as vast as phenomenology, religion, hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, intersubjectivity, language, Marxism, and structuralism has made Paul Ricoeur one of the philosophical giants of the twentieth ...

At the time of his death in 2005, French philosopher Paul Ricoeur was regarded as one of the great thinkers of his generation. In more than half a century of writing about the essential questions of human life, Ricoeur’s thought encompassed a vast range of wisdom and experience, and he made landmark contributions that would go on to influence later scholars in such areas as phenomenology, hermeneutics, structuralism, and theology. Toward the end of his life, Ricoeur began (...) to focus directly on ethical questions that he feared had been overshadowed by his other work; the result was a two-volume collection of essays on justice and the law. The University of Chicago Press published the English translation of the first volume, The Just, to great acclaim in 2000. Now this translation of the second volume, Reflections on the Just, completes the set and makes available to readers the whole of Ricoeur’s meditations on the concept. Consisting of fifteen thematically organized essays, Reflections on the Just continues and expands on the work Ricoeur began in with his “little ethics” in Oneself as Another and The Just. In the preface, he considers what revisions he would make were he to start over and how that is reflected in these essays. The opening part brings phenomenology to bear on ethics; the second group of essays comprises shorter, occasional pieces considering the concept of justice in the works of other philosophers, including Max Weber and Charles Taylor. The final part turns to the specific domains of medicine and the law, examining how concepts of right and justice operate in those realms. Cogent, deeply considered, and fully engaged with the realities of the contemporary world, Reflections on the Just is an essential work for understanding the development of Ricoeur’s thought in his final years. (shrink)

Paul Ricoeur’s contribution to the theory of interpretation, or hermeneutics, is considerable: he ranks among the masters of this discipline alongside Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer. In addition to major works like _The Conflict of Interpretations_, he wrote many articles and shorter texts which deserve to be discovered and rediscovered. These allow us to gain a deeper understanding of the development of his work over time and to appreciate the full range of his contribution. Some of the texts examine (...) the nature of metaphor while others guide the reader through the many challenges of the hermeneutic problem - from the symbol to the text, then to the text as action, taking full account of the ethical implications. Here one encounters Ricoeur’s reflections on the future of hermeneutics and his abiding concern to explore the relations between hermeneutics and analytical philosophy. Ricoeur’s contribution to biblical hermeneutics has also been decisive. Two masterful studies in this volume attest to Ricoeur’s attempt to explore the relations between revelation and truth, on the one hand, and between myths of salvation and reason, on the other. This book - the second volume of Ricoeur’s writings and lectures - brings together texts which appeared between 1972 and 2006. It is published under the auspices of Le Fonds Ricoeur. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: L'herméneutique de Paul Ricœur est centrée sur le problème de l'interprétation de soi par le moyen de la référence sémantique du monde du texte. Bien que Ricœur poursuive un examen fort important du rapport entre le discours narratif et le processus de formation de l'identité, la façon dont il prolonge cette dynamique poury inclure la question du soi est problématique. La distinction qu'il tente de tracer entre deux types d'identités, liés l'un à «ce qu'est» une personne et l'autre à (...) «qui» elle est enchevêtre inévitablement sa compréhension de la pragmatique du soi dans la sémantique de l'identité. (shrink)

Why does one say today that the hermeneutic problem begins with Schleiermacher? Is there not a Christian hermeneutic which from the time of the early church has sought to place the figures of the New Testament in an interpretative relation with the figures of the Old Testament? Is hermeneutical reflection also not in evidence in the Church Fathers? What of the theory of the “Four Senses of Scripture” from the medieval period, as has been so magnificently reconstructed by Henri de (...) Lubac? And was there not an ongoing hermeneutical debate at the time of the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation linking together the theological axiom “sola fide” and the hermeneutical axiom “sola scriptura,” the Counter-Reformation opposing this with the correlating of exegesis, tradition, and the magisterium? (shrink)

Why does one say today that the hermeneutic problem begins with Schleiermacher? Is there not a Christian hermeneutic which from the time of the early church has sought to place the figures of the New Testament in an interpretative relation with the figures of the Old Testament? Is hermeneutical reflection also not in evidence in the Church Fathers? What of the theory of the “Four Senses of Scripture” from the medieval period, as has been so magnificently reconstructed by Henri de (...) Lubac? And was there not an ongoing hermeneutical debate at the time of the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation linking together the theological axiom “sola fide” and the hermeneutical axiom “sola scriptura,” the Counter-Reformation opposing this with the correlating of exegesis, tradition, and the magisterium? (shrink)

Unparalled in its poetry, richness, and religious and historical significance, the Hebrew Bible has been the site and center of countless commentaries, perhaps none as unique as Thinking Biblically. This remarkable collaboration sets the words of a distinguished biblical scholar, André LaCocque, and those of a leading philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, in dialogue around six crucial passages from the Old Testament: the story of Adam and Eve; the commandment "thou shalt not kill"; the valley of dry bones passage from Ezekiel; (...) Psalm 22; the Song of Songs; and the naming of God in Exodus 3:14. Commenting on these texts, LaCocque and Ricoeur provide a wealth of new insights into the meaning of the different genres of the Old Testament as these made their way into and were transformed by the New Testament. LaCocque's commentaries employ a historical-critical method that takes into account archaeological, philological, and historical research. LaCocque includes in his essays historical information about the dynamic tradition of reading scripture, opening his exegesis to developments and enrichments subsequent to the production of the original literary text. Ricoeur also takes into account the relation between the texts and the historical communities that read and interpreted them, but he broadens his scope to include philosophical speculation. His commentaries highlight the metaphorical structure of the passages and how they have served as catalysts for philosophical thinking from the Greeks to the modern age. This extraordinary literary and historical venture reads the Bible through two different but complementary lenses, revealing the familiar texts as vibrant, philosophically consequential, and unceasingly absorbing. (shrink)

When French philosopher Paul Ricoeur died in 2005, he bequeathed to the world a highly regarded, widely influential body of work which established him as one of the greatest thinkers of our time. He also left behind a number of unfinished projects that are gathered here and translated into English for the first time. Living Up to Death consists of one major essay and nine fragments. Composed in 1996, the essay is the kernel of an unrealized book on the (...) subject of mortality. Likely inspired by his wife’s approaching death, it examines not one’s own passing but one’s experience of others dying. Ricoeur notes that when thinking about death the imagination is paramount, since we cannot truly experience our own passing. But those we leave behind do, and Ricoeur posits that the idea of life after death originated in the awareness of our own end posthumously resonating with our survivors. The fragments in this volume were written over the course of the last few months of Ricoeur’s life as his health failed, and they represent his very last work. They cover a range of topics, touching on biblical scholarship, the philosophy of language, and the idea of selfhood he first addressed in Oneself as Another. And while they contain numerous philosophical insights, these fragments are perhaps most significant for providing an invaluable look at Ricoeur’s mind at work. As poignant as it is perceptive, Living Up to Death is a moving testimony to Ricoeur’s willingness to confront his own mortality with serious questions, a touching insouciance, and hope for the future. (shrink)

El estudio que sigue nació de una conferencia dictada en 1970 en el Instituto de Altos Estudios de Bélgica en presencia y bajo la presidencia del profesor Perelman. Puesto que esta conferencia no ha sido pública recibo como un honor la invitación de asociarme hoy al homenaje rendido por sus amigos y sus discípulos a quien fuera durante varios decenios el filósofo maestro en Bruselas.

Sartre and Ricœur have never been compared in detail before, as hermeneutics and existentialism have been wrongly pitted against each other. The Aesthetics of Autonomy demonstrates that an existential hermeneutics overcomes the respective limitations of each philosopher and gives us the necessary tools of seeking autonomy in an age of uncertainty, which is the globalized world.

In an intentionally provocative essay published in the journal Esprit (January, 1983) on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, I ventured the following slogan: “Death to personalism; long live the person!” I was attempting to suggest that Mounier's formulation of personalism was, as he himself readily admitted, connected with a certain cultural and philosophical constellation which is no longer ours today: existentialism and Marxism are no longer the only opponents. They are no longer even opponents at all, against which personalism (...) would be required to define itself, at the risk of becoming one or another system or `ism'. I concluded my essay with the following citation from Mounier's Qu'est-ce que le personnalisme?: “We are witnessing [...] the first meanderings of a cyclical course where the explorations pursued to exhaustion along one path are are given up only to be rediscovered farther on, enriched by this forgetting and by the discoveries for which it cleared a path” (p. 11). In addition, I wanted to say that the person is still the most appropriate term to designate those investigations for which neither the term `con-sciousness', nor `subject', nor `individual' really apply, for the various reasons that I invoked at the time. I would like to discuss some of those investigations here, beyond the point reached in that essay, where I restricted myself to defining the person by an attitude in Eric Weil's sense, or as one would say in hermeneutics, by the everyday understanding that we have of it. Following Paul Landsberg, I used the criteria of crisis and commitment, adding to the latter certain corollaries such as fidelity over time to a higher cause, and acceptance of alterity and difference within personal identity. Now I would like to make use of contemporary investigations into language, action and narrative in order to provide the ethical constitution of the person with a substratum and roots, comparable to those explored by Emmanuel Mounier in Traité du Caractère. In this sense, the present study is an extension of Mounier's book. (shrink)

The authors present the inaugural issue of ERRS.

Reading Ricoeur -- Freedom and nature -- Ricoeur's turn to hermeneutics -- The fullness of language and figurative discourse -- Selfhood and personal identity -- Memory, recognition, practical wisdom.

Identifying Selfhood organizes many of the features of Ricoeur’s philosophical views around the major theme of selfhood, Ricoeur’s hermeneutical quest for a “non-idealistic interpretation of the self.” In a quasi-developmental account, the author, Henry Isaac Venema, provides the reader with numerous details of Ricoeur’s relation to phenomenology and hermeneutics, as well as the complexities of Ricoeur’s views of self-constitution and self-understanding, involving the use of symbolism, metaphor, and narrative.

The aim of this article is to elaborate on how a distinct concept of the person can be implemented within person‐centred care as an ethical configuration of personhood in the tension between the two predominant cultures of knowledge within health care: naturalism and phenomenology. Starting from Paul Ricoeur's ‘personalism of the first, second, and third person’ and his ‘broken’ ontology, open‐ended, incomplete, and imperfect mediations, placed at the precise juncture where reality is divided up into two separate cultures of (...) knowledge, is identified as crucial for what makes us human. Within this context, Ricoeur's distinct ethical configuration of personhood is based on the homology between the linguistic, practical, narrative, and moral determinations of selfhood—articulated as a hermeneutics of the self, without any methodological break. Person‐centred care is thus recognized as an profound ethical approach to health care based on mediations of ‘horizontal’ (teleological) and ‘vertical’ (deontological) readings of an ethical configuration of personhood by the use of practical wisdom. (shrink)

This dissertation discusses friendship in relation to self-identity in the thought of Paul Ricoeur. Its main claim is that Ricoeur's notion of self-identity designates a hermeneutically mediated experience, and that this complex experience can only be illumined by a phenomenology that is sensitive to ethical aspects. Another finding is that, according to Ricoeur, whatever we do, say, or write, takes on the form of narrative experience. Finally, the dissertation shows that what looks like the force of the (...) discourse, driving author to reader, and readers to one another, is in fact the force of philia, and that the latter is a source that nourishes practical wisdom exercised in relations with others. The call to friendship is a call to esteem for the being-like-me, a call to recognize a likeness beyond question and doubt, which relates selfhood and alterity, sameness and difference. (shrink)

S. Geniusas: Although Gadamer’s hermeneutics has suffered attacks from a number of philosophical perspectives, the profusion of criticisms seldom constitutes new challenges and for the most part is a reiteration of two seemingly opposite claims. On the one hand, we often hear that Gadamer’s hermeneutics is merely a disguised brand of the “philosophy of the subject” which under the pretext of openness reduces the Other to the self. On the other hand, it is just as often claimed that Gadamer’s writings (...) fall into the category of the “hermeneutics of the fundamental questions” and therefore they cannot account for the selfhood of the self. Taking as its focus the theme of the oneness of the hermeneutical horizon(s), this paper argues that this theme carries no hegemonic or essentialist connotations. Rather, a careful analysis, which accentuates the negative and the dialectical elements of the oneness of horizons and the fact that this theme is for Gadamer both a presupposition and an achievement, reveals the shortcomings of both critiques. In the final analysis, the oneness of the horizon(s) is the dialogue that we ourselves are. Special attention is granted to Richard Kearney’s critique of Gadamer, to Gadamer’s critique of the incommensurabilist stance, and to the relevance of Gadamer’s hermeneutics in the context of today’s socio-political concerns. G. B. Madison: This essay is a companion piece to S. Geniusas’ “On the Oneness of the Hermeneutical Horizon(s)” and seeks to correct some of the serious misunderstandings of the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer that one often encounters in the literature. It seeks above all to show how Gadamer’s commitment to philosophical universalism is ideally suited to enabling philosophy to confront the ethical challenges posed by the phenomenon of globalization. (shrink)

I argue that imagination has an inherently paradoxical structure: it enables one to flee one’s socio-cultural reality and to constitute one’s socio-cultural world. I maintain that most philosophical accounts of the imagination leave this paradox unexplored. I further contend that Paul Ricoeur is the only thinker to have addressed this paradox explicitly. According to Ricoeur, to resolve this paradox, one needs to recognize language as the origin of productive imagination. This paper explores Ricoeur’s solution by offering a (...) detailed study of reproductive and productive imagination in the framework of poetic imagination. My analysis subjects Ricoeur’s distinction between reproductive and productive imagination to a critique that relies upon the principles of classical phenomenology. According to my central thesis, the imaginative powers of language are themselves rooted in perception. This thesis broadens the scope and significance of Ricoeur’s solution by enabling one to resolve the paradox of imagination not only at the level of language-based imagination, but also at the level of dreams and daydreaming as well as at the level of non-language based art. No less significantly, this thesis enables one to open a fresh dialogue between phenomenology and hermeneutics. (shrink)

In the 1970s, particularly in his article “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text”, Paul Ricœur proposed a hypothesis concerning the homology between the text and social action. That hypothesis is not reducible to the narrative logic prevailing in late Ricœur’s writings, and we are searching to elucidate its further implications in social sciences. A new hermeneutics of social meanings can be founded upon it, enriched by the methodological experience of structural semiotics and taking into account (...) some special processes of sense-giving as “remote-model behavior” and “sense-suppressing action”. . (shrink)

Review of the book John Arthos, Hermeneutics After Ricœur.

In this little volume, Anthony Thiselton makes an impassioned appeal for closer attention to the philosophy of hermeneutics. Emilio Betti provocatively observes that hermeneutics ought to constitute an obligatory course for most degrees in the humanities. Hermeneutics, he insists, teaches patience, tolerance, respect for other views, understanding, and humility, while holding one's own views with firmness and generosity. Yet many teaching institutions do not yet recognize this. With this in mind, Thiselton first considers and responds to those who argue that (...) hermeneutics is not necessary. Then he considers anew more sophisticated thinkers on the subject. Types of texts and hermeneutical models, he argues, are almost infinite, a fact many biblical scholars do not recognize. In the field of biblical hermeneutics, too many view the Bible as one thing, or as a monochrome landscape--it is not. The culmination of Thiselton's case consists in a sustained reflection on the impressive work of Paul Ricoeur, selecting thirteen points of genuine advance his work makes. With a glossary of fifty technical terms this is a volume that will prove helpful to student and scholar alike. (shrink)

In Cultural Hermeneutics, Mario J. Valdés offers a synthesis of the hermeneutic philosophies of Miguel de Unamuno and Paul Ricoeur, a dialectical method that has formed the basis for many of Valdés' own studies in comparative literature. As Valdés explains in these insightful essays, what Unamuno and Ricoeur shared in their hermeneutic studies was a theory of interpretation in which the meaning of a work of art comes into existence through the dialectical relationship between its creator and its (...) readers, listeners, or viewers. Contextualizing this hermeneutic concept as it appears in the works of both philosophers, Cultural Hermeneutics presents the basis for a profound understanding of the arts. (shrink)

Hermeneutics and Phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur: Between Text and Phenomenon calls attention to the dynamic interaction that takes place between hermeneutics and phenomenology in Ricoeur's thought. It could be said that Ricoeur's thought is placed under a twofold demand: between the rigor of the text and the requirements of the phenomenon. The rigor of the text calls for fidelity to what the text actually says, while the requirement of the phenomenon is established by the Husserlian call to (...) return "to the things themselves." These two demands are interwoven insofar as there is a hermeneutic component of the phenomenological attempt to go beyond the surface of things to their deeper meaning, just as there is a phenomenological component of the hermeneutic attempt to establish a critical distance toward the world to which we belong. For this reason, Ricoeur's thought involves a back and forth movement between the text and the phenomenon. Although this double movement was a theme of many of Ricoeur's essays in the middle of his career, the essays in this book suggest that hermeneutic phenomenology remains implicit throughout his work. The chapters aim to highlight, in much greater detail, how this back and forth movement between phenomenology and hermeneutics takes place with respect to many important philosophical themes, including the experience of the body, history, language, memory, personal identity, and intersubjectivity. (shrink)