Bergson argues in his Creative Evolution that life has to be defined as an élan vital, that is, as a driving force that presses forward incessantly, overcoming obstacles to its progress and exploding in a variety of directions at once. In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Freud elaborates a critique of such a vitalistic notion of the drives. For him, the drives are not only sources of excitation, but also forces that resist change and that cause the body's movements and activities (...) to stagnate. Freud ascribes a remarkable name to these conservative and stubborn tendencies at work in the body, viz. the death drive. I argue that this drive is to be understood as a force in life that resists life and that, instead of following a course of progression and development, consists in a production of antiproductivity. I show how Freud is led to reconsider a vitalistic conception of the drives by means of a study of phenomena of repetition. One suggestion that Freud makes in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, which I examine in detail, is that the ego-drives are the “myrmidons of death.” To clarify this claim, I consider a remark that he makes on the viscosity of the drives and melancholia in his short essay On Transience. (shrink)

The essay defends praying with images against those who claim this type of prayer is objectionable. The hermeneutical defence consists of three arguments. First I observe that people relate to ordinary photos in ways that cannot be explained in terms of the image's sign-value alone. Second, I develop an account of praying with images as a form of symbolic practice. Finally, in order to bolster my account, I compare icons with a particular class of symbolic objects, viz. relics. The general (...) idea I put forward is that icons have to be understood as expressions of the reality they represent, and not simply as accurate or inaccurate visual representations of that reality. Icons are not created by human hands; instead, the hand of the painter is the instrumental cause of God's self-expression, via the painter, on the canvas. (shrink)

In Upheavah of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions, Martha Nussbaum suggests understanding charity simultaneously as mildness, pitiful commiseration, and altruism on behalf of the human community. This essay argues that these elements do not put charity inthe correct perspective. Not mildness, but patience, should be taken as the core of charity. Rather than reinserting a person into the community, charity endures someone who is no longer capable of taking part. Ultimately, respect and pity are not the motivating forces of charity. (...) By relying on the traditional Christian works of mercy — the corporeal and the spiritual — an alternative view of charity is developed. Why, for one, is burying the dead considered a (corporeal) work of mercy? Undoutably, pity is an insufficient basis for justifying this attribution. Moreover, burial can hardly be interpreted as benevolence oras a form of altruism in the usual sense. Taking burial as a paradigm for other works of mercy, the author suggests that the dead body is an in-between, being at the same time outside and inside the community of men. The dead person no longer belongs to the living, nor does he or she fall radically outside the ongoing circle of interpersonal meanings. This point of view provides an approach to the socalled spiritual works of mercy.The (corporeal or spiritual) indigent other is in need of charity at the very moment that he or she is no longer capable of reacting as a person. To be charitable does not always consist in doing something for the other, but sometimes in renouncing the prospectof improvement and even in refraining from demanding that the other should behave as a person should. Hence the title of the essay: charity means wondering how to bear the 'transcendence' of the other. By transcendence here, we mean the other's estrangement from the community of men that does not yet fall outside the circle of interpersonal meanings. Charitycannot be reduced to helpfulness or readiness to help. In some circumstances, charity reveals a deeper sense by accepting and bearing the indigence of someone who cannot be helped. (shrink)

According to a popular view charity is reduced to mercy and benevolence. Through an exploration of traditional, Christian, charitable acts -- both corporeal and spiritual in nature -- I set out to develop an alternative view. Why, for example, is the simple act of laying the dead to rest considered an act of charity? Feelings of pity and commiseration offer an insufficiently firm basis for justifying such an attribution. By adopting the burial of the dead as a sort of touchstone, (...) I suggest that the indigent other finds him- or herself in need of charity at the precise moment that he or she loses the ability to react as a person. Sometimes being charitable comes to expression in relinquishing one’s demands that the other behave as morally responsible people ought to behave. Charity involves the question of how to bear the other’s ”transcendence’. (shrink)

I argue that idealization can throw a new light upon Freud’s theory of sublimation and that courtly love can be seen as an illustration of this suggestion. For Freud sublimation is the process in which the sexual aim of the instincts is diverted towards a non-sexual aim that is still related with the original one. Freud’s theory struggles with at least two problems.The first problem regards the relation between the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quem. Freud describes this (...) relation with different terms. The notion of ‘desexualization’ represents precisely what he has in mind. This term propounds that Freud understands sublimation as a one-sided movement that consists in leaving behind the original sexual aim. Courtly love proves that desexualization, as Freud understands it, is not a necessary condition for sublimation. A weakening of Freud’s strong claim concerning desexualization implies however that the distinction between sublimation and perversion is not always clearcut.The second problem appertains to the processes that bring about the transformation of the sexual aim. Courtly love infers that idealization of the love-object can play an important role in bringing about sublimation. The kind of sublimation that corresponds to courtly love is what has been called Verführung in German Idealism.Psychoanalytic theory is not willing to conceive idealization in this sense. According to the classical psychoanalytic theory, idealization produces repression of sexual instincts. I argue that this idea is counter-intuitive and that Freud’s understanding of idealization is more subtle. I give a short overview of Freud’s approach and I draw attention to some elements in his approach that help us to describe the direct link between idealization and sublimation.Idealization of the beloved can go together with an inhibition of sexual instincts. But it is wrong to identify aim-inhibition with repression or with a softening of the instincts. My suggestion is that the interaction between idealization and sublimation can be characterised as an interaction between an intensification of the sexual instincts, as it happens in any form of falling in love, and an inhibition of them.This interaction results in being lifted up above the sexual instincts that are caused by the idealised object. In religion and art, the double movement of the instincts is called ‘exaltation.’. (shrink)

Nous essayons d'éclaircir quelques principes fondamentaux de la grammaire transformationelle de Chomsky à partir de Derrida et de Lacan. Nous tâchons d'approfondir deux problèmes : le premier concerne la portée de ceci que la possibilité de la déviation est donnée comme inhérente à l'institution même de la règle grammaticale; le second a trait au statut et au contenu du tiers sujet en tant que fondement de la structure intersubjective du langage. Primo : Selon Chomsky, une grammaire idéale doit être capable (...) de générer toutes les phrases — et rien que les phrases — bien formées à partir d'un nombre fini de règles. Une grammaire idéale et cohérente ne peut traiter les déviations que comme des possibilités purement accidentelles : une déviation n'aurait pas dû y être; elle n'aurait même pas pu y être. Bref, le risque d'un échec n'est pas interrogé comme prédicat essentiel de la grammaire. À en croire Derrida, on devrait regarder les conséquences qui découlent du fait qu'un risque possible est toujours possible. Comme les déviations présupposent une règle, chaque règle présuppose le risque d'un échec. La possibilité d'un échec est la condition nécessaire d'une règle grammaticale. Mais il s'agit d'une condition très spécifique, puisqu'elle rend impossible cela même qu'elle rend possible. Ni la grammaire, ni la déviation ne sont originaires, mais bien la différance entre les deux, ce qui veut dire qu'à l'origine de la production du sens il n'y a pas une grammaire idéale. Nous avons élaboré cette remarque de Derrida à partir d'une analyse de la métaphore, précisément parce que celle-ci ne peut être intégrée dans un système grammatical préalable. Secundo : la présence implicite d'un sujet compétent chez Chomsky doit expliquer pourquoi le sens ne dépend pas de l'arbitraire d'un sujet empirique. Chaque parole présuppose un Tiers, un Autre qui transcende les positions de destinateur et de destinataire. Mais, pour Chomsky, il s'agit d'un sujet idéal capable de déterminer a priori le sens invariable des lexemes auquel doivent se tenir les différents sujets. Le sujet compétent correspond à la nature universelle et rationelle de l'homme. Pour Lacan toutefois, ce Tiers — l'Autre — n'est pas un sujet universel mais bien un sujet marqué par un manque : cet Autre — sujet à manque et dès lors pas absolu — ne peut plus fixer a priori le sens d'un signifiant. Les différents effet de sens d'un signifiant ne peuvent plus être reuni dans une signification commune que l'Autre pourrait déterminer a priori. Nous démontrons comment l'intersubjectivité doit être comprise dans la perspective lacanienne. (shrink)

I argue that courtly love can throw a new light upon two major problems in Freud's theory of sublimation. For Freud sublimation is the procès in which the sexual aim of the drives is diverted towards a non-sexual aim that is still related with the original one. The first problem regards the relation between the terminus a quo and the terminus ad quern. Freud describes this relation with different terms. The notion of ‘desexualisation’ represents precisely what he has in mind. (...) This term propounds that Freud understands sublimation as a one-sided movement that consists in leaving behind the original sexual aim. Courtly love proves that desexualisation as Freud understands it, is not a necessary condition for sublimation. A weakening of Freud's strong claim concerning desexualisation implies however that the distinction between sublimation and perversion is not always clear-cut. The second problem appertains to the processes that bring about the transformation of the sexual aim. Courtly love infers that idealisation of the love-object can play an important role in bringing about sublimation. The kind of sublimation that corresponds to courtly love is what has been called in German Idealism ‘Verführung’ (rapture). Psychoanalytic theory is not willing to conceive idealisation in this sense. According to the classical psychoanalytic theory, idealisation produces repression of sexual drives. I argue that this idea is counter-intuitive and that Freud's understanding of idealisation is more subtle. I give a short overview of Freud's approach of idealisation and I denote some elements in his approach that help us to describe the direct link between idealisation and sublimation. Idealisation of the beloved can go together with an inhibition of sexual drives. But it is wrong to identify aim-inhibition with repression. I suggest to characterize the interaction between idealisation and sublimation as an exaltation of drives. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to clarify the Lacanian concept of jouissance which has often been misunderstood and has been the subject of unnecessary obscurantism. We start from a few examples of jouissance and make a first attempt to explain the concept of jouissance from this perspective. Very soon we are confronted with a number of complex questions: Where does this concept of jouissance originate from?, What is the precise relation between jouissance and the pleasure principle?, Is there an (...) equivalent to Lacanian jouissance in Freudian theory?, What is the connection between jouissance and evil?, Is there a moral dimension to jouissance?… In answering these questions we will come to three essential characteristics of Lacanian jouissance: self-loss , passivity and lack of sense for what is good . After this definition of the main characteristics of Lacanian jouissance, we briefly attempt to draw a rough sketch of the clinical relevance of jouissance and the manifestations of jouissance in psychosis, neurosis and perversions. (shrink)

La différence entre l'interprétation lacanienne de la métaphore et celle de la linguistique doit être comprise à partir de la double structure fondamentale de la différence (la langue étant un système de différences). La linguistique conçoit ces différences comme une ensemble fini d'oppositions : le développement de la langue est régi par la présence a priori d'un nombre de formes. Cette conception, selon laquelle les différences sont dominées par l'identité d'une forme, est due à une certaine interprétation de l'événement de (...) la communication, interprétation qui se base sur l'évidence d'un je-sujet et une délinéabilité précise de la signification. L'événement de la métaphore doit être compris en fonction de cette forme a priori : la linguistique ne peut donc interpréter la métaphore autrement que comme une déviation qui serait -en principe -annulable. L'opposition propre vs impropre revêt ici une fonction prépondérante. Lacan veut délivrer la création métaphorique et le mouvement métonymique de l'opposition stérile de propre vs impropre. L'expérience clinique n'a pas uniquement débloqué la position centrale du sujet, mais de plus, elle impose une manifestation de sens irrécupérable dans un processus linéaire. La langue se présente ici comme un enchaînement infini de signifiants : ce mouvement est infini parce qu'il est soustendu par un vide (cette batterie ne peut être refrénée par aucune instance). Lacan identifie la métonymie à ce mouvement incessant : l'enchaînement de signifiants réfère à un manque qui ne peut être comblé. Il manquera toujours un signifiant pour dire ce qui doit être dit. La métaphore surgit dans ce mouvement comme un moment où le vide est identifié d'une façon provisoire (la métaphore engendre une nouvelle identité). Pour Lacan, la métaphore et la métonymie doivent finalement se confondre, vu que chaque identité, produite par la métaphore, est brisée par le glissement incessant du signifié sous le signifiant. (shrink)

The paper argues for a notion of religion that is based on a strong human sense for symbols. Symbols are the natural milieu for religion. I distinguish symbolsfrom signs through the fact that the symbol brings together the elements kept separate in the sign. A symbol does contain something of the force of the realitywhich it represents. With this approach we can look at fides quaerens intellectum in a new light. Moreover, religious images and icons can gain from understanding religion (...) as a symbolic practice. The paper argues that the theological debate on the religious value of icons should not be focused on the tension between the visibility and the invisibility of the divine. Against Marion I argue that touching, rather than seeing, is the core of religious images. People kiss and caress icons. Examples from ordinary life are adduced to illustrate this understanding. (shrink)

The paper argues for a notion of religion that is based on a strong human sense for symbols. Symbols are the natural milieu for religion. I distinguish symbolsfrom signs through the fact that the symbol brings together the elements kept separate in the sign. A symbol does contain something of the force of the realitywhich it represents. With this approach we can look at fides quaerens intellectum in a new light. Moreover, religious images and icons can gain from understanding religion (...) as a symbolic practice. The paper argues that the theological debate on the religious value of icons should not be focused on the tension between the visibility and the invisibility of the divine. Against Marion I argue that touching, rather than seeing, is the core of religious images. People kiss and caress icons. Examples from ordinary life are adduced to illustrate this understanding. (shrink)

Love, desire, and enjoyment are the best natural candidates for an understanding of mystic love. Grounded in these natural capacities, mystic love bestows a spiritual orientation upon them that they cannot give to themselves. Mystic love has everything in common with a passionate love; that is to say, a love consumed by desire. However, it also consists in a painful transformation of this self-destructive passion into a pure love; that is to say, a love without desire—which is another word for (...) the highest contemplative prayers. The mystic way that brings about this transformation possesses a triadic structure. The first stage begins with the humble forms of meditative prayer and ends with the spectacular prayers of rapture and ecstasy. The suffering of the mystic night is the turning point, preparing the prayer of mystic union with God in which the soul loves all there is as it is. (shrink)

Love, desire, and enjoyment are the best natural candidates for an understanding of mystic love. Grounded in these natural capacities, mystic love bestows a spiritual orientation upon them that they cannot give to themselves. Mystic love has everything in common with a passionate love; that is to say, a love consumed by desire. However, it also consists in a painful transformation of this self-destructive passion into a pure love; that is to say, a love without desire—which is another word for (...) the highest contemplative prayers. The mystic way that brings about this transformation possesses a triadic structure. The first stage begins with the humble forms of meditative prayer and ends with the spectacular prayers of rapture and ecstasy. The suffering of the mystic night is the turning point, preparing the prayer of mystic union with God in which the soul loves all there is as it is. (shrink)

Philosophy as well as theology have always been keen to know which natural capacities of the conditio humana a religiously inspired life is connected with. What is it that makes man susceptible and sensitive to religion? In which natural source of power does religion find its fertile soil? Today this classic question is still of importance. To think about religion from this perspective may help prevent it becoming even more isolated from the totality of forms of life which may support (...) and give an orientation to human existence. The formulation of the question presupposes, on the one hand, that religion is a continuation of interests and practices that may indeed actually be present in forms of existence that are not religiously coloured, and on the other hand that religion provides an enlargement as well as an orientation that these interests and practices, on which it builds, cannot themselves provide.Philosophy and natural theology have forwarded several candidates to serve the function of a natural link. According to some, reason is the most suitable candidate. Religion enlarges upon man's scientific curiosity and appeals to his love for truth. Religious belief is then interpreted as a version of believing that. To believe, in a religious sense, entails that the believer takes a minimum number of propositions concerning what is ultimately the case to be true, and he does so on the basis of rational arguments, which, no matter how much they are religiously coloured, are not fundamentally different from arguments that are equally valid in scientific discourse. Others, in line with biblical-exegetical elucidations of believing , prefer to link religious belief back to the basic attitude of trust of men in each other. To believe is then interpreted in terms of to believe and trust someone. The relation between belief as trust in God, and the events that may confirm as well as contradict this trust, that may support it as well as cause it to falter, must then be understood by analogy with what it means to trust one another in normal life.Wittgenstein and cultural anthropologists like Lévi-Strauss, Mauss and Malinowski connect religious practice to man's capacity to understand symbols and to set ritual actions that are sensitive to symbols. Finally, more existentially inclined approaches link religious belief to a basic feeling of dependency or to universally recognizable experiences involving notions such as receptivity, gratitude for gifts given for nothing, etc. Religion is thereby linked to, and at the same time enlarges the meaning of these experiences by relating notions such as gratitude, dependency and indebtedness to a receding horizon that soars above inner-worldly, merely human limits and is yet addressed personally as God. (shrink)

Love, desire, and enjoyment are the best natural candidates for an understanding of mystic love. Grounded in these natural capacities, mystic love bestows a spiritual orientation upon them that they cannot give to themselves. Mystic love has everything in common with a passionate love; that is to say, a love consumed by desire. However, it also consists in a painful transformation of this self-destructive passion into a pure love; that is to say, a love without desire—which is another word for (...) the highest contemplative prayers. The mystic way that brings about this transformation possesses a triadic structure. The first stage begins with the humble forms of meditative prayer and ends with the spectacular prayers of rapture and ecstasy. The suffering of the mystic night is the turning point, preparing the prayer of mystic union with God in which the soul loves all there is as it is. (shrink)

This article pushes Lacan into the area of moral philosophy. In the posthumously published Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret, Goethe expresses his perplexity concerning a short passage in the tragedy of Antigone in which the eponymous character gives to Creon a rather extravagant justification of her deadly gesture. This essay contends that Lacan’s reference to Goethe in his Ethics of Psychoanalysis clarifies what is at stake in his dialogues with Aristotle and Kant. Moral sensibility gravitates towards contingencies that (...) hinder a subject from fully participating in the market of exchangeable goods and the realm of social justice or the universal demands of a categorical imperative. In the tragedy of Antigone, a contingent blood tie incarnates a symbolic value that accumulates such enormous power that it isolates Antigone from her social context and even from her desire for self-preservation. Moral sensibility circulates around those areas in which an individual is separated from the universal. (shrink)

This article pushes Lacan into the area of moral philosophy. In the posthumously published Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Soret, Goethe expresses his perplexity concerning a short passage in the tragedy of Antigone in which the eponymous character gives to Creon a rather extravagant justification of her deadly gesture. This essay contends that Lacan’s reference to Goethe in his Ethics of Psychoanalysis clarifies what is at stake in his dialogues with Aristotle and Kant. Moral sensibility gravitates towards contingencies that (...) hinder a subject from fully participating in the market of exchangeable goods and the realm of social justice or the universal demands of a categorical imperative. In the tragedy of Antigone, a contingent blood tie incarnates a symbolic value that accumulates such enormous power that it isolates Antigone from her social context and even from her desire for self-preservation. Moral sensibility circulates around those areas in which an individual is separated from the universal. (shrink)

In this paper a distinction is made between two conceptions of the ego in freudian metapsychology. According to the first conception, a conception which Freud never gave up, the ego is conceived as a specific function on the surface of the living organism ; it is the result of a progressive differentiation of the Id ('Es') under the driving power of internal stimuli and external reality. Fitted with specific neutral, i.e. non-conflictual functions as perception, memory, control of the bodily motions (...) and consciousness, the ego has to defend the individual as a biological living organism against the threats from without and within. In this conception the ego is treated as an instance that doesn't take part in the different psychic conflicts. We analyse the philosophical presuppositions and show the metapsychological disadvantages of this hypothesis that has been worked out especially in the American ego-psychology. According to the second conception, that takes into account important clinical pheno mena as identification, idealisation, narcissism, ideal of the ego, the ego is conceived as a metaphorical effect of a specific psychic act. With Lacan, we try to analyse and to interpret this specific act as an act that causes an infinite splitting in the ego : the ego is constituted as a subject that from its origin is separated from itself. Instead of being a biological function that lives in the immediate metonymical prolongiation of the living organism, it rather has to defend a certain representation of himself. This point of view doesn't exclude a purely functional description of the ego ; but the different functions have now to be interpreted differently because the ego is the effect of conflicts in which it takes part (consciousness is interlaced with unconsciousness, perception with denying...). In the last part of our study we show how Freud makes the philosophically important distinction between the ego as an object of the Id and the ego as a subject that has to speak in the first person ('I'). We try to give a Lacanian interpretation of the subject as act on the basis of the well-known Freudian formula 'Wo Es war soll Ich werden'. (shrink)

The Christian commandment of love of neighbour “You shall love your neighbour as yourself” might rather easily give rise to what I would like to call, with the necessary reservations, ‘immoderate images’. If we examine the consequences of the commandment, we very soon run into a world of excessive obligations and exaggerated unselfishness which can trouble the imagination and stir up fantasies of desire. The commandment which some would say is irreconcilable with the natural limits of common sense, is nonetheless (...) intriguing to both the imagination and the desire of the human person. Associations can easily be made with the peculiar and sometimes spectacular lives of certain saints, martyrs and impassioned mystics in which the boundaries between perversion, narcissism, selflessness, self-destruction and high moral standing are not always crystal clear.It is perhaps possible that Christianity’s attractiveness is due, in no small measure, to this associative network of tormented images and extreme examples which are easily evoked by the vestiges of our commandment. The fact that some people, when reflecting on the commandment, are almost exclusively inclined to think of extreme, and sometimes sinister, sacri- fices does not only speak of the commandment itself but also reveals something about such people and their desires. It is almost as if the commandment, while at first sight running against common sense, at the same time plays along with, and even leans towards, our human desires.We might ask ourselves if it is not a fact that every ethical theory somehow turns around a ‘core’ which, if we relate to it too directly and too literally, can let the theory’s principles run wild. Perhaps the commandment of love of neighbour has taken the place of such a ‘disorienting core’ in Christianity. Perhaps also there can be no particular ethic which does not somewhere run the risk of leading to excess. If this is the case, however, then the commandment of love of neighbour loses something of its specific expressiveness. Nevertheless, it is my contention that we can argue with good reason that our Christian commandment disorients moral rules and obligations in a very direct, radical and even characteristic way.In order to argue my point, the first part of this essay will be devoted to a discussion of Freud’s repudiating and reticent attitude in relation to this commandment. In this regard, I will make an abstraction of the question how the tradition, the church and moral education have taught us to understand the commandment and focus our attention on a structural and grammatical analysis of its formulation. I will argue that Freud’s aversion entails the fact that our commandment, in contrast to the incest taboo and the Ten Commandments, as such forbids nothing. Indeed, it is precisely the fact that it forbids nothing that makes it so alarming.In the second part of the essay I will return to the way in which the tradition has taught us to understand this ‘opaque commandment’. I will point out that the paradigmatic line of approach concerns ‘helping the needy’, although the commandment, in the literal sense, speaks only of love. I will also tackle the question of the identity of my neighbour and what it means for someone to become my neighbour. In conclusion I will raise the question whether in fact every kind of charitable activity can be understood from the perspective of ‘helping’.The problem which lies at the root of this question, however, is the following: if it is the case that the solid and characteristic core of love of neighbour has to do with the alleviation of needs, then why, in exceptional circumstances, is burying the dead considered an act of charity? (shrink)

The fundamental and unevitable risk of schizophrenia and paranoia reveals to us that the ego is not originally given ; the ego, that unifies the psyche and gives it a personal character (my psyche), is not from the very beginning necessarily present in my psyche. The ego has to be constituted; and in some extreme cases (i.e. schizophrenia and paranoia ) this process of constitution may radically fail : the ego might not have come about. This constitution cannot be thought (...) as a selfconstitution : it is the effect of the Other. I am constituted by the Other ; I receive my personal being from the Other and not from myself. The fundamental processes of the primary repression ('Urverdrängung'), the mirror phase, identification and idealisation, and finally the discourse of the Other are interpreted by De Waelhens against the back-ground of this primordial, — clinical — evidence. The philosophical interpretation of these fundamental structures of our being induces us to understand the ego from the very beginning as separated from itself by the Other, — the Other in me. The different facets of this original splitting and its consequences for our conception of the ego and his relation with the Other are worked out in this study. (shrink)

In this book, Marianne Moyaert develops a new interreligious appropriation of Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutical philosophy. Viewed in context of his philosophical, anthropological, and ethical work, Ricoeur’s fragmentary reflections on the encounters between religions provide insights on global cooperation practices and religious identity concerns.

This article reflects on the struggle for recognition, in particular on the question of how to avoid people becoming battle-weary. Where do people find the strength to continue this struggle without lapsing into violence? These are questions which we derive from one of Paul Ricoeur's latest publications Course of Recognition. Ricoeur claims that the only way to avoid the struggle for recognition degenerating into violent conflicts, is to place it in a horizon of hope – the hope that the (...) struggle does not have the final word on interpersonal relations. In this article we take up Ricoeurs suggestion and elaborate it successively from a broad religious perspective and a Christian-Biblical perspective. This also allows us to develop new anthropological insights concerning the Struggle for Recognition. (shrink)

SUMMARYCultural and religious differences often lead to conflicts, which sometimes even degenerate into violence. This situation has triggered a debate among universalists and particularists on the possibility of a global ethic. This article does not repeat the discussion here between universalism and particularism as such. Rather, its aim is to shed new light on this discussion by turning to the French philosopher Paul Ricœur, one of the great minds of the twentieth century.My starting point is Ricœur's discussion with Hans (...) Küng on the ‘Declaration Towards a Global Ethic’. This discussion is not very well known and has, to my knowledge, not been commented upon by a third party. In this discussion Ricœur immediately signals his “inner resistance” to Küng's project. First, Ricœur states that the global ethic amounts to a “disembodied formalism” because it is founded on too radical a distinction between universal formal norms and particular religious convictions. Moreover, Küngs global ethic also neglects the challenge posed by the application of these formal principles to the ethical complexities with which people are confronted in life. After having explored these objections, I will examine how Ricœur develops an original perspective concerning the contemporary challenge of ethical diversity and the tension between particularity and universality. In this regard, especially his so-called little ethics deserves our attention.In unpacking and analyzing Ricœur's ethical reflections and elaborating on them in view of the context of diversity, I hope not only to argue how this Ricœurian perspective sheds new light on the discussion concerning the possibility of a global ethic but also to contribute in a very specific way to Ricœur studies. In this sense, the following article can also be read as an intercultural or interreligious appropriation of Ricœur's ethical reflections. (shrink)

This article reflects on the struggle for recognition, in particular on the question of how to avoid people becoming battle-weary. Where do people find the strength to continue this struggle without lapsing into violence? These are questions which we derive from one of Paul Ricoeur’s latest publications Course of Recognition. Ricoeur claims that the only way to avoid the struggle for recognition degenerating into violent conflicts, is to place it in a horizon of hope—the hope that the struggle does (...) not have the final word on interpersonal relations. In this article we take up Ricoeurs suggestion and elaborate it successively from a broad religious perspective and a Christian-Biblical perspective. This also allows us to develop new anthropological insights concerning the Struggle for Recognition. (shrink)

Paul Moyaert proposes to resolve persistent difficulties in Freud's theory of drive by appealing to a metaphysics of mutually irreducible forces. His argument is persuasive on many points, but raises questions about others. Three of them are mentioned here: one each pertaining to the implications of his position for the body and sexuality, the analytic relation, and ethics.