Today, there is an emerging interest for the potential role of hermeneutics in reflecting on the practices related to digital technologies and their consequences. Nonetheless, such an interest has neither given rise to a unitary approach nor to a shared debate. The primary goal of this paper is to map and synthetize the different existing perspectives to pave the way for an open discussion on the topic. The article is developed in two steps. In the first section, the authors analyze (...) digital hermeneutics “in theory” by confronting and systematizing the existing literature. In particular, they stress three main distinctions among the approaches: between “methodological” and “ontological” digital hermeneutics; between data- and text-oriented digital hermeneutics; and between “quantitative” and “qualitative” credos in digital hermeneutics. In the second section, they consider digital hermeneutics “in action”, by critically analyzing the uses of digital data for studying a classical object such as the political opinion. In the conclusion, we will pave the way to an ontological turn in digital hermeneutics. Most of this article is devoted to the methodological issue of interpreting with digital machines. The main task of an ontological digital hermeneutics would consist instead in wondering if it is legitimate, and eventually to which extent, to speak of digital technologies, or at least of some of them, as interpretational machines. (shrink)

This paper aims to foster an interdisciplinary dialogue between Ricoeur’s phenomenological- hermeneutical thought and human geography, in particular with respect to the issue of landscape interpretation. The connection draws on the idea that landscapes and lived spaces can be read as texts, not unfamiliar to human geography and semiotics from 1980s onward. In the first part of the paper I will briefly expound some theories of landscape which make use of the metaphors “landscape as cultural image” and “landscape as text” (...) in human and cultural geography. Then, I will discuss the main contribution of Ricoeur to the issue of space. The philosopher already envisioned a possible application of his “threefold mimesis” of Time and Narrative to architectural spaces. In the conclusion, I will propose to rejuvenate the geographical metaphor of “landscape as text” by introducing a possible application of the Ricoeurian notion of “meaningful action as text” to landscape. (shrink)

Notions of space and place are often used interchangeably in everyday speech, but they are distinguished both conceptually and historically. When put in relation to space and place, beauty reveals all its vitality and ties to socio-political issues, like: why do we consider a place beautiful and another place ugly? How do taste judgments about places influence planning, tourism, heritage policies, urban, and landscape architecture? I will develop my argument in four points. First, I will shortly pin down the main (...) tenets of a concept of beauty that is inherently spatial, by rephrasing Roger Scruton’s insights on the beautiful and Ed Casey’s notion of ‘implacement’. Second, I will address the interconnection between the modern emergence of a quantitative and objectivist concept of space and a non-relational idea of beauty. Third, I will expose the relationship between the concept of place, idiographic and qualitative, and the emergence of a site-specific, phenomenologically based concept of beauty. In conclusion, I will show how non-relational conceptions of beauty risk to colonize aesthetic experience and I will take a stand for a relational conception of beauty against the risk of standardization of both landscape appreciation and planning. (shrink)

This issue of Itinera aims to address the connections between architecture and the performing arts in its various aspects and from multiple points of view. The growing emphasis on the performative character of artistic practices, namely, their ability to involve spectators directly and pervasively (Dixon 2007), imbues the relationship between architecture, the performing arts, and the spectator’s experience. The sharing of the scenic space by spectators and performers is essential for the co-production of a common energy which operates as a (...) “transforming force” and thereby opens up the shared experience of discovering oneself and the other as a union of the body and the mind (Fischer-Lichte 2004). (shrink)

This article aims to overcome the representational conceptions of landscape in or-der to recover its substantive character. Landscape appears as a semantically ambiguous and tensive concept in both conceptualizations, but if the representational approaches draw on the dualisms of modernity (between nature and culture, subject and object, art and sciences) and understands landscape in terms of a spiritual / artistic / visual construction opposed to nature, a substantive approach towards landscape emphasizes the continuity between the natural and the anthropic and, (...) without denying the constructive potential of subjective or cultural perceptions, endows the geographical forms with the capacity to produce meanings, constraints and socio-political options by means of their aesthetic qualities. The article is divided in five paragraphs: the first four discuss different kinds of representational attitude towards landscape elaborated during the XX century (the cognitive, the idealistic, and the critic approach), while in the fifth paragraph I will pin down some elements to build an integrally substantive conception of landscape, opening the path for further research developments. (shrink)

The performative turn in aesthetics is paralleled by a similar transformation in the epistemology of geography with the rise of the so-called non-representational theory. This paper focuses on the connection between non-representational geography and the morphological approaches to landscape elaborated by Humboldt in the XIX century and Carl Sauer in the XX century. At stake there is the possibility to establish a virtuous relationship between aesthetics and geographical knowledge, which have often been separated despite their indisputable kinships and liaison points.

This paper deals with the relation between freedom and norm in the practical philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, taking into account especially the “Little Ethics” that covers Studies VII, VIII, IX of Oneself as Another. Although Ricoeur states the priority of ethics over moral, playing the quest for good and happiness off against deontological morality of duty, it soon appears clear that the norm is necessarily implied by the development of ethics itself. No actual freedom can exist without norm; but, on (...) the other and, no normative system is absolute, because the quest for good, in which freedom consists, cannot be fulfilled by any norm. This is the reason why it is always possible, and in some cases necessary, to act not following the established rules, but by improvisational conducts that can answer to the needs of the given situations. Aim of the article is to show the relevance of creativity for Ricoeur’s theory of action, but also to highlight the fact that creativity is not grounded on itself, but is linked to an infinite ethical ambition that give sense to improvisation. (shrink)

Il s'agit dans cet article de montrer certains liens existant entre la conception militante de l’utopie que Ricœur a proposée dans les textes rassemblés dans Plaidoyer pour l'utopie ecclésiale des années 60 et la notion philosophique d'utopie développée dans les conférences et les recherches des années 70. Les enjeux purement éthiques de l'utopie, dans la mesure où ils visent à la fois l'accomplissement de l'humanité dans son universalité et dans sa singularité, sont surtout envisagés dans le cadre du discours militant (...) de Ricœur, don’t Plaidoyer pour l'utopie ecclésiale est une bonne illustration. Cette utopie de l'humanité accomplie était déjà présente et active pendant le militantisme de jeunesse de Ricœur dans le cadre du socialisme révolutionnaire anti-soviétique. Elle fournit un arrière-plan extra-philosophique à la conception philosophique de l'utopie comme l'un des deux pôles de l'imagination sociale, ainsi qu'aux analyses consacrées à Marx, au personnalisme de Mounier et à l'imagination transcendantale de Husserl. (shrink)

Recension de l'ouvrage de Johann Michel: Ricoeur et ses contemporains, Paris, PUF, 2013.

The morphological account of landscape aims to overcome the contrast between an objectivist/scientific account of space and the more qualitative/subjective account of place. It does so by actualizing the notion of landscape, which endows a materiality often overlooked in contemporary spatial theories. In this paper, I will discuss what has been called the ‘space-place conundrum’ by referring mostly to the human geography contemporary debate on space and place. In the following, I will retrieve Carl Sauer’s morphological conception of landscape as (...) an alternative framework aimed at rephrasing both the concepts of space and place. Landscape must be freed from the cage of the aesthetic gaze so that it can be understood as a lived and dynamic complex of interacting forms that encompass the embodied subject. In the end, I will outline the main characteristics of a morphological conception of landscape, paving the way for further inquiries. (shrink)

Abstract:This paper aims to show the connection between space, place and subjectivity. According to how we conceive space, place and their relations, it is possible to affirm a certain understanding of what has been called “the subject” in the framework of Cartesian, Kantian and Husserlian legacies. Quantitative geography takes the transcendental subject—characterized by a methodical detachment from its environment, constituted as an opposite object—for granted. Many and various reactions to this subject-object model can be traced within the social sciences (and (...) within human geography in particular) in the last four decades. In this paper I propose an overview of these reactions and then provide a new conceptual articulation for them, based on the kind of subjectivity they assume. I have identified three overarching patterns, or meta-theories: one ontological, one critical and one phenomenological. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to put Ricœur’s philosophy in dialogue with human geography. There are at least two good reasons to do so. The first concerns the epistemological foundation of geography: Whereas humanistic or phenomenological geographers inspired by Heidegger or, to a lesser extent, by Merleau-Ponty have sometimes taken on an anti-scientific approach, the Ricœurian articulation of understanding and explanation may contribute to building a bridge between the experiential side of place-meanings and the scientific explanations of spatial elements (...) and their relationships. The second reason has to do with the application of the Ricœurian “model of the text” to landscape: It is a direction that Ricœur never explicitly took, but it is worth exploring, especially considering that “landscape as a text” was quite a popular metaphor among human geographers in the 1980s and 1990s. In this paper I will discuss both issues in order to outline a “Ricœurian path to geography,” which, while never explicitly developed by the philosopher, may represent an innovative and fruitful actualization of his thought. (shrink)

Introduction to special issue "Ricoeur and the Problem of Space".

Introduction française au numéro spécial "Ricœur et la question de l'espace".

Bookreview of, Alberto Romele, L’expérience du verbum in corde , ou l’impuissance de l’herméneutique , 260 pp. Compte rendu de l'ouvrage d'Alberto Romele, , L’expérience du verbum in corde , ou l’impuissance de l’herméneutique , 260 pp.