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Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur.
... From 1947 onwards he was thinking reflectively and critically about the university sector and became engaged fully with campus life as an academic with a considerable teaching load which he relished, first at Strasbourg (1950)(1951)(1952)(1953)(1954)(1955)(1956), then at Paris Sorbonne and Paris Nanterre (1956)(1957)(1958)(1959)(1960)(1961)(1962)(1963)(1964)(1965)(1966)(1967)(1968)(1969)(1970). Ricoeur's experiences on the Nanterre campus is spanned by four essays, one from 1964, two from 1968, and one from 1971 (Ricoeur 1964;1968a, b;1971). ...
... As a result of the riots, students won the right to sit on management committees (cogestion = co-management); however, as Ricoeur had presciently warned in 1964, it turned out to be a somewhat illusory victory because committee bureaucracy slowed down innovation: students often did not witness the changes they initiated (Ricoeur 1964). The 1968 débacle provides a filter for Ricoeur's evolving views on universities, and in 1971-still raw about Nanterre, his resignation and failure to realise his dream (see Sect. 5.2)-he wrote a preface about his philosophy for Hermeneutic phenomenology: the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: it throws contemporary thought from that time in the UK and across Europe and many other areas into sharp relief (Ricoeur 1971). After all the hectic violence of '68, he places the written text at the centre of human development which becomes the 'place for the decentering and dispossession of immediacy'; he hopes that 'meaning comes to the ego through the power of the word' as a way to balance his 'permanent mistrust of the pretensions of the subject in posing itself as the foundation of its own meaning' (Ricoeur 1971, xv). ...
... The class of the privileged, as a form of identity, resists any pressure to share its gains in terms of what and who and how it knows, fearing downward mobility (Goldthorpe 2016). To frame it in Ricoeurian imagery, 'contemporary thought feeds itself on the debris of this clash' (Ricoeur 1971) between 'left' and 'right', so that perceived gains on one side (the left via Black Lives Matter) lead to increased activity on the other (the right via 'great replacement theory' protagonists). ...
This chapter explores some of the key issues that have beset English universities in the twenty first century with a summary of some key areas in Ricœur’s early philosophy and interventions in the 1960s. Comparisons and contrasts are made from the 1960s with current debates about free speech on campus in England: complaints from 2017 to 2022 from outside the university about both more and less free speech have multiplied, whilst there has been increasingly less discussion inside the university about how to converse well. Equality, diversity and inclusion are policy labels that are in conflict with Prevent, the UK’s counterterror programme targeted at ‘extremist’ ideas that are nonetheless lawful.
... One clear influence is his friend and mentor, Paul Ricoeur. Ihde is said to be the first to do a dissertation on Ricoeur in English, and the first to write a fully-fledged Englishlanguage study of his works (Ihde, 1971). Ricoeurian themes of the creative exploration of the overlap between hermeneutics and phenomenology are clearly visible across Ihde's own corpus. ...
... Gadamer's hermeneutics seem to this author to be particularly relevant for clinical social work practice and could have considerable potential for enhancing the heuristic value of empathy. The French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur (1981) has also been a major figure in the development of what has been called "hermeneutic phenomenology" (Ihde, 1971). His work seems particularly promising for moving hermeneutic understanding from the immediate practice arena into the research and knowledge-building realm. ...
... Felski has offered follow-ups to Limits in assorted arenas (2016, 2020), and a PMLA forum debates the merits of her argument (Beckwith 2017;Best 2017;Friedman 2017;Jagoda 2017;Love 2017;Robbins 2017;Simpson 2017), with Felski (2017) herself responding to the scholars of the forum. 4 While Felski traces the concept "hermeneutics of suspicion" to Ricoeur's discussion of the authors he dubs masters of suspicion (i.e., Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx), Scott-Baumann (2009: 63) traces the phrase to Ricoeur's (1971: xiv) preface to Ihde (1971). Scott-Baumann's chapter offers a full discussion of the phrase's history and its assorted referents for both Ricoeur and those influenced by him. ...
In this article, I examine debates about the relationship between critique and normativity in the study of religion. One position in this debate bars the critic from any involvement in normative claims; the other finds that critique fails to achieve the detached status necessary for nonnormative argumentation. I turn to parallel discussions concerning the critical and postcritical found in literary scholarship, particularly Sedgwick (2003 [1997]; 2007) and Felski (2015), to suggest a path forward. Where Felski proposes a rejection of critique on account of its failed production of detachment, Sedgwick maintains the usefulness of critique for specific goals. I argue that critique is always already normative. Its effectiveness at communicating and promoting the normative claims that already motivate it requires an attached critic, who cannot imagine themself at a distance from the situations they analyze.
... As Holroyd (2007, p. 10) makes clear, hermeneutic phenomenology offers a means by which research may be conducted so that whilst the scientific method is respected it is not relied upon to "explain human experience or ... precipitate an understanding of it." The hermeneutic turn in phenomenology moves toward explication of socially lived experience through indirect and dialectical paths (Ihde, 1971, p. 6) using language and even symbolic expression as the medium. As Ricoeur (1974) describes, all hermeneutic problems are problems of interpretation and require some degree of textual exegesis that attempts to sort a reading from the communal context of its production. ...
Public libraries contribute to a democratic civil society and an educated, informed, tolerant and engaged polity. There is, however, little extant research on how knowledge is represented in public libraries in Australia, and in particular about what types of assumptions about knowledge are prioritised in selecting and evaluating adult nonfiction monographs. This dissertation is a mixed methods study of public library adult nonfiction monograph collections and the professional lived experience of the librarians who select and evaluate them. I situate this study within collection management, knowledge organisation and epistemics. Firstly, I look to elicit the knowledge-oriented factors that influence selection and evaluation of nonfiction collections. I formulate the explanation in terms of a number of ways that knowledge is valued, its relationship to the concept of belief, worldview and the practice of librarianship. I also look to provide an interpretive matrix through which it is possible to characterise the knowledge represented in these collections. I engage in an empirical bibliometric study to describe the commonalities in distribution that reveal subject priorities and to assess how subjects are distributed in terms of range and depth of coverage and I engage in a discursive inquiry into librarians’ epistemic values and their orientations towards particular types of knowledge to explicate the criteria that selectors bring to bear on their selection and evaluation decisions and how they would identify crucial or core knowledge, assuming this exists. The triangulation of the two studies helped to answer the question of how knowledge is represented. I make the case that while knowledge is represented primarily in terms of that which has value for people oriented in their personal concerns at the level of self, home and family, and that this may limit what is included in a knowledge collection, this is necessitated by the need for knowledge to support the development of public library users’ sense of personal meaning and that it is the expression also of librarians care for the value of this for users as individuals and as members of an epistemic community.
... Meanwhile, Ricoeur's method as a whole, though it still fits into the realm of philosophy of language, is more focused on how we should interpret language and its various symbolisms in order to arrive at understanding (Ihde 1971). Because of this, Ricoeur's method can rightly be labeled as "hermeneutical"that is, it involves interpretation, of making sense of things. ...
This paper is an attempt to bring together the convergent elements in J.L. Austin's and Paul Ricoeur's philosophies of language. Though a number of studies have already claimed that Ricoeur has in some ways been influenced by Austin, to date, not a single study has been made that exclusively focuses on the interrelatedness between Austin's and Ricoeur's philosophies of language. Thus, in this paper, I will start with a general exposition of the philosophical connection between Austin and Ricoeur. I will then show how Austin and Ricoeur define and also understand the nature of words, the central component of every language. I will next explore the interplay of meaning and hermeneutics through a detailed discussion of the Speech Acts Theory (Austin) and the Hermeneutics of Symbols (Ricoeur). Afterward, I will argue that in Austin and Ricoeur, words, meaning, and hermeneutics constitute the art of making sense of things and of interpreting certain aspects and features of language.
... I will present the rationale behind this choice as I go along. The genealogy of hermeneutic phenomenology is complex, and one can trace its origin to several streams of continental philosophy (Ihde, 1971;Van Manen, 2014). Over time, this stream has incorporated theoretical understanding and insights from streams such as Husserlian phenomenology, Gestalt psychology, existential philosophy, structural semiotics, and clinical theory (Thompson, 1996). ...
In this age of rising consumerism, it is evident that we need to move toward a more environmentally sustainable and socially just form of consumption patterns by surpassing the impasse currently faced by various sustainable consumption policies. Without any further delay, we need to embrace an apt methodological orientation to gain a better socioculturally situated conceptual understanding of consumers and a means to obtain empirical insights into drivers of socioenvironmentally impactful consumption patterns to be able to proceed toward efficacious sustainable consumption policies. This article proposes a phenomenological research methodology–based conceptual framing and a step-by-step methodological approach based on that framing to gain an in-depth understanding of how consumers being socioculturally situated identity projects–driven subjects embed consumer goods as integral parts of their life narratives and how that in turn acts as the drivers of their consumption. The elaborated steps of interpreting collected consumer narratives are presented with examples from an empirical research conducted in a few Indian cities. Critical reflections on diverse issues that may arise while employing this methodology in similar contexts like India are then discussed. The conclusion highlights how this understanding of consumer could make a novel contribution to sustainable consumption literature.
... 2. For reference to puppetry as a mode of expression, see Bell et al. (2014), Blumenthal (2005), Bogatyrev (2001) and Jurkowski (2013a). 3. The hermeneutic-phenomenology in mind here refers to the philosophical work of Paul Ricoeur (see Ihde, 1971;Ricoeur, 1975Ricoeur, , 1991. Here phenomenology takes the role of a descriptive analysis of lived experience articulated within and through historically positioned subjects, objects and contexts. ...
The puppet form has caught the imagination of many artists and writers. However, coming to terms with this riddling figuration is difficult. As a configuration characterized by tensions and conflicts, it eludes easy determination. This article focuses on the paradoxical nature of the puppet form: the tension in between the external bodily existence and the internal dramatic life of the puppet – two existential states that invest the puppet form with a perplexing double life. The paradox of renegotiating communicative flows between interior and exterior worlds is examined in relation to the phenomenon of intermediality. Amidst the intermedial concatenation of different modes of expression – puppetry, theatre, cinema and object animation – the puppet form acts as an intimate space. Concrete instances of medial interchanges carry metaphorically a long way towards the most intimate relation of knowing and feeling in resonance with the puppet form. Working with one of the finest examples of the use of puppetry in film, Jan Švankmajer’s Don Šajn (1970), these thoughts are developed through a series of readings ranging from the film critic Michael O’Pray’s view of the film, André Breton’s notion of communicating vessels, Deleuze’s concept of the baroque fold and Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic phenomenology.
... Ne ovat, kuten vaikkapa Paul Ricoeurin tai Emmanuel Levinasin tapauksissa, osa fenomenologian historiaa (ks. Cohen 2001;Ihde 1971). Mediafenomenologia tuskin muodostaa tässä ristiriita-alttiudessa poikkeusta, mikä saattaa osaltaan selittää esimerkiksi sen, miksi edellä tarkasteltu Majkutin (2010b) kirja on muodoltaan sitä mitä on. ...
Artikkelissa analysoidaan fenomenologialähtöisen mediatutkimuksen lähihistoriaa. Monisuuntainen ja -ulotteinen, mutta samalla myös fragmentaarinen tutkimusalue voidaan luontevasti koota yhteen ”mediafenomenologia” -käsitteen avulla. Mediafenomenologiaa kehitellään artikkelissa Martin Heideggerin eksistentiaalifenomenologian pohjalta kolmella osa-alueella: median ontologian jatkokehittelyissä, medioidun täällä-olemisen (Dasein) analyysissa sekä lopuksi median, ruumiinfenomenologian ja eksistenssin välisenä kysymyksenä. Artikkeli sisältää myös tekstilähtöisen koeasetelman: analyysissä pyritään soveltuvilta osin noudattamaan eksistentiaalifenomenologialle ominaista tutkimusotetta, -kieltä ja -käsitteistöä. Lopussa tuodaan myös esille mediafenomenologian tuoreimpien tutkimushaarojen, etenkin biomedialähtöisen biofenomenologian, esille nostattamia mahdollisuuksia ja haasteita. Mediafenomenologiaa voidaan pitää koherenttina ja mediateknologian kehityksen suhteen monessakin mielessä kuvausvoimaisena mediatutkimuksen sateenvarjoteoriana.
... The process began by the researcher familiarising herself with the raw data, then starting to sort it into patterns and common themes. Ricoeur's three levels of analysis (Ihde, 1980) were used: initially there was a naïve reading of the material, followed by a structural analysis and finally a critical interpretation and discussion of what was found. ...
Background:
there can be serious consequences for patients if negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT) is performed incorrectly and patient safety must be paramount. The existing literature was found to mainly concentrate on the use of the technology from the patient perspective. This article examines the opinions of nurses who apply the therapy.
Method:
five staff nurses from different areas with differing experience levels were interviewed in a semi-structured manner. The transcribed interviews were coded, sorted into themes and analysed.
Results:
the themes were: enhancing knowledge and understanding, managing problematic pumps, formalised and interactive training, and efficacy and healing. There was a lack of standardised training provided for the nurses interviewed. Overall the nurses were aware of the basic evidence behind the treatment but would have liked additional support in this area as well as some practical, less pressured training. This complements the existing literature.
Conclusion:
nurses are expected to learn difficult and highly specialised skills quickly within a busy ward environment, often with no prior training or preparation. As things can go wrong, with the potential for patient harm, it is vital that nurses get these skills right first time, but it is difficult to do this in a practical, fast and cost-effective way. There is scope for future research in the area and perhaps the development of an online training tool to assist nurses in understanding and undertaking a new procedure.
... The answer to this question lies in hermeneutics. Heidegger's philosophy marks the beginning of the hermeneutic turn within the post-Husserlian phenomenological tradition (Ihde, 1971). This was part and parcel of Heidegger's particular emphasis on logos in human living, as language is not something that human beings possess in the strict sense. ...
In this article, the question of human nature is confronted from what may be called an existential-humanistic ecopsychological perspective. From this perspective, human nature is interpreted to be a synthetic, bipolar human–animal boundary form. The global character of this living form is noted to be a dynamic, oscillating hermeneutical-dialectical interplay between humanitas and animalitas. This appropriation of the human–animal boundary idea provides a wide-open, welcoming space for diverse conceptualizations of human life. At the same time, it maintains that human beings and nonhuman animals are indubitably embedded in a natural world within which we are active coparticipants in the development of experiential perspectives on our own bodies, those of others, and the natural environment at large. © 2015, Copyright © Division 32 (Humanistic Psychology) of the American Psychological Association.
This chapter on Algeria, and Chaps. 5 and 6 on Nanterre and Chicago respectively, present certain historical and conceptual aspects of Ricœur’s activism on campus and outline his intellectual development. I will demonstrate the irrefutable connections between his ideas and his applied work. As a junior academic, Ricœur held utopian ideas about the university as a site for self-development and rich educational opportunities for all, as well as a locus for political activism. In this chapter, I consider the role of the university campus in Ricœur’s early to mid-career struggles with abuses of power in the idealism that followed World War 2, reflected through his philosophy. As a relatively junior academic, his approach, based on polemical discussion with students, was successful from 1947 in opposing colonial France in Algeria.
This chapter explores the failure of Ricœur and Nanterre students to engage with each other through discussion. In the mid-1960s, Ricœur had sought an alternative higher education model to break the hegemony of the Sorbonne as a place of huge lectures, distant tutors and a classical education. He was sympathetic to the students’ rebelliousness, yet his dream of equality of class, gender and subject discipline on campus failed; his experiences give us insight into the fragility of discussion as a mediating process.
Before diving into Ricœur’s historical and conceptual experiences of free speech about Algeria, Nanterre and USA in Chaps. 4, 5 and 6, I provide in this chapter a clear working definition of ‘free speech’ as a negotiated process and explore how, by using the Communities of Inquiry approach, young people can learn the art of discussion as they progress through university. As an antidote to the chilling effects of the culture wars, this develops a politics of pedagogy that entails mutual recognition of each other’s arguments and helps us to share the risk with each other of causing offence. There are significant differences between this approach and the communicational ethics of Habermas. This chapter and Chaps. 4 and 6 end with sample Communities of Inquiry.Keywords
Communities of Inquiry
Procedural ethicsRhetoricAddamsAllenHabermasKant
Paul Ricoeur is a philosopher of wide ranging interests whose main concern is hermeneutics. His hermeneutics is self-reflexive, an existential appropriation that eventually gives way to self-understanding. Questions pertaining to self-identity, the problem of the other and intersubjectivity are presented by him in a tensive style, keeping the scope of interpretations wide open. While discussing the question of self-identity, he moves towards intersubjectivity which is centred on self-esteem. It provides a context for self-constancy which gives to a moral identity, an attestation of Here I am. Here arises the basic issue, how the narrative identity which is hermeneutical give rise to an ethical relation. If so, Ricoeur must be ready to see that there is an asymmetric relation between the same and the other which can be termed ethical. Though he says that conscience contains an injunction to attest ourselves to say, Here I am, it is a statement of “said” and not one of “saying”. Only a statement of “saying” can interrupt ontology and enact the movement from the same to the other which is ethical. Hence, Ricoeur stands at the hemeneutical level which cannot abandon ontology. But the polysemic nature of alterity posed by him never closes the possibilities of an ethical interpretation.
This chapter unpacks the “philosophical wager” underlying Ricoeurian hermeneutics. Going back to Freud and Philosophy and the discovery of the conflict of interpretations, Marcelo emphasizes the origin of Ricoeur’s perspectivism and “enlarged standpoint.” He puts forward a possible development stemming from Michael Walzer’s model of a “connected critic.” This progressive hermeneutics tackles some of the social and political challenges stemming from concrete, existing societies. Drawing from Freud and Philosophy (alongside the Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Oneself as Another and The Course of Recognition) two examples of progressive hermeneutics become apparent: 1) that of a “critical hermeneutics of populism” and 2) that of a political transformation that is “real utopian”, that is, partially achievable by approximating the space of experience and the horizon of expectation (to borrow Koselleck’s notions that Ricoeur also uses) by breaking up the proposed utopia in a series of intermediary goals. Marcelo argues that the ontological and epistemological dimensions of Ricoeur’s philosophical wager have ethico-political implications for a hermeneutics deeply rooted in our social world and that this hermeneutics bears potential for progressive social transformation.
Paul Ricoeur’s presentation of “Consciousness and the Unconscious” at a colloquium in Bonneval from 1960 cannot make sense until afterwards, which is fundamental to Freud’s notion of Nachträglichkeit, often translated as aprèscoup or afterwardsness. This chapter is an uncovering of the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit in Ricoeur’s own philosophical biography and writing. A reading of Freud’s text from 1914 (“Remembering, Repeating, Working-Through”) reveals how the work of mourning and the work of memory were already interlaced from Freedom and Nature to Living Up to Death. If Descartes is right about the cogito, then there cannot be a distinction between the two concepts of consciousness and an unconscious, and the apre`s-coup cannot exist. But Freud’s notion of working-through (perlaboration) finds a possible way out of this impasse. The little miracle of memory, the opposite of which is repetition toward compulsion (or hell), may resurrect the dead. The underworlds of Homer, Virgil, and Dante are taken up in 20th-century philosophy and psychoanalysis. At the core of this philosophical or psychological work is Ricoeur’s powerful claim: “consciousness is not given but a task.”
The chapter identifies self-recognition as a leading insight amongst Ricoeur’s ideas on hermeneutics, a commitment however which, the chapter argues, fails to remove the tensions that exist in his work. One of Ricoeur’s themes is his attempt to render Freud’s unconscious and the substitution of satisfaction relevant to hermeneutics by eradicating Kant’s distinction between explanation and interpretation. Another motif is Ricoeur’s collection of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud under the notion of a hermeneutics of suspicion, declaring consciousness a false surface juxtaposed to the reality of the unconscious. The chapter takes issue with Ricoeur’s preference of Frege’s paradigm of sense and reference to Husserl’s hermeneutically more fertile, expanded meaning chain, Ricoeur’s analysis of structuralism and semiology, as well as his writings on narrative for their neglect of literariness and the subtleties of the presentational process. While Ricoeur rightly dismisses truth conditions in hermeneutics, he fails to acknowledge the original source of this insight in Kant. Strengths in Ricoeur are shown to be his accent on the emancipatory hermeneutics and his contribution to the study of metaphor. The chapter concludes on Ricoeur’s Gadamer-inspired flight from Kant as an unjustified denial of the relevance of the Critique of Judgment to hermeneutics.KeywordsEclectic hermeneuticsSelf-recognitionAbolition of distinction between explanation and interpretationHermeneutics of suspicionNeglect of presentational process in narrativeDisavowal of Kant’s proto-hermeneutics
In this article, we indicate some examples of the possible contemporary return of the mind-body dualism. Aspects of contemporary culture, like the influence of brain-computer interface (BCI) or brain-machine interface (BMI), neuroscience projects, and the popularity of sci-fi series and movies that visualise the separation of consciousness from our bodies, are discussed. Only a few of these examples are indicated as introductory to emphasise the need to think again about the importance of some of the strongest philosophical arguments against this dualism. It is in this regard that we will focus on the philosophies of Gabriel Marcel and Paul Ricoeur. Of specific concern for us in this article is Marcel's influence on Ricoeur in his fundamental rejection of the mind-body dualism. This article's unique contribution lies, then, in the fact that it analyses and reveals this influence of Marcel on Ricoeur, especially with regards to their shared understanding of embodied being, or incarnate existence, as opposed to a body-mind dualism. This investigation of how Marcel influenced Ricoeur provides a better understanding of: i) Ricoeur's account of embodied being; ii) Marcel's philosophy and concept of incarnate existence as being; and finally, iii) the importance of rejecting a mind-body dualism for our contemporary thought and living.
Can finite humans grasp universal truth? Is it possible to think beyond the limits of reason? Are we doomed to failure because of our finitude? In this clear and accessible book, Barnabas Aspray presents Ricœur's response to these perennial philosophical questions through an analysis of human finitude at the intersection of philosophy and theology. Using unpublished and previously untranslated archival sources, he shows how Ricœur's groundbreaking concept of symbols leads to a view of creation, not as a theological doctrine, but as a mystery beyond the limits of thought that gives rise to philosophical insight. If finitude is created, then it can be distinguished from both the Creator and evil, leading to a view of human existence that, instead of the 'anguish of no' proclaims the 'joy of yes.'
Within the heuristic frame of the »Biocultural Turn«, this paper aims to propose a new transdisciplinary approach: the Neurohermeneutics of Suspicion. Its purpose is to investigate the literary text as a unique cognitive dynamic device with multilayered meanings and a metaphorical undercurrent, both responsive to the functioning system of the human mind. This implies considering the literary text as an anthropological device, which cognitively guides the imaginative, emotional and experiential responses of the reader by means of the author’s linguistic, stylistic and rhetoric choices, mirroring cognitive, emotional, and imaginative human processes. We suggest that particularly Ricoeur’s idea of a ›suspicious stance‹ opens a new way to hermeneutics, allowing to refigure the process of reading as a creative and ›playful‹ act, and to restore the value of subjectivity in the process of deciphering fictional worlds conveying ever new meanings to texts.
The Swayambhu (Svayambhū) UNESCO heritage site in Nepal has recently recovered from extensive earthquake damage. It serves as a social locus of ethnic and religious cultural heritage and identity for diverse local residents as well as domestic and international pilgrims and tourists. Here an applied case will be used to demonstrate processes necessary for producing an empirically authentic multimedia representation of an immersive experience related to a daily community devotional singing event with its own unique grassroots heritage. This case will illustrate how systematic phenomenological, ethnographic, and text-based methods are used as data inputs for representing the authenticity of experiences by way of diverse forms of verbatim interview data and recorded primary sources. Technical attention to the design phases of applications of digital technologies for heritage sites will be addressed. Ethical considerations and methods for diversifying enfranchisement of voices and perspectives employed in representing living cultural heritage will be discussed. Benefits of using VR/AR-supported immersive experiences of heritage to enable cultural literacy, appreciation of alterity, civic harmony, and local economic vitality will also be detailed.
Philosophy of religion declares the phenomenon of religious plurality to be a
subject of reason. This is an expression of the view that religion must not shy
away from rational discourse, but rather recognize it as its ally. Conversely, to
draw an absolute boundary between reason and the essence and content and
religion would also mean surrendering religion to the irrational. A radically
secular reason leaves behind an irrational religion that can quickly be derailed
and fall victim to fundamentalism. A reason, however, that does not keep in mind
the infinite runs the risk of absolutizing finite quantities such as nation, politics,
race, wealth, progress, technology, or other things. Such finite entities can become
dangerous realities because, while expected to be infinite or even divine,
they are incapable of fulfilling these expectations and are ultimately destroyed by
them. And human freedom has often been sacrificed to this.
This paper, originally given in Groningen, the Netherlands, proposed a ‘material hermeneutics’, or, metaphorically, an interpretation which “lets things speak” via new scientific imaging technologies. Such a material hermeneutics would add to, perhaps often displace the usual linguistictextual hermeneutics so refined by Paul Ricoeur. I outline several examples of such a hermeneutics here based on some 40 or more years of technoscience experience.
This paper addresses the specific gaps in Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology. Ricoeur’s view is presented in three phases – subjectivity, language, and ethics. First, a critique of Ricoeur’s idea of fallibility is presented; secondly, it is pointed out that Ricoeur does not provide a general theory of interpretation; and thirdly, the reality of structural injustices is mentioned to expose what is missing in Ricoeur’s conception of justice. The paper, however, argues that to understand existence dialectically from the perspective of the subject as a unity remains to be a strong way of responding to the question of what makes man fully human. Such a view potentially benefits future investigations with respect to the way society must think through its most important problems and issues.
This study is undertaken in order to critically examine how the applicability of
Paul Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of suspicion and faith” to marital discernment can be a
step towards conflict resolution in the family. In view of that end, three questions are
subsequently explored: (1) What is Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of suspicion and faith”?
(2) How can Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of suspicion and faith” be applied to marital
discernment? (3) How can the applicability of Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of suspicion
and faith” to marital discernment be a step towards conflict resolution in the family?
Ricoeur gave details about his “hermeneutics of suspicion and faith” beginning
with his discussion on the nature of symbols. Ricoeur held that hermeneutics arise
because of symbols: symbols give rise to thought; symbols always call for
interpretation. But owing to the absence of a general hermeneutics, of a universal
canon for interpretation, there ensues a conflict of interpretations: on one hand, the
hermeneutics of suspicion which demystifies symbols and unmasks the falsity of
immediate consciousness previously taken as the source and origin of meaning; on the
other hand, the hermeneutics of faith which listens attentively to the real meanings of
symbols in order to restore them. At closer inspection, however, the two conflicting
hermeneutics are complementary and are not opposed to each other. By means of the
dialectic of the two hermeneutics, the hermeneutics of suspicion becomes a passage to
the hermeneutics of faith. Where the two hermeneutics are related to each other
dialectically, the conflict of interpretations is resolved and the two hermeneutics can
now be taken as a unity.
Both the “hermeneutics of suspicion and faith” are applicable to marital
discernment. Applied to marital discernment, the hermeneutics of suspicion ensures
objectivity so that the married couple can now discern minus bias and partiality.
Applied to marital discernment, the hermeneutics of faith ensures subjectivity so that
the married couple can now also discern with more sensitivity and understanding.
Even more, the dialectic of “suspicion” and “faith” applied to marital discernment
provides the married couple with the kind of balance that will let them discern with
objectivity and subjectivity.
The application of the “hermeneutics of suspicion and faith” to marital
discernment can furthermore be taken as step towards conflict resolution in the family.
The married couple making use of the hermeneutics of suspicion in their common
discernment to resolve family conflicts will be able to unmask the hidden roots of
family conflicts. Similarly, the married couple making use of the hermeneutics of faith
in their common discernment to resolve family conflicts will be able to restore the real
meaning of family relationship, that is, communion in the family. More importantly,
the married couple making use of “suspicion” and “faith” dialectically in their
discernment to resolve family conflicts will have the necessary balance that will make
them see family conflicts with the clarity of perspective and a deeper sensitivity and
understanding.
In the final analysis, the applicability of Paul Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of
suspicion and faith” to marital discernment is truly such a step towards conflict
resolution in the family.
أطروحة الدكتوراه
(مشروع ريكور التأويلي و موقفه من الذاتية)
تهدف الدراسة إلى التعريف بالمشروع الفلسفي التأويلي (الهيرومينوطيقي) للفيلسوف الفرنسي المعاصر (بول ريكور Paul Ricoeur 1913-2005 )، من حيث أهميته و تأثيره في الفلسفة المعاصرة و تأثره بها، و توطئة لذلك، كان من الضروري، تتبع تطور التأويلية و الوقوف على مدارسها المختلفة، و مدى تأثيرها على (ريكور)، و هو ما يتطلب (منهجا تاريخيا) ينطلق من اليونان مرورا بالعصر الوسيط وصولا إلى الفلسفة الغربية المعاصرة. و يتطلب (منهجا تحليليا) من خلال عرض ملهمات مشروعه التأويلي كـ(فينومينولوجيا هوسرل)، و (فرويد و التحليل النفسي) و (منهجا مقارنا) للمقارنة بين (ريكور) و بين من شاركوه الاهتمام الفينومينولوجي، أمثال (هيدجر)، لمعرفة قدرته على توظيف تلك الأفكار و إعادة صياغتها، لكي لا تبدو غريبة عن مشاريع هيرمينوطيقية سابقة، كمشروع (شليرماخر) و (غادامير)؟ و ما مدى قدرته على صهر تلك الأفكار المختلفة في مشروع هيرمينوطيقي متجانس؟
و لأن التأويلية الدينية، هي حجر الزاوية في مشروع ريكور، بل إن التأويلية الفلسفية و الأدبية، ما هي إلا تتمة لهذا المشروع، فقد أولى قضاياها أهمية خاصة، مثل (تعدد الأناجيل) و اختلاف روايتها، و كيفية التوفيق بينها، إضافة إلى (مشكلة الشر)، و (أبوة المسيح) و من خلال ذلك، حاول التأسيس لمعايير تأويلية عامة، و التي أنتقل من خلالها إلى إشكالية النص (هيرمينوطيقا النص) و إشكالية المعنى (معنى النص)، و كيف ينتقل الخطاب إلى نص، و ذلك بفعل الكتابة.
و إشكالية المعنى تتلخص من جهة، في فض الاشتباك الحادث بين العناصر المشاركة في صناعته، سواء من طرف المرسل (المؤلف) أو من طرف المتلقي (المستمع-القارئ) أو من طرف وسيلة التواصل أو وعاء المعنى (اللغة-النص)، أو المرجعية (السياق الثقافي و الاجتماعي للنص)، و من جهة أخرى تعود إشكالية المعنى إلى إلحاح التأويليين المستمر، بغية ترجيح كفة أحد المنهجين؛ منهج التأويل الذاتي الذي يتحكم فيه إما (مؤلف النص)، أو (قارئ النص)، أو (منهج التأويل الموضوعي)، الذي يعتمد على انغلاق أنظمة اللغة و ارتباط المعنى بالنص وحده. أو محاولة الجمع بين المنهجين، بالمحافظة على موضوعية النص، و أيضا الاحتفاظ بقواعد تقنن ذاتية القارئ.
و في (المحصلة)، يمكن القول (وفقا للمنهج النقدي) أن ريكور، و رغم أنتاجه العلمي الغزير، إلا أنه لم يتبع منهجا واضحا، و لم ينتج فكرا نسقيا منظما، بل كان يكرر ما يقول بصيغ مختلفة، كما لم يكن حريصا في عرض أفكاره، على التمييز بين ما ينقله عن غيره، و بين نتاجه الخاص. و الأهم من ذلك، أن محاولة دمجه كل التأويليات (الدينية و الفلسفية و الأدبية) في تأويلية واحدة عامة، لم تنجح، نتيجة لتباين الأفكار التي تتناولها كل تأويلية، و تباين دور المؤلف و النص و المتلقي، حيث تكون مقدسة و ثابتة دينيا، و مترابطة فلسفيا، و ذاتية أدبيا.
This article examines and analyses the authentic experiences of a doctoral student, Kate, in the period just prior to Confirmation, an academic milestone in the Australian doctoral education context. The article uses qualitative phenomenological inquiry as the methodology and employs ideas drawn from the writings of hermeneutical phenomenologist, Paul Ricoeur, especially his notions of narrative, self, time, and human agency. These ideas are utilised in order to ‘get inside’ the constructions of self, the strategies of learning and adaptation, and the experiences of being a doctoral candidate within the milieu of an Australian university education faculty. The writers argue that such a close and personal examination of experience and a hermeneutical approach to analysis is important for a deep understanding about how Kate negotiated her way through the hurdles of early candidature and adapted her life and identities towards success. Particular focus is given to Kate’s experiences of transition and change and the formation of her academic identity that emerged out of these experiences, which led to successful negotiation of this early period of candidature. The research findings reported in this article suggest that Kate’s deep reflexivity, enjoyment of her research and sense of her own well-being as a doctoral student are significant for her perseverance through difficult milestones and ultimately her successful completion of her PhD.
‘Hermeneutics,’ the word, is derived from Greek ‘hermenus’, which means ‘an interpreter’. Historically, it comes from Greek mythology, which refers to the messenger, Hermes, who was an interpreter of Zeus’ messages. Hermeneutics, in general, is a method or a science of interpreting sacred texts. It covers both orders- the theory of understanding and the interpretation of linguistic and non- linguistic expressions
Paul Ricoeur is one of the most significant hermeneutic thinkers of the twentieth century. Born in Valence, France, in 1931, he taught as professor of philosophy at the universities of Strasbourg, Paris, and Chicago, and also served as director for the Center of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics in Paris. Together with heidegger (Article 18) and gadamer (Article 38), Ricoeur developed a philosophy based on the view that existence is itself a mode of interpretation (hermeneia). Or, as the hermeneutic maxim goes: Life interprets itself. But where Heidegger concentrated directly on a fundamental ontology of interpretation, Ricoeur advances what he calls the “long route” of multiple hermeneutic detours. This brought him into dialogue with the human sciences, where philosophy discovers its limits in what is outside of philosophy, in those border exchanges where meaning traverses the various signs and disciplines in which being is interpreted by human understanding. He challenged Heidegger's view that being is accessible through the “short route” of existence understanding itself through its ownmost possibilities, maintaining instead that it is always mediated through an endless process of interpretations – cultural, religious, political, historical, and scientific. Hence Ricoeur's basic definition of hermeneutics as the “art of deciphering indirect meaning.” A definition he explains as follows:
Paul Ricoeur is a prominent French philosopher and theological thinker whose enormous body of works has exerted influences in what David Tracy calls "theological self-understanding". An understanding of Ricoeur's method plays an important role in this regard. This paper, therefore, pays exclusive attention to an effort to understand his method or style of thinking. An overall synthesized picture of the method is given on the basis of analyses and observations of Ricoeurian scholars. The result of the synthesis portrays a picture of Ricoeur's method as that of mediation through a long and winding detour. It is characterised as being dialectical, hybrid, and grafting. Illustrations are given of how his dialectical style of thinking assists theological self-understanding.
Keeping an eye on Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology in particular, this essay maps out Ricoeur’s explicit references to Kierkegaard in the corpus of his major works. Even though many of these references are made only in passing, on their basis it is possible to construe a humbly withdrawing Kierkegaardian anthropology in Ricoeur’s work that, I claim, is nevertheless firmly present and which will shed substantial light to Ricoeur’s anthropological thought as a whole. I argue that Kierkegaard is present in Ricoeur’s work in ways that so far has gone undetected in Ricoeur and Kierkegaard scholarship. This paper concludes that an extended analysis of the relation between the two thinkers is warranted, particularly regarding Ricoeur’s phenomenological stance that is noticeably Kierkegaardian in some of its aspects.
Most (not all) genera and species of yeast can ferment sugars to ethanol anaerobically. This is why research on yeast fermentation has (and still does) receive extensive financial support in many countries. The question of ethanol metabolism and related areas is the most important in this context. Studies on glycolysis (particularly with yeast) rival their significance, both scientifically and economically, with the discovery of penicillin and subsequent studies to develop it as the first antibiotic. The elucidation of the glycolytic pathway from glucose into pyruvate and subsequently ethanol (or lactic acid) involves a number of enzyme-catalysed stages. Although studies on the glycolytic pathway began with Pasteur in the mid-nineteenth century and then Buchner with cell-free extracts, during the twentieth century, this research was central for generating major advances in biochemistry together with massive economic applications. Glycogen is a major intracellular carbohydrate in yeast cell together with the disaccharide trehalose. Glycogen forms an energy reserve that can be rapidly mobilized to meet a sudden requirement for glucose, usually early in the fermentation/growth cycles. Trehalose plays a protective role against stresses such as osmotic pressure, nutrient depletion and starvation. It improves cell resistance to high and low temperatures, concentrated wort, elevated ethanol concentrations, etc. The Citric Acid Cycle is also known as the Tricarboxylic Acid (TCA) Cycle and/or the Krebs cycle. It is a series of reactions used by aerobic organisms (including yeast) to generate energy through the oxidation of acetyl-CoA derived from carbohydrates, fats and proteins into carbon dioxide and chemical energy. Also, the cycle provides precursors for certain amino acids as well as the reducing agent NADH, which is used for numerous other biochemical reactions (details in Chap. 7).
The aim of the article is to present some aspects of Paul Ricœur's thought, especially his reflection on the servile will. Firstly I present Ricœur's philosophy of will (in the context of phenomenology of the voluntary and involuntary) and the concept of fallibility. Then I demonstrate the main aspects of Ricœurian rethinking and enlarging of Husserl's phenomenology what leads to hermeneutic formula: the symbol gives rise to thought. Eventually, I argue that Ricœur's hermeneutic phenomenology creates a specified anthropological view and understanding of the human condition. This understanding will later become a part of the 'hermeneutics of the self'.
Article: This paper follows an archetypal critical path that extrapolate from Biblical motifs and classical mythology to bare the argument that in Fidelis Uchenna Okoro's Cracking the Shell, home and glory are the goals towards which characters laboriously press. The text is explored in the light of the quest for the attainment of a goal, on the collective level, the big dream of a nation, and on a personal scale, the restoration individual glory and the realization of a peaceful home. At the bottom line is the polarity between one goal and another, wherein we see two objects that run contrary to themselves, and to attain one, the other has to be abandoned. Amiche who understands this conflicts tries as he can to explain it to Akem, but his effort is all in vain. And therein lies the root of the apocalypse of the text, as one must reap the consequences of contravening universal laws.
With Augustine and especially with Wittgenstein, we see that when we use language we "negotiate a meaning" since language is something we acquire in a community. On the other hand, Chomsky argues that language is something that happens to us, rather than something we learn. We attempt to bring these two positions in a balance by following Davidson's ideas on meaning and radical interpretation, which gives us a way to keep meaning (what someone thinks) and belief (what someone holds true about the world) together and thus we manage to bring and keep the individual and the community in a balance. Moreover, through language, with the help of narrative, we get in touch with ourselves, as selves, and with the others, which leads us to considerations on personal identity. To illustrate this, we bring in a few examples ranging from Apache stories in Arizona to narrative accounts about lives lived while changing linguistic environments. In guise of conclusion, we will attempt to move the discussion on the field of multiculturalism, pointing out a possible line of research which would inquire into an alternative approach to understanding other cultures by emphasizing the concept of dialogue and a re-defined concept of identity.
This study of the receptions of phenomenology in French philosophy and religious thought prior to 1939 was occasioned by the renewal of phenomenological approaches to theology and the philosophy of religion in France beginning in the 1980s, as represented, on the one hand, by Paul Ricoeur ’s hermeneutical interpretation of biblical narratives, and, on the other, by Jean-Luc Marion ’s so-called “radical” or post-ontological investigations of the primordial givenness of God. Their employment of phenomenological strategies to explore theological questions has not passed without criticism, however. For example, Dominique Janicaud , in a polemical essay published in 1991 whose title, Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française, pronounces an indictment upon Marion , Levinas , and other radical phenomenologists, argues that Husserl and Heidegger along with Sartre and Merleau-Ponty established firm precedents for keeping phenomenology and theology separate enterprises. French debates over the application of phenomenological methods to religious philosophy have nevertheless engaged American thinkers due to the impact that structuralist and post-structuralist theories have had on a wide range of academic disciplines in the United States. So, too, the professorships that Ricoeur and Marion have held in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago and the translations of their major works have brought their ideas directly to American audiences. To provide a context for evaluating these and other contemporary rapprochements of phenomenology and theology, this study offers a comprehensive historical analysis of the introduction of phenomenology to France through an examination of various precursors, early interpreters, popularizers, and adopters.
This essay relates to three major themes in Ricoeur’s oeuvre, themes that recur throughout but with considerable development. These are: philosophy of language, ethics and politics, and philosophical anthropology. Although Ricoeur is not a system-builder as such, these themes and their interrelations help us to see the systematic character of his thought, how each area has a distinct treatment, yet interconnects with the others.
Based on ethnographic research within the extreme metal community, Unger offers a thought-provoking look at how symbols of authenticity and defilement fashion social experience in surprising ways. Exploring the many themes and ciphers that comprise this musical community, this book interprets aesthetic resonances as a way to understand contemporary identity, politics, and social relations. In the end, this book develops a unique argument: the internal composition of the community’s music and sound moulds symbols that shape, reflect, and constrain social patterns of identity, difference, and transgression. This book contributes to the sociology of sound and music, the study of religion in popular culture, and the role of aesthetics in everyday life. It will be of interest to upper level students, post-graduate students and scholars of religion, popular culture, and philosophy.
In 1974, in a writing which is at once a summing up and a plan for future research, Ricoeur came back to his favorite theme, the relation between hermeneutics and phenomenology, setting out his project for a “hermeneutic phenomenology.”1
In the preface to a most penetrating monograph on Ricoeur’s thought by the American scholar Don Ihde, Ricoeur himself, in the early 1960’s, briefly took stock of his philosophical itinerary from the original descriptive (eidetic) phenomenology to the hermeneutic phenomenology of his more recent works, stressing both the substantial continuity of his basic tenets and evident changes in perspective. He himself attributed the latter mainly to changes in the philosophical landscape, determining a shifting of “fronts,” with different interlocutors and issues. His interlocutors during the early period of his research were Sartre and Merleau-Ponty, when the problem at issue appeared to be that of updating the reflexive tradition of philosophy by introducing elements from phenomenology and suggestions from existentialism. At that time the encounter between philosophy and the human sciences took place on the terrain of psychology. But “today the philosophical landscape has changed: the semiological sciences have taken the place of the natural sciences in the confrontation of philosophy with its other.” Nor is it possible to recover the problematic of meaning without reckoning with the “end of metaphysics” proclaimed in the “hermeneutics of suspicion” of Marx, Nietzsche and Freud. Today, according to Ricoeur, the issue is no longer the phenomenological essence of the will, the equivalent of the question in Merleau-Ponty’s works as to the essence of perception, but turns on the relation between speech and action, the search for a “new equilibrium between saying and doing,” which in Ricoeur comes to a head in a “poetics of the will” that will show how “meaning comes to the ego through the power of the word.”1
Philosophical phenomenologies, in their multifarious versions, have bloomed in Europe and North America for many decades. Phenomenologies of religion have developed independently in the same regions and more or less at the same time.1 The interaction between philosophical and religious phenomenologies has been mutually beneficial in some sense but problematic in others. For example, Paul Ricoeur, who has been dissatisfied with the “perceptualist” philosophies which include “both Husserlian and existential phenomenologies” in dealing with the understanding of symbols, raises the question of inadequacy.2 Thus he proposes a “hermeneutic phenomenology” to meet the question.3
Man kann die Wiederaufnahme der Willensthematik in der Psychologie als die Entscheidung auffassen, ein lange brach gelegenes Forschungsfeld neu zu bestellen. Dazu kann die Bereitschaft gehören, nicht nur da wieder anzuknüpfen, wo die Arbeiten unterbrochen worden waren, sondern Neues zum Motiv der Entscheidung werden zu lassen. Dazu gehört allerdings eine Haltung, die Alexander Pfänder (1963, S. 142), der erste Phänomenologe des Wollens, in der uns schon fast fremden Sprache seiner Zeit dahingehend charakterisiert hat, „daß das Ich-Zentrum sich nicht nur aufnehmend und apperzipierend, sondern auch innerlich oder geistig hinhörend… zuwendet.“
The conclusion to this study comprises two parts. The first highlights and explains the differences between the receptions of phenomenology among French philosophers and religious thinkers prior to 1939 on the basis of their respective Cartesian and Aristotelian foundations and the static versus dynamic orientations of their respective epistemologies. The second part briefly surveys the subsequent history of the reception of phenomenology in France, focusing especially on the two principal phenomenological currents that have had an impact upon contemporary French religious thought, namely the hermeneutical style of phenomenology developed by Paul Ricoeur
and the radical strain advanced by Jean-Luc Marion
. Their respective approaches mark the displacement of the concerns shared by earlier religious thinkers in France who turned to phenomenology to bolster or redefine their understandings of the nature and development of dogma and the act of faith and to affirm the existence of God. On the other hand, because Marion
recognizes that Aquinas’s theology does not belong to the type of onto-theology he rejects, a basis for a fruitful encounter between Thomism and phenomenology may be more possible now than it was in 1932, when the Société thomiste
organized a day of study to explore the possibilities for such a rapprochement.
This article, part of a larger project examining the significance of Donald W. Winnicott’s contributions to research, teaching, and clinical care across psychology, religion, and theology, is written with this broad question in mind: What are Winnicott’s writings about? I draw from a study I carried out that concludes that Winnicott’s writings can be understood in terms of two “readings” (Ricoeur 1970)—expressing (a) a developmental–existential point of view and (b) a notion of being religious—of a network of six “theoretical ideas” (Stausberg 2009): early experience in infancy, transition, connecting and disconnecting, creative space, holding (and being held) and holding onto, and facilitating. This article outlines the contours of these two readings of the fifth set of theoretical ideas—holding (and being held) and holding onto—and spells out some implications.
In this article, I will explore the archeology of the concept of attestation in Ricoeur’s work. In a brief discussion of his early reflections on Husserl’s concept of the ego (as an example of reflexive philosophy), I show how the dialectic of trust and suspicion enters Ricoeur’s hermeneutic concerns. I argue that this dialectics remains present in his account of attestation. By a brief confrontation with Heidegger’s notion of attestation as developed in Being and Time, I show that the uniqueness of Ricoeur’s account of attestation is to be found in this dialectic of trust and suspicion that he reinterprets in his later work in light of the concept of attestation.
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