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Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences
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978-1-107-14497-2 - Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action
and Interpretation
Paul Ricoeur and John B. Thompson
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Paul Ricoeur and John B. Thompson
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Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences
Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation
B
Paul Ricoeur
Edited, translated and introduced by
JOHN B. THOMPSON
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University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.
It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
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Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781316508206
© Maison des Sciences de l’Homme and Cambridge University Press 1981
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 1981
Reprinted 1982 (twice), 1998
Cambridge Philosophy Classics edition 2016
Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication data
Names: Ricoeur, Paul, author. | Thompson, John B. (John Brookshire), editor.
Title: Hermeneutics and the human sciences : essays on language, action
and interpretation / Paul Ricoeur ; edited, translated and introduced
by John B. Thompson.
Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2016. | Originally published:
New York : Cambridge University Press, 1981. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015049718| ISBN 9781107144972 (Hardback : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781316508206 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Hermeneutics. | Social sciences–Philosophy.
Classification: LCC BD241 .R48413 2016 | DDC 121/.686–dc23 LC record available at
http://lccn.loc.gov/2015049718
ISBN 978-1-107-14497-2 Hardback
ISBN 978-1-316-50820-6 Paperback
Transferred to digital printing 2009
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Contents
B
Preface to this edition by charles taylor page vii
Acknowledgements ix
Editor’s introduction xi
Notes on editing and translating xxxviii
A response by Paul Ricoeur xlii
Part I: Studies in the history of hermeneutics 1
1 The task of hermeneutics 3
2 Hermeneutics and the critique of ideology 23
3 Phenomenology and herme neutics 61
Part II: Studies in the theory of interpretation 91
4 The hermeneutical function of distanciation 93
5 What is a text? Explanation and understanding 107
6 Metaphor and the central problem of hermeneutics 127
7 Appropriation 144
Part III: Studies in the philosophy of social science 157
8 The model of the text: meaningful action considered as a text 159
9 Science and ideology 184
10 The question of proof in Freud’s psychoanalytic writings 209
11 The narrative function 236
Select bibliography 259
Index 262
v
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Preface to this edition
charles taylor
B
The move of the term ‘hermeneutics’ from its original home in textual
(at first Biblical) interpretation to its new application to history and human
science owes a great deal to two outstanding twentieth-century philoso-
phers, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Paul Ricoeur.
The move can be understood in the light of two crucial insights. The first
is that ‘understanding’ can have a quite different sense applied to human
affairs from that which it has in natural science or technology. Under-
standing why you made that surprising move involves something rather
different from understanding why my car broke down. Thus we often
say things like (1) ‘I can’t understand him. He seems to be sabotaging,
undermining his most cherished goal ’; or (2) ‘That reaction seems totally
over the top, uncalled for’; or (3) ‘He seems to be deliberately provoking
opposition’; or (4) ‘Why did she put her demand in those terms, which
almost guaranteed refusal?’ In all these cases, the actor is (provisionally)
opaque to us; we cannot understand him or her.
We explain properly, we make sense of the action/response, when we
add to or complexify the range of meanings or motivations actually operat-
ing here. It was Dilthey who made this point most forcefully, and he influ-
enced some important twentieth-century sociologists, like Max Weber.
The second point is that there are important features in common between
making sense of human beings and understanding texts. In particular, a
certain kind of circularity attaches to both types of account. The aim, in the
original context of Bible interpretation, was often to clarify a particular
passage which was uncertain or enigmatic. But the reading offered of this
passage or verse had to make sense within the presumed overall meaning of
the entire chapter, book, and ultimately, of the whole Bible. One could thus
use the sense of the whole to make sense of the part. But a question can
always be raised: do we understand fully the meaning of the whole?
There is a circle here, but not a vicious one. It doesn’t involve the
notorious ‘circular argument’, where one assumes the conclusion among
the premises. On the contrary, the attempt is to bring the arguments in
both directions into an equilibrium in which one makes maximum sense of
the text. But a similar circularity applies to making sense of action. The
vii
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sense we make of a certain passage of history or biography has to fit
with our reading of what came before and after. Now from this similarity
between text interpretation and making sense, a third one arises. Biblical
hermeneutics aims to make better sense of text than we have up to now.
But this brings us to an impossibility of claiming closure. No matter how
convincing our present reading, it is always possible that someone could
propose a better one. And the same applies to human action in history.
This interesting collection illustrates not only Ricoeur’s contribution to
the translation of hermeneutics to the new fields, but also some of the
extraordinarily creative uses he made of it.
viii preface to this edition
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Acknowledgements
B
I began work on this volume while I was a research bye-fellow at Girton
College, Cambridge. A grant from the SSRC/CNRS research exchange
scheme for social scientists enabled me to spend time in Paris, where most
of the translation was done. The volume was completed during the first
year of a research fellowship at Jesus College, Cambridge. I wish to thank
these institutions for their support.
Ihavebenefited greatly from the comments and criticisms of others.
Kathleen McLau ghlin, David P ellauer and Miche l Audet r ead all o r most
of the manuscript and made many valuable remarks. I also received
helpful suggestions from D avid Held, Susanne Kappeler, Mike Barfoot,
and Alison Hendry. I am grateful to Anthony Giddens for his sound
advice at every stage of the project. Above all, I offer my thanks to Paul
Ricoeur, who so willingly a nd generously p rovided the m aterial which
forms this book. Any errors that may remain in the translation are, of
course, my own.
All of the essays are reprinted with permission. Details of the original
publication are as follows:
‘La tâche de l’herméneutique’,inExegesis: Problèmes de méthode et exercices
de lecture, edited by François Bovon and Grégoire Rouiller
(Neuchâtel: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1975), pp. 179–200. An English
translation of this essay appeared in Philosophy Today, 17 (1973),
pp. 112–28.
‘Herméneutique et critique des idéologies’,inDémythisation et idéologie,
edited by Enrico Castelli (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1973),
pp. 25–64.
‘Phénoménologie et herméneutique’,inPhänomenologische Forschungen,
vol. 1, edited by Ernst Wolfgang Orth (Freiburg: Karl Alber,
1975), pp. 31–77. A partial translation of this essay appeared in
Noûs, 9 (1975), pp. 85–102.
‘La fonction herméneutique de la distanciation’,inExegesis: Problèmes de
méthode et exercices de lecture, edited by François Bovon and
Greǵoire Rouiller (Neuchâtel: Delachaux et Niestlé, 1975),
ix
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pp. 201–15. This is a modified version of an essay which
appeared in English in Philosophy Today, 17 (1973), pp. 129–43.
‘Qu’est-ce qu’un texte? expliquer et comprendre’,inHermeneutik und
Dialektik, vol. 2, edited by Rüdiger Bubner et al. (Tübingen: J.C.B.
Mohr, 1970), pp. 181–200. An abridged version of this essay
appeared in English on pages 135–50 of David Rasmussen,
Mythic-Symbolic Language and Philosophical Anthropology
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971).
‘La métaphore et le problème central de l’herméneutique’, Revue
philosophique de Louvain, 70 (1972), pp. 93–112. English
translations of this essay appeared in New Literary History,6
(1974), pp. 95–110; and Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal,3
(1973–4), pp. 42–58.
‘The model of the text: meaningful action considered as a text’, Social
Research, 38 (1971), pp. 529–62.
‘Science et idéologie’, Revue philosophique de Louvain, 72 (1974),
pp. 326–56.
‘The question of proof in Freud’s psychoanalytic writings’, Journal of the
American Psychoanalytic Association, 25 (1977), pp. 835–71.
‘La fonction narrative’, Etudes théologiques et religieuses, 54 (1979),
pp. 209–30. A shorter version of this essay appeared in English in
Semeia, 13 (1978), pp. 177–202.
J.B.T.
Cambridge
May 1980
x acknowledgements
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Editor’s introduction
B
The nature of language and meaning, of action, interpretation and subject-
ivity, are issues of increasing concern to a wide range of contemporary
disciplines. For philosophers, linguists, literary critics and social scientists,
the clarification of such issues has become an urgent and inescapable task.
In the En glish-speaking world, however, the pursuit of this task remains
hindered by both an institutionalised respect for disciplinary boundaries
and a long-standing insularity with regard to Continental traditions of
thought. There can be no doubt that the growing familiarity with the
work of Paul Ricoeur will help enormously to overcome these obstacles.
As one of the leading philosophers in postwar France, Ricoeur has written
with originality and authority on an astonishing variety of topics. During
the last few years, he has turned his attention more directly to problems of
language, entering into a sustained dialogue with the tradition of hermen-
eutics. The dialogue with this tradition, whose mem bers have focused for
centuries on the process of interpretation,
1
forms the backcloth for the
contributions contained in this volume.
In order to appreciate fully the significance of Ricoeur’s current work,
it is necessary to have some perspective on his writings as a whole. My
aim in this introduction is to provide such an overall view. I shall begin
with a brief synopsis of Ricoeur’s career. In the second part, I shall trace
the evolution of Ricoeur’s thought, from his early project for a philosophy
of the will, through his encounters with psychoanalysis and structur alism,
to his recent preoccupation with the theory of the text. In the third part,
I shall sketch the central themes of Ricoeur’s current work. Finally, in the
fourth part, I shall summarise some of the main arguments of the essays
1 For a short history of hermeneutics from classical Greece until the nineteenth century, see
W. Dilthey, ‘The development of hermeneutics’,inSelected Writings, edited and translated
by H.P. Rickman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 246–63. A survey of
developments from the nineteenth century until the present day may be found in
Ricoeur’s essay on ‘The task of hermeneutics’, in this volume, pp. 43–62. For an introduc-
tion to some of the key figures in modern hermeneutics, see Richard E. Palmer, Hermen-
eutics: Interpretation Theory in Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and Gadamer (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1969).
xi
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which appear in this volume. It should be said at the outset that no
attempt will be made to give a comprehensive survey of Ricoeur’s work.
Certain contributions will be emphasised at the expense of others and
some of his writings, for example those dealing with educati onal and
theological issues, will largely be left aside.
2
It should also be said that,
however important Ricoeur’s ideas may be, I do not believe that they are
without difficulties; but thi s is not the place to express my reservations,
which I have developed in detail elsewhere.
3
Here my aim is to present a
short and thematic exposition of Ricoeur’s views, in the hope of facilitating
the sympathetic reception of his work in the English-speaking world.
I
Born in Valence in 1913, Ricoeur began his philosophical career at a time
when European thought was dominated by the ideas of authors such as
Husserl and Heidegger, Jaspers and Marcel. Gabriel Marcel was working
in Paris when Ricoeur registered at the Sorbonne as a graduate student
in the late 1930s. Marcel had a deep and lasting influence on Ricoeur’s
thought, directing it towards the formulation of a concrete ontolog y which
would be infused with the themes of freedom, finitude and hope. How-
ever, Ricoeur believed that the pursuit of this goal demanded a method
more rigorous and systematic than that which Marcel and his disciples
employed. Ricoeur discovered the requisite method in the phenomeno-
logical writings of Edmund Husserl. As a prisoner in Germany during the
Second World War, Ricoeur was allowed to read the work of Husserl, as
well as that of Martin Heidegger and Karl Jaspers. He was impressed and
attracted by Jaspers’s thought, which he found close to Marcel’s in many
respects. Following the war, Ricoeur and Mikel Dufrenne – a frien d and
fellow prisoner – published a lengthy sketch of Karl Jaspers et la philosophie
de l’existence (1947); and in the same year, Ricoeur published his own study
of Gabriel Marcel et Karl Jaspers. In the early post-w ar years, Ricoeur also
completed a translation of, and commentary upon, Husserl’s Ideen I,
thereby establishing himself as a leading authority on phenomenology.
2 For a detailed discussion of Ricoeur’s work in the 1950s and 1960s, see Don Ihde,
Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur (Evanston: Northwestern Uni-
versity Press, 1971). A review of Ricoeur’s contributions to educational and theological
issues may be found in Michel Philibert, Ricoeur ou la liberté selon l’espérance (Paris:
Seghers, 1971).
3 See my Critical Hermeneutics: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur and Jürgen Habermas
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
xii editor’s introduction
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In 1948 Ricoe ur was elected to a chair in the history of philosophy at the
University of Strasbourg. Each year he committed himself to read the col-
lected works of one great philosopher, from Plato and Aristotle to Kant,
Hegel and Nietzsche. This immersion in the tradition of Western phil osophy
turned Ricoeur away from the preocc upations of ‘existentialism’ or ‘existen-
tial pheno menology’, which was then being popularised by Sartre and
Merleau-Ponty. For on the one hand , Ricoeur became incr easingly concerned
with the development of a reflective philosophy, a philosophy which seeks to
disclose authentic subjectivity through a reflection upon the means whereby
existence can be understood. On the other hand, he became more and more
convinced that necessity, no less than freedom, is an integral aspect of human
existence. Rico eur’s ambitious and highly original project on the philosophy
ofthewillexpressesthiswelterofinfluences on his thought. In the first
volume of the project, Le Volontaire et l’involontaire (1950) (Freedom and Nat ure:
The Voluntary and the Involuntary), Ricoeur employed a phenomenological
method to explore the volitional dimension of what Marcel called ‘incarnate
existence’. The second volume of the philosophy of the will, a volume
entitled Finitude et culpab ilité (Finitude and Guilt), was published in 1960 as
two separate books: L’Homme faillible (Fallible Man )andLa Symbolique du mal
(The Symbolism of Evil). In these two books, Ricoeur moved away from a
strict phenomenological method and pursued the problem of the will into
the opaque domain of human fallibility and fault. At the beginning of his
project on the philosophy of the will, Ricoeur outlined the task of a third and
final volume which would be dedicated to the ‘poetics of the will’.Hedid
not, however, undertake this task immediately, embarking instead upon
an interrogation of two disciplines which had become a su ccès de scandale:
psychoanalysis and structuralism.
Ricoeur was appointed to a chair in general philosophy at the Sorbonne
in 1957. The intellectual milieu in Paris was changing rapidly: the ideas of
Husserl and Heidegger were being eclipsed by those of Freud and Saus-
sure. Ricoeur did not follow this trend; his inclinations were too distant
from the fashions of Paris, his views too deeply rooted in the tradition of
phenomenology. Yet Ricoeur could not ignore the change, since psycho-
analysis and structuralism offered radical approaches to problems which
he had bee n led to in his work on the philosophy of the wi ll, problems
concerning guilt, symbolism and the subject. Ricoeur met the challenge
thus presented in a direct and cogent manner. His well-known and justly
acclaimed study of Freud, De l’interprétation: Essai sur Freud (Freud and
Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation), was published in 1965. A collection
which includes many of the essays he wrote on psychoanalysis and
editor’s introduction xiii
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structuralism was published in 1969 under the title of Le Conflict des
interprétations: Essais d’herméneutique (The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays
in Hermeneutics).
In 1966 Ricoeur chose to teach at Nanterre, where he was appointed
Dean in March 1969. Following the student occupation of the University in
1970 and the subsequent intervention by the police, Ricoeur resigne d as
Dean and moved to the University of Louvain. In 1973 he returned to
Nanterre, combining his appointment there with a part-time professorship
at the University of Chicago. At the same time, he assumed the director-
ship of the Centre d’études phénoménologiques et herméneutiques in Paris. It
was during this period that Ricoeur became preoccupied with problems of
language and entered more deeply into the dialogue with hermeneutics.
His masterly study of metaphor, La Métaphore vive (The Rule of Metaphor),
was published in 1975. He also wrote, and continues to write, many essays
on related issues. Such prolificity is amply attested to by Ricoeur’s bibli-
ography, which now includes more than a dozen books and several
hundred essays. In the next two parts of the introduction, I should like
to draw out some of the central themes of this substantial corpus, begin-
ning with the original project for a philosophy of the will.
II
Philosophy of the will
The aim of Ricoeur’s philosophy of the will is to reflect upon the affective
and volitional dimensions of human existence. This philosophy thus
focuses on issues like action and motive, need and desire, pleasure and
pain. Ricoeur initially approaches such issues from a phenomenological
perspective, that is, from a perspective which attempts to describe the
ways in whi ch phenomena appear and to relate these modes of appear-
ance to subjective processes of consciousness. In approaching the dimen-
sions of the will from a phenomenological perspective, Ricoeur distances
himself from the work of exis tentialists, as well as from the position of
Husserl himsel f. For Ricoeur is critical of those authors who plunge too
quickly into a vivid portrayal of everyday experience: ‘in the early stages
at least’ , he insists, ‘phenomenology must be structural’.
4
Yet Ricoeur
criticises, with equal force, Husserl’s tendency to treat perception as a
paradigm of the operations of consciousn ess. In rejecting this ‘logistic
4 Paul Ricoeur, Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology, translated by Edward G. Ballard
and Lester E. Embree (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967), p. 215.
xiv editor’s introduction
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prejudice’, Ricoeur seek s to develop Husserl’s method beyond its idealistic
origins, applying it to those regions of human experience which lie on the
very boundaries of conscious life.
The first stage of Ricoeur’s philosophy of the will is presented in Freedom
and Nature. In this study, Ricoeur attempts to unfold the basic structures
of the will at the level of ‘essential possibility’, that is, at a level which
abstracts fro m the accidental features of everyday life. What is revealed at
this level is that the structures of the will are characterised by a funda-
mental reciprocity of the voluntary and the involuntary. The dualism of
subject and object, of freedom and nature, is not primary, but is rather
an attitude which phenomenological description must delve beneath.
Through long and intricate analyses, Ricoeur shows how, in the act of
willing, consciousness adheres to the elements of involuntary life, and
how in turn the elements of involuntary life adhere to the ‘I will’. Thus
the act of willing involves a decision designating a future action which lies
within the agent’s power; but the decision is based upon motives, the
action is mediated by bodily organs, and the act of willing as a whole is
conditioned by character, the unconscious and life, to which the agent
must consent. The reintegration of consciousness into body and body into
consciousness is not, however, harmonious. The unity of the voluntary
and the involuntary is a ‘drama’,a‘polemic’, anticipating a rec onciliation
which is less a reality than a limiting idea. In the light of this limiting idea,
our freedom truly appears for what it is, ‘a freedom which is human and
not divine’.
5
In Finitude and Guilt, the second volume of the philosophy of the will,
Ricoeur removes some of the met hodological parentheses which restricted
his earlier analyses to the level of essential possibility. The firs t book of
this volume, Fallible Man, initiates the movement towards that feature of
human existence which constitutes the locus of evil. This feature is ‘falli-
bility’; it can be conceived as the line of fault, as the constitutional weak-
ness which gives rise to an interruptio n or distortion of the basic structures
of willing. Hence fallibility is not continuous with the characteristics
disclosed in Freedom and Nature, wherein ‘we ske tched’, as Ricoeur recalls,
‘the undifferentiated keyboard upon which the guilty as well as the
innocent man might play’.
6
To grasp hold of this new dimension requires,
5 Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, translated by Erazim
V. Kohák (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966), p. 486.
6 Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, translated by Charles Kelbley (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1965),
p. xvi.
editor’s introduction
xv
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therefore, a transformation of method. The object of analysis is no longer
an essential structure accessible to phenomenological description, but
rather an internal aberration that must be approached regressively
through reflection on unstable syntheses. Reflection reveals, for example,
that the primary passions of possession, power and worth are suspended
between a finite pole of pleasure and an infinite pole of happiness, so that
each bears the threat of endless pursuit. By means of such reflection,
Ricoeur seek s to specify those aspects of human existence which harbour
the possibility of evil, thereby preparing the way for an inquiry into the
actuality of fault.
The transition from possibility to actuality, from fallibility to fault, is
accomplished in The Symbolism of Evil, which is the second book of Finitude
and Guilt. Once again, the movement demands a methodological shift. For
the actuality of fault cannot be apprehended directly, in the fullness of
experience, but can be approached only through the language in which
that experience is expressed. Description of essential structures and reflec-
tion on unstable syntheses thus give way to a hermeneutics of symbols
and myths. Ricoeur begins his inquiry with the most primitive expressions
of the confession of evil, that is, with the ‘language of avowal ’. This
language is thoroughly ‘symbolic’, in the sense that it speaks of sin or
guilt in an indirect and figurative way which calls for interpretation.
Although the interpretation of symbols and of the myths constructed from
them is not identical with philosophical reflection, nevertheless interpret-
ation paves the way for refl ection. For as Ricoeur submits, ‘I am convinced
that we must think, not behind the symbols, but starting from symbols, ...
that they constitute the revealing substrate of speech which lives among
men. In short, the symbol gives rise to thought.’
7
Hermeneutics is thus the
route to philosophical reflection, to reflection premissed on the assump-
tion that by following the indication of symbolic meaning one will arrive
at a deeper understanding of human existence.
Examination of psychoanalysis
The emergence of interpretation as a central moment in the study of the
will leads Ricoeur into an examination of psychoanalysis. For if hermen-
eutics is the route to philosophical reflection, then reflection cannot escape
from the conflict of interpretations. As Ricoeur explains at the outset of
7 Paul Ricoeur, ‘The hermeneutics of symbols and philosophical reflection: i’, translated by
Denis Savage, in The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, edited by Don Ihde
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), p. 299.
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Freud and Philosophy, ‘there is no general hermeneutics, no universal canon
for exegesis, but only disparate and opposed theories concerning the rules
of interpretation. The hermeneutic field .. . is internally at variance with
itself.’
8
Thus, according to one view, hermeneutics is construed as the
restoration of a meaning addressed to the interpreter in the form of a
message. This type of hermeneutics is animated by faith, by a willingness
to listen, and it is characterised by a resp ect for the symbol as a revelation
of the sacred. According to another view, however, hermeneutics is
regarded as the demystification of a meaning presented to the interpreter
in the form of a disguise. This type of hermeneutics is animated by
suspicion, by a scepticism towards the given, and it is characterised by a
distrust of the symbol as a dissimulat ion of the real. Ricoeur suggests that
it is the latter type of hermeneutics which is practised by Marx, Nietzsche
and Freud. All three of these ‘mas ters of suspici on’ look upon the contents
of consciou sness as in some sense ‘false’; all three aim to transcend this
falsity through a reductive inter pretation and critique.
Having situated psychoanalysis within the field of hermeneutics, Ricoeur
undertakes a systematic reading of Freud’s work. The reading consists of
three basic cycles, each of which isolates a distinctive problematic. The first
cycle begins with the ‘Project’ of 1895, encompasses the interpretation of
dreams and neurotic symptoms, and ends in a state of the system which
Ricoeur calls the ‘first topography’: unconscious, preconscious, conscious.
In this cycle, the principal concern is with the structure of psychoanalytic
discourse, which presents itself as a mixture of statements of force and
statements of meaning; and as Ricoeur repeatedly proclaims, ‘this mixed
discourse is not an equivocal discourse for want of clarification: it grips
firmly the very reality we discover when we read Freud and which we can
call the semantics of desire’.
9
The second cycle of the reading is concerned
with the extension of Freud’s ideas to the sphere of culture, an extension
which reacts back upon the original model and results in the ‘second
topography’ of ego, id, superego. Finally, in the third cycle, Ricoeur explores
the upheaval effected by the introduction of the death instinct. This instinct
completes both the theory of culture and the interpretation of the reality
principle, but in so doing it propels Freud into a mythological realm
dominated by the figures of Eros, Thanatos and Ananke.
8 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, translated by Denis Savage
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), pp. 26–7.
9 Paul Ricoeur, ‘The question of the subject: the challenge of semiology’, translated by
Kathleen McLaughlin, in The Conflict of Interpretations, p. 263.
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The notion of a semantics of desire provides the parameters for Ricoeur’s
approach to the epistemological status of psychoanalysis. In reply to those
critics who contend that Freud’s theory does not satisfy the most elementary
criteria of scientificity, and in contrast to those authors who attempt to
reformulate the theory in order to accord with these criteria, Ricoeur main-
tains that all such contentions and reformulations betray the very essence of
psychoanalysis. For the latter is not an observational science dealing with
the facts of behaviour; rather, it is an interpretative discipline concerned
with relations of meaning between representative symbols and primordial
instincts. Thus psychoanalytic concepts should be judged, not according to
the exigencies of an empirical science, but ‘according to their status as
conditions of the possibility of analytic experience, insofar as the latter
operates in the field of speech’.
10
The recognition of the irreducible role of
language and meaning in psychoanalysis brings Ricoeur close to the pos-
ition of Jacques Lacan and his followers. Ricoeur is critical, however, of the
Lacanian attempt to interpret condensation as metaphor and displacement
as metonymy. Such an attempt disregards the energetic dimension of
psychoanalysis, thus failing to account for the barrier, for the bar of repres-
sion, which separates ordinary language from the quasi-language of the
unconscious. In Ricoeur’s view, therefore, neither the behaviourist nor the
Lacanian conception does justice to the peculiarity of psychoanalysis as a
semantics of desire.
The final phase of Ricoeur’s examination of the writings of Freud occurs
at the level of philosophical reflection. The question which dominates this
phase is twofold: (1) how does the mixed discourse of psychoanalysis
enter into a reflective philosophy? and (2) what happens to the subject of
reflection when the guile of consciousness is taken seriously? The answer
to this question is crystallised in the claim that ‘the philosophical place
of analytic discourse is defined by the concept of an archaeology of the
subject’.
11
This concept concedes the dispossession of immediate con-
sciousness to the advantage of another agency of meaning, namely the
emergence of desire. Yet desire is accessible only through the disguises in
which it manifests itself; it is only by interpreting the signs of desire that
one can capture its emergence, and thus enable reflection to regain the
archaic heritage which it has lost. Ricoeur builds upon the implicit tele-
ology displayed by the expansion of reflection, proposing to complement
the regressive analysis of Freudianism by a progressive synthesis of the
10 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, p. 375. 11 Ibid., p. 419.
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figures of the mind. Indeed, the internal dialectic of archaeology and
teleology, of regression and progression, is itself rooted in the overdeter-
mined structure of the authentic symbol. Ricoeur thus concludes his
philosophical reflection on Freud with the suggestion that the complex
constitution of the symbol contains the key to the resolution of the conflict
of interpretations.
Confrontation with structur alism
The growing importance of language in Ricoeur’s thought is the stimulus
for his critical confrontation with structuralism. The term ‘structuralism’
refers to an assortment of doctrines which have been prevalent in Fr ance
since the early 1960s, and which have been associated with such authors as
Roland Barthes, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Louis Althusser. The diverse
contributions of these and other authors are united by an underlying
linguistic model, the presuppositions of which define the limits of the
structuralist approach. The model was originally constructed by Saussure,
but Ricoeur finds a more trenchant formulation in the work of the Danish
linguist Louis Hjelmslev. Drawing upon Hjelmslev’s Prolegomena to a
Theory of Language, Ricoeur summarises the presupp ositions of the linguis-
tic model as follows. First, structuralism assumes that language is an
object that can be investigated scientifically. Second, structuralism distin-
guishes between a science of states of the system and a science of changes,
and it subordinates the latter to the former. Third, the structuralist model
presupposes that in any state of the system there are no absolute terms but
only relations of mutual dependence, so that language ‘becomes a system
of signs defined by their differences alone’.
12
Fourth, structuralism treats
the collection of signs as a closed and autonomous system of internal
dependencies. It follows from these presuppositions that for structuralism
a sign must be defined not in terms of some object for which it stands, but
rather in terms of its relation to all other signs of the same level within the
system of which it is part.
In the writings of ‘structuralist’ authors such as Lévi-Strauss, the lin-
guistic model is transposed into other object domains. Lévi-Strauss justi-
fies this transposition with the assumption that the relevant domains are
themselves systems of communication and hence comparable to language.
Kinship relations, for example, constitute systems of oppositi onal pairs in
which women are circulated between families or clans in a manner
12 Paul Ricoeur, ‘The question of the subject’, p. 250.
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analogous to the way in whic h words are exchanged between individuals.
Similarly, myths can be conceived as systems of constituent units or
‘mythemes’ which are interconnected by laws resembling those of linguis-
tics. In The Savage Mind, however, Lévi-Strauss goes well beyond these
cautious transpositions and applies the linguistic model to a whole level of
thought. The level is that of ‘savage thought’, of thought, as Ricoeur
remarks, ‘which orders but which does not think itself’.
13
According to
Lévi-Strauss, therefore, savage thought is an ‘unconscious’ order which
can be analysed objectively as a pure system of differences.
Ricoeur develops his critique of structuralism through a reflection on
the limits imposed by the presuppositions of the linguistic model. He
argues that in founding itself upon these presuppositions, structural lin-
guistics excludes from consideration a number of important phenomena.
It excludes, for instance, the act of speaking, not only as an individual
performance but as the free creation of new expressions. History is also
excluded, for history is more than the passage from one state of a system
to another: it is the process whereby human beings produce the mselves
and their culture through the production of their language. Structuralism
excludes, moreover, the primary aim or intention of language, which is to
say something about something. Language has both an ideal sense, to say
something, and a real reference, to say it about something. In one move-
ment of transcendence language leaps across two thresholds, and thereby
takes ‘hold of reality and expresses the hold of reality on thought’.
14
The
exclusion of such phenomena leads Ricoeur to question the initial presup-
position of the linguistic model, namely that language is an object which
can be investigated scientifically. For it is too readily forgotten that the
object is relative to the theory and method of the structuralist approach.
Language is absolutised as an object and structuralism exceeds the limits
of its validity, thus occlud ing the communicative process whereby some-
one says something to someone about something.
The tendency to overstep the limits of validity of structuralism is charac-
teristic of Lévi-Strauss. Ricoeur attempts to demonstrate such transgressions
by arguing, to begin with, that the transition from the linguistic model to
the savage mind is accomplished by means of a privileged instance. The
examples adduced by Lévi-Strauss are drawn from a particular range of
13 Paul Ricoeur, ‘Structure and hermeneutics’, translated by Kathleen McLaughlin, in The
Conflict of Interpretations, p. 40.
14 Paul Ricoeur, ‘Structure, word, event’, translated by Robert Sweeney, in The Conflict of
Interpretations, p. 84.
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ethnographic material, a range which lends itself with exceptional ease to
the reshufflings of the bricoleur. However, if one were to draw examples
from a different tradition of thought, from the Semitic, pre-Hellenic or Indo-
European tradition, it seems unlikely that the examples could be analysed
without remainder by the structuralist method; and that remainder, that
irreducible residue of meaning, would be the legitimate object of a hermen-
eutic inquiry. A similar transgression of the limits of validity is evident in
the implicit movement, made by Lévi-Strauss and others, from a structural-
ist science to a structuralist philosophy. Ricoeur maintains that this move-
ment is bound to fail. For structuralism, insofar as it precludes the
possibility of self-reflection, can never establish itself as a philosophy. ‘An
order posited as unconscious can never, to my mind, be more than a stage
abstractly separated from an understanding of the self by itself; order in
itself is thought located outside itself.’
15
Agenuinelyreflective philosophy
must nevertheless be receptive to the structuralist method, specifying its
validity as an abstract and objective moment in the understanding of self
and of being. This imperative forms one of the principal guidelines for
Ricoeur’s recent work on the theory of language and interpretation.
III
Discourse and creativity
The philosophy of the will, the examination of psychoanalysis and the
confrontation with structuralism have all raised fundamental questions
concerning the nature of language. In response to such questions, Ricoeur
seeks to develop a theory of language which would provide the spring-
board for a hermeneutic philosophy. The theory is premissed upon a
fundamental distinction between system and discour se. Although this
distinction is related to the Saussurian dichotomy between langue and
parole, it is more directly indebted to the work of the French linguist Emile
Benveniste. According to Benveniste, language is a totality that can be
articulated int o a series of levels, each of which is characterised by a
distinctive and constitutive unit. The transition betwe en these levels is
not, however, a continuous one. Whereas the phoneme, the morpheme,
the semanteme and so on are all signs defined by their internal and
oppositive relations, the sentence is not itself a sign but rather an indeter-
minate and unlimited creation. The sentence ‘is no longer the unit of a
15 Paul Ricoeur, ‘Structure and hermeneutics’, p. 51.
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language [or system], but of speech or discourse’.
16
The transition to the
level of discourse creates the possibility of a genuine semantics of the
sentence, as distinct from a semiotics of the sign.
Ricoeur unfolds the features of discourse in terms of an internal dialectic
between event and meaning. Discourse has an eventful character, insofar as
to speak is to realise an event which immediately disappears. Yet although
the utterance of a sentence is an ephemeral phenomenon, nevertheless a
sentence may be reidentified as the same on subsequent occasions; in other
words, ‘if all discourse is realised as an event, all discourse is understood as
meaning’.
17
Ricoeur suggests that, on first approximation, the notion of
meaning may be analysed into two basic dimensions, comprising both an
objective aspect or that which the sentence means, and a subjective aspect or
that which the speaker means. In discussing these two dimensions, Ricoeur
draws upon the work of philosophers well known in the English-speaking
world, most notably the work of J.L. Austin, P.F. Strawson and John
R. Searle. Ricoeur further distinguishes, following Frege, between two
components of the objective aspect of meaning: the sentence has both an
ideal sense and a real reference. It is only at the level of the sentence that
language can refer to something, that the closed universe of signs can be
related to an extra-linguistic world. The referential relation is thus a crucial
characteristic of discourse and one in virtue of which the semiotics of the
sign must be regarded as a derivative discipline.
The semantics of discourse sheds light on the primitive processes of
creativity and interpretation in ordinary language. The basic condition of
creativity is the intrinsic polysemy of words, that is, the feature by which
words in natural languages have more than one meaning. The boundaries
of polysemy can be defined by a semiotics of the sign, since the potential
uses of a word are accumulated and codified in the lexical system. Ricoeur
maintains, however, that the actual functioning of polysemy can be
grasped only by a semantics of the sentence. For words have meaning
only in the nexus of sentences, and sentences are uttered only in particular
contexts. Polysemy thus depends on a contextual action which filters out
some of the surplus meaning, so that a univocal discourse can be pro-
duced from polysemic words. To grasp this filtering effect is to exercise
interpretation in its most primordial sense. ‘The simplest message
conveyed by the means of natural language has to be interpreted because
all the words are polysemic and take their actual meaning from the
16 Paul Ricoeur, ‘Structure, word, event’, p. 86.
17 Paul Ricoeur, ‘The hermeneutical function of distanciation’, in this volume, p. 134.
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connection with a given context and a given audience against the back-
ground of a given situation.’
18
Polysemy, by endowing the word with a
surplus of meaning that must be sifted through interpretation, provides
the basis for the creative extension of meaning through metaphor.
Ricoeur develops his ideas on metaphor through a detailed analysis of
earlier views. In traditional rhetoric, metaphor is regarded as a type of
trope, that is, as a means whereby a figurative word is substituted for a
literal word on the grounds of an apparent resemblance. Metaphor, so
conceived, tells us nothing new; it is merely a decorative device which
embellishes a language that is otherwise austere. In an attempt to go
beyond this static view, Ricoeur turns to the work of certain Anglo-Saxon
authors, such as I.A. Richards, Max Black and Monroe Beardsley. What
these authors have shown is that metaphor operates primarily at the level
of the sentence rather than that of the word; or more precisely, it operate s
between these two levels. Metaphor, according to Ricoeur, presupposes
the establishment of a tension between two terms in the sentence through
the violation of a linguistic code. The metaph orical statement then appears
as a reducti on of this tension by means of a creative semantic pertinence
within the sentence as a whole. Hence Ricoeur suggests that ‘metaphor
is a semantic innovation that belongs at once to the predicative order
(new pertinence) and the lexical order (paradigmatic deviation)’.
19
The
emergent meaning can be grasped only through a constructive interpret-
ation which makes sense of the sentence as a whole, building upon and
extending the polysemy of the metaphorical terms. The emergence of
sense is accompanied by a transf ormation of the referential dimension,
endowing metaphor with its power to redescribe reality. The nature of thi s
transformation, which affects not only metaphor but lite rary works in
general, is clarified by the concept of the text.
Texts and the theory of interpretation
Ricoeur makes the transition from semantics to hermeneutics proper with
the formulation of a concept of the text. The text is a work of discourse,
and hen ce in the first instance a work. To say that a text is a work is to say
that it is a structured totality which cannot be reduced to the sentences
18 Paul Ricoeur, ‘Creativity in language’, translated by David Pellauer, in The Philosophy of
Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of His Work, edited by Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), p. 125.
19 Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in
Language, translated by Robert Czerny (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978),
pp. 156–7.
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whereof it is composed. Such a totality is produced in accordance with a
series of rules which define its literary genre, and which transform discourse
into a poem, a novel, a play. At the same time as a work belongs to a genre,
so too it has a unique configuration which defines its individual style. The
production of discourse as a work is thus displayed in its composition, its
genre and its style. These categories are categories of production and of
labour; ‘to impose a form upon material, to submit production to genres, to
produce an individual: these are so many ways of treating language as a
material to be worked upon and formed’.
20
As a work of discourse, the text
preserves the properties of the sentence, but presents them in a new con-
stellation which calls for its own type of interpretation.
In addition to being a work of discourse, the text is a written work.
Ricoeur emphasises that the text is not merely the inscripti on of some
anterior speech, as if speaking were the oral fount of every written work.
On the contrary, speakin g and writing are alternative and equally legitim-
ate modes of the realisation of discourse. Th e realisation of discourse in
writing nevertheless involve s a series of characteristics which effectively
distance the text from the conditions of spoken discourse. Ricoeur encap-
sulates these characteristics in the key no tion of ‘distanciation’, a notion
which displays four principal forms. The first form of distanciation is the
surpassing of the event of saying by the meaning of what is said. It is the
meaning which is inscribed in writing, and this inscription is rendered
possible by the ‘intentional exteriorisation’ of the speech-act; that is, the
constitutive features of the speech-act can be realised in writing by means
of various grammatical and syn tactic devices. The second form of distan-
ciation concerns the relation between the inscribed expression and the
original speaker. Whereas in spoken discourse the intention of the speak-
ing subject and the meaning of what is said frequently overlap, there is
no such coincidence in the case of writing. ‘What the text signifies no
longer coincides with what the author meant; henceforth, textual meaning
and psychological meaning have different destinies.’
21
The third form
of distanciation introduces a similar discrepancy between the inscribed
expression and the origi nal audience. In contrast to spoken discourse,
where the hearer is specified by the dialogical relation, written discourse
is addressed to an unknown audience and potentially to anyone who can
read. The text thus ‘decontextualises’ itself from its social and historical
conditions of production, opening itself to an unlimited series of readings.
20 Paul Ricoeur, ‘The hermeneutical function of distanciation’, p. 136. 21 Ibid., p. 139.
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The fourth and final form of distanciation concerns the emancipation of
the text from the limits of ostensive reference. Whereas the reference of
spoken discourse is ultimately determined by the shared reality of the
speech situation, in the case of writing this shared reality no longer exists.
The poss ibility arises, therefore, that the text has a referential dimension
which is of a different order from that of speech, a dimension which is
unfolded in the process of interpretation.
The theory of interpretation elaborated by Ricoeur is closely connected
to the concept of the text. This connection reveals a shift away from
Ricoeur’s earlier work, in which interpretation was linked to the complex
structure of the authentic symbol. It is no longer the symbol but the text,
written discourse as such, which defines the object domain of hermeneut-
ics. Accordingly, the principal features of Ricoeur’ s theory of interpret-
ation can be derived from the characteristics of written discourse. The first
two forms of distanciation – the eclipse of the event of saying by the
meaning of what is said and the severance of the latter from the intentions
of the speaking subject – imply that the objective meaning of a text is
something other than the subjective intentions of its author. From this
Ricoeur concludes, in direct opposition to the views of literary critics like
E.D. Hirsch, that ‘the problem of the right understanding can no longer
be solved by a simple return to the allege d inten tion of the author’.
22
Just
as the resolution of the tension established by a metaphor requires the
construction of a new sense, so too the meaning of a text must be guessed
or construed as a whole. The construal of meaning may indeed result in
more than one interpretation of a text, in which case the imminent conflict
must be subsumed to a process of argumentation; but this is a process,
Ricoeur firmly insists, in which the alleged intentions of the author have
no privileged role.
The second two forms of distanciation have equally important conse-
quences for the theory of interpretation. Ricoeur observes that the emanci-
pation of written discourse from the interlocutors and circumstances of the
dialogical situation engenders two possible attitudes towards the text.
On the one hand, the reader may suspend any judgement concerning the
referential dimension of the text, treating the latter as a wholly worldless
and self-enclosed entity. On the other hand, the reader may abandon this
epoché and seek to unfold the non-ostensive references of the text. The
first attitude is adopted by the structuralist approach, which attempts to
22 Paul Ricoeur, ‘The model of the text: meaningful action considered as a text’, in this
volume, p. 211.
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explain the text in terms of its internal relations. Structuralism thereby
offers a novel and fruitful type of explanation, a type which comes not
from the natural sciences but from the field of language itself. Yet Ricoeur
argues, echoing his earlier critique of Lévi-Strauss, that any such explan-
ation presupposes a form of understanding which cannot be reduced to
structural analysis. The presupposed form of understanding is the concern
of the second attitude that the reader may adopt towards the text. For the
reader may seek, not something hidden behind the text, but something
disclosed in front of it; not the internal constitution of the text, but that
which points towards a possible world. To understand a text at this level is
to move from its sense to its reference, from that which it says to that
which it says it about. In Ricoeur’s theory, therefore, explanation and
understanding are no longer contradictory attitudes, as has often been
assumed in the history of hermeneutics. On the contrary, with the medi-
ation of structural analysis ‘it seems possible to situate explanation and
interpretation along a unique hermeneutical arc and to integrate the
opposed attitudes of explanation and understanding within an overall
conception of reading as the recovery of meaning’.
23
Action and history
Although formulated with respect to texts, Ricoeur’ s theory of interpret-
ation can be extended to other domains. The extension to the sphere of the
social sciences is rendered possible by the claim that action may be
regarded as a text, insofar as it may be objectified in a way that embodies
the four forms of distanciation. For example, just as the inscription of
discourse involves the surpassing of the instance of saying by the meaning
of what is said, so to o the objectification of action is marked by the eclipse
of the event of doing by the significance of what is done. On the basis of
such considerations, Ricoeur enters into the methodologica l debate con-
cerning the relative roles of explanation and understanding in the inter-
pretation of action, a debate which Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Weber and
others initiated in the context of the soci al sciences. For if indeed action
may be regarded as a text, then it is plausible to propose that ‘the para-
digm of reading, which is the counterpart of the paradigm of writing,
provides a solution for the methodological paradox of the human sci-
ences’.
24
An action, like a text, is a meaningful entity which must be
construed a s a whole; and a conflict of interpretations can be resolved
23 Paul Ricoeur, ‘What is a text? Explanation and understanding’, in this volume, p. 161.
24 Paul Ricoeur, ‘The model of the text’, p. 209.
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only by a process of argumentation and debate, in which the intentions of
the agent may be relevant but are not decisive. Moreover, the structuralist
mode of analysis can be transposed into the social sphere, providing an
explanatory moment which mediates a depth interpretation of action. For
Ricoeur contends that human action, no less than literary texts, displays a
sense as well as a reference; it possesses an internal structure as well as
projecting a possible world, a potential mode of human existence which
can be unfolded through the process of interpretation.
The extension of the theory of interpretation to the domain of action is
all the more plau sible in that action itself is the referent of many texts.
Aristotle tells us that tragedy seeks to imitate human action in a poetic
way: ‘the mythos of tragedy – that is, both its fable and its plot – is the
mimesis, the creative imitation, of human action’.
25
Tragedy does not
merely describe action but presents it in a more favourable light, making
it appear higher and nobler than it is in reality. The emphasis on the
creative character of tragedy points to a further and more profound
affinity with a ction, for the latter too is animated by the creative power
of imagination. The role of imagination is evident both on an individual
level, where action is projected in acco rdance with an anticipatory schema,
and on a social level, where individuals relate to one another and to their
collective tradition through the figures of ideology and utopia. These
figures are not mere distortions of social life, but rather are, according to
Ricoeur, constitutive of the social bond itself. If utopian thought expresses
a critical distance from social reality, such distance is possible only because
that reality is fi rst integrated through an ideology which precedes critical
reflection and which transmits a collective tradition.
The complex interplay between belonging to a tradition and distancing
oneself from it forms the matrix for extending the theory of interpretation
to the sphere of history. Historical experience is fundamentally the experi-
ence of belonging to a tradition that is received from the past. Yet as
Dilthey, Husserl and others have stressed, experience is ess entially
expressible: it can be externalised in signs that demand to be understood.
Thus distanciation is the counterpart of belonging, from which it follows
that ‘historical experience and writing share the same fate. Historical
experience as inscribed is put at a distance, and so history is a science
25 Paul Ricoeur, ‘Explanation and understanding: on some remarkable connections among
the theory of the text, theory of action, and theory of history’, translated by Charles
E. Reagan and David Stewart, in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, p. 161 (translation
modified).
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978-1-107-14497-2 - Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action
and Interpretation
Paul Ricoeur and John B. Thompson
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based on traces.’
26
The distanciation of historical experience justi fies the
incorporation of an explanatory dimension into the di scipline of hi story.
One attempt to sp ecify such a dimension was made by Carl Hempel in
his classic study of ‘The f unction of general laws in history’.Asinhis
critique of structuralism, Ricoeur does not dismiss Hempel’sattempt
outright. For Hempel’s mistake is no t that he searche s for an explan atory
structure of history, but that he fails to grasp the methodological frame-
work within which the explanatory structu re operates. Explanation in
history is not an end in itself; it se rves to mediate historical understand-
ing which is tied in turn to the narrativity of the historical text. The
generalisations or ‘explanatory sketches’ of the historian thus serve to
facilitate the following of stories, especially when the latter process has
become interrupted or blocked.
The link between the history of the historians and the interpretation of
texts is in no way dissolved by the ‘realist intention’ of history. There is no
doubt that history claims to offer a true representation of past events, and
that it typically adduces vari ous kinds of evidence in support of this claim.
Yet Ricoeur maintains that, just as mimesis endows fiction with a referen-
tial relation to the real world of action, so too history has an imaginary
aspect. By recognising the values of the past only through their differences
from those of the present, histor y opens up the real towards the possible.
As Ricoeur says, ‘the “true” histories of the past uncover the buried
potentialities of the present’.
27
Indeed, so far from diverging at the level
of reference, it is precisely at this level that history and fiction converge
upon the fundamental historicity of human experience. Thus the
ambiguity of the word ‘history’, an ambiguity which is even richer in the
French word histoire, is no accident: retelling the text of the past is part of
the reality of the present – part, as Gadamer would say, of the ‘effective-
historical consciousness’.
Hermeneutics and philosop hical reflection
The theory of interpretation, elaborated with respect to texts and then
extended to the socio-historical world, reaffirms the connection between
hermeneutics and philosophical reflection. In his earlier writings, Ricoeur
established this connection by drawing upon the work of the French
philosopher Jean Nabert. Closer to Fichte than to Kant, Nabert dissociates
26 Paul Ricoeur, ‘History and hermeneutics’, translated by David Pellauer, Journal of Philoso-
phy, 73 (1976), p. 692.
27 Paul Ricoeur, ‘The narrative function’, in this volume, p. 295.
xxviii editor’s introduction
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Paul Ricoeur and John B. Thompson
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reflection from epistemological justification and conceives it instead as the
recovery of the effort to exist and the desire to be. However, this effort and
this desire cannot be grasped immediately in an act of intellectual intu-
ition; they can only be glimpsed through the mirror of the objects and acts,
the symbol s and signs, wherein they are disclosed. Hence ‘reflection must
become interpretation because I cannot grasp the act of existing except in
signs scattered in the world’.
28
Reflection cannot speak from nowhere, for
it must always begin by interpreting the cultural products of a specific
tradition. Such interpretation makes reflection ‘concrete’, opening it to
the methods and results of all the disciplines concerned with the socio-
historical world.
In addition to providing material for philosophical reflection, the
humanistic disciplines transform its very nature. For reflection is necessar-
ily self-reflection, and such disciplines raise afresh the question of what
‘the self’ might signify. Thus psychoanalysis castigates the pretensions
of the narcissistic ego, leaving behind a wounded and humiliated cogito,
‘a cogito which understands its primordial truth only in and through the
avowal of the inadequation, the illusion, the fakery of immediate con-
sciousness’.
29
Freud presents us with the startlin g discovery that con-
sciousness is not a given but a task, a task to be accomplished through
the long and tortuous by-way of a seman tics of desire. Similarly the
critique of ideology, as formulated by Marx and developed in the writi ngs
of the so-called Frankfurt School, proclaims consciousness to be the realm
of falsehood. For everyday attitudes are general ly distorted representa-
tions of reality, concealing and justifying the system of domination. The
critique of ideolo gy seeks to unveil these distortions and to engender an
authentic consciousness in the minds of the oppressed. So reflection must
be linked to hermeneutics not only because existence can only be grasped
in its external manifestations, but also because immediate consciousness is
an illusion which must be unmasked and overcome through an interpret-
ative critique.
The concept of concrete reflection is further enriched by the theory of
interpretation. By subordinating the subjective intentions of the author to
the objective meaning of the text, the theory effects an initial displacement
of the primacy of the subject. As with psychoanalysis and the critique of
ideology, however, this extirpation of the subject as radical origin prepares
the way for the reintroduction of subjectivity in a more modest role. For
28 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy, p. 46.
29 Paul Ricoeur, ‘The question of the subject’, p. 243.
editor’s introduction
xxix
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and Interpretation
Paul Ricoeur and John B. Thompson
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the process of interpretation culminates in an act of appropriation which
forms the concluding counterpart of distanciation. To appropriate, Ricoeur
explains, ‘means “to make one’sown” what was initially “alien”’,sothat
‘interpretation brings together, equalises, renders contemporary and simi-
lar’.
30
The act of appropriation does not seek to rejoin the original intentions
of the author, but rather to expand the conscious horizons of the reader by
actualising the meaning of the text. Although interpretation thus culminates
in self-understanding, it cannot be equated with naive subjectivism. Ricoeur
emphasises that appropriation is not so much an act of possession as an act
of dispossession, in which the awareness of the immediate ego is replaced by
a self-understanding mediated through the text. Thus interpretation gives
rise to reflection because appropriation is bound to the revelatory power of
the text, to its power to disclose a possible world.
The culmination of interpretation in an act of appropriation indicates that
ontology forms the ultimate horizon of hermeneutics. In endorsing the
quest for ontology, Ricoeur reveals his distance from most Anglo-Saxon
philosophies of language, as well as his proximity to the work of Heidegger
and Gadamer. Like the latter authors, Ricoeur considers hermeneutics to be
concerned with the understanding of being and the relations between
beings. Nevertheless, Ricoeur wishes to ‘resist the temptation to separate
truth, characteristic of understanding, from the method put into operation by
disciplines which have sprung from exegesis’.
31
To dissociate method and
truth, in the manner proposed by Gadamer, is to disregard the conflict of
interpretations within which we perceive the being we seek to understand.
It may well follow that the ontology attainable in Ricoeur’saccountwill
remain a fragmented and incomplete formulation of being; but this intrinsic
fragmentation of the hermeneutical horizon is no basis for renunciation or
despair. For it merely attests to the condition of a philosophy which has
acknowledged its fundamental finitude.
IV
Studies in the history of hermeneutics
The foregoing remarks provide a philosophical backcloth for the studies
collected in this volume. The studies do not purport to reflect this back-
cloth, to illustrate the evolution of Ricoeur’s ideas or to exemplify the
30 Paul Ricoeur, ‘Appropriation’, in this volume, p. 185.
31 Paul Ricoeur, ‘Existence and hermeneutics’, translated by Kathleen McLaughlin, in The
Conflict of Interpretations, p. 11.
xxx editor’s introduction
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© in this web service Cambridge University Press
Cambridge University Press
978-1-107-14497-2 - Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action
and Interpretation
Paul Ricoeur and John B. Thompson
Frontmatter
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