Paul Ricoeur

The Hermeneutics of Action

Richard Kearney

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 1996
• ISBN:
  9781446233863
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Paul Ricoeur's work is of seminal importance to the development of hermeneutics, phenomenology and ideology critique in the human sciences. This major volume assembles leading scholars to address and explain the significance of this extraordinary body of work.

Opening with three key essays from Ricoeur himself, the book offers a fascinating tour of his work ranging across topics such as the hermeneutics of action, narrative force, the other and deconstruction while discussing his work in the context of such contemporary figures as including Heidegger, L[ac]evinas, Arendt and Gadamer. Paul Ricoeur is also published as Volume 21 Issue 5/6 of Philosophy and Social Criticism.

Part I: Essays by Paul Ricoeur

Paul Ricoeur

Reflections on a new ethos for Europe

It is no extravagance to formulate the problem of the future of Europe in terms of imagination. The political organization of Europe poses the unprecedented problem of how to get beyond the form of the nation-state at the institutional level, without repeating its well-known structures at a higher level of ‘supranationality’. Furthermore, the invention of new institutions cannot be fashioned after any of the existing federal states (Switzerland, Germany, the United States of America) which are holders of the same symbols of sovereignty (currency, army, diplomacy) as the less complex nation-states. The expression ‘post-national state’ meets these two requirements, insofar as it leaves open – precisely to the imagination – the question of knowing what new institutions can respond to a political situation which is itself without precedent.

I should like to say here how a reflection which focuses on the ethical and spiritual activities of individuals, intellectuals and cultivated persons, and also of intellectual communities, churches and other religious denominations, can contribute to this political imagination.

Indeed, it would be a mistake to believe that transfers of sovereignty in support of a political entity which is entirely unrealized can be successful at the formal level of political and juridical institutions without the will to implement these transfers deriving its initiative from changes of attitude in the ethos of individuals, groups and peoples.

The problem is familiar enough. Taken as a whole it is a matter of combining ‘identity’ and ‘alterity’ at numerous levels that will need to be distinguished. What we most desperately lack are models of integration between these two poles. For the moment, I refer to these poles in highly abstract terms, not unlike the supercategories of Plato’s Dialogues! However, in order to shatter this impression of disconcerting abstraction I propose to classify models for the integration of identity and alterity according to an increasing order of spiritual density.

I The model of translation

The first model which is presented for consideration is that of the translation of one language into another. This first model is perfectly appropriate for the situation of Europe which, from the linguistic point of view, displays an irreducible pluralism which it is infinitely desirable to protect. Of course, it is not the dream of giving another chance to Esperanto which threatens us most, nor even the triumph of one great cultural language as the sole instrument of communication; rather it is the danger of incommunicability through a protective withdrawal of each culture into its own linguistic tradition that threatens us. But Europe is and will remain ineluctably polyglot. It is here that the model of translation entails requirements and assurances which extend all the way to the heart of the ethical and spiritual life of both individuals and peoples.

In order to understand this model, a turning-back to the most fundamental conditions of the workings of language is required. It is necessary to begin with the fact that language (le langage) exists nowhere else than in languages (des langues). It realizes its universal potentialities only in systems differentiated on phonological, lexical, syntactic and stylistic levels, etc. And yet languages do not form closed systems which exclude communication. If that were the case there would be differences between linguistic groups similar to those which exist on the biological level between living species. If there is only one human race, it is because transferences of meaning are possible from one language to another; in short, because we can translate.

But what does it mean to be able to translate? This possibility, or rather this capacity, is not ascertained solely by the fact that we actually succeed in translating speech and texts from one language to another without totally prejudicial and, above all, entirely irreparable semantic loss. The possibility of translating is postulated more fundamentally as an a priori of communication. In this sense, I will speak of ‘the principle of universal translatability’. Translation is de facto; translatability is de jure. It is this presupposition which has reinforced the courage and stimulated the ingenuity of the decipherers of hieroglyphics and of other systems of signs, some of which still remain undisclosed. But let us look closely at the translation process itself. First, it presupposes bilingual translators, thus flesh and blood mediators; then it consists of the search for optimum commensurability between the distinctive resources of the receiving language and those of the original language. In this respect, the arrogant model of the ‘remains of the Egyptians’, which we find at one point in St Augustine, is not a worthy one. The model to be preferred is the more modest one proposed by von Humboldt, i.e. that of raising the distinctive spirit of his own language to the level of that of the foreign language, particularly when it is a matter of original productions which constitute a challenge for the receiving language. It is really a matter of living with the other in order to take that other to one’s home as a guest.

We see immediately how translation constitutes a model which is suited to the specific problem that the construction of Europe poses. First, at the institutional level, it leads us to encourage the teaching of at least two living languages throughout the whole of Europe in order to secure an audience for each of the languages which is not in a dominant position at the level of communication. But, above all, at a truly spiritual level, it leads us to extend the spirit of translation to the relationship between the cultures themselves, that is to say, to the content of meaning conveyed by the translation. It is here that there is need of translators from culture to culture, of cultural bilingualists capable of attending to this process of transference to the mental universe of the other culture, having taken account of its customs, fundamental beliefs and deepest convictions; in short, of the totality of its significant features. In this sense we can speak of a translation ethos whose goal would be to repeat at the cultural and spiritual level the gesture of linguistic hospitality mentioned above.

II The model of the exchange of memories

I call the second model that of the exchange of memories. We see immediately how it links up with the preceding model: to translate a foreign culture into the categories peculiar to one’s own presupposes, as we have said, a preliminary transference to the cultural milieu governed by the ethical and spiritual categories of the other. Now the first difference which calls for transference and hospitality is a difference of memory, precisely at the level of the customs, rules, norms, beliefs and convictions which constitute the identity of a culture. But to speak of memory is not only to evoke a psychophysiological faculty which has something to do with the preservation and recollection of traces of the past; it is to put forward the ‘narrative’ function through which this primary capacity of preservation and recollection is exercised at the public level of language. Even at the individual level, it is through stories revolving around others and around ourselves that we articulate and shape our own temporality. Two noteworthy phenomena concern us here.

The first is the ‘narrative identity’ of the characters of the story. At the same time that the recounted actions receive the temporal unity of a story from the plot, the characters of the story can also be said to be plotted out (mise en intrigue). They are recounted at the same time as the story itself. This first remark has many consequences of which the following is the most important: narrative identity is not that of an immutable substance or of a fixed structure, but rather the mobile identity issuing from the combination of the concordance of the story, taken as a structured totality, and the discordance imposed by the encountered events. Alternatively put, narrative identity takes part in the mobility of the story, in its dialectic of order and disorder. An important corollary is suggested here: it is possible to revise a recounted story which takes account of other events, or even which organizes the recounted events differently. Up to a point, it is possible to tell several stories based on the same events (however we may then give meaning to the expression: the same events). This is what happens when we endeavour to take account of other people’s stories.

This last remark leads to the second phenomenon which needs to be emphasized here. If each of us receives a certain narrative identity from the stories which are told to him or her, or from those that we tell about ourselves, this identity is mingled with that of others in such a way as to engender second order stories which are themselves intersections between numerous stories. Thus, the story of my life is a segment of the story of your life; of the story of my parents, of my friends, of my enemies, and of countless strangers. We are literally ‘entangled in stories’, according to W. Schapp’s beautiful title, In Geschichten Verstrickt.

From these two phenomena taken together – 1) narrative constitution of each personal identity, and 2) the entanglement of personal incidents in stories conveyed by some and heard by others and above all told by some about others – a model of memory-exchange emerges whose ethical import is easy to grasp. To communicate at the level where we have already conducted the work of translation, with its art of transference and its ethics of linguistic hospitality, calls for this further step: that of taking responsibility, in imagination and in sympathy, for the story of the other, through the life narratives which concern that other. This is what we learn to do in our dealings with fictional characters with whom we provisionally identify through reading. These mobile identifications contribute to the reconfiguration of our own past and that of the past of others, by an incessant restructuring of stories that we tell, some of them about others. But a more profound engagement is required by the transition from the level of fiction to that of historical reality. It is not of course a matter of actually reliving the events that happened to others; the inalienable character of life experiences renders this chimerical ‘intropathy’ impossible. More modestly, but also more energetically, it is a matter of exchanging memories at the narrative level where they are presented for comprehension. A new ethos is born of the understanding applied to the complex intertwining of new stories which structure and configure the crossroads between memories. It is a matter there of a genuine task, of a genuine labour, in which we could identify the Anerkennung of German Idealism, that is, ‘recognition’ considered in its narrative dimension.

The transposition to the level of the European problematic is evident. But the second lesson, that drawn from the entanglement of stories at the interpersonal level, reaches its objective only if the first – the narrative constitution of specific identity – has been well understood and completely accepted. The identity of a group, culture, people, or nation, is not that of an immutable substance, nor that of a fixed structure, but that, rather, of a recounted story. Now the contemporary implications of this principle of narrative identity have not yet been perceived. A rigid and arrogant conception of cultural identity prevents us from perceiving the corollaries of this principle mentioned above: the possibilities of revising every story which has been handed down and of carving out a place for several stories directed towards the same past. What really prevents cultures from allowing themselves to be recounted differently is the influence exercised over the collective memory by what we term the ‘founding events’, the repeated commemoration and celebration of which tend to freeze the history of each cultural group into an identity which is not only immutable but also deliberately and systematically incommunicable. The European ethos which is sought does not of course require the abandonment of these important historical landmarks, but rather an effort of plural reading: one first example of which is the dispute among French historians about the meaning of the French Revolution; another is the dispute among German historians regarding the significance of the criminal episodes of the Second World War. Recounting differently is not inimical to a certain historical reverence to the extent that the inexhaustible richness of the event is honoured by the diversity of stories which are made out of it, and by the competition to which that diversity gives rise.

This ability to recount the founding events of our national history in different ways is reinforced by the exchange of cultural memories. This ability to exchange has as a touchstone the will to share symbolically and respectfully in the commemoration of the founding events of other national cultures as well as those of their ethnic minorities and their minority religious denominations.

In this exchange of memories it is a matter not only of subjecting the founding events of both cultures to a crossed reading, but of helping one another to set free that part of life and of renewal which is found captive in rigid, embalmed and dead traditions. In this regard, I deferred up to now any mention of ‘tradition’. Indeed, it is only at the end of the twofold linguistic and narrative course just proposed that we can go beyond clichés and anathemas concerning tradition. It is necessary for us to have gone through the ethical requirements of translation – what I call linguistic hospitality – and through the requirements of the exchange of memories – narrative hospitality – in order to approach the phenomenon of tradition in its specifically dialectical dimension. Tradition means transmission, transmission of things said, of beliefs professed, of norms accepted, etc. Now such a transmission is a living one only if tradition continues to form a partnership with innovation. Tradition represents the aspect of debt which concerns the past and reminds us that nothing comes from nothing. A tradition remains living, however, only if it continues to be held in an unbroken process of reinterpretation. It is at this point that the reappraisal of narratives of the past and the plural reading of founding events come into effect.

What remains to be considered now is the second pole of the partnership of tradition and innovation. With regard to innovation, an important aspect of the rereading and the reappraisal of transmitted traditions consists in discerning past promises which have not been kept. Indeed, the past is not only what is bygone – that which has taken place and can no longer be changed – it also lives in the memory thanks to arrows of futurity which have not been fired or whose trajectory has been interrupted. The unfulfilled future of the past forms perhaps the richest part of a tradition. The liberation of this unfulfilled future of the past is the major benefit that we can expect from the crossing of memories and the exchange of narratives. It is principally the founding events of a historical community which should be submitted to this critical reading in order to release the burden of expectation that the subsequent course of its history carried and then betrayed. The past is a cemetery of promises which have not been kept. It is a matter of bringing them back to life like the dry bones in the valley described in the prophecy of Ezekiel (Ch. 37).

III The model of forgiveness

What has just been said about the revival of promises of the past which have not been kept leads to a third opening: that of forgiveness. The considerations which follow are linked in a double sense to the preceding discussion. On the one hand, the role of the story in the constitution of narrative identity has indicated what we have called the revision of the past, a revision which is effected by recounting in a different way. Forgiveness is a specific form of the revision of the past and, through it, of the specific narrative identities. On the other hand, the entanglement of life stories gives occasion for a revision which is neither solitary nor introspective of its own past, but rather a mutual revision in which we are able to see the most valuable yield of the exchange of memories. Forgiveness is also a specific form of that mutual revision, the most precious result of which is the liberation of promises of the past which have not been kept.

The novelty of this third model is connected to a phenomenon – a complement of the founding events which a historical community glories in – namely, the wounds inflicted by what Mercea Eliade called the ‘terror of history’. What has been said above under the heading of the exchange of memories must no longer be investigated through the perspective of glorious deeds but rather through this new perspective of suffering. Suffering appears twice, then, in the tableau of our meditation: it appears in the first instance as endured suffering which transforms the agents of the story into victims; it appears a second time as suffering inflicted on others. This point is so important that it is necessary to reverse the order...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I: Essays by Paul Ricoeur
• Part II: Essays for Paul Ricoeur
• Part III: Review essays
• Index