Études Ricoeuriennes / Ricoeur Studies

Empathy in the Context of the Hermeneutics of Suspicion

2023-04-17T19:30:54-04:00

We defend in this essay Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutics of suspicion against Toril Moi’s debunking of it as a misguided interpretation of the practice of critical inquiry, and we relate the practice of a rigorous and critical empathy to the hermeneutics of suspicion. For Ricœur, empathy would not be a mere psychological mechanism by which one subject transiently identifies with another, but the ontological presence of the self with the Other as a way of being —listening as a human action that is a fundamental way of being with the Other in which “hermeneutics can stand on the authority of the resources of past ontologies.” In a rational reconstruction of what a Ricœur-friendly approach to empathy would entail, a logical space can be made for empathy to avoid the epistemological paradoxes of Husserl and the ethical enthusiasms of Levinas. How this reconstruction of empathy would apply to empathic understanding, empathic responsiveness, empathic interpretation, and empathic receptivity is elaborated from a Ricœurian perspective.

Many Colors of History

2021-09-15T05:08:04-04:00

In his Time and Narrative, Ricœur introduces the term of “third time” to designate the middle ground between human and natural time. This time is synonymous with historical time, which is the main source of historical discourse. The third time consists of inscribing human time onto the time of nature. While historiography must strictly follow this structure, works of fiction have the freedom to explore and even create imaginative variations of time. Despite the constraints this seems to impose on historical writing, this article shows that even within the tight structure of historical time, a palette of various colors and shades, akin to imaginative variations, can be observed. Historical time possesses depth and speed; it can contract and relax, motivate or prevent action, or gain various dynamics in relation to the ending it offers.

Vivre, pour vivre ensemble

2023-03-15T18:27:24-04:00

According to Paul Ricœur, “anthropology has become an urgent task of contemporary thought.” The one he develops in all of his work is based on his own hermeneutical phenomenology (the originality of which is due to the heritage of reflective philosophy in particular) to the point that the latter is enough, in our opinion, to draw the main lines of the former. It makes it possible to endow the world with regularities which make it habitable and to endow each human being with a self. It tackles head-on the difficulties of intersubjectivity that Edmund Husserl or Martin Heidegger had left unresolved and makes it a key to his philosophy. People are then more than inhabitants of the world; they inhabit a City that they contributes to build. The theme of the “new” allows us to consolidate one of the lessons that we can draw from Ricœur’s work: to live together, we must live. Ricœurian anthropology then does not require any added ethics for this vitalist impetus to appear via its hermeneutic phenomenology.

Introduction – Ricœur et l’éducation

2023-12-18T07:31:34-05:00

Introduction au numéro spécial « Ricœur et l’éducation »

Introduction – Ricœur and Education

2023-12-18T07:27:27-05:00

Introduction to the special issue "Ricœur and Education"

Le conflit des traditions

2023-09-14T11:47:21-04:00

The present article aims at analyzing some challenges of educating in a “problematic universe,” following Ricœur’s interview (1996) to Anita Hocquard in 1985. The eminently conflictual nature of the educational task–to present to the new inhabitants of the world our “fundamental cultural choices,” but also the topics that “split those who are contemporaries–” leads us to analyzing the notions of traditionality, traditions, and tradition. We thus investigate the present struggle for recognition, legitimacy and authority among different traditions in face of a cultural context in which the colonialist legacy operated as a delegitimizing instance of the plural traditions that coexisted in rivalry. Finally, we propose as our hypothesis that literature may represent an alternative form of revitalizing these silenced legacies, resorting to the novel Ponciá Vicêncio, by Brazilian novelist Conceição Evaristo.

Problems about the Canon in Teaching Philosophy in Colombia

2023-09-13T20:48:02-04:00

This text is focused on the question of what we should teach in high school philosophy and the relationship of this teaching to recognizing oneself as a good philosophy teacher. We hold that these points are connected to the idea of “canon” and “history of philosophy” that we gained with and despite Ricœur himself. This paper advances a critical view of contemporary practices in philosophy teaching in Colombia through Ricœur’s thought. In the first part, we follow Ricœur’s considerations about the history of philosophy and its connections to the very practice of thinking. In the second part, we concentrate on the question of the canon. At the end of each section, we will give some pedagogical stitches to interweave Ricœur’s philosophical legacy with the didactics and theory of the curriculum, thus forming a tripod that should be part of the didactics of philosophy as an independent discipline.

Une phénoménologie de la souffrance enseignante

2023-09-14T13:00:53-04:00

This article presents a reflection on the suffering of schoolteachers in Brazil. The examination of this phenomenon was carried out from the definition of suffering, proposed by Paul Ricœur, on the occasion of his conference « La souffrance n’est pas la douleur ». In Brazil, teacher suffering is often related to the material precariousness of the exercise of the teaching profession: overcrowded classes, low wages, accumulation of posts, degraded and insufficient material resources. However, we intend to examine the phenomena of suffering from the condition designated in our research as symbolic precariousness of the teaching profession. This condition results in changing the possibility of teachers to exercise their capacities as a human agent, as well as their relationship with others. It is from these two axes that we propose a phenomenology of teaching suffering.

A Pedagogy of Responsibility

2023-09-15T14:58:03-04:00

The following article reconstructs the philosophy of education implicit in Paul Ricœur’s late writings —above all, his “Autonomy and Vulnerability”— to address the current crisis in the humanities. In keeping with Kant and the Bildung tradition, Ricœur reminds us that education aims, above all, at self-formation. In particular, a “pedagogy of responsibility” serves as a bridge between vulnerability and “autonomy”: shorthand in Ricœur’s thought for character, intellectual independence, and moral maturity. Unlike orthodox Kantians, however, Ricœur highlights the indispensable role symbolic representation plays in the cultivation of autonomy, mutual recognition, and three related modes of identity: narrative identity, personal identity, and moral identity. Moreover, we learn this art of identity-formation from sustained study in the humanities (literature, philosophy, history, etc.).

Paul Ricœur’s Philosophy of Education and its Relevance for our Scientific-Technological Civilization

2023-12-18T07:39:04-05:00

Inspired by the report, Reimagining our Futures Together. A New Social Contract for Education, which warns that humanity and planet Earth are under threat, but acknowledges that education has the power to bring about profound change, this article makes the case for giving careful consideration both to Paul Ricœur’s reflections on humanity and human capacities, and to his comments on “true education” and the educational value of poetic thought. To get a sense of where scientific-technological civilization is headed, it draws on the work of Allen Buchanan and Dominique Janicaud. It then examines Ricœur’s account of the essential characteristics of education and his thoughts on the roles of families and teachers. It argues that Ricœur’s proposal for the cultivation of an “ethical consciousness” offers greater protection for humanity in an uncertain future than Janicaud and Buchanan’s proposals for “ethical vigilance” and rules-based protective measures.