Études Ricoeuriennes / Ricoeur Studies

Book Review. Corine Pelluchon, Paul Ricœur, philosophe de la reconstruction. Soin, attestation, justice (Paris : Puf, 2022)

Azadeh Thiriez-Arjangi — 2023-09-06

Introduction – L’articulation de la phénoménologie et de l’herméneutique chez Paul Ricœur

Marc-Antoine Vallée — 2023-07-17

Introduction au numéro spécial "L'articulation de la phénoménologie et de l'herméneutique chez Paul Ricœur"

Introduction – The Articulation of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics in Paul Ricœur

Marc-Antoine Vallée — 2023-07-17

Introduction to the special issue "The Articulation of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics in Paul Ricœur"

Les tournants herméneutiques de Paul Ricœur

Jean Grondin — 2023-07-17

This paper argues that there is more than one hermeneutical turn in Ricœur’s thinking. It shows that once he realized the aporias associated with his first hermeneutical turn, from 1960, Ricœur resolutely turned to the questions and challenges of hermeneutics, in what can be understood as a reversal of his first hermeneutical turn. This turn subsequently took other forms in Ricœur and his philosophy became one of hermeneutical detours. We will discuss whether the path of detours is necessarily the royal road of hermeneutics, and we will consider the last expression of this hermeneutical turn to be found at the end of Memory, History, Forgetting.

Distantiation, Post-Critique, and Realism. Reconsidering the Relation of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics in Ricœur

Gert-Jan van der Heiden — 2023-07-17

Recent developments in literary theory and philosophy, specifically regarding the role of critique, that inspire the turn to post-critique and realism, respectively, indicate a renewed sensitivity for concerns characteristic of hermeneutic phenomenology. This essay argues that crucial aspects of Ricœur’s articulation of phenomenology and hermeneutics may help to understand and support post-critique and realism and that, in turn, the latter two invite hermeneutics to return to its phenomenological condition. To this end, Ricœur’s understanding of the hermeneutical condition of phenomenology, both in the form of Husserl’s idealist phenomenology and the phenomenology of religion, is revisited; Ricœur’s account of distantiation is critically assessed; and, finally, the interplay of trust and distrust at stake in hermeneutic phenomenology is contrasted with the modern insistence on hyperbolic doubt.

Le surcroît d’imagination dans le récit. Comment Husserl apporte un complément aux vues de Ricœur

Pol Vandevelde — 2023-07-17

I examine why and in what sense imagination is present in a narrative of real facts or events. I present the problem as stated by Paul Ricœur when he introduces the three genres of “the Same,” “the Other,” and “the Analogous” in order to explain how a narrative can render facts and events “as they really happened.” For the solution I appeal to Edmund Husserl’s notion of “phantasma,” which he sees as the support for pure imagination, as when I imagine a centaur. The phantasma plays in pure imagination the same role as sensations in perception. I argue that a narrative has a phantasma—what it allows us to visualize and experience when reading an account—and that this phantasma is analogous to the sensations of perceptions that first observers had of these facts and events. There is thus, first, no radical difference between perception and imagination: both include a moment of “mere presentation” through sensations or phantasma, respectively. And, second, the imaginative component of a narrative allows the brute facts and events to be “experienced” again in the mode of the “as if.”

Herméneutique et phénoménologie. Tensions autour de la religion

Sylvain Camilleri — 2023-07-17

This article examines the tensions between phenomenology and hermeneutics as they crystallize in Ricoeur's discourse on religion. Particular attentions will be given to a late text that has gone through several versions but is perhaps the only one in which the philosopher so directly addresses the methodological issues raised by a phenomenology of religion. We attempt to show that Ricoeur considers the latter with blinders on, as it were, favoring a hermeneutics of religion which, however modest and cautious it may be, is forced to renounce the task of elucidating the original constitution of religious experience.

Herméneutique et horizon anthropologique de la phénoménologie dans la philosophie ricœurienne

Samuel Lelièvre — 2023-08-29

The expression, “grafting of hermeneutics onto phenomenology” which Ricœur coined, is meant to characterize his hermeneutic phenomenology or Ricœurian approaches the fields of phenomenology and hermeneutics. However, the expression seems to have been quite misunderstood and therefore may have led to various misunderstandings about Ricœur’s approach and its relationship to phenomenology and hermeneutics. The term “grafting” refers to a differentiation between two methods and domains, where one method and domain is complete another method and domain. However, it is less the difference between phenomenology and hermeneutics that is at stake than the difference between the phenomenological origin of Ricœur’s hermeneutics and his project of a philosophical anthropology. More often this aim is overlooked by critics who rely on their expertise in either phenomenology or in hermeneutics. By so doing their commentary of Ricœur’s philosophy suffers certain limitations.

De la sagesse poétique à la sagesse pratique. Quelle place pour les poètes et le poétique dans l’anthropologie de l’homme capable ricœurienne ?

Jean-Philippe Pierron — 2023-07-17

Ricœur never ceased exploring the links between literature and philosophy, between poetics understood in the broad sense and practical philosophy. This exploration impacted his analyses in a major way, with the concept of narrative identity, and the adjective also understood in its literary dimension, as one of its centres. But this valorisation of the linearity of the narrative has sometimes given the impression of having valorised the importance of the novel, at the expense of the role of poetry and theatre. This article proposes to explore the mutual links between poetic and practical wisdom by returning them their full place. It does so by following the way in which Ricœur gave place to poetry, particularly that of Rilke; and by bringing to light the different argumentative strategies (exergue, correspondence, commentary) by which poetry, particularly the psalm, enlightens and enriches the understanding of those who engage in action.

“Who do you say that I am?” Truth in Narrative Identity

Inês Pereira Rodrigues — 2023-07-17

The following article explores what notion of truth is possible in Ricœur’s narrative identity. It is motivated by the question of how our identity can be constituted in narratives of self when we are often easily self-deceiving and do not choose the building blocks of our narratives. It explores how our identities are constituted in narrative, with others, in order to see what dimensions of truth this allows. Narrative identity implicates a novel notion of truth that is intrinsically ethical, which gives rise to a set of ethical issues. In particular, a truth of self that occurs in relation to others is open to violence and abuse—our very identity is, to varying degrees, in others’ hands. Butler’s ethics of fragility may offer a positive solution.