Action, Norms and Critique

Abstract

IntroductionOn several occasions, Paul Ricoeur used expression of to characterize his philosophical enterprise and its unity. We know for a fact that after having investigated finitude of act of willing and evil that pervades human freedom, Ricoeur's project was to dedicate an entire volume to creative capacity of acting consciousness. That type of creation, understood against backdrop of a poetics, should emphasize function of imagination, which consists in practical power to innovate, rather than psychological function of reproducing perceptions. This projected completion of philosophy of will in a poetics never saw light of day; because of this, Ricoeur's philosophy is caught up in a sort of incompleteness. Probably because he saw it fit to accentuate mediations that separate subject from his or her origins and potencies, he never dedicated a book to practical imaginary. Instead of a poetics of will, Ricoeur published his book on Freud, in which he explores discovery of unconscious and its consequences for concept of interpretation.1Does this necessarily mean that project of a of had simply been abandoned? Actually, Ricoeur never ceased to reflect upon rela- tion between symbolic imaginary and human action. If we no longer seem to find topic of will thematically analyzed in his work, this is without a doubt due to his increasing suspicion towards a topic that stems from both psychology and metaphysics. However, we can find many texts which attest to fact that he continued to approach action and imaginary together. The 1976 article Imagination in Discourse and in Action,2 to mention only one, explicitly takes up thread of an investigation to which he earlier gave the ambitious name of poetics of will.3 As its title indicates, this text elaborates on passage of theory of productive imagination from sphere of discourse to that of action. This extension of imagination from semantics to praxis was, from that moment on, presented as a necessary introduction to a poetics of will, now grounded in a redefinition of potencies of imaginary. If, therefore, it is true that Ricoeur revived his earlier project, it must be added that this was done through a radical redefinition of its meaning. And that transformation is in itself a sound proof of evolution of his philosophy from a theory of consciousness to a hermeneutics of capacities.This evolution, which is confirmed by Ricoeur himself, is due to an inner logic in his work, and I cannot explicate it fully here. Instead, I will focus on what is at stake in approaching action through powers of imaginary. In fact, originality of Ricoeur's method lies in his decision to place imagination at heart of a practical anthropology attentive to capacities of each individual. Ricoeur constantly reasserts fundamental claim according to which there is no pure action, no action that can be described independently of language that expresses it and concrete modes of its effectuation. Ricoeur's anthropol- ogy is an anthropology of capacities, that is, of action; and this not in mode of subjective virtuality but rather as a real potency. This phenomenology of capable human being is loosely inspired by Merleau-Ponty's practical rewriting of cogito: Consciousness is in first place not a matter of 'I think that' but of 'I can.'4 By encompassing in same approach action and imagination, Ricoeur remains faithful to methodological principle that grants priority to description of possible over that of actual. As a faculty of producing fictions, imagination acquires a fundamental heuristic function: it is not only that which guides action, but also what makes it intelligible for philosophy.Ricoeur's own trajectory regarding this question is one that goes from definition of imaginary as a faculty of knowing, towards approaching imagination as a practical faculty shedding light on human capacities. …