Understanding a Lateral Truth: Paul Ricoeur’s Intercultural Hermeneutics

Abstract

ABSTRACT Starting from Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic pluralism and its relevance from the point of view of the current intercultural debate, the article aims to elaborate a pluralistic model in which we recognize the need for a hermeneutic virtue, the phronesis as a prerequisite for understanding that each person can only see parts of truth ‘sideways’ and that it is not possible to compare one’s beliefs with those of others by looking at them from the outside, from a sort of superior view from above. Intercultural dialogue can only start from an awareness of the inadequacy and historical-cultural determinacy of different perspectives, avoiding the twin pitfalls of absolutizing singular points of view and falling into naïve relativism. In this way, the article aims to discuss Ricoeur’s conception of a situated and ‘lateral’ truth and, therefore, his original application of a phronetic-hermeneutic model in the dialogue between cultures.