Paul Ricoeur Research Articles

Testimony and Engagement: On the Four Elements of Witnessing

In order to develop a hermeneutic-phenomenological analysis of testimony, this essay will first argue that testimony is “said in many ways” without being homonymous and that contemporary epistemological approaches to testimony are not capable of accounting for all paradigmatic forms of testimony. Second, it is argued, following and extending the work of Paul Ricoeur, that by emphasizing the sense of engagement or Bezogenheit as a basic characteristic of testimony, we may find another approach to testimony that offers a phenomenological alternative to the observational model of witnessing and the accompanying conception of testimony as report. Third, this approach is further developed and analyzed in terms of the four elements of testimony, namely, subject matter, witness, act of testifying, and addressee.

"Exile Memoirs: Beyond the Confines of Obligated Memory" Memoirs Reviewed

"Exile Memoirs: Beyond the Confines of Obligated Memory" Memoirs Reviewed María de los Ángeles Torres Cecilia M. Fernández. Leaving Little Havana: A Memoir of Miami Cuban's Ghetto. Orlando, FL: Beating Winds Press, 2013. Translated to Spanish by Gonzalo Ravelo, 2015. José María de Lasa. My Story: Family, Cuba and Living the American Dream. Miami, FL: Ediciones Universal, 2018. Gerardo González. A Cuban Refugees Journey to the American Dream: The Power of Education. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2018. Dania Rosa Nasca. Lights Out: A Cuban Memoir of Betrayal and Survival. Dania Rosa Nasca, 2016. Luis Santeiro. Dancing with Dictators: A Family's Journey from Pre-Castro Cuba to Exile in the Turbulent Sixties—A Memoir. Luis Santeiro, 2017. Marisella Veiga. We Carry Our Homes with Us. Saint Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2016. Like all wars, the Cuban Revolution generated carefully constructed narratives of its history with heroes and villains starkly cast and storylines carefully scripted. Inversely, the opposition did the same. For the exile community, the revolution betrayed became a central theme, as did triumphs in exile. We became the golden exiles who thrived despite the loss of nation, family, property, and imagined futures. Our defiance included reproducing Cuba in the United States. And nostalgia was a way of not forgetting. But with this process came an official narrative that demanded unanimity in the renditions of past and present. Paul Ricoeur calls this obligated memory; what we are expected to remember is not necessarily what happened to us, but it is what we must remember. The reality was more complex, as were the human experiences lived through multiple histories, and some of these have found themselves into testimonials and memoirs. Some of the first cracks in the official narrative surfaced when young Cuban exiles started to return to the island, an act that in and of itself defied the official narrative of exile. With this movement came testimonies of life in the United States that for many of us, especially those raised outside the nestled confines of Cuban Miami, included ugly confrontations with racism and discrimination because we were Cubans. In Contra viento y marea, for instance, [End Page 301] Lourdes Casal and a group of editors from Areíto gathered personal testimonies from those returning to Cuba with the Antonio Maceo Brigade. The stories did not fit neatly into the narrative of the golden exile. Much later Ruth Behar and Juan Leon initiated a project to collect personal narratives of those who did return to Cuba, further constructing alternatives to the tropes of survival and success. Bridges to Cuba, their two-volume publication of personal narratives, poems, and stories established a plurality of experiences. By Heart/De Memoria: Cuban Women's Journeys in and out of Exile, which I edited, brings together women's personal narratives of encounters with the island from those of us in exile and with narratives from those on the island. By the 1990s, returning had also generated its own mythologies and acceptable renditions, and these essays complicated the narratives on both sides of the Florida Straits. All these projects have sought to build alternative communities through texts. Other memoirs sought to fill in the personal stories of immigration. Cuban immigration has been periodized by time and method of departure. The dramatic exodus of fourteen thousand unaccompanied minors in Operation Pedro Pan engendered its own deeply militarized memories that reflect the collective coping with the pain arising from the separation of parents and children. Pedro Pans become symbols of the origins of a community born of extreme sacrifice. The narrative called for presenting our experience as heroic, as we were saved from communism. Silence might have been expected about the pain or abuse encountered by the children. Still, memoirs like Carlos Erie's, Waiting for Snow to Fall in Havana, presented a more complex set of experiences, as did Flora Gonzalez's essay "House on Shifting Sand: in Bridges. Both the Cuban and the US government complicated the Mariel exodus by casting immigrants as criminals and unwanted escoria. But Mirta Ojito's Waiting for Mañana gave us the version of traveling through those hate-filled and racialized rhetorical waves...

The Concept of the Person as “Subject” and “Place” of Morality According to Paul Ricoeur

e concept of the subjectivity of a person presented in this article has shownthat man as a subject appears in constant references and relations in which hisexistence is embedded. On the one hand, it escapes the determinism of nature,on the other hand, it reveals a certain crack between its nature and action. isleads to the conclusion that even if a person is characterised by individuality, itis not a separate existence. It seems justified to return to the question of whatmakes a person, in spite of both external and internal variability; they remain thesame or otherwise what builds and what destroys the subjectivity of the person?e question thus posed reveals the first threat to human subjectivity whichis the fact of the existence of evil. For it is not only something external to manbut also something that makes man both the “place” of the appearance of evil and responsible for evilB8. While staying in Ricoeur’s philosophy characterisedby a dialectical movement one can already see in the language discussing evila threat to certain “deposits of hope” present in his thoughtB<. For the religiouslanguage to which Ricoeur ultimately reduces the problem of evil is the languageof hope and eschatology. Freedom also takes on a new meaning in this context.It is no longer just something that has been enslaved but above all somethingthat is a “desire for the possible.” A possible freedom is the Resurrection. In thisperspective, even evil and suffering can find their ultimate meaning, and thesubjective character of morality does not threaten to fall into subjectivism.Moreover, it is in the name of such subjectivism that morality demands for thesubject this “otherness,” the hope that comes from the Resurrection.

The (Self)portrait of a Writer: A Hermeneutic Reading of Virginia Woolf’s (Auto)biographical Writings

Woolf’s maturing as a writer was deeply influenced by her traumatic experiences in childhood, the (in)capacitating states of mental instability, as well as her proto-feminist convictions. Long before Barthes, she toppled the traditional position of the author, and her literary enshrinement of “the other reality” reached unity with the world rather than individuality. This article ponders Woolf’s creative impulse and investigates her autobiographical writings to show the import of their impact on her fiction, which, as Woolfian scholarship suggests, can be viewed as autobiographical, too. I argue that philosophical hermeneutics sheds light on the self-portrait that emerges from Woolf’s autobiographical writings and offers a rewarding insight into her path of becoming an author. I assert that Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy of subjectivity, and, in particular, his notion of narrative identity provide a route to examine how Woolf discovers her writing voice. In light of his hermeneutics of the self, the dispersed elements of the narrative of life can be seen as a possibility of self-encounter. Woolf’s writings bespeak her gradually evolving self-knowledge and self-understanding, which come from the configuration of those separate “stories” into a meaningful whole. The article also interprets Woolf’s autobiographical writings through the prism of Michel Foucault’s reflection on discourse and subjectivity, indicating that her texts instantiate his assertion of the subject’s constant disappearance.

Apresentação] Entre filosofia e não-filosofia: a obra de Paul Ricoeur sob o olhar de Domenico Jervolino

O presente artigo é uma apresentação ao texto Discurso Filosófico e Existência em Ricoeur: Filosofar após Kierkegaard de Domenico Jervolino que tivemos a honra de trazer ao português. Para isso, dividimos nossa escrita em três partes. A primeira reflete sobre a recepção do pensamento de Paul Ricoeur no Brasil, em especial, com a tradução/interpretação de Hilton Japiassu. Em seguida, analisamos alguns aspectos da obra de Domenico Jervolino e o horizonte interpretativo que ela deixou para a reflexão do pensamento ricoeuriano. Por fim, buscamos pensar qual é o lugar que o texto que traduzimos ocupa, tanto no contexto da obra de Jervolino, quanto no contexto da nossa tradição sobre o pensamento de Paul Ricoeur.

HOSPITALIDADE E RELIGIÃO NÓMADA: IDENTIDADE PARA ALÉM DA VIOLÊNCIA

Partindo de uma noção fechada de identidade, seja pela sua redução territorial seja pela sua redução cultural ou mesmo individual, que poderia encontrar apoio numa concepção de religião como posse exclusiva da referência a um único Deus verdadeiro ou como processo sacrificial, chegar-se-á a uma relação inevitável entre religião e violência. Propõe-se aqui um outro princípio, inspirado em Paul Ricoeur, Jacques Derrida, Jan Patocka e Emmanuel Levinas, que explora a dimensão excessiva e gratuita do religioso, interpretado como responsabilidade e com aplicação concreta no dinamismo da hospitalidade incondicional. Isso origina identidades religiosas nómadas, as quais estariam, em princípio, imunes à possibilidade de violência, a não ser que se trate de uma “violência” contra a violência, por exigência identitária.

Hermeneutics in Paul Ricoeur as a Way of Interpreting Cultural Symbolic Language and Human Interaction with the Environment

This present work intends to prospect the potential of hermeneutics in the point of view of Paul Ricoeur, as a viable proposal to understand culture, considered as a human formation filled with symbolic language. While formulating this method, Ricoeur uses concepts developed by psychoanalysis as foundation in order to study the human meaning it involves, so that the aim of the theory of interpretation includes the action of demonstrating that reality is symbolic and needs to be interpreted as such. We also worked to facilitate a dialogue regarding the environment, pursuing a concept that goes beyond the understanding of the physical environment, and encompasses the social and cultural dimensions of its constitution. We accomplished, therefore, an interdisciplinary bibliographical research where we demonstrate that human beings are by excellence promoters of culture, but also products of it. Culture supplies human beings with the resources that are indispensable for their interaction with nature, and therefore, disseminates the principles that establish behavioral patterns, which are mediated by symbols. Thus, we concluded that human beings are immersed in a cultural and environmental context governed by symbols, and that, from this presumption, the symbols construct meanings connected to existence.

Wahyu Alkitabiah dalam Tinjauan Hermeneutika Ricoeur

<p><em>This article attempts to explain the idea of revelation in the Scripture according to Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic philosophy. This paper consists of two parts. The first part describes the theory of text in Ricoeur's hermeneutics. Ricoeur's most important contributions to this section are his description of threefold semantic autonomy: semantic autonomy with respect to the author's subjective intention outside the text, semantic autonomy with respect to the original cultural context in which the text was written, and semantic autonomy with respect to the original audience or addressee. An important consequence of semantic autonomy is that interpretation of a text is never reproductive but productive. The second part explains that the language of Scripture is much more like poetic language than scientific language. Poetic language is the language of disclosure, which expresses a deeper dimension of reality. The next five literary genres in the Scriptures are discussed, through which divine revelation is expressed: namely, narrative, prophetic, prescriptive, wisdom and hymnic genre. With that Ricoeur shows the richness of biblical revelation in its various dimensions, which together form “a polysemic and polyphonic concept of revelation”.</em></p><strong>Keywords</strong>:<em> text, discourse, literary genre, semantic autonomy, revelation, narrative, hymn</em>

MAKNA PENDIDIKAN TAUHID DALAM BUKU “TUHAN MAHA ASYIK” KARYA SUJIWO TEJO DAN DR. MN. KAMBA

The purpose of this study is to find out the meaning of tauhid (monotheistic) education in the book “Tuhan Maha Asyik” by Sujiwo Tejo and Dr. MN. Kamba and know the relevance of the meaning of tauhid in the book “Tuhan Maha Asyik” by Sujiwo Tejo and Dr. MN. Kamba on Islamic Religious Education. This study is library research. As for the data collection technique using documentation methods, while the data analysis technique used is content analysis from Paul Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutical analysis. The results of this study can be concluded that this book has the meaning of tauhid education that includes the meaning of tauhid, namely rububiah and uluhiyah. The meaning of tauhid in this book has relevance to several elements found in Islamic Education, namely in accordance with the purpose of Islamic Education which includes the meaning of ketauhidan (monotheism), understanding, appreciation, and practice.

RECOGNITION AND HOSPITALITY

An increasing interest for the theme of recognition and of intersubjective relationships has been registered in the last decades. In this frame a new interest for Hegel’s theory of recognition has also been developed. This new interest focuses mostly only on the figure of struggle for recognition in the Phenomenology of Spirit. Nevertheless, Hegel’s theory of recognition has a much wider structure: it is not limited to this conflictual moment, but also connects to the themes of forgiveness and of love. That’s why it also offers the premise for a discussion of the theme of hospitality. The connection between recognition and hospitality has been emphasized by Paul Ricoeur in his last writings, dedicated to the theme of translation and to the different courses of recognition.

A Prelude to Material Hermeneutics (2021)

This paper, originally given in Groningen, the Netherlands, proposed a ‘material hermeneutics’, or, metaphorically, an interpretation which “lets things speak” via new scientific imaging technologies. Such a material hermeneutics would add to, perhaps often displace the usual linguistictextual hermeneutics so refined by Paul Ricoeur. I outline several examples of such a hermeneutics here based on some 40 or more years of technoscience experience.

Os direitos humanos como efetivação da justiça em Ricoeur

Consideramos que a reflexão de Paul Ricoeur sobre a justiça pode ser um importante caminho para a demanda acerca de tornar os Direitos Humanos (DH) socialmente relevantes. A concepção de justiça de Ricoeur está interligada com as prerrogativas da norma moral e em diálogo com a Declaração Universal dos Direitos Humanos (DUDH), especialmente na reflexão que propomos a partir do método hermenêutico-fenomenológico ricoeuriano sobre os DH como o critério balizador para a efetivação da justiça. Destacamos aqui três pontos fundamentais do pensamento ricoeuriano: a igualdade no sentido de uma justiça distributiva, o reconhecimento jurídico, tendo em vista a acolhida da alteridade independentemente das concepções sociais hegemônicas, e, por fim, a efetivação de instituições justas como o caminho para a garantia e proteção dos DH. Portanto, ao unirmos esses três fundamentos, percebemos a relação que Ricoeur estabelece entre a Justiça e os DH, bem como a importância da reflexão jus-filosófica para lançar novas luzes quanto à busca pela efetividade dos DH, encontrada na possibilidade real de alcançar a justiça para todos os seres humanos.

Thinking God in France

Abstract Organized by Richard Kearney and Joseph S. O’Leary, the 1979 Colloquium Heidegger et la question de Dieu was of critical importance for the development of phenomenology of religion in France. This special issue introduces the event and its ensuing publication to the English-speaking world. The editors’ historical and thematic contextualizing essay is followed by contributions from six leading philosophers. Richard Kearney sets the stage by updating his original foreword, while Jean-Yves Lacoste presents the central moments in the history of Heidegger’s complicated relationship to Christian thinking. Paul Ricoeur’s “Introductory Note” delivers a well-known challenge to Heidegger in a piece whose brevity belies its impact. Finally, three participants of the 1979 Colloquium, Joseph S. O’Leary, Jean Greisch, and Jean-Luc Marion, reflect back on the significance of this event and its role in developing their own groundbreaking work. The special issue closes with a brief reflection on where we find ourselves in philosophy today.

Introductory Note

Abstract The brevity of this note by Paul Ricoeur belies its impact, as a version of the famous challenge he delivered to Heidegger upon his first arrival in France at the Cerisy-la-Salle conference in 1955. Why has Heidegger passed over the Judaic tradition? He pays such close attention to the Greeks and their questioning of being, and yet what about the prophetic tradition and the ethical dimensions it inspires? Are these not an essential part of the Western tradition? Heidegger dismissed Ricoeur’s challenge at the time and never arrived at any answers in his later career. And yet this step is absolutely necessary, claims Ricoeur, if one hopes to rethink the Christian tradition, and indeed, Western philosophy.

Involvement of relatives in chronic non-malignant pain rehabilitation at multidisciplinary pain centres: part one- the patient perspective.

Chronic non-malignant pain (CNP) is a significant healthcare problem with considerable consequences for patients, relatives and society. CNP is a lifelong condition that calls for acceptance and self-management. Existing research indicates that the involvement of relatives improves patients' and relatives' management of CNP, but the area is, at present, scarcely described. Research is required to obtain knowledge about the patients' experiences, needs and preferences concerning the involvement of their relatives within the frame of CNP rehabilitation, which is the aim of this study. The study applied a qualitative phenomenological-hermeneutic design conducting individual interviews with 10 patients with CNP from three selected Multidisciplinary Pain Centres (MPC). The analysis was guided by Paul Ricoeur's philosophy of interpretation of the text. The findings illuminated the patients' perspectives on the involvement of relatives within three key themes, each having two or three sub-themes. The analysis revealed that patients in CNP rehabilitation had various interpretations of the substance of involving relatives, reflecting their sparse experiences. It seemed arbitrary, who during the rehabilitation actually experienced the involvement of their relatives, leaving the impression of an area short of structure. This shortage was troublesome, due to a heartrending impact of CNP. Patients' reduced functional level, combined with their surroundings difficulties in grasping the magnitude of CNP led to a loss of relationships and a risk of social isolation. Patients' close relationships became essential but were under pressure as well. Patients living with a spouse/cohabitant experienced that the relationship was affected by a disrupted balance and pain-related emotional outbursts. The patients experienced a profound need for being understood, but the text also revealed a need for mutual understanding to acknowledge the relatives' strain as well. Particular patients with children living at home experienced to be under great strain, complicated by a deep concern for long-term consequences for their children growing up influenced by parental CNP. Experienced involvement of relatives, even to a minor extend was perceived as beneficial for the patients, who experienced increased understanding and support from the relatives. However, due to the lack of a structured service, the patients' access to the involvement of relatives became dependent on their ability to define their need and pick it out. Thus the patients also expressed a general preference for mandatory and structured involvement, yet tailored to the specific patient. The study showed an overwhelming need for the involvement of relatives among patients with CNP, indicating that increased attention and investigation of relevant interventions are required. Despite differences between the MPC, our primary impression was that the involvement of relatives reached a minimal level of what was expected, which might entail desertion of patients scarce of resources. Individualised adjusted involvement of relatives is assumed to improve patient's management of CNP in everyday life. A family systems nursing (FSN) approach is a relevant proposal for intervention, useful in other illness areas. Still, research needs to shed light on the appropriateness of FSN when involving relatives in the rehabilitation of CNP.

Hermeneutic, Comparative, and Syncretic Philosophy: Or, On Ricoeurian, Confucian and Aztec Philosophy

Hermeneutic philosophy, and Paul Ricoeur’s formulation of hermeneutics in particular, faces a serious challenge, not from external sources, but from internal proponents of the program. In what might be called the Collapse Challenge, Ricoeur’s understanding of the hermeneutic circle is criticized for making use of structuralist methods that are no longer considered viable. Rather than look to replace Ricoeur’s work with an external model, the present essay draws on his late model of translation to suggest two viable paths forward beyond the Collapse Challenge. To develop these paths, the essay gives two concrete cases, one using Confucian philosophy, which is comparative, another using Aztec philosophy, which is syncretic.

The Fantastic of the Everyday: Re-Forming Definitions of Cinematic Parables with Paul Ricoeur

Recent publications on theology and film attempting to explain what a parable is remain less clear about how or why a parable works for cinema, and many definitions do not fully take into account the formal dynamics of film qua film nor parable qua parable. I seek to demonstrate the benefits of a more precise conception of cinematic parables by utilizing philosopher Paul Ricoeur's understanding of “parable” to make theological interpretations of film that take audio-visual aesthetics into consideration. I conclude with three recent examples of cinematic parables in order to demonstrate this Ricoeurian parabolic hermeneutic: Asghar Farhadi's Iranian melodrama, A Separation (2011), American filmmaker Anna Rose Holmer's enigmatic The Fits (2016), and Aki Kaurismäki's droll Finnish comedy, The Other Side of Hope (2017). Ultimately, I make a case for film as theology, what I am calling “theocinematics.”

From Perception to Action

This paper re-examines the well-known problem of how it is possible to have an “intuition of absences” in Sartre’s example of Pierre. I argue that this problem is symptomatic of an overly theoretical interpretation of Sartre’s use of intentionality. First, I review Husserl’s notion of evidence within his phenomenology. Next, I introduce Sartre’s Pierre example and highlight some difficulties with interpreting it as a problem of perception. By focusing on Sartre’s notion of the project, I argue instead that the problem is better understood at the level of action. In support of this interpretation, I conclude with a brief comparison to the early work of Paul Ricoeur. By borrowing some of Ricoeur’s phenomenological vocabulary tailored to action, I reinterpret Sartre’s example as a practical problem.

Pink Floyd’s Time: an aural metanarrative exploring time through form, lyric, and musical arrangement

The inability of language to capture the essence of time is a crisis that has been expressed by philosophers starting from St. Augustine to Paul Ricoeur. Appearing on their seminal album, Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd’s Time is a profound artistic attempt which transcends this language barrier by using music to bring the listeners to a more direct confrontation with time; doing so by juxtaposing time as calibrated and as experienced through the music and the lyrics, and by making the reader experience time-based affects such as impatience, expectation, monotony, and such. As a direct function of song, time is experienced as musical time in the song, thereby ensuring that the listener’s confrontation with time is immersive, with lyrics that describe the nature of experienced and calibrated time working synchronously with the music to complete the image. In the context of its release in 1974, the 6:52 minute song was in engagement with the concept of time as well, in that it was among the pioneering ones which redefined radio broadcast time beyond the standard 3 minutes afforded to popular music tracks, with the commercially preferred listener span in mind. The matter of time thus becomes a multi-layered formal engagement in the song, at the level of lyric, recording, music and listening, thereby making possible an image of time that is polished and rounded. These aural, lyrical and production-based concepts will be addressed and expanded upon to show how Pink Floyd’s Time functions as a metanarrative in how it uses and invokes the elements of time to talk about time.

Arne Grøn’s Existential Hermeneutics: Existence, Ethics and Religion

This paper presents an introduction to Arne Grøn’s existential hermeneutics as a philosophical method, while also attempting to indicate how Grøn’s work contributes to and engages in a number of crucial topics in modern continental philosophy. The first section of the paper shows how Grøn draws on Paul Ricoeur and Michael Theunissen to rethink the concept of existence through a reading of Kierkegaard that uncouples this concept from the self-evident status it attained in twenty-century existentialism. The second section of the paper argues that Grøn proposes an existential ethics that takes the Kierkegaardian notion that humans are inherently normative beings and uses this as a basis for a critique of ethics, as well as for establishing an ethics of vision inspired by Kierkegaard. The third section of the paper presents a reading of Grøn’s notion of religion as an inextricable part of human existence.