"The symbol gives rise to thought." The "approximation" of the New Testament message in a conceptual framework is the final step in its interpretation. For Ricoeur, this is a philosophical task, and hence
"within the autonomy of responsible thought."82 The biblical message presents a new starting-point for thinking and exerts a continually reforming pressure upon it. But yet thinking, once it begins, is
autonomous. If the philosopher is "converted," he is converted "within philosophy and to philosophy according to its internal exigencies."83 Ricoeur thus is saying that thinking to which the biblical message gives rise must make its own way in the intellectual world. It must function
"within the limits of a reason alone." At the same time, this does not mean that the philosopher who also happens to be a Christian may dispense with the biblical text. Thought, autonomous on its own account, must constantly seek to "approximate" the message in fresh ways. What it is as a constituting of the world of experience must be intelligible to all, whether accepted by all or not.
What is the theological use of this philosophical quest? Its purpose is not primarily apologetic. Rather, Ricoeur is trying to be sure that the gospel message everywhere has the same sense. The concrete possibility of "freedom in the light of hope" rests on our ability to specify the
"innovation of meaning" given us in Scripture as reliably the same innovation in all circumstances and vicissitudes. The innovation begins as "a-logical." It begins as an irruption into a closed order and seems a- logical not only in relation to this order, but also because it represents a cognitive excess. "But if this novelty did not make us think, then hope, like faith, would be a cry, a flash without a sequel."84 Ricoeur is saying that we cannot distinguish authentic "freedom in the light of hope" from
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1770 (27 of 37) [2/4/03 3:03:39 PM]
the utopias that are merely ecstatic projections of the thinking of this or that time or place unless the novelty of this kerygma is "made explicit by an indefinite repetition of signs," and "verified in the ‘seriousness’ of an interpretation. . ." The kerygma is to be grafted onto "real [historical]
tendencies;"85 deciphering the signs of the Resurrection wherever they are, we must find the form of conceptual universality given by the kerygma’s content. As Ricoeur says ,"It is necessary . . . that the Resurrection deploy its own logic . . ."86
The conceptual framework in which this is worked out, described as "a post-Hegelian Kantianism," will be more understandable to the
technically equipped philosopher than to the student primarily interested in biblical hermeneutics. But it is worthwhile to sketch the main
elements. Let us begin by noting what Ricoeur finds to his liking in Hegel, and then go on to show how Hegel must be corrected by Kant.
As Ricoeur puts it, "The positive and permanent value of Hegel’s phenomenology of religion is to have attempted to trace the stages through which religious ‘representations’ point toward their speculative achievement."87 The progress of the figurative toward the conceptual is actually the progress through the history of culture of the figurative expressions of desire. Hegel is concerned not with the ethics of duty in the abstract, but with the confrontation of will with will, with the
adjudication of rights in concrete communities, the family, the economy, the state. Ricoeur willingly calls Hegel’s philosophy the philosophy of the will. "Its greatness derives from the diversity of problems that it traverses and resolves: union of desire and culture, of psychology and politics, of the subjective and the universal."88 Ricoeur’s concern to find a transcendental deduction of freedom in the light of hope "cannot but be in dialogue" with Hegel, so close is Hegel’s thought to being an account of the conceptualization of hope and freedom in process of realization.
The problem with Hegel’s thought is that the fullness of life, of conflict, of culture, out of which the imaginative representations of the will come, is progressively swallowed up until only the concept survives.
Moreover, the concept emerges when the living forms of life that led up to it have ceased to be living. Philosophy always "arrives too late" to preach "what the world ought to be like." It records "gray in gray" forms of life that have become old.
It is here that Ricoeur must abandon Hegel and seek help in Kant.
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1770 (28 of 37) [2/4/03 3:03:39 PM]
Hegel’s understanding of the forward progress of the will through the history of culture is richer than Kant’s, but it leads to a notion of the completion of the will in "absolute knowledge," a metaphysical
abstraction which Hegel’s critics, Ricoeur among them, find pretentious and impossible. Kant puts a limit on our ability to "complete" our
conceptual knowledge of what is involved either in human knowing or human striving. For Kant, the role of religious symbols and
representations is imaginatively to represent the limit beyond which the demand of conceptual knowledge for completeness cannot pass.
For Kant we can think beyond the world of objects, but we cannot know that which is unconditioned by the object world. To suppose that we can know the realm of the unconditioned is, as we have seen, what Kant calls the "transcendental illusion." But in the practical realm of our willing and doing — the realm of society and culture — we experience a demand for completeness of meaning. This demand is a moral
pressure that human nature should be fulfilled, that human effort should be capable of attaining the good, and that the attainment of this good should be accompanied by happiness. The problem is that if we try to think out what this means, we run into impossible conflict between our concepts of the good and the actual circumstances of appetite, desire, political and personal compromise, and the like. If our redescriptions of the world of everyday life under the sign of the Resurrection have helped to fuel this desire for goodness and happiness in this life, if they have helped us formulate, with Kant, the notion of a human society understood as a "Kingdom of ends" (in which each human being,
including oneself, is treated as an end in him or herself), we find that the effort to realize such hopes requires us to "postulate’’ realities which we cannot "know": freedom, immortality, God. Precisely this moral
pressure to go beyond the limits of objective knowledge calls for a reintroduction of symbol.
Biblical symbols, then, serve to limit, but also to break open, our
reasoning process. It is "the task of hermeneutics to disentangle from the
‘world’ of the texts their implicit ‘project’ for existence, their indirect
‘proposition’ of new modes of being. . .Hermeneutics has finished its job when it has opened the eyes and the ears, i.e., when it has displayed before our imagination the figures of our authentic existence."89 Thus Ricoeur proffers "a transcendental inquiry into the imagination of Hope." In Kant, a transcendental inquiry asks what formal conditions must be satisfied for us to have a realm of objectivity such as, for example, the realm of objective relationships described in Newtonian
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1770 (29 of 37) [2/4/03 3:03:39 PM]
physics. Since Heidegger, the notion of a transcendental inquiry has been broadened: how, we now ask, is a certain way of seeing and acting in the world possible? Ricoeur seems to be suggesting that the figures of hope function in the interpersonal world somewhat as Kant’s categories of substance, causality, and so on, function in the interobject world.
There is a difference, of course. While the Kantian categories are pure concepts, the figures of hope correspond most closely to Kant’s
"schemas" which serve as a bridge between empirical objects and the concepts under which these objects are subsumed. The schema is not simply an image, but a product of the imagination. I reach toward the concept of substance, for example, through the notion of the
permanence of the real in time. Kant calls this a "representation of a general procedure of the imagination by which a concept receives its image."90 This notion of the "productive imagination" which reaches toward concept is further developed by Kant in his treatment of
"aesthetic ideas" in The Critique of Judgment. In Ricoeur’s words,
"At the moment of accounting for the aesthetic productions of genius, Kant invokes that power of the imagination ‘to present’ (Darstellung) those ideas of reason for which we have no concept. By means of such representation the imagination ‘occasions much thought (viel zu
denken). . .’ Historical testimony has the same structure and the same function. It, too, is a ‘presentation’ of what for reflection remains an idea, namely the idea of a letting go wherein we affirm an order exempt from that servitude from which finite existence cannot deliver itself."91 Ricoeur wants to give this "transcendental inquiry into the imagination of hope" an autonomy that it does not have in Kant, just as he wishes to move ethics, the question of the will, to center stage as the realm of realization of our relationship to being. Hence ontology, of a kind, enters through the question, "What may we hope?" The imagination functions transcendentally to give us a world in which certain
fulfillments of our being are possible. The fact of evil threatens this fulfillment because evil is expressed in our lives as "fraudulent
totalization" of our being. Under these circumstances, the conditions for the "regeneration" of the will cannot be deduced from the formal
condition of Freedom."92 And, for the same reason, "the narratives and symbols which ‘represent’ the victory of the Good Principle over the Evil Principle are nor expendable."93 That is, if our being is to be fulfilled, not in fraudulent totalization but out of what Ricoeur early in his career called its "originary affirmation," symbols of "regeneration"
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1770 (30 of 37) [2/4/03 3:03:39 PM]
must be at work in the "productive imagination."
For, as Ricoeur points out, in the Dialectics in Kant’s Second Critique we find the question of the "full or complete" object of the will. This involves "the reconciliation of freedom and nature, i.e., the achievement of Man as a whole."94 Precisely, that is, the question that began to open up in his early work. How can we speak of an authentic actualization of freedom unless we can articulate in productive imagination the content of the hope underlying such freedom? Such an ideal, presumably would be a counterpart of the articulation of self-abdicating freedom, the
"servile will." It would be an articulation of the symbols and metaphors of humanity as regenerate and fulfilled.
This articulation has begun, but only barely, in Ricoeur’s treatment of the texts of the Resurrection. Are we to expect that the long-awaited Poetics of the Will will complete the needed "symbolic of
regeneration?" The direction of Ricoeur’s work to date suggests that it could. So Ricoeur may fulfill the promise implicit in his early
recognition that we hope for "a recreation of language. We, citizens of postmodernity, "wish to be called again."
NOTES:
1. Paul Ricoeur, La Symbolique du mal (Paris: Aubier, 1960). The Symbolism of Evil, Emerson Buchanan, trans. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), p. 349.
2. See the preface to the first edition of Paul Ricoeur, Histoire et verite (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1955). History and Truth, Charles A. Kelbley, trans. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), p. 5.
3. Ricoeur has preached from time to time in the Rockefeller Chapel of the University of Chicago, and elsewhere. Among his published
sermons are "You Are the Salt of the Earth," in Political and Social Essays by Paul Ricoeur, David Stewart and Joseph Bien, eds. (Athens:
Ohio University Press, 1974), pp. 105-24, and "Listening to the Parables of Jesus," in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart, eds. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), pp. 239ff. Ricoeur was the preacher at the eucharistic service uniting Protestants and
Roman Catholics in the midst of the uprising of workers and students in
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1770 (31 of 37) [2/4/03 3:03:39 PM]
Paris on June 2, 1968. His sermon, as summarized in Christianisme social (Nos. 7-10, 1968), may be found in translation in Lewis S.
Mudge, The Crumbling Walls (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1970), pp. 30-33.
4. Ricoeur has recently been colleague and collaborator, in particular, with Norman Perrin, David Tracy, Mircea Eliade, and others, at the University of Chicago.
5. See Loretta Dornisch, "Symbolic Systems and the Interpretation of Scripture: An Introduction to the Work of Paul Ricoeur," Semeia IV (1975): 17f.
6. See "Freedom in the Light of Hope," below, p. 156.
7. The Symbolism of Evil, p. 356.
8. Ricoeur, "Biblical Hermeneutics," Semeia, IV (1975): 29.
9. E.g., Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), p. 92.
10. See "Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation," below, pp.
105ff., and "The Hermeneutics of Testimony," below, passim.
11. "Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation," below, pp. 73ff., 99ff.
12. See "The Hermeneutics of Symbols: I," Dennis Savage, trans., in Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays on Hermeneutics, Don Ihde, ed. (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1974), p.
299.
13. Quoted in the Editor’s Introduction, The Conflict of Interpretations, p. xxii.
14. See Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, Erazim V. Kohak, trans. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966) and The Conflict of Interpretations, passim.
15. The Symbolism of Evil, p.355.
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1770 (32 of 37) [2/4/03 3:03:39 PM]
16. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), p. 3.
17. The Symbolism of Evil, p. 351.
18. Ibid., p. 352.
19. Ibid., p. 19.
20. Ibid., p. 355.
21. Ibid., p. 355.
22. See "Preface to Bultmann," below, p. 65.
23. Ibid., pp. 65-66.
24. Paul Ricoeur, "The Language of Faith," in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, p. 227.
25. Paul Ricoeur, Preface to Don Ihde, Hermeneutic Phenomenology:
The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971), p. xv.
26. Ihde, pp. 4ff.
27. Ricoeur began the study of Husserl’s work while a prisoner of war in Germany in World War II, subsequently publishing a number of translations and studies in French. Some of these have been gathered in English in the volume, Husserl. An Analysis of His Phenomenology, Edward G. Ballard and Lester E. Embree, trans. (Evanston:
Northwestern University Press, 1967).
28. See note 14, above.
29. So Ihde, pp. 26ff.
30. "Existence and Hermeneutics," in The Conflict of Interpretations, p.
6.
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1770 (33 of 37) [2/4/03 3:03:39 PM]
31. Freud and Philosophy, p. 46.
32. Ibid., p. 46.
33. Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, Charles Kelbley, trans. (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1965).
34. Paul Ricoeur, "The Antinomy of Human Reality," in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, p. 33.
35. The Symbolism of Evil, pp. 151ff., et passim.
36. "Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation,’’ below, p. 106.
37. Freud and Philosophy, p. 525.
38. Interpretation Theory, passim.
39. Ibid., p. 92.
40. See "Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation," below, passim.
41. Interpretation Theory, pp. 8ff.
42. Ibid., p. 16.
43. Ibid., p. 13.
44. "The I-Iermeneutics of Testimony," below, pp. 110ff.
45. "Structure and Hermeneutics," in The Conflict of Interpretations, p.
45.
46. Ibid., p. 46.
47. Ibid., p. 46.
48. Ibid., p. 46.
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1770 (34 of 37) [2/4/03 3:03:39 PM]
49. Ibid., p. 46.
50. "Preface to Bultmann," below, p. 50.
51. Ibid., pp. 51-52.
52. Ibid., P. 52.
53. Ibid., p. 52.
54. Ibid., p. 56.
55. Ibid., p. 56.
56. "Structure and Hermeneutics," in The Conflict of Interpretations, p.
45, Ricoeur’s italics.
57. Van A. Harvey, The Historian and the Believer (New York:
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1966).
58. "Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation," below, pp. 73- 74.
59. Ibid., p. 77.
60. Ibid., p. 90.
61. Ibid., p. 100.
62. Ibid., p. 101.
63. Ibid., p. 102.
64. Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello, S. J., trans. (Toronto and Buffalo:
University of Toronto Press, 1977).
65. "Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation," below, p.107.
66. Ibid., p. 109.
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1770 (35 of 37) [2/4/03 3:03:39 PM]
67. "Freedom in the Light of Hope," below, pp. 155ff.
68. Ibid., p. 157.
69. Ibid., p. 159.
70. Ibid., p. 159.
71. Ibid., p. 159.
72. Ibid., pp. 159-60.
73. Ibid., p. 161.
74. Ibid., p. 160.
75. Ibid., p. 162.
76. Ibid., p. 162.
77. Paul Ricoeur, "The Specificity of Religious Language," Semeia IV (1975): 127.
78. Ibid., p. 127.
79. "Freedom in the Light of Hope," below, p. 164.
80. "The Specificity of Religious Language," p. 127.
81. "Freedom in the Light of Hope," below, p. 180.
82. Ibid., p. 156.
83. Ibid., p. 157.
84. Ibid., p. 165.
85. Ibid., p. 165.
86. Ibid., p. 166.
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1770 (36 of 37) [2/4/03 3:03:39 PM]
87. "The Specificity of Religious Language," p. 140.
88. "Freedom in the Light of Hope," below, p. 168.
89. "The Specificity of Religious Language," p. 144.
90. Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, Max Muller, trans.
(New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1927), pp. 11Sf.
91. "Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation," below, p. 116.
92. "The Specificity of Religious Language," p. 145.
93. Ibid., p. 145.
94. Ibid., p. 145.
15
http://www.religion-online.org/cgi-bin/relsearchd.dll/showchapter?chapter_id=1770 (37 of 37) [2/4/03 3:03:39 PM]