Hermeneutics and the Productive Imagination: Paul Ricoeur in the 1970s

Author(s): Sanford Schwartz

Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 63, No. 3 (Jul., 1983), pp. 290-300
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
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Hermeneutics and the Productive
Imagination:
Paul Ricoeur in the 1970s
Sanford
Schwartz / University
of
Chicago
During
the last two
decades,
the
writings
of Paul Ricoeur have exerted
a
growing
influence in this
country, especially
in
divinity
schools and
seminaries. Amid the
confusing array
of
contemporary methodologies
that vie for our
allegiance,
Ricoeur has fostered
greater understanding
of the
assumptions
and limits of our various
options
and demonstrated
the
advantages
of dialectical
exchange
between theories that
appear
irreconcilably opposed. Throughout
his
career,
Ricoeur has mediated
between a reflective
philosophy
that
proceeds
from the
subject's
search
for
self-understanding
and the
objectively
constituted sciences which
bypass
reflective consciousness or
question
the
authority
of its testi-
mony.
In his first
major work,
Freedom and Nature: The
Voluntary
and the
Involuntary (1950),
Ricoeur extended his
phenomenological description
of the will
by using
the
objectifying
stance of
biology
and
psychology
to
reveal
aspects
of
subjective experience
overlooked in
purely phenome-
nological
studies. His "hermeneutics of recollection" in the
1960s,
which
aimed at the
recovery
of
meaning
in
religious symbolism,
matured
through
its
dialogue
with the "hermeneutics of
suspicion" encouraged
by Marx, Nietzsche,
and Freud.2 In a similar
manner,
Ricoeur's more
recent work on the
theory
of
interpretation,
which turns from the
problematics
of double
meaning
in the
symbol
to textual discourse in
general,
modifies Gadamer's
philosophical
hermeneutics
by
consider-
1
Paul
Ricoeur,
Freedom and Nature: The
Voluntary
and the
Involuntary,
trans. E. V. Kohak
(Evanston,
Ill.: Northwestern
University Press,
1966).
On Ricoeur's
practice
of
confronting
phenomenology
and hermeneutics with the so-called
counterdisciplines throughout
the 1950s
and
1960s,
see Don
Ihde,
Hermeneutic
Phenomenology:
The
Philosophy of
Paul Ricoeur
(Evanston,
Ill.:
Northwestern
University Press,
1971).
2
Paul
Ricoeur,
Fallible
Man,
trans. C.
Kelbley (1960; Chicago: Henry Regnery Co.,
1965)
marks the transition from Ricoeur's
early phenomenology
of the will to the hermeneutic
approach
of The
Symbolism of Evil,
trans. E. Buchanan
(1960;
New York:
Harper
& Row
Publishers,
1967).
See also Freud and
Philosophy:
An
Essay
on
Interpretation,
trans. D.
Savage (1965;
New
Haven,
Conn.: Yale
University Press,
1970);
and The
Conflict
of Interpretations,
ed. Don Ihde
(1969;
Evanston,
Ill.: Northwestern
University Press,
1974).
Ricoeur discusses the various turns in his
career in "From Existentialism to the
Philosophy
of
Language" (1971), reprinted
as an
appendix
to The Rule
of Metaphor,
trans. Robert
Czerny,
Kathleen
McLaughlin,
and
John Costello,
S.J.
(1975;
Toronto:
University
of Toronto
Press,
1977), pp.
315-22. In addition see
"My
Relation to
the
History
of
Philosophy,"
IliffReview
35,
no. 3
(Fall 1978):
5-12. Charles E.
Reagan
and David
Stewart have edited The
Philosophy of
Paul Ricoeur
(Boston:
Beacon
Press,
1975),
an
anthology
which traces his
development
from the late 1940s to the mid-1970s.
c 1983
by
The
University
of
Chicago.
All
rights
reserved.
0022-4189/83/6303-0006$01.00
290
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Paul Ricoeur and Hermeneutics
ing
the counterclaims of structuralism and of Habermas's
"critique
of
ideologies."3
Out of this latest dialectical encounter Ricoeur
emerges
with a
description
of textual
discourse,
as well as a
theory
of
interpreta-
tion,
which has theoretical
significance
of its own and
provides
a foun-
dation for his studies of the
productive
function of the
imagination
in
literary
and biblical texts.4
Ricoeur's
approach
to
textuality may
be divided into four interrelated
phases
that follow the
destiny
of the text from the initial event of
writing
to the reader's act of
appropriation.
Each of these moments-
distanciation
by writing, objectification by structure,
reference to a
world,
and
self-understanding by reading-is
modeled on a
specific
feature of
language
itself and
corresponds
to a
particular
mode of
textual
interpretation. Considering
in succession theories that locate
the
meaning
of a text in authorial
intention,
the formal
design
of the
work,
the world to which it
refers,
and the reader's
response,
Ricoeur
establishes a framework for
examining
the merits of each alternative
by
constructing
a
comprehensive
"hermeneutical arc" that includes and
qualifies
them all. At the risk of
schematizing
Ricoeur's dialectical
thinking excessively,
we will review
briefly
each
phase
of the herme-
3
Ricoeur's
dialogue
with structuralism
pervades
his work of the late 1960s and 1970s and will
be discussed at
length
in this review. On Ricoeur's
attempt
to mediate between Gadamer and
Habermas,
see "Ethics and
Culture,"
in Political and Social
Essays,
ed. David Stewart'and
Joseph
Bien
(Athens:
Ohio
University Press,
1974), pp. 243-70;
and "Hermeneutics and the
Critique
of
Ideology,"
in Hermeneutics and the Human
Sciences,
ed. and trans.
John
B.
Thompson (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press,
1981), pp.
63-100.
According
to
Ricoeur,
while hermeneutics
emphasizes
our
participation
in a tradition and seeks to
preserve
our cultural
heritage,
the
critique
of
ideologies
is the
offspring
of the
Enlightenment pretension
to liberate the mind from
the fetters of traditional
prejudices
and
pursue
a future unconstrained
by
the
ideological
distortions of the
past.
Ricoeur
acknowledges
that the hermeneutic
tradition,
which arose out of
the
romartic hostility
to the
objectifying
stance of the
physical
sciences and a
longing
to recover
a threatened
heritage,
too
easily yields
to the forms of the
past
from which it
ought
to maintain a
critical distance. While
affirming
the main tendencies of modern
hermeneutics,
Ricoeur once
again attempts
to enhance reflective
philosophy through
a
dialogue
with an
objectively
constituted science which
exposes
its weaknesses.
4
Despite
the
appearance
of several collections of his
essays, many
of Ricoeur's
writings
of the
last decade are scattered in a
variety
of
journals. Fortunately,
some of his most
important pieces
on
philosophical
hermeneutics are now collected in Hermeneutics and the Human
Sciences,
which
supplements
the valuable but
highly compressed
series of
lectures, Interpretation Theory:
Discourse
and the
Surplus of Meaning (Fort
Worth: Texas Christian
University Press,
1976).
While The Rule
of
Metaphor
contains most of Ricoeur's extensive research on the
theory
of
figurative language,
there
is no
equivalent
volume for his still
evolving
work on narrative
(see
n. 10 below for
journal
references).
But the most serious
deficiency
lies in the area of biblical hermeneutics. With the
exception
of one small
collection,
Essays
on Biblical
Interpretation,
ed. Lewis S.
Mudge (Phila-
delphia:
Fortress
Press,
1980),
most of Ricoeur's
significant
contribution to biblical hermeneutics
is
dispersed
in
periodicals
and conference
proceedings (see
nn. 15-18 below for
journal
references).
A
bibliography
of Ricoeur's
writings through
the mid-1970s
appears
in Studies in the
Philosophy of
Paul
Ricoeur,
ed. Charles E.
Reagan (Athens:
Ohio
University Press,
1979), pp.
180-94. I am indebted to Kenner Swain for
bringing
to
my
attention a number of Ricoeur's less
publicized essays
of the last ten
years.
291
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The
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of
Religion
neutical arc and
analyze
the
strategic position
of the third
phase
-the
central domain of hermeneutics -in
Ricoeur's
theory
of
interpretation.5
Like the
structuralists,
Ricoeur draws on modern
linguistics
for his
characterization of
textuality.
But instead of
employing
the
semiologi-
cal model based on Saussure's
approach
to
language
as
systematic
code
(langue),
Ricoeur turns to Emile Benveniste's account of the
distinctive features of actual discourse
(Saussure's parole).6 According
to
Benveniste,
while the
linguistic
code is virtual and outside of
time,
spoken
discourse is realized
temporally
and in the
present.
Second,
while the basic unit of the
linguistic system
is the
sign,
the basic unit of
living speech
is the sentence with its
subject-predicate
form. Ricoeur
focuses on the
peculiar relationship
between these first two features of
discourse: as the
temporal
realization of
propositional
statements,
dis-
course occurs as a transient event but takes the form of
proposition
that
can be identified
repeatedly
as the same.
However,
when we turn from
spoken
to written
communication,
this event/form
relationship
is
altered
by
the introduction of
writing,
which distances the statement
from the initial act of articulation. Ricoeur maintains that
writing pre-
serves not the
ephemeral
event itself but the
enduring meaning
of the
event which is inscribed in the
proposition.
It also accentuates the
noncoincidence between the author's
subjective
intentions and the
immanent sense of the
statement,
between "utterer's
meaning"
and
"utterance
meaning,"
which is minimal
by comparison
in a
spoken
dialogue.
For
Ricoeur,
the distanciation that
writing
establishes
between
subjective
intention and
objective meaning legitimates
the
study
of the written text as an autonomous
entity
without reconstruct-
ing
the author's mental life or his historical milieu.
The first moment of the hermeneutical arc is the
province
of critical
theories concerned
primarily
with the
relationship
between author and
text. It is the
phase
of
textuality
which characterized the "Romantic
hermeneutics" of the nineteenth
century
and remains the focus of
certain theorists
today.7 According
to
Ricoeur,
the
great
nineteenth-
century
founders of modern
hermeneutics,
Schleiermacher and
Dilthey, sought
to
bridge
the cultural distance between
past
and
present by recovering through
extant
signs
the
psychic
life of the author
in his
original
milieu.
However,
Ricoeur attaches
significance
to
5
Ricoeur's use of this
quadrapartite
scheme is
apparent
at
many points
in the
essays
in
Thompson's
collection and in
"Philosophical
Hermeneutics and
Theological Hermeneutics,"
Studies in
Religion/Sciences Religieuses 5,
no. 1
(1975)
14-33.
6
See
esp. Ricoeur,
Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences
(n.
3
above), pp.
197-203.
7
The most celebrated modern defense of this
position
is E. D.
Hirsch,
Validity
in
Interpretation
(New Haven,
Conn.: Yale
University Press,
1967),
which uses Husserl to construct an
updated
hermeneutics aimed at the
recovery
of authorial intention.
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Paul Ricoeur and Hermeneutics
Dilthey's increasing emphasis
on the immanent
meaning
of the
text,
especially
after the
publication
of Husserl's
Logical Investigations.8
Husserl identified
meaning
not with
subjective processes
or ideas in the
mind of the
individual,
but with ideal
objects
that can be isolated and
analyzed independently
of the
subject's psychological
state. For
Ricoeur,
Husserl's liberation of
logic
from
psychology,
his
recognition
that the
meaning
of a conscious act is
lodged
in the
object
it
intends,
manifests a
significant
shift at the turn of the
century
not
only
in
philosophy
but also in textual
theory.
The turn in
philosophy
from the
psychological
to the
logical corresponds
to a
change
from
psychic
identification with the author's
subjectivity
to the
study
of the text itself
as an autonomous
entity,
or what Eliot called the
"objective
correlative"
of the author's
subjective
life.
Signs
of this transformation
appear
not
only
in
Dilthey's
later
writings
and in Eliot's
impersonal theory
of
poetry,
which
anticipated
the New
Criticism,
but also in Russian
formalism,
which is the
early twentieth-century
antecedent to contem-
porary
structuralism.
The second moment of the
interpretive
arc
belongs
to theories which
construe the text as an
entity open
to
objective investigation
of its
structure and
meaning.
From this
perspective,
the author is considered
not the
psychological subject
with whom we seek to
identify,
but the
artisan who
imposes
form on matter and submits
impersonally
to the
rules that
govern production
in a
given literary genre.
His
individuality
is not
eliminated,
but
analyzed
in its
objectified
form as his
"style."
According
to
Ricoeur,
the formal and
rule-governed
nature of textual
composition
warrants the kind of
objective analysis
of the
codifying
process
that has been the hallmark of structuralism. At first Ricoeur's
acknowledgment
of the
validity
of the
semiological approach
seems to
betray
his commitment to actual discourse rather than the
language
code as the model for
textuality.
Unlike the Saussurean
langue
employed by
the
structuralists,
discourse is tied
by
means of various
indicators,
such as the
first-person pronoun,
to an actual
speaker.
Nonetheless,
Ricoeur claims that the written text not
only
distances the
immanent
meaning
of the text from the author's
subjective intention,
but also breaks the
immediacy
of self-reference characteristic of
spoken
discourse.
Hence,
there is
justification,
at least in this
phase
of the
hermeneutical
arc,
for
examining
the text as an autonomous
entity
without direct
appeal
to the
subjective
life of the
author, or,
as we shall
see,
that of the reader.
Ricoeur maintains that the
development
of
semiology
as a
genuine
science of the text
poses
a
challenge
to modern hermeneutics. The
8
See Edmund
Husserl,
Logical Investigations,
trans.
J.
N.
Findlay (London: Routledge
&
Kegan Paul,
1970).
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The
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of
Religion
success of
semiology compels
us to
question
Dilthey's distinction,
which
is
perpetuated
in a certain
respect by
Gadamer,
between the
objectively
constituted
explanations (Erklirung) appropriate
to the natural sciences
and the
distinctively
hermeneutic
process
of
understanding (Verstehen)
reserved for the human sciences. For
Ricoeur,
structuralism has
demonstrated that the
objectifying methodology
of the sciences can no
longer
be excluded from
hermeneutics,
and that the
semiological
explanation
of the text is a
necessary step
toward hermeneutic under-
standing
of its
meaning.
It is undeniable that Ricoeur's
acceptance
of
structuralist
analysis
as a
legitimate
moment of
interpretation
seems at
times a willful
attempt
to mediate between the irreconcilable aims and
assumptions
of two rival traditions.
However,
what at first
appears
to
be a
merely diplomatic gesture
is
actually part
of a
strategy
which
becomes
apparent
in the
passage
from the second to the third moment
of the
interpretive
arc: the
recognition
on the
ascending
curve of the arc
that the text
possesses
a determinate structure irreducible to the
author's
subjectivity prepares
the
way
on the
descending
curve for the
acceptance
of the text as
referring objectively
to a "world" irreducible to
the
subjectivity
of the reader. In other
words,
the
objectifying proce-
dures of structuralism enable hermeneutics to
identify
the text with a
determinate and stable
meaning
which transcends the finite horizon of
both the author who wrote it. and the various readers who seek to
appropriate
it.
As he moves into the third
phase
of the hermeneutical
arc,
Ricoeur
turns once
again
to Benveniste and raises the issue of the referential
dimension of the
text,
which tends to be
ignored
or denied
by
theories
that dwell on its intrinsic structure. While Saussure's
langue
contains
signs
which refer
differentially only
to other
signs
within the
system,
Benveniste
argues
that discourse is directed to
something beyond
itself.
Borrowing
from
Frege's terminology,
Ricoeur states that discourse has
not
only
an immanent
"sense,"
but also a "reference" to a world outside
itself with which it establishes some connection. It is true that the intro-
duction of
writing
modifies the referential character of
discourse,
just
as
it affects the event/form
relationship
of
spoken dialogue
and its direct
tie to a
speaking subject: writing deprives
discourse of the shared situa-
tion of the interlocutors that exists in a
spoken dialogue,
and loses what
Ricoeur describes as the "ostensive" referential
relationship
between
discourse and situation that
prevails
in live conversation.
Nonetheless,
Ricoeur
rejects
those critics who dissociate the text from external
reference
entirely by choosing
as the
paradigm
for
textuality
a handful
of
avant-garde
texts--the
poems
of Mallarme or
Joyce's Finnegans
Wake-in which
signifiers appear
to have broken loose from the signi-
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Paul Ricoeur and Hermeneutics
fied.9
Instead,
Ricoeur maintains that the loss of immediate ostensive
or situational reference in the written text is the
negative
condition for
establishing
a second-order reference to
reality.
The
literary
text
suspends
the referential function of
language
at one level and reconsti-
tutes it at another
by referring
to a world distinct from the
ordinary
reality
to which we are accustomed. While romantic hermeneutics
sought
the author's
subjectivity
behind the
text, contemporary
herme-
neutics
belongs
instead to the third
phase
of the
interpretive
arc in its
emphasis upon
the
imaginative
world
displayed
in front of the text.
Through
the
power
of a narrative to
project
a world at once different
from and similar to our
own,
or the
capacity
of
lyric
to
embody
a new
mode of
feeling,
we
explore previously unimagined possibilities
that
may eventually
influence our habitual
patterns
of
thought,
action,
and
feeling.
In the last
phase
of the hermeneutical
arc,
Ricoeur examines the
relationship
between the world to which the text refers and the reader
who
attempts
to
appropriate
it for his own time and
place.
Once more
Ricoeur
proceeds
from the
example
of discourse and then
emphasizes
the difference between
spoken
and written communication. Unlike the
language
code,
discourse
possesses
an auditor to whom a
message
is
addressed.
However,
a written text is not confined to its
original
audience;
it is available to
any
reader who has access to it. Recent
theorists have
grown increasingly preoccupied
with the reader's
partici-
pation
in the
interpretive process,
and some have claimed that the
meaning
of a text is
inseparable
from the
subjective response,
the
historical
circumstances,
or the
interpretive
conventions of those who
read it.
10
The fascination with
reader-response criticism,
the
emphasis
upon
the
historicity
of
interpretation,
the
exploration
of the
varying
norms
through
which readers
categorize
and
interpret
texts -all
grant
a
priority
to the reader similar to that which the nineteenth
century
bestowed
upon
the author. But
just
as he wishes to avoid the inten-
tional
fallacy
at one
pole
of the hermeneutic
arc,
Ricoeur also desires to
9
On the
triumph
of the
signifier
in recent French
criticism,
see Roland
Barthes, "Theory
of
the
Text,"
in Robert
Young, ed., Untying
the Text: A Post-Structuralist Reader
(Boston: Routledge
&
Kegan Paul,
1981), pp.
31-47.
10
See,
for
instance, Jane
P.
Thompkins,
ed.
Reader-Response
Criticism: From Formalism to Post-
Structuralism
(Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press,
1981);
Roland
Barthes, S/Z,
trans.
Richard Miller
(New
York: Hill &
Wang, 1974), pp. 3-15;
and
Stanley Fish,
Is There a Text in This
Class? The
Authority
of
Interpretive Communities
(Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1980).
Insofar as he
emphasizes
the
inescapable historicity
of
interpretation,
Gadamer's
theory
of the
text
may
rest
uneasily
in this
group.
While Ricoeur is aware of Gadamer's careful
attempts
to
avoid
interpretive relativism,
his own
theory may
be seen as an effort to overcome the shadow of
relativism that still surrounds Gadamer's
position by incorporating
into hermeneutics the
formalist notion of
objective
and stable
meaning
in the text.
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The
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forestall the affective
fallacy
at the other
pole.
Parallel to his distinction
between
subjective
intention and
objective meaning
on the
ascending
curve,
he discriminates between the
objective
reference of the text to a
world and the
subjective
appropriation
of the text on the
descending
curve.
Although
it is the aim of hermeneutics to overcome the
estrange-
ment between
past
and
present
forms of
expression,
we must
recognize
that the world of the text is different not
only
from the author's finite
horizon but from the reader's as well.
Subjective appropriation
of a text
ought
to involve not the reduction of the text to the reader's own
world,
but rather the self-examination made
possible by exposing
oneself as a
reader to a textual world distinct from one's
contingent
circumstances.
Ricoeur envisions
interpretation
as the dialectical interaction between
the
understanding
of the world
projected by
the text and the self-
understanding
which takes
place
as the reader enters a
reality
different
from his own. For
Ricoeur,
the act of
appropriating
a text should be a
process
of
disappropriating
one's habitual
identity
as it is transformed
imaginatively
and
noncoercively by
its
participation
in the world of the
text.
Ricoeur's
approach
to
metaphor
is
closely
tied to this account of the
literary
text as a world which transforms
reality
as we
ordinarily
know
it. In The Rule
of Metaphor,
Ricoeur extends the
pioneering
efforts of
I. A.
Richards,
Max
Black,
Monroe
Beardsley,
and their
successors,
by developing
the so-called tensional or interaction
theory
of
metaphor
which has
appeared
in the twentieth
century. Just
as he
rejects
the
sign
in favor of the sentence in his
theory
of the
text,
Ricoeur shifts the
theory
of
metaphor
from the individual word to the sentence.
According
to
Ricoeur,
a
metaphor
should be understood not as the
decorative substitution of one term for
another,
but as the act of
predicating
one
thing
of another that reveals an
aspect
of the
subject
or
of both terms which we have not noticed before. In the traditional
"substitution"
theory
of
pre-twentieth-century
rhetoricians such as
Fontanier,
the
metaphorical
term served
primarily
to embellish an
absent
proper term;
in the modern tensional
theory,
a new
metaphor
is
a
genuine
semantic innovation that constitutes a relation between ideas
formerly kept apart by existing categories
of
thought.
Like the
literary
text,
metaphor
has the referential function of
redescribing
reality by
proposing
connections that call into
question
the
existing
order of our
semantic fields. The creative
metaphor may
be likened to Aristotle's
poetic mythos,
which functions as a heuristic
fiction,
or a
model,
to
present
us with new
possibilities
that
challenge
our habitual modes of
thought. Metaphor
has on a small scale the mimetic
capacity
of the
fictional
text,
which does not
reproduce
the
existing
form of
reality,
but
produces
a new form which redescribes the
ordinary
world and invites
296
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Paul Ricoeur and Hermeneutics
us to consider in
imagination
the new set of
relationships
that
appears
before us.1l
While Ricoeur disavows the
attempt by
Nietzsche and Derrida to
collapse
the fundamental distinction between
metaphor
and
concept,
he affirms that
metaphor
issues from the same
unifying capacity
which
engenders
an abstract
idea,
and he
regards metaphorical
creation as
the
chrysalis
for
conceptual
innovation.'2 But,
unlike the
generic
concept, metaphor
establishes a new
identity
without
erasing
the
difference between the terms it relates: "A
family
resemblance first
brings
individuals
together
before the rule of a
logical
class dominates
them.
Metaphor,
a
figure
of
speech, presents
in an
open
fashion,
by
means of a conflict between
identity
and
difference,
the
process
that,
in a
covert
manner,
generates
semantic
grids by
fusion of differences into
identity."'3
In other
words,
by displaying
the
identity
established
by
a
generic concept,
without
canceling
the differences between the terms
related, metaphor presents
as
possibility
what the
concept
renders as
fact.
Just
as the fictional text
challenges
the order of our conventional
experience by projecting
new
possibilities,
"the
strategy
of
language
at
work in
metaphor
consists in
obliterating
the
logical
and established
frontiers of
language,
in order to
bring
to
light
new resemblances that
previous
classification
kept
us from
seeing."14
Ricoeur's reassertion of the referential function of
metaphor
and
fiction
appears initially
to run counter to the main tendencies of
twentieth-century
art and critical
theory.
In the first two decades of this
century,
artists declared their
independence
from the fetters which
bound their works to external
reality.
While
avant-garde painters
abandoned the traditional ideal of
representation
and
sought
to
disrupt
the sense of
continuity
between the world
depicted
on the canvas and
the world of
ordinary perception, experimental
novelists
relinquished
1
In addition to The Rule
of Metaphor (n.
2
above),
see Paul
Ricoeur,
"The
Metaphorical
Process as
Cognition, Imagination,
and
Feeling,"
Critical
Inquiry 5,
no. 1
(1978):
143-59.
Ricoeur's most extensive treatment of the
parallel
between
metaphor
and the Aristotelian
mythos
and mimesis
appears
in the first
chapter
of The Rule
of Metaphor.
For a restatement of his
theory
of
metaphor
and fiction that also
attempts
to
revamp
traditional
philosophical
accounts of the
imagination,
see "The Function of Fiction in
Shaping Reality,"
Man and World 12
(1979):
123-41.
Ricoeur's
published
studies of the function of narrative itself include "The Human
Experience
of
Time and
Narrative,"
Research in
Phenomenology
9
(1979): 17-34,
and "Narrative
Time,"
Critical
Inquiry 7,
no. 1
(1980):
169-90. A brisk but informative
summary
of Ricoeur's
approach
to
language
in
general
and the
redescriptive
role of
metaphor
and fiction
appears
in
"Creativity
in
Language: Word,
Polysemy, Metaphor," Philosophy Today
17
(1973):
97-111.
12
Ricoeur discusses Derrida's radicalization of
Heidegger
in The Rule
of Metaphor, pp.
280-95.
13
Ibid., p.
198. Ricoeur
regards
this
capacity
of
metaphor
"to
display
relations in a
depicting
mode" as the basis of the sense of
pictorial
concreteness we
generally
associate with the
figure.
On
the "iconic" dimension of
metaphor,
see
esp.
"The
Metaphorical
Process as
Cognition,
Imagination,
and
Feeling"
and "The Function of Fiction in
Shaping Reality" (n.
10
above).
14
Ricoeur,
The Rule
of Metaphor, p.
197.
297
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The
Journal
of
Religion
the linear time
sequences,
reliable authorial
perspective,
and consis-
tency
of
representational
mode
through
which the
nineteenth-century
"realistic" novel created a
seemingly
accurate
reproduction
of the social
world. The
emergence
of a new art which stressed the
discontinuity
between the text and
ordinary experience
also fostered critical theories
which
depreciated
the referential function of
imaginative
works and
focused
primarily
on their intrinsic structures. For
instance,
the
example
of
early twentieth-century experimental
literature
inspired
the
Russian formalists to dissociate the text not
only
from the
personality
of
the author but also from the historical milieu it
depicts.
Formalist
critics have been
remarkably
successful in
demonstrating
that individ-
ual works of
art,
both traditional and
modern,
are not reducible to the
social world
they portray; they
have also shown that the
history
of art
proceeds through
the interaction and transformation of
generic
con-
ventions that transcend individual
authors,
and that the course of its
development
does not
always
coincide with the course of external
events.
Ricoeur does not
reject
the formalist turn from the author's
subjec-
tivity
to the intrinsic structure of the
text,
but does
attempt
to revive the
notion of reference which fell into
disrepute
at the same time. Most
critics who still
argue
for the
descriptive
function of art revert to a naive
copy theory
of
representation,
and
usually
remain hostile to the
technical innovations of modern art and to the formalist
approaches
that
appeared simultaneously.
However,
Ricoeur's
theory
of reference
deliberately
takes account of the formalist
recognition
of the discon-
tinuity
between the text and the
everyday
world around us. For
Ricoeur,
the
explication
of the referential dimension of the text is not
opposed to,
but rather
proceeds from,
the formal
analysis
of its struc-
tural features. While the text loses its reference to the world as we
ordinarily
know
it,
it establishes a second-order reference to
presenting
us with a world whose unusual characteristics
may
lead us to further
understanding
of ourselves and our
possibilities.
In this
respect,
Ricoeur's
theory
affirms the stance of certain
Modernists,
such as Eliot
and
Brecht,
who
justified
the
discontinuity
between art and life
by
claiming
that art should not
merely
reflect
existing patterns
of
thought,
action,
and
feeling,
but
project
a world with a
peculiar logic
of its
own,
which in turn "illuminates the actual
world,
because it
gives
us a new
point
of view from which to
inspect
it."'5
In terms of his own
hermeneutical
arc,
Ricoeur's
theory
of the text mediates between
formalist theories that
carry
an awareness of the "otherness" of the text
to the
point
of
dissociating
it from life
entirely,
and those reader-
15
T. S.
Eliot,
The Sacred Wood
(1920;
London:
Methuen, 1950), p.
117.
298
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Paul Ricoeur and Hermeneutics
oriented theories which are so
eager
to "own" the text that
they
lose
sight
of its
peculiar logic.
For
Ricoeur,
textual
interpretation
is a
process
of dialectical movement between "distanciation" and
"appropri-
ation,"
between the
objectifying
stance that enables us to
identify
the
otherness of the text and the self-examination which takes
place
as we
struggle
to relate the text to our own situation.
The dialectic of distanciation and
appropriation
has
special
relevance to the
problem
of modern biblical
interpretation.
Even in the
late twentieth
century
the battle still
goes
on between those who
maintain
unquestioned fidelity
to the outlook of the Bible's
original
authors,
whose
authority
is sanctioned
by
divine
inspiration,
and those
who see the
necessity
of
reinterpreting
the text in a
way
that
speaks
to
the
drastically
altered conditions of
modernity.
In his
theory
of the
text,
Ricoeur
attempts
to avoid both the intentional and the affective
fallacy
and, similarly,
in his
approach
to biblical
texts,
he steers a course
between
conflicting
extremes. 16
Capitalizing
on recent trends in biblical
scholarship,
Ricoeur examines the various
literary
forms
through
which faith is
expressed,
and locates the
meaning
of a biblical text
beyond
the
temporal
horizon of both authors and readers in the world
displayed by
the
particular
form. Ricoeur's account of the
power
of
metaphor
and fiction to redescribe
reality
is
especially
well suited to the
parable,
which shows us what the
Kingdom
of God "is like"
by present-
ing
us with a narrative of a world whose values invert the
logic
of
ordinary
existence.17
However,
Ricoeur is aware of the
danger
of
making any
one
genre
the norm for
religious understanding.
The Old
Testament alone contains a
variety
of
literary forms-narrative,
prophecy, prescriptive discourse,
wisdom
literature,
and
hymns among
others--each of which exhibits a distinctive
understanding
of God's
relationship
to his
people. Although they
name God as their common
referent,
each of these
partial
discourses limits and conditions the
others,
and no one of them
provides
the exclusive
key
to the
meaning
of
the
Scriptures today.
Ricoeur
explores
the
meaning
of each of these
modes of discourse and their mutual interactions while
maintaining
that the one God to whom
they point
can be reduced to no one form of
expression
or to a
philosophical system
that
encompasses
them all.18
By
16
For an
analysis
of biblical hermeneutics that
passes through
the four
phases
of the
interpretive arc,
see
"Philosophical
Hermeneutics and
Theological
Hermeneutics"
(n.
5
above).
17
See Paul
Ricoeur,
"Biblical
Hermeneutics,"
Semeia 4
(1975):
29-148. Ricoeur makes some
interesting
advances in his treatment of
parabolic
discourse in "The Bible and the
Imagination,"
in The Bible as a Document
of
the
University,
ed. Hans Dieter Betz
(Chico,
Calif.: Scholars Press,
1981), pp.
49-75.
18
See Paul
Ricoeur,
"Philosophy
and
Religious Language," Journal of Religion
54
(1974):
71-85;
"Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation" in
Mudge's
collection
(n.
4
above);
and
"Naming God,"
Union
Theological Seminary Quarterly
Review
34,
no. 4
(1979):
215-27.
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The
Journal
of
Religion
emphasizing
the
variety
of
literary
forms and the
multidimensionality
of
Scripture,
Ricoeur takes a
step
toward
mediating
the conflict
between
opposing theological
tendencies. He asks liberals to take
account of the
cosmological
as well as the existential dimension of the
text,
and conservatives to
acknowledge
that
part
of the text which
justifies
the drive for social
justice
in this world as well as that which
encourages hope
for
personal
deliverance
beyond
it. The
recognition
that the biblical world is both
singular
and
plural
should make us
pause
before we
grant
an exclusive
privilege
to
any
one
literary genre
or
interpretive
stance.19
Ricoeur's reluctance to search for a
conceptual
formulation which
embraces the diverse
expressions
of faith in the
Scriptures
reveals a
characteristic
tendency
of his
thought. Although
his dialectical reason-
ing
and his
comprehensive sweep
are reminiscent of
Hegelian philos-
ophy,
Ricoeur
stops
short of
constructing
a
synthesis
which
integrates
all
partial
views into a
systematic totality.
While his dialectical
exchanges
between
competing disciplines
extend our
understanding,
Ricoeur's
thinking always operates
with a Kantian awareness of the
limits of human
knowledge.
Like his
description
of
metaphor,
which
establishes connections without
eliminating
the differences between its
constituent
terms,
Ricoeur
engages
the
seemingly
antithetical stances
of
contemporary methodologies
in a dialectical encounter which com-
prehends
their
opposing
claims not
by constructing
a
synthesis
that
resolves their differences but rather
by making productive
use of the
tensions between them.
19
On other
aspects
of Ricoeur's
writings
on biblical
interpretation
and
theology
in the
1970s,
see the
essays
in
Mudge (n.
4
above);
in
pt.
5 of the
anthology
edited
by Reagan
and Stewart
(n.
2
above);
and "Manifestation and
Proclamation,"
Journal of
the Blaisdell
Institute,
vol. 12
(Winter
1978),
an
intriguing attempt
at a dialectical
exchange
between Eliade and
Bultmann,
or more
important,
between
religious
traditions that
emphasize
the
presence
of the divine in nature and
sacrament,
and those which stress the
primacy
of the Word and the task of
interpretation.
300
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