Paul Ricœur (February 27th 1913, Valence - May 20th 2005, Châtenay-Malabry), is a Philosophe French.

Biography

Born in 1913, Paul Ricœur, orphan of mother, lose her father with the war in 1915, and discover philosophy with the college of Rennes with Roland Dalbiez. It is of religion Protesting E. Laid off in Philosophy at 20 years, it is received second with the aggregation in 1935. A long time in favor of the Pacifism and a Theology of radical left, it will be solved tardily with the importance of the official institutions. It is in Paris, in the years 30, qu' it continues its philosophical training with Gabriel Marcel. He discovers there the writings of Husserl, work which he will continue by translating into hiding-place Ideen I during his captivity in Poméranie of 1940 with 1945.

After the war, he teaches three years with the Cevennes college of Chambon where he completes his thesis on the will. In 1948 it is named at the University of Strasbourg, before becoming professor with the Sorbonne in 1956. Writing regularly in the review Spirit and that of the social Christianity , it teaches in parallel during 10 years with the Protestant Faculty of the Arago Boulevard in Paris. In 1964 it founds the department of philosophy of the Université of Nanterre before being elected Doyen of the Faculty of Arts during the agitated years. While animating a famous seminar with the Husserl Files in Paris, it enters in 1970 to the department of philosophy of the University of Chicago and then shares its time between the the United States and the France.

The Eighties devote the return of Paul Ricœur to the foreground of the French intellectual life. Alternate then major works and compilations of texts where philosophy dialogs with the right, interpretation, the history, etc It does not cease travelling in the world and encouraging there a philosophy in catch with the contemporary questions. He is prize winner many prices (Prix Hegel with Stuttgart, Grand Prix of the French Academy, Town of Paris, and Academy of Science morals and policies, price of Kyoto in 2000, Prix Paul VI in 2003, price John W. Kluge in Washington in 2004). Until its death in 2005, the philosopher continues a work recognized internationally for its originality, its moral and political engagement, and its exceptional width.

The work of Paul Ricœur began post-war period under the sign of the Philosophie of the will (1950), and of ethics social ( Histoire and truth , 1964). Its course leads it Phénoménologie to act it with a critical Herméneutique ( Of interpretation, test on Freud , 1966, and the conflict of interpretations , 1969), then with poetic of time and action ( the metaphor lives , 1975, Temps and Récit , 1983-1985, Of the text to the action , 1986), which breaks with the structuralist fence language.

Oneself as another (1990) proposes variations on the sensitive topic, speaking and acting. One finds there strongly articulated a philosophy moral and political, prolonged by several compilations of texts dealing with the problem of justice like virtue and institution ( Lectures 1 and the Juste 1 and 2 between 1991 and 2001). It however does not cease remaining in debate with not-philosophical sources of philosophy, and in particular the biblical texts ( Lectures 3 , 1994, Penser the Bible , 1998). In 2000, it publishes the Memory, the History, the Lapse of memory on the question of a right representation of the past, and in 2004 still a Parcours of the recognition which places this one, with its uncertainties and its difficult reciprocities, in the middle of the social link.

Ricœur remains for much the model even of the intellectual always challenged by the event and trying to answer it simply as a thinker, and not as a Master thinker. Exemplary frontier runner, having woven faithful friendships but without concession with many philosophers and contemporary thinkers, it is located at cross of three great philosophical traditions: French reflexive philosophy, European philosophy known as continental and Anglo-Saxon analytical philosophy.

Philosophy

Phenomenology

Ricœur was interested first of all in the Phénoménologie husserlienne as shows it its translation of the Ideen of Husserl but also its thesis of doctorate on Philosophie of the will definitely impregnated by the phenomenologic thought.

The Bible

Another important aspect of its Philosophie are its studies devoted to the Bible. Itself protesting, Ricœur always attached a great importance to the dialog between philosophy and Religion (see for example biblical hermeneutics ).

Hermeneutics

The Langage always was in the think tank of Ricœur. The Hermeneutics, on the one hand, constitutes another important pole of its reflections. The question of interpretation (interpretation of the Writings, interpretation of the psychoanalytical symptoms as in Of interpretation. Test on Freud ), of its bases and ends was indeed in the center of its concerns.

It exposes in the following terms the function of the Herméneutique: “For a semiotics, the only operational concept remains that of literary text. The Hermeneutics, on the other hand, endeavors to rebuild the whole arc of the operations to which the experiment practices gives itself works, authors and readers (...) the stake, it is thus the concrete process through which the textual configuration is used as mediator between the prefiguration of the practical field and its refiguration thanks to the reception of work”.

Metaphor analyzes

The study of the metaphor, in addition, is a significant element in its work. In the metaphor lives (1975) Ricœur indeed analyzes the poetic function of the language and more precisely the concept of Trope which is analyzed under the angle Linguistique, Poétique and philosophical. Because the stylistic device and more precisely the Métaphore are for Ricœur an original cognitive process and with its own value.

“the function of transfiguration of reality that we recognize with the poetic fiction implies that we ceased identifying reality and empirical reality or, in other words, that we ceased identifying experiment and empirical experiment. The poetic language draws its prestige from its capacity to express aspects of what Husserl called Lebenswelt and Heidegger In-DER-Welt-center. Kind it requires that we criticize our conventional concept of the truth, i.e. we ceased limiting it to logical coherence and the empirical checking, in order to take into account the claim of truth related to the transfiguring action of the fiction. ”

He even writes: “the metaphor, it is the capacity to produce a new direction, at the point of the spark of direction where a semantic incompatibility crumbles in the confrontation of several levels of significance, to produce a new significance which exists only on the line of fracture of the semantic fields. In the case of the narrative one, I had gone so far as to say that what I call the synthesis of heterogeneous does not create less innovation than the metaphor, but this time in the composition, in the configuration of a told temporality, a narrative temporality. ”

But this discovery of the cognitive function of the metaphor rests on the going beyond of the usual treatment of the metaphor which sees in it a simple linguistic phenomenon of “transport of direction”. To include/understand that it should according to Ricoeur be seen that the metaphor takes all its direction as a whole only put in perspective in the text.

Study of the account

In 1983 follow three volumes of Temps and account in which it proposes the proximities between the temporality of the Historiographie and of the literary speech. One finds the will of Ricoeur here to bind philosophical reflection on the nature of the account and linguistic approach and Poétique.

Work on the history

Ricœur was interested very early in the history from the philosophical point of view without never however practicing the Philosophie of the history. In History and truth (1955) it tries to define the nature of the concept of truth in Histoire and to differentiate objectivity in history by distinguishing it from objectivity in the exact sciences.

Many years later, it will be devoted to cultural and historical questions in a phenomenologic approach and Herméneutique. It nourished the discussion relating to the Mémoire and the cultural memory in the memory, the history, the lapse of memory (2000).

Ethical

The ethical was always one of the most important concerns of Ricœur.

“Is it Necessary to distinguish between ethical Morale and ? To tell the truth, nothing in the etymology or the history use words impose it: one comes from the Latin , the other of the old Greek , and both return to the idea of manners (ethos, mores); one can however distinguish a nuance, according to whether one stresses what good is estimated or on what asserts oneself like obligatory. It is by convention that I will reserve the term of “ethics” for the aiming of a life achieved under the sign of the actions considered good, and that of “morals” for the obligatory side, marked by Norme S, obligations, the prohibitions characterized at the same time by a requirement of universality and an effect of constraint. One will recognize easily in the distinction between aiming of the good life and obedience to the standards the opposition between two heritages: the heritage aristotelician, where the ethical is characterized by its prospect Téléologique (of Telos, meaning “fine”); and a heritage Kant IEN, where the Morale is defined by the character of obligation of the standard, therefore by a point of view of Déontologique (deontologic meaning “precisely Owe”).”

Polemic

Ricœur was in the middle of a polemic blaming its engagement lasting the second world war. He indeed wrote in a text of youth: “The democracies are plutocracies… I acknowledge to have tested a true anguish by reading the speech of Hitler: not that I believe his pure intentions, but in a language of a beautiful hardness - I was going to say of a beautiful purity - he recalls to the democracies their hypocrite identification right with the system of their interests, their hardness for disarmed Germany (...) This reason appears more decisive to me than the preceding one in favor of the policy of conciliation: I believe that the German ideas of dynamism, of vital energy of the people, have more direction than our empty and hypocritical idea of the right.”

Quotations

• “ One could say that in arts at two times the moment of sempiternal is in the withdrawal of the booklet and script, but the temporal test is in the monstration. The capacity of an unceasingly renewed monstration, as being always different, though the same one, constitutes the bond between the sempiternal one and the history; it is the temporal mark perhaps there more prégnante of the work of Article ”

• “ Since September 11th we regressed on the Kantian ideal of universal peace. For Kant the principal sign of recognition of the people consisted of hospitality. Today, we are far. ”

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