Paul Ricoeur on Evil

Paul Ricoeur represents an important source in Western culture who refuses to adopt a sharp separation between humanity and the rest of nature, while recognizing the importance of human distinctiveness. This chapter will engage Ricoeur’s works, beginning with Freedom and Nature, where he emphasizes the preconditions for human sin and the distinctions between scientific explanations and philosophical understanding. Another work, Fallible Man, distinguishes between the finite and infinite and describes the preconditions for human sin. Here, Ricoeur takes steps to fill in the gap between what he terms the pathétique of misery and the transcendental. He resists the idea that the source of evil arises directly from animal passions, but presents a more complex argument related to the force of what he terms ‘the fault’. In The Symbolism of Evil, Ricoeur further describes his recognition that the Fall of humanity admits a voluntary quality to specifically human sin; therefore, guilt is distinct from suffering. Ricoeur’s interpretation of the significance and problematic nature of Augustine’s account of the Fall is instructive in this respect. How far is the explicit human propensity for sin also dependent on prior language and symbolic thought? Ricoeur’s thought also frames the discussion that follows as a dialectical relationship between the natural propensity for evil and its voluntary, symbolic/semiotic character.