“ ‘Signature Event Context’ … in, well, context”

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-141
Author(s):  
Joshua Kates
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
The Self ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Signature Event

Abstract This article concerns a moment in French intellectual history when the self-evidences of structuralism become doubtful under the pressure exerted by discourse; it thus treats a second turn within the linguistic turn as it occurred in France. The work of Emile Benveniste, and texts by Jean-Francois Lyotard and Paul Ricoeur, flesh out this development. I use them, as well as John Searle’s response, to approach anew Derrida’s essay “Signature Event Context.” Derrida’s distance from this second linguistic turn thereby becomes visible (including from Lacan’s, Barthes’, and Foucault’s versions of it), and the distinct status of discourse in Derrida’s own thought emerges. Finally, critiquing Derrida’s folding of discourse into a notion of “signifying form” in sec, while drawing on his account there of “citationality,” I sketch new directions for conceiving of context and discourse themselves, ones arguably able to withstand Derrida’s express concerns.

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

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 108-132
Author(s):  
Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen ◽  
Mads Peter Karlsen ◽  
René Rosfort
Keyword(s):  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Self ◽  
Philosophical Method ◽  
The Third ◽  
Paul Ricœur

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.

scholarly journals Memory, embodiment, ethics: In conversation with Wentzel van Huyssteen’s work on theological anthropology

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Vosloo
Keyword(s):  
South African ◽  
Personal Identity ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
The Self ◽  
The South ◽  
Theological Discourse ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Key Features

This article focuses on Wentzel van Huyssteen’s work on theological anthropology, attending especially to his emphasis on the temporal and narrative dimension of personal identity. In this regard, Van Huyssteen draws on the thought of Paul Ricoeur, including his view that memory is the gateway to the self. With this in mind, the first part of the article highlights some key features of Van Huyssteen’s engagement the last decade or two with the question what it means to be human, namely the affirmation of interdisciplinarity, embodiment and vulnerability. The argument is put forward that Van Huyssteen’s work invites and displays the need to uphold the interconnections between embodiment, memory, vulnerability, imagination and empathy. It is furthermore claimed that his constructive proposals ‘in search of self’ should be seen as inextricably connected with its crucial ethical and theological motivation and contours.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: This article focuses on the South African theologian Wentzel van Huyssteen’s work on theological anthropology. He is internationally renowned, and this article discusses key features of his views and brings it into conversation with the work of the philosopher Paul Ricoeur and perspectives from memory studies. As such, it presents a novel engagement that can enrich systematic theological discourse.

scholarly journals Michel Foucault et Paul Ricœur, vers un dialogue possible

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 68-86 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Castonguay
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
The Self ◽  
Theory Of Action ◽  
Historical Ontology ◽  
Strong Interest ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

Il est désormais connu que Michel Foucault s’est intéressé à la fin de sa vie à l’ ”herméneutique du sujet.” Mais cette histoire de la constitution du sujet (ou de la subjectivité) fait étrangement l’économie d’une réflexion sur le rôle de la compréhension, alors que Foucault qualifie son travail d’ ”ontologie historique de nous-mêmes.” C'est sur ce point précis qu’est ici mis à l'épreuve le caractère médiateur de l’œuvre de Paul Ricœur, dont l’herméneutique du soi prend en charge une ontologie de la compréhension. Suite à ces considérations, la seconde partie de l’article cherche à démontrer que la théorie de l’agir de Ricœur peut favoriser le passage d’une reconnaissance de type objectale à une reconnaissance des capacités du sujet à se tenir pour responsable. Ce passage sera opéré directement sur le modèle d’analyse du “dernier Foucault,” c’est-à-dire son concept-clé de “processus de subjectivation.” In his later work, Michel Foucault manifested a strong interest for the “hermeneutics of the subject.” Yet this history of the constitution of the subject (or subjectivity) does without any reflection on the role of understanding, even though Foucault characterizes his project as a historical ontology of ourselves. The power of mediation emphasized in the work of Paul Ricœur may help us redefine an ontology of understanding through a hermeneutics of the self. Following this, the second part of the article aims to show that Ricœur’s theory of action can facilitate a transition from the recognition of the self, first described as “objectivation,” to a recognition of the subject’s capacity to be held responsible. This passage will draw on the model of analysis in the later Foucault, specifically, on his key concept of the subjectivation process.

Catherine Malabou: The Plastic Human

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Watkin
Keyword(s):  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
The Self ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Human Trait ◽  
The Brain

The transition from Badiou and Meillassoux to Malabou leads us away from thinking the human in terms of a ‘host capacity’ and proposes instead a ‘host substance’: the brain. The first half of this chapter argues that Malabou manages to avoid a host capacity account of the human by developing a notion of plasticity not as a uniquely human trait but as the possible transformation of all traits. This position harbours an irreducible ambiguity, however, between an escape from the host capacity approach and its hyperbolisation, and so what Malabou offers us can be construed as nothing less than a host meta-capacity. The second half of the chapter explores Malabou’s determination to initiate a new plastic encounter between philosophy and neuroscience, eschewing both the ‘cognitivism’ of neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux and the ‘Continental’ resistance to neuroscience of Paul Ricœur in order to elaborate her own ‘neuronal materialism’ in terms of ‘destructive plasticity’. In an attempt to develop this neuronal materialism in a way that avoids plasticity becoming one more defunct metaphor of the human, the chapter concludes by offering a reading of ‘the self’ in Malabou not as a metaphor but as a movement or tension of metaphoricity.

scholarly journals Opaque Selves: A Ricœurian Response to Galen Strawson’s Anti- Narrative Arguments

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 70-89
Author(s):  
Kristofer Camilo Arca
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Narrative Identity ◽  
Hermeneutic Phenomenology ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
The Self ◽  
Cognitive Sciences ◽  
Epistemic Access ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Galen Strawson

As narrative conceptions of selfhood have gained more acceptance within various disciplines including philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences, so too have these conceptions been critically appraised. Chief among those who are suspicious of the overall viability of ‘narrative identity’ is the philosopher, Galen Strawson. In this paper, I develop five arguments underlying Strawson’s critique of narrative identity, and respond to each argument from the perspective of the hermeneutic phenomenology of Paul Ricœur. Though intuitive, I demonstrate that none of Strawson’s arguments are cogent. The confrontation between these two figures highlights a deep conceptual disagreement about our epistemic access to the self, which has thus far gone unrecognized in the Anglo-American discussion, so that it raises a new problem for the metaphysics of personal identity.

scholarly journals Collective Identity and Collective Memory in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Leichter
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
The Self ◽  
Or Groups ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Collective memory has been a notoriously difficult concept to define. I appeal to Paul Ricoeur and argue that his account of the relationship of the self and her community can clarify the meaning of collective memory. While memory properly understood belongs, in each case, to individuals, such memory exists and is shaped by a relationship with others. Furthermore, because individuals are constituted over a span of time and through intersubjective associations, the notion of collective memory ought to be understood in terms of the way that memory enacts and reenacts networks of relations among individuals and the communities to which they belong, rather than in terms of a model that reifies either individuals or groups. Ricoeur’s account can show sources of oppression and offers ways to respond to them.

scholarly journals Ricoeur on Conscience: His Blind Spot and the Homecoming of Shame

2010 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-54
Author(s):  
René Thun
Keyword(s):  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Blind Spot ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Affective Dimension ◽  
Nous Sommes ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Working Out

In his hermeneutic of the self, which he is working out in his Oneself as another, Ricœur writes about the constitutive conditions of conscience as a dimension of the experience of passivity. For the following considerations, I will argue that Ricœur is very right in maintaining the moral impact of the notion of conscience; but if we on the other hand remember older writings by Ricœur like Fallible Man we have to admit that something is missed in the chapter about conscience in Oneself as Another. And that means, that in Oneself as Another he neglects the affective dimension of conscience. This affective dimension is - I think - the notion of shame.Dans Soi-même comme un autre où s'élabore son herméneutique du soi, Paul Ricœur réfléchit sur les conditions constitutives de la conscience comme expérience de la passivité.  Pour les considerations suivantes, je souhaiterai montrer que Ricœur a tout à fait raison de plaider pour la dimension morale de la notion de conscience. Mais, d'un autre côté,si l'on se souvient des écrits plus anciens de Ricoeur sur l'Homme faillible, nous sommes tenus d'admettre que, au cours du chapitre sur la conscience dans Soi-même comme un autre, quelque chose est perdu de vue. Nous voulons signifier que, dans ce chapitre, il néglige la dimension affective de la conscience. Cette dimension affective est, nous semble-t-il, la notion de honte. 

scholarly journals La ‘faille’ chez Paul Ricœur. De l’identité symbolique et narrative, à l’identité gestuelle et langagière

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 74-89
Author(s):  
Guilhem Causse
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Current Situation ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
The World ◽  
Paul Ricœur

In Fallible man, Ricœur discovers a faille (fault, breach, rift) in the heart of man. Due to this faille, man is fragile: he has to mediate between himself and the world. This mediation puts man at risk of losing himself. Thus, fragile man is also fallible. In Oneself as Another, Ricœur returns to this faille that passes through the heart of the self, between idem and ipse, giving access to the alter. This image, the faille, guides Ricœur in each of these two texts. It gives us access to their continuity but also to the gap that separates one from the other. But if this image has inspired Ricœur, it also gives us the opportunity to criticize his work. Re-reading the Symbolism of Evil, we will highlight a dimension of man little explored by Ricœur and that our current situation pushes us to rediscover: the body and gesture.

Theory of a practice: A foundation for Blumenberg’s metaphorology in Ricoeur’s theory of metaphor

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 155 (1) ◽  
pp. 91-108
Author(s):  
Spencer Hawkins
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Research Group ◽  
General Model ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Hans Blumenberg ◽  
Metaphoric Language ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Explicit Theory ◽  
European Intellectual History

Hans Blumenberg is celebrated for demonstrating that metaphors have had a more foundational influence than concepts on European intellectual history. Many acknowledge that his insights might have achieved even greater impact if he had articulated a more explicit theory of metaphor. In 1960 Blumenberg discusses the historical formation of metaphors that have given rise to meaningful discourses on metaphysical abstractions, like God, existence, or Being, but he does not develop a general model of metaphoric language, and his work rarely engages with other contemporary theories of metaphor. During Blumenberg’s lifetime, French and German postwar philosophers rarely cited one another. Yet French hermeneutics, and the work of philosopher Paul Ricoeur in particular, may have strongly influenced Blumenberg’s research group, Poetik und Hermeneutik. This paper is an attempt to recuperate intellectual affinities between Blumenberg and Ricoeur, in order to demonstrate that Ricoeur’s claims about metaphor provide the theoretical background for a fuller appreciation of Blumenberg’s metaphor analyses.

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