Nies

Is there an internet copy of the essay you are reading? A common reading in the room could ground the discussion to be quite fruitful.

I couldn't find any of his works online. This essay is from <i>The Philosophy of Paul Ricouer: An Anthology of His Work.</i> I chose it to start because "Main Problem" indicates something core to his philosophy will be expressed.

What a good intro done by Nies. Yes, indeed I agree with your take on ‘why we do not call Philosophy philosophy’ : ) I am also reading the same book right now. Picked it up from the public library. I find the book a good read. And yes, it is hard to find a substantial work of Ricoeur online.

Just to illuminate a bit on the parallel between Ricoeur and Nietzsche: Ricoeur talks about exegesis—a critical analysis (interpretation) of a text. Nietzsche, on the other hand, does the genealogy. Many might be getting the wrong impression that Nietzsche is searching for “origin”—understood by many as something that has remained the same, that has retained a lot of its “characteristics” throughout history. This is in fact what Nietzsche has been trying to disprove—that what we call the “origin” of a word and the apparent meaning of the same word are, in fact, disparate. Both of these philosophers try to peel away the layers of meaning that have piled up on a word, idea, symbol, etc. to reveal what’s “hidden”—hence, Ricoeur’s “shown-yet-concealed” paradigm.

Anyway, my previous professor once said “If you are reading a book by Nietzsche right now, then you are not reading a book by Nietzsche right now.” Though his statement is extreme, I believe there’s a lot of truth in it. For one, translators will never capture Nietzsche’s intensity as a writer. I was even dismayed when I read that one translator of Nietzsche’s writing, working from scratch, revealed that he excluded the dots and dashes that Nietzsche made in his original manuscript. Ouch!.
<!-- editby --><br /><br /><i>edited by: mnelson, Jun 01, 2004 - 03:51 AM</i><!-- end editby -->

Meow.

haha, maybe you are psychic - or an 'empath' - I forgot about this thread due to care for my cat who was just spayed.

Back to Ricouer. One thing that I find most interesting of this essay (Metaphor and the Main Problem of Hermeneutics) is his possible appropriation of Heidegger on subjectivism and the issue of empathy. I delivered a conference paper on this topic, so it jumps out. He calls the old school of Hermeneutic theory the Romantic hermeneutics (anyone know who he groups in this school? Schleiermacher?). The Romantic view of reading a text assumes that the reader and writer enter into a sympathic relation between subject and subject. The reader 'enters the mind' of the writer. Also assumed is that the reader already possessed self-understanding, then can eithe project himself into the interpretation, or by this self understanding come to recognize something about the character or writer. Ricouer's view, is that reading/interpreting is not a subject-to-subject relation, but that with each reading, a world is opened - a new understanding is opened through the reference of the text. Self-understanding is not possessed ahead of time but is continually created in the act of reading or interpretation.

"Far from saying that a subject already masters his own way of being int he world and projects it as the a priori of his reading, I would say that interpretation is the process by which the disclosure of new modes of being-or, if you prefer Wittgenstein to Heidegger, of new 'forms of life' - gives to the subject a new capacity of knowing himself. If there is somewhere a project and a projection, it is the reference of the work which is the project of a world; the reader is consequently enlarged in his capacity of self-projection by receive a new mode of being from the text itself." (p. 145).

I bring up Heidegger on empathy (Being and Time section 26) because Heidegger argues against the theories of empathy in vogue in his day (it became a philosophical term through Theodor Lipps, though before that, the concept was somewhat interchangeable with 'sympathy' via Max Scheler). The view was one of a preexistent natural empathy between subject and subject. A projection of one subject onto another is then considered sufficient for understanding and empathizing, with the mysterious bond of empathy gluing together the subjects and justifying the subjectivity. However, the projector then becomes object in this projection, and real understanding does not take place. It can't take place when a human being does not possess themselves fully, when they are incomplete, or especially when they are still thinking of themselves as independent subjects <i>in</i> and <i>separate</i> from the world. There will always be a gap in understanding, but the unfolding of new insights occurs continually in the acts of discourse. Discourse gives birth to new worlds. (That's my interpretation of this passage in conjunction with Ricouer). I think Heidegger includes this passage on empathy so that his mitdasein is not mistaken for it, as understood by prevalent theories.

The romantic hermeneutic school uses metaphors of entering the other mind whereas I think empathy is a problem best expressed in Hannah Arendt's problem with Adolf Eichmann, namely, whenever and wherever we are alone what is required of us by judgement to discern our conduct. My lecturer defined Arendt's judgment as the "conscious act of the imagination to represent the viewpoint of another." In the Appendix on Judging in her "Life of the Mind," she speaks of Kant's judgement as having a "enlarging mentality" to see beyond the immediate situation via representation. Empathy it seems is best answered by looking at the capacity of representation. However, when I do this, I come off as philosophically antiquated.

I do like Ricoeur's insistence that there is no pure understanding of subjectivity as exemplified in the pure cogito of Descartes. Instead, all self understanding is mediated through signs, texts and symbols. When I heard it, I was philosophically amazed. For me, this meant that language was not the catch-all center that analytics make it out to be, but that language became a mediating activity for worldly-understanding, continually recreating itself anew with each utterance (nonc). The insights created occurred at all the afforementioned levels of meaning.

Partly, the amazement was best reminescent of a man named Thales who falls into a well at seeing the heavens and a Thracian maid is said to have laughed at the philosopher's gaze.

Nies, I do admit a certain abhorrence for Heidegger's social insights. This seeing myself only in light of others seems to occur at the level of Gerede. I do not think an authentic Dasein is the primary aim of someone's life and by narrowing the criticism to our inauthentic solicitude, Heidegger's philosophy looks down on the level that we mostly live our lives. I find his philosophy an oversimplification of a larger problem of living in the presence of others.

Just some thoughts,

JKT....MEOW!!!!!!