The Demand of the Other in Paul Ricœur’s Philosophical Hermeneutics

Authors

  • Małgorzata Hołda The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15633/lie.2122

Keywords:

Ricœur, the demand of Other, ethics, vulnerability

Abstract

The article proposes to view Paul Ricœur’s ethics and the demand of the Other from the perspectives that are mostly explicated in his seminal Oneself as Another, namely: the self and the suffering Other, friendship, the capable human being, and the notion of ‘the good life’ seen as the teleological horizon of a human life. My attempt is to demonstrate that for Ricœur the demand of the Other is set on the premise of understanding viewed as the fundamental mode of being‑­in‑­the world, and that his ethics of the Other comprises mainly such phenomena as mutual vulnerability, the self’s indebtedness to the Other and reliance on the Other, as well as an expression of the feelings of benevolence and solicitude. Significantly, for Ricouer the genuine response to the demand of the Other equals a worthy, fulfilled life manifested in the narrative coherence of a life. This article also touches upon the debate between Ricœur and Lévinas regarding the ‘I’ and ‘Thou’ relation and the underlying difference in their approach to alterity; Ricœur’s presupposition of the response of the Other and Levinas’s model which does not entangle reciprocity.

Author Biography

  • Małgorzata Hołda, The Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow
    Małgorzata Hołda – affiliated at The Ponti­fical University of John Paul II in Krakow, received her PhD in literature from Nicholas Co­pernicus University, Toruń. Her research interests include philosophical hermeneutics with special reference to Hans­‑Georg Ga­damer and Paul Ricoeur, postmodernism, postmodern philosophy, literature and culture, American and British postmodern fiction. She is the author of Between Liberal Humanism and Postmodernist Fun: The Fiction of Malcolm Bradbury; Aporia of Time in Virginia Woolf‘s Mrs. Dalloway and “Kew Gardens” in the Light of Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics; Kazuo Ishiguro’s “A Family Supper” – the Hermeneutics of Familiarity and Strangeness Paul Ricoeur’s Narrative Identity and Mikhail Bakhtin’s Polyphony of Speech; The Hermeneutics of Conversation; Silence, Epiphany and the Irreducibility of Conversion and numerous articles on postmodern fiction, postmodern philosophy and philoso­phical hermeneutics.

References

Carter J., Ricœur on Moral Religion: A Hermeneutics of Ethical Life, Oxford 2014.

Cavarero A., Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, London–New York 2000.

Gadamer H.-G., Philosophical Hermeneutics, transl. & ed. D. E. Linge, Berkeley–Los Angeles 1977.

Kaplan D. M., Reading Ricœur, Albany 2003.

Levinas E., Ethics and Infinity, Conversations with Philippe Nemo, transl. R. A. Cohen, Pittsburgh, PA 1985.

Levinas E., Totality and Infinity, Pittsburgh 1969.

Paul Ricœur: Honoring and Continuing the Work, ed. F. Erfani, New York–Toronto–Plymouth 2011.

Pirovolakis E., Reading Derrida and Ricœur: Improbable Encounters Between Decon­struction and Hermeneutics, New York 2010.

Ricœur as Another: The Ethics of Subjectivity, eds. R. A. Cohen, J. L. Marsh, Albany 2002.

Ricœur P., Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Fort Worth 1976.

Ricouer P., The Just, transl. D. Pellauer, Chicago 2003.

Ricœur P., Narrative Identity, transl. M. S. Muldoon, “Philosophy Today” 35 (1991: Spring) issue 1, s. 73–81.

Ricouer P., The Narrative Path: The Later Works of Paul Ricœur, eds. D. Rasmussen, P. Kemp, Cambridge, MA 1989.

Ricœur P., Oneself as Another, transl. K. Blamey, Chicago 1992.

Wall J., Moral Creativity: Paul Ricœur and the Poetics of Possibility, Oxford 2005.

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Published

2017-06-01

Issue

Vol. 23 No. 1 (2017)

Section

Articles

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