Ermeneutica critica e analitiche (chiesastiche) dell’azione

Starting from a general problematisation of the role of philosophy today, this article thematises the philosophy of action in its different uses, in science and analytical philosophy as well as in phenomenology and hermeneutics. It criticises the unilateral and radicalised use of all philosophical approaches and traditions, whether they belong to the Continental or the Anglo-Saxon area; and prospects the use of critical hermeneutics as a multiple methodology and epistemology for interdisciplinary purposes

Justice Through Recognition: A Philosophical Survey

The question(s) of recognition has been largely discussed at the level of public and political debate, as well as studied in psychology, sociology, theory of politics and philosophy since the nineteens. But there is still much to do in studying and understanding all implications of it refereed to problems and experiences of misrecognition and dehumanization, and referred to the dialectic connection between politics of recognition and social recognition, social recognition and self-emancipation, self-emancipation and the recognition of the other. The question of ‘What are the psychological, sociological and political implications?’ is still open, but now, thanks to Taylor, Habermas, Ricœur, and Honneth works (among others’ works) it is clear that recognition may be established as a theoretical-practical basis for individual emancipation, social progress and strengthening of justice and democracy

Hermeneutics ‘Reloaded’: From Science/Philosophy Dichotomy to Critical Hermeneutics

Currently, hermeneutics is no longer a koinè, yet it pervades the field of human knowledge on different and diverse levels. With the decline of philosophical hermeneutics, the inheritance of a rich tradition of thought, there remains some very important problematic and speculative cornerstones and a poorly ordered horizon of hermeneutical practices and procedures, more or less technical and/or speculative. From this composite picture the (negative) possibility of truths without method and methods without truth or validity emerges; and therefore, again, emerge the problems of consistency, rigour and philosophical legitimacy, and the risk of non-rational seductions and/or ideological distortions. From another point of view, philosophy and reflection within hermeneutical traditions have elaborated sufficient critical content and devices for the definition of an organised, rigorous and controlled model of a comprehensive procedure. From this perspective, Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical work seems emblematic. From his philosophy it is possible to extract a general model of a non-philosophically-engaged hermeneutical method, which is valuable for the human and social sciences as well as a useful procedure for interdisciplinary work. This is critical hermeneutics: a specific form of speculative and theoretical hermeneutics whose methodological and epistemological foundation mirrors the new form of the contemporary hermeneutic-scientific koinè

The Ricoeurian Way: Towards A Critical Hermeneutics for the Human and Social Sciences

Focusing on Paul Ricœur’s philosophical methodology as practised in his mature speculative work, it is possible to profile a hermeneutical procedural model: that of a critical hermeneutics, methodologically and epistemologically structured, for the most part by following the theory of the arc herméneutique. Ricœur’s reinterpretation of Freudian psychoanalysis offers one of the first theoretical and disciplinary bases for this theory and his practice of philosophy offers in itself the model of a philosophy exercised as a practical theory and as a human and social science. Indeed, Ricœur’s critical hermeneutics is at once a philosophy, a philosophical approach, and a methodological model for the human and social sciences, which works to coordinate explanation and understanding under the rule of interpretation

Lacan’s Epistemic Role in Ricœur’s Re-Reading of Freud

In this paper, the author reconsiders the role played by Lacan in Ricœur’s philosophy of psychoanalysis by reconstructing the history of the relationship between psychoanalysis and philosophy, and by focusing on some of the important aspects of the reception of Ricœur’s work in France. The reception of his work is directly connected to Lacan’s School and the role played by his followers, who were against Ricœur. Some of the unpublished documents kept at the Fonds Ricœur should help to clarify some points in this regard. These documents should help to demonstrate how the incompatibility of Ricœur’s interpretation with Lacan’s structural perspective was determined more by their personal incompatibility and their different interests than by a genuine incommensurability in their theories.Dans cet article, l'auteur revient sur le rôle joué par Lacan dans la philosophie de la psychanalyse de Ricœur en reparcourant l'histoire de la relation entre psychanalyse et philosophie, et en revenant sur certains des aspects importants de la réception de l’œuvre de Ricœur en France. La réception de l’œuvre ricœurienne est directement liée à l'école lacanienne et au rôle joué par ses disciples, dans leur opposition à Ricœur. À ce titre, certains des documents inédits conservés au Fonds Ricœur aident à clarifier plusieurs points concernant cette confrontation. Selon l’auteur, ces documents démontrent comment l’incompatibilité de l’interprétation de Ricœur avec la perspective structuraliste de Lacan a été davantage déterminée par leur incompatibilité personnelle et leur divergence d’intérêts que par une distance théorique effectivement incommensurable

Editor's Introduction

The twentieth century was deeply influenced by theoretical-practical and reflective developments in philosophical hermeneutics. It introduced a large range of problems, content and perspectives, on a vast referential and implicational (inter-)disciplinary scale, to enter into the real orbit of a philosophical koinè, not for a decennary or few decennaries (Vattimo), but for a century and more. It expressed the productivity, significance and heuristic strength of research and thought that hit different scientific domains, particularly (but not exclusively) the human and social sciences: from psychology to sociology, from psychoanalysis to literature, from semiotic to biblical exegesis, from anthropology to linguistics, from rhetoric to narratology, from history to law and from political theory to religion

The Human and Its Discourse: From Fragmentation to Unification

We are living in an era in which the differentiation of knowledge in the contemporary sciences has spurred a great increase in complexity. On one hand, this complexity is accompanied by specialisation and fragmentation; on the other hand, it fosters increased research of shared methods and vocabularies, and interdisciplinary approaches. The character and complexity of the different, intertwined series of challenges and the problematic connected to this discourse becomes particularly vivid if we consider the knot around the discourse of the human and the contemporary paradoxes related to the pre-eminent idea of what it means to become a person. Paul Ricoeur’s research offers a contemporary, comprehensive example of the complex interconnection of this dialectic. At the same time, it offers an example of a general model capable of being considered as a multilevel methodology for philosophy and the human and social sciences. This is critical hermeneutics: A theoretical-practical and interdisciplinary procedure based on a transversal epistemology. In the end, the application of his philosophy and methodology to the concrete case of the contemporary human life will lead to reasoning with new complexities and paradoxes, revealing that, in the end, any comprehensive attempt to define the human being requires the support of a new, varied, and nourished humanism

Editors' Introduction

There is no doubt that, for better or for worse, popular mobilisation always revels a significant, or even highly significant, transformative power. It can express itself as a sublime and magmatic power that, as historia docet, does not necessarily bring chaos and destruction, even when it shakes the institutions to their foundations. It generates and nurtures the crisis; and, as French Philosopher Paul Ricoeur remarks, ‘la crise de la démocratie est une crise double où se conjuguent un mouvement ascendant et un mouvement descendant, des menaces fécondes et des menaces ruineuses’. In short, the crisis generates and nurtures new energies and ideas, a fusion of horizons, refoundation and new impulses, which all pervade, however, a time of uncertainties where that fecundity of crisis and that possibility of ruin and fall inhabit half walls. After all, as a possibility, popular mobilisation is in itself a cornerstone of democratic life. Ricœur again underlines that ‘La démocratie est une idée en devenir et en combat. C’est une histoire commencée que nous avons la tâche de continuer. La crise (...) est un moment dans une histoire dont il faut retrouver l’élan’. It is the People who are primarily responsible for what happens in a democratic state.

Ruled Imagination

This paper aims to show how Paul Ricoeur’s inquiry on memory, trace, and testimony contributes to rebalancing a framework that, at the dialectical level between imagination and representation, would essentially present historians’ work as hermeneutical. In Ricoeur’s later writings, we find a differently balanced perspective by focusing the (neurobiological and psychological) substrate of representation behind trace and memory. Representation precedes interpretation. And neither memory’s fidelity nor history’s epistemic truth belong to a game that would be solely played within the communicative space of a plurality of cognitive agents who are exchanging, controlling and sharing their experiences. Consequently, the reality of the past itself emerges in the practice of memory’s background