Vinicio Busacchi

What we are experiencing today in different ways on social, national and international levels because of the flow of migrants and the populistic backlash is not separated from the sense and the task of our personal existence, from the way we can and must realise ourselves. Following Paul Ricoeur’s three different discursive axes within which the dialectic tensional intersection of crisis and conflict reach a significant speculative level, a careful analysis deepens the intertwining of historical, cultural and anthropological factors, demonstrating that those who disregard foreigners despise themselves.

Tout en suivant une perspective ricœurienne, cet article se propose de montrer de quelle façon la dialectique de la vulnérabilité et de l’effort constituent le « moteur émancipateur » de la personne. L’auteur parte d’une confrontation entre la philosophie de l’homme de Emmanuel Lévinas et celle de Paul Ricœur, tout en approfondissant les différentes étapes afin de réinterpréter l’idée initiale que nous naissons en tant qu’individu, tandis que devenir une personne est un processus qui passe par une dialectique interrelationnelle et culturelle. Dans cette perspective, qui mieux que d’autres révèle une proximité significative entre Ricœur à Lévinas, l’idée d’identité en tant que parcours herméneutique d’émancipation révèle sa caractérisation de défi éthique. Défi éthique, d’une parte, entre la passivité/vulnérabilité et les pouvoirs subjectives, et, de l’autre, entre la capacité d’être accueilli par les autres et la volonté de progresser avec eux, à travers les défis de la reconnaissance mutuelle.

La psychanalyse de Freud exerce un rôle constitutif dans le discours philosophique de Paul Ricœur sur l'homme. Autour de sa conception de “l' homme capable,” on peut voir s'articuler très clairement trois modèles théoriques: une théorie de la réflexion comme réappropriation, une théorie de la narration comme construction et comme reconstruction de l'identité, une théorie de la reconnaissance comme parcours d'émancipation. Il s'agit de trois modèles capables de donner à la psychanalyse d'aujourd'hui des éléments nouveaux pour l'élaboration d'une théorie herméneutique centrée sur les concepts de narration et d'action. The psychoanalysis of Freud plays a constitutive role in Paul Ricœur’s philosophical discourse on the human. His conception of the human being as “capable man” revolves around three theoretical models – a theory of reflection as re-appropriation, a theory of narration as the construction and reconstruction of identity, and a theory of recognition as a course of emancipation. These three models can lend new elements to current psychoanalysis for the elaboration of a hermeneutical theory focused on the concepts of narration and action.

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.

This paper aims to show how Ricœur’s inquiry on memory, trace, and testimony contributes to rebalance a framework that, at the level of the dialectic between imagination and representation, would essentially present Historian’s work as a hermeneutical work. In Ricœur’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 the fidelity of memory nor the epistemic truth of history 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 own experiences. Consequently, the reality of the past itself reemerges as the corollary of the practice of memory.

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.