Rex Emerick

Paul Ricoeur's philosophy has been called eclectic, syncretistic, and utopian by critics. In this dissertation these charges shall be refuted by means of an analysis of the role of imagination in his thought. In response to the first charge, I will show that, if understood as a "poetics of the self" rather than the will, his philosophical project appears as a unity, developing coherently and consistently from the abstract, concrete, to the completed stage of the ontological question of selfhood. What prevents it from falling prey to a "violent syncretism" of the Hegelian type is his view of the ontological "openness" of language, which allows philosophy to progress systematically without becoming entrapped in a system of absolute knowledge. Imagination has the key function in his thought, for it is the power of reconciliation that mediates reason and truth, that is, the finitude of human understanding and the absolute character of Being. This power is shown to derive from Fichte's concept of the hovering of imagination, as it mediates dogmatic realism and idealism. In my conclusion I argue that Ricoeur's Poetics is inspired by Fichte's notion insofar as it transforms the utopian character of absolute truth--from an "impossible demand" placed upon reason to an infinite reservoir of possibility for the latter. Where sin abounds, grace superabounds