Ricoeur points out that the dichotomy between so-called Greek time (as circular) and Hebraic time (as linear) is facile and won't hold. He then goes on to describe 'biblical time' in terms of the intersection of the different literary genres within the scriptures and their perceptions of time. So:
The instruction issuing from the successive legislations, unified under the emblem of Sinai and Moses, colors the narratives themselves. These narratives, under the pressure of the prescriptive, become narratives of the march of a people with God under the sign of obedience and disobedience.
He calls this the 'narrativisation of ethics and the ethicisation of narratives'. What has this to do with time, especially? Well:
...the law qualifies not just the event of its giving but all the narratives in which this giving is encased, in such a way that the founding events become events that do not pass away but remain.
3 comments:
Yes, Derrida points out that regardless of 'circular' and 'linear' conceptions, they are still singular lines.
Ricoeur is an interesting alternative to reader-centred hermeneutics I find: he is determined to let the text be the text and nothing else. Cool, huh?
Yes; I'm reading up on Husserl at the moment, and am coming across him quite a bit.
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