I have to say Paul Ricoeur's Gifford lectures published as Oneself as Another ranks among the most difficult books I have ever tried to read.
But I was interested to read in the first chapter to the book how Ricoeur sees his largely philosophical work in relation to theology. He had, he said, written a couple of more explicitly theological chapters, but does not include them in this book.
He is adamant that he doesn't want his philosophy of the self to be seen as a crypto-theology. It is certainly the case that he discovers all these conceptual difficulties and problems that seem to be suggestive of a theological resolution. Does not the philosophy of the self point us inevitably to the need for some kind of divinity? This is the move he wants to resist
And, what's more, he doesn't want to see it the other way around: theology as taking the place of philosophy. Theology doesn't give the 'ultimate foundation' (rationally speaking) that philosophy strives for but can never attain. That would be stretching theology to do work it isn't designed to do:
If I defend my philosophical writings against the accusation of crypto-theology, I also refrain, with equal vigilance, from assigning to biblical faith a cryptophilosophical function which would most certainly be the case if one were to expect from it some definitive solution to aporias that philosophy produces in abundance... (p. 24)
No: theology does not answer the questions that philosophy has raised. The irretractable problems that a philosopher discovers are not susceptible to a theological answer. The problems remain, and remain to be addressed by philosophy. What he has instead from theology is assurance, which is to be taken by faith. This is how he puts it:
The dependence of the slef on a word that stripsit of its glory, all the while comforting its courage to be, delivers biblical faith from the temptation, which I am here calling cryptophilosophical, of taking over the henceforth vacnt role of ultimate foundation. In turn, a fiath that knows itself to be without guarantee...can help philosophical hermeneutics to protect itself from the hubris that would set it up as the heir to the philosophies of the cogito (ie Descartes) and as continuing their self-foundational claim. (p. 25)
5 comments:
Don't take this the wrong way but I'm really glad you find that book difficult!! It was being asked to make it a central part of my own PhD project that convinced me that I was being called to focus on formation for the ministry rather than academia (having a Radical Orthodox supervisor didn't help). I'm sure Ricoeur has interesting things to say, but I've been so shaped by analytical philosophy that I don't have very much patience with deliberately convoluted language. I want to give my intellectual effort to understanding the implications of the ideas themselves (as with, eg, Wittgenstein or theology) rather than deciphering what is being said in the first place. The book still sits on my shelf, mostly unread, ten years later, despite this area (Philosophy of Mind/ notion of the self) being one of my principal philosophical interests.
Thanks for the overview. I have the book too (unread), but your review has persuaded me that it might be worth the effort of trying to wade through it.
I remember my supervisor saying, in very sympathetic tones, "I'm afraid you're going to have to read Oneself as Another." And I, naively, having previously read Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, which I had understood without much problem, said, "Oh, that's okay, I like Ricoeur." Such naiviety. I think that I read him at least twice and I used bits of it in my thesis, but whether I really understood it is open to question. I've occasionally considered going back to it since then but suspect that life is too short!
Ricoeur in his joint lectures with Tracy would alternatively reference coherency-aimed philosophies like Hartshorne’s as interesting footnotes, valid efforts but failing on coherency grounds (like Whitehead and Russell’s failed universal algebra), or open projects possibly tractable to some future prodigy-Aquinas spinning a “proof” – a potential unity of knowledge, coherency based, not merely consilient (like for E.O. Wilson). These variable evaluations struck me as far less binary than emphatic (focused on a scale of emphasis: theology for T-functions, Philosophy for P-functions, with potentially overlapping magisteria). I wondered, too, why the gratuitous allegation of “crypto”-theology, since he seems so so obviously and patently theological. The French.
Jim
ricoeur has always interested me precisely for this disciplined committment to a certain independence b/w theol and phil, esp. because this committment of his is not based on some naive distinction b/w faith and pure reason (ric obviously knows all about tradition, presupps, hermeneutics and so on) and yet, he still maintains the 'two hats' methodology (i.e. is careful to distinguish when he is speaking as a theologian or as a philosopher). I take it that most christians' surface reaction to this is that it's wrong - disingenuous, that you can't 'compartmentalise' in this manner. But ricoeur is not alone and stands as representative of a large methodological tradition where this is common (a sort of (Kantian) transcendental/ phenomenological approach) which is committed to both a kind of theological epoche (what you call agnositicism) and to empahsising the limits of philosophy as philosophy and the aporias it runs up against. And as you say - you can't just import answers from theology to fix up the mess at the end of the day. Though of course you can use the theological treasure-trove of language and concepts as a rich resource to imagine/think-otherwise in philosophy. This is what i suspect ricoeur does but I don't know his work well enough to make my comments more detailed. Nevertheless Ricoeur has always been of interest to me precisely for the reason you mention here - he seems to display great integrity as both a theologian and as a philosopher (but NOT as both at the same time! - methodologically speaking). the dynamics of this is very interesting to me.
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