Philosophical anthropology against objectification. Reconsidering Ricoeur’s Fallible Man

Abstract

In this article I reconsider Ricoeur’s early philosophical anthropology in Fallible Man by probing its force in a current discussion on anthropology in the ethics of care. This discussion shows similarities with the intentions behind Ricoeur’s project. They are both dissatisfied with existing philosophical conceptions of human beings, in particular with their objectifying and fixing character. However, the ethics of care is a practice oriented approach while Ricoeur’s is an abstract philosophical one. In this article I will examine whether Ricoeur’s philosophical approach may be of value for such a practical approach. For this purpose I analyse three aspects of Ricoeur’s approach that seem to be akin to the ethics of care: (1) his ‘passion for the possible’ that inspires a critique of objectification; (2) his methodological reflections that highlight the relation between philosophy and the pre-philosophical; and (3) fragility as central anthropological category. Taking into account these aspects will give rise to the critical question of whether the anthropology in the ‘weak’ sense in which it is present in the ethics of care is able to account for the risk of objectification. Discovering the importance of this criticism reveals the relevance and topical interest of Ricoeur’s approach also for current practice-oriented philosophical reflection.

Keywords:

• anthropology
• Ricoeur
• Fallible Man
• ethics of care
• fragility of human beings
• ‘passion for the possible’

Notes

1. Held, “The Ethics of Care.”

2. Leget, Gastmans, and Verkerk, Care, Compassion and Recognition, 2.

3. Held, “The Ethics of Care,” 538.

4. Friedman, “Care Ethics,” 706–707.

5. Compared to the later English edition (2011), the more voluminous original Dutch version (2005) contains a more elaborate, explicit argument for developing a philosophical-medical anthropology (217–221, 258–262). For the sake of accessibility to those who do not read Dutch, I refer to the English edition.

6. Van Heijst, Professional Loving Care, 133-–134.

7. There are impulses to a more explicit and substantial anthropology within the ethics of care – which confirms that the ethics of care is not a ‘solid faction’. For example Diedrich, Burggraeve and Gastmans argue that a ‘legitimising philosophical anthropology’ is needed to empower care ethics (“Towards a Levinasian care ethic”, 34). The authors argue that Levinas’ thinking, in which they recognise many similarities to Tronto’s Moral Boundaries, may provide such an anthropology. See also Vanlaere and Gastmans, “A personalist approach;” they play off the contextual, descriptive approach of the ethics of care against the anthropological dimension by addressing what they call the problem of normativity, the Achilles heel of care ethics. In their view, the ‘pure reconstruction of an actual care situation’ is not enough to generate normativity (163–164).

8. Taylor and Dell’Oro. Health and Human Flourishing

9. Maio, Clausen, and Müller, Mensch ohne Maß?; Heilinger, Anthropologie und Ethik.

10. Held, “The Ethics of Care,” 542.

11. Ricoeur states that this is a ‘contemporary tendency’ (Fallible Man, 3). See also a later remark of Ricoeur: ‘I doubt that the central concept of philosophical anthropology is finitude, it is rather the triad finitude-infinitude-intermediary’ (“The antinomy of human reality”, 21).

12. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 4

13. Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature, 4–5.

14. Kevin J. Vanhoozer characterises Ricoeur’s philosophy as a whole as stemming from ‘a passion for the possible’ which gives rise to hope (Biblical Narrative in Ricoeur, e.g. 3–18 and passim). Ricoeur uses this expression ‘passion for the possible’ in several later articles with reference to Kierkegaard, e.g. “Freedom in the Light of Hope” (The Conflict of Interpretations, 407); “Guilt, Ethics and Religion” (The Conflict of Interpretations, 437; “Hope and the Structure of Philosophical Systems” (Figuring the Sacred, 207). See also Schaafsma, Reconsidering Evil, 27 n. 44, 259–260.

15. Ricoeur, “From existentialism”, 86.

16. Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature, 27.

17. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, xlvi.

18. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 134.

19. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, 40.

20. Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature, 3.

21. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 78.

22. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 107.

23. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 111–125.

24. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 111–112.

25. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 144.

26. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 145.

27. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 112.

28. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 143.

29. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 142.

30. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 143.

31. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 1.

32. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 4.

33. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 3–4.

34. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 4.

35. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 46.

36. Ricoeur, “The antinomy”, 35.

37. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 2, 25.

38. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, e.g. 63. In his characterisation of Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology in the introduction to Fallible Man, Walter Lowe regards an early essay on humanism (Ricoeur, “What does humanism mean?”) as revealing Ricoeur’s intentions in Fallible Man. Here Ricoeur calls for a philosophical humanism that should struggle against the ‘objectification of the human being’ in an ‘effort to reclaim and reaffirm “the élan of humanity”’ (Introduction to Fallible Man, viii).

39. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 18.

40. This repudiation of the possibility of direct introspection is a recurring argument in Ricoeur’s work that relates to his sympathy for the tradition of ‘reflective philosophy’ of which Jean Nabert was a contemporary representative (Schaafsma, Reconsidering Evil, 38–39).

41. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 17.

42. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 47.

43. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 48.

44. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 81.

45. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 21.

46. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 23.

47. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 53.

48. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 57.

49. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 60.

50. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 60–61.

51. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 113.

52. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 115.

53. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 120.

54. Van Heijst, Professional Loving Care, 144, 148.

55. Maillard, La vulnérabilité, 199.

56. Le Blanc, “Penser la fragilité.”

57. Le Blanc, “Penser la fragilité,”247.

58. In this respect, Le Blanc argues (“Penser la fragilité,” 251) that there is a transformation in the meaning of fragility from Ricoeur’s early Fallible Man to his later essays collected in Reflections on the Just (2007): fragility no longer designates a specific region of human existence, i.e. that of feeling, but qualifies the totality of human capacities.

59. Van Heijst, Professional Loving Care, 144.

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Notes on contributors

Petruschka Schaafsma

Petruschka Schaafsma is lecturer in ethics at the Protestant Theological University. In 2009 she received the five-yearly Legatum Stolpianum Prize for her dissertation Reconsidering Evil. Confronting Reflections with Confessions (Leuven, 2006). Apart from her Ricoeur research she currently runs a theological ethical research programme on the meaning and value of family in the Western world.