Ricoeur's Appropriation of Heidegger: Happy Marriage or Holzweg?

References

• E.g. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, trans, by K. McLaughlin and D. Pellauer (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1984), pp. 85f. Further references to this work are prefixed by “TN”.
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• Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 15th ed. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1979), pp. 39–40; Being and Time, trans. J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962), pp. 634. All further references to this work appear in the text unprefixed and with the page numbers of both texts, e.g. (39–40/63–4).
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• The point is hotly disputed and requires further elaboration; but I believe the search for essential structures, despite the book's existential elements, still characterizes Heidegger's effort in Being and Time; cf. pp. 38n/63n, 34–37/58–61, 50n/75n.
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• James M. Robinson, “The German Discussion of the Later Heidegger,” in The Later Heidegger and Theology, ed. Robinson and John B. Cobb (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 3–76, quote p.11.
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• Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, ed. and trans. John B. Thompson (CUP, 1981), p. 278. Subsequent references to this work are prefixed by “HHS.”
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• HHS 289. Ricoeur elsewhere defines historicity as “the historical condition that characterizes human existence”; see his “History and Hermeneutics,” Journal of Philosophy 73 (1976): 683–95, p. 683.
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• For a more detailed defense of this statement see Fridolin Wiplinger, Wahrheit und Geschicht-lichkeit. Eine Untersuchung über die Frage nach dem Wesen der Wahrheit im Denken Martin Heideggers (Freiburg/München: Karl Alber, 1961), e.g. p. 238 and n.l51.
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• Werner Brock, “An Account of ‘Being and Time’,” in Heidegger, Existence and Being (South Bend, Indiana: Gateway Editions, [1949?]), 11–116, p. 77.
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• To be more specific, Heidegger is there fascinated by the potential of a philosophy still concerned with objective categories; see e.g. “Das Kategorienproblem,” in Heidegger, Frühe Schriften (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1972), 341–53.
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• For example, for a critique of the “Rede von der Subjektität [not Subjektivität] des Menschenwesens als dem Fundament für die Objektivität jedes subjiectum” see “Uber ‘die Linie,” German text in Heidegger, The Question of Being (New York: Twayne, 1958), 54, 56.
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• Note that Ricoeur nowhere (to my knowledge) directly links the three terms in this manner. I have borrowed the locution from Heidegger in order to show—this will be my thesis—the difficulties that arise from ascribing it to Ricoeur.
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• “History and Hermeneutics,” p.693; cf. pp. 686–87.
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• HHS 185, and Chapter 7 of HHS, “Appropriation,” in toto.
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• Ricoeur, “From Existentialism to the Philosophy of Language,” in Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart, eds., The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of His Work (Boston: Beacon, 1978), pp. 86–93, quote p. 90.
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• Ibid., p. 91. Ricoeur develops his critique at length, drawing directly from Heidegger's philosophy, in “Heidegger and the Question of the Subject,” in Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, ed. Don ihde (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), pp. 223–35.
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• Ricoeur, “Biblical Narrative,” Semeia 4 (1975), pp. 29–145, quote p. 127.
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• Heidegger, “Identität und Differenz,” German text included in Identity and Difference, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 116.
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• Heidegger, “Logos: Heraklit, Fragment 50,” in Vorträge und Aufsätze (Pfullingen: Günther Neske, 1954), pp. 207–29, quotes pp. 213, 228.
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• “Language,” in Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper, 1971), p. 210.
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• Heidegger, On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), p. 10. Further references appear in the text with the prefix “TB.”
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• Heidegger, Über den Humanismus (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1949), p. 36.
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• See for example “Die Onto-theo-logische Verfassung der Metaphysik,” in Identity and Difference, pp. 107–43.
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• Löwith in Robinson, p. 14; even the title of Löwith's book, Heidegger: Denker in durftiger Zeit, suggests the comparison.
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• “Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry,” in Existence and Being, pp. 292–324, quote pp. 279–80. The following quote is from p. 289.
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• “wenn das homologein geschient, ereignet sich Geschickliches…Das allein und d.h. zugleich eigentlich Geschickliche ist der Logos.” In Vorträge und Aufsätze, p. 221.
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• Heidegger, Erläuterungen zu Hölderlins Dichtung (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1953), p. 65.
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• William J. Richardson, Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1963), p. 424.
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• Joseph J. Kockelmans, On the Truth of Being: Reflections on Heidegger's Later Philosophy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), p. 59.
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• Richardson, pp. 424–25.
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• Ricoeur, “The History of Philosophy and the Unity of Truth,” in History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), pp. 41–56, quote p. 50. The following reference is to p. 53.
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• “das Einzig-Eine als das Einende,” Vorträge und Aufsätze, p. 220.
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• Ricoeur, “Structure, Word, Event,” in The Conflict of Interpretations, pp. 79–96, quote p. 95.
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• In addition to the work of Austin and Searle, it serves as the foundation, for example, for Jürgen Habermas's massive Theory of Communicative Action, vol. 1, trans. T. McCarthy (Boston: Beacon, 1984).
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• Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), p. 37.
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• Kevin Vanhoozer, A Passion for the Possible: Paul Ricoeur and Biblical Narratives, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
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• “Heidegger and the Question of the Subject,” Conflict, pp. 233–4.
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• Semeia, p. 36.
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• “Existence and Hermeneutics,” in Conflict, pp. 3–24, quote p. 8.
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• Perhaps to the 200-year-old farmer's house, the Schwarzwaldhof that Heidegger so lovingly describes in “Bauen Wohnen Denken,” Vorträge und Aufsätze, p. 161.
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• “Existence and Hermeneutics,” p. 6.
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• The task has been adequately carried out in the secondary literature; see, inter alia, David E. Klemm, The Hermeneutical Theory of Paul Ricoeur: A Constructive Analysis (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1983), pp. 27–44; Don Ihde, Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1971), pp. 171–73; and John B. Thompson in HHS 19–21.
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• “Explanation and Understanding,” in Interpretation Theory, pp. 71–88; “What Is a Text: Explanation and Understanding,” in HHS 145–64.
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• Of course, the later Heidegger still engaged in the study of poetry and the history of philosophy; in this sense, the individual continues to play an active role in the quest. But Heidegger would want to call it a listening-searching, a passive acting.
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• Interpretation Theory, p. 71.
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• “Existence and Hermeneutics,” p. 10.
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• One must again ask, by the way, whether an “explanation” that is bracketed on both sides by understanding, i.e. a thoroughly ontological/existential/hermeneutical explanation, bears any real similarity to “explanation” as discussed in other academic contexts. Though Ricoeur clearly intends a rapprochement with other academic disciplines not found in Heidegger, the agreement with explanation in other fields may be merely verbal, such that from their perspective Ricoeur and Heidegger are indistinguishable. But we cannot pursue this question here.
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