75

Ric oe ur
ANNA C. ZIELINSKA
Introduction
Paul Ric oe ur (1913 – 2005) is mostly known for his work on hermeneutics and phenomenology.
But he was also close, for quite a long time, to the structuralist tradition
which became notorious through works of Ferdinand Saussure, Roman Jakobson, and
Algirdas Greimas. 1 He thus had a double heritage, philosophical and linguistic, which
in all likelihood made him more open to the so - called analytical tradition in philosophy
(his fellow French philosophers saw him as the most ‘ transatlantic ’ among them). 2 He
did not, however, live this duality as something natural, torn as he was between linguists
who considered linguistic communication as an unproblematic ‘ given ’ and philosophers
who regarded the very fact of communicating as a fundamental mystery. He
eventually conceded that there is indeed a mystery in the fact that we communicate,
but that it is not defi nitive and can be transgressed. At one point he described his work
as an attempt to “ understand the discourse as a transgression of the monadic incommunicability
” (Ric oe ur 2004 : 53). The urge to leave the naturalistic framework and
adopt the transcendental perspective is here motivated by the will to put the theory of
discourse in the “ space of the game, both logical and phenomenological, which is not
the one of nature ” (ibid.). This denaturalized conception of discourse was subsequently
refi ned, but its role remained central throughout Ric oe ur ’ s work.
The present chapter focuses on the way Ric oe ur dealt with the problem of action,
which became increasingly important to him from the end of the seventies. Ric oe ur was
the fi rst French reader of Anscombe and Davidson. His interest in them arose primarily
because they were both working on action discourse within a broadly Aristotelian
tradition. One of his major books, Oneself as Another , contains both an original contribution
to the philosophy of action and an interesting criticism of the most discussed questions
of the discipline as he encountered it. In what follows, I shall try to reconstruct a
part of it; however, it is an image, and not an idea, that is going to give the tone to my
investigation. My starting point is Ric oe ur ’ s own remark at the beginning of his discussion
of the Anglo - Saxon philosophy of action:
Anscombe ’ s book Intention provides in this regard the most elegant example of what I shall
call, without any pejorative overtone, a conceptual impressionism, to distinguish it from
the somewhat cubist version found in Donald Davidson ’ s theory. (Ric oe ur 1992 : 67)
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614
Preliminaries: Thinking about Language
One of the major notions in Ric oe ur ’ s work is that of interpretation (which gave him
several reasons to think about Freud ’ s psychoanalytic theory). 3 Ricoeur wished to “ preserve
the fullness, the diversity and the irreductibility of the various uses of language ”
(Ric oe ur 1983 : 175), thus distancing himself from those analytic philosophers who
maintained that well - formed languages “ are alone capable of evaluating the meaning -
claims and truth claims of all non ‘ logical ’ uses of language ” (ibid., p. 176). His second
aim was to “ gather together the diverse forms and modes of the game of storytelling ” ( le
jeu de raconter ), guided by the claim of “ functional unity ” among fi ction and non - fi ction.
The temporal character of this unity manifests itself as a “ common feature of human
experience ” which allows the author to consider “ fi ction, history and time ” as “ one
single problem ” (ibid.). Ric oe ur ’ s contribution to the philosophy of language thus seems
to consist in the shift from proposition to text as a basic unit of language itself.
An interest in text is, of course, fundamental to Ric oe ur ’ s hermeneutics, which fi rst
of all deals with the “ rules required for the interpretation of the written documents of
our culture ” ( 1991 : 144), and consists of an Auslegung (explanation) rather than a
Verstehen (understanding). The latter requires a deeper understanding of the entire
context, whereas the former limits itself to a narrow class of signs “ fi xed by writing ” :
Sensible action is an object for science only under the condition of a kind of objectifi cation
that is equivalent to the fi xation of a discourse by writing. This trait presupposes a simple
way to help us at this stage of our analysis. In the same way that interlocution is overcome
in writing, interaction is overcome in numerous situations in which we treat action as a
fi xed text. (Ric oe ur 1991 : 150)
Ric oe ur invokes a well - known distinction between understanding on a pre - scientifi c
level (which he relates to Anscombe ’ s “ knowing how ” ) and understanding on a deeper
level, which he calls “ interpretation. ” He next suggests that the “ sensible action ” ( action
sens é e ) “ may become an object of science, without losing its character of meaningfulness
through a kind of objectifi cation similar to the ‘ fi xation ’ that occurs in writing ”
(ibid., p. 151). This announcement sets our present framework: we should not conceive
of the philosophy of action as the study of disembodied action, but rather as a study of
the signifi cance of action. This meaningfulness is neither deep nor hidden; it belongs to
the public sphere of the narrative.
Philosophical anthropology is thus a place where the theories of text and action meet
through the notion of discourse. This is “ realized temporally and in the present, ” has
an identifi ed speaker, “ is always about something, ” and has “ an other, another person,
an interlocutor to whom it is addressed ” (ibid., 145 – 146). Discourse assures the stability
of this common space between language and interacting people; a space called “ action. ”
Oneself as Agent
Ric oe ur began to work on Oneself as Another during the Gifford Lectures he delivered at
the University of Edinburgh in February 1986, shortly after the publication of the last
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615
volume of his Time and Narrative (1985). 4 He used this occasion not only to distance
himself from Heidegger, but also – more importantly – to clarify his disagreement with
the Cartesian conception of the self as transparent. The resulting book constitutes a
dialogue between his original (albeit Husserl - infl uenced) thought and several major
themes in the contemporary analytical tradition.
When Ric oe ur talks of the “ theory of action, ” he refers to the ostensibly autonomous
fi eld of study recently established by English - speaking philosophers, treating the philosophy
of language as a mere working tool (ancient Greek organon ) within action
theory. As far as Ric oe ur is concerned, this subject matter differs from that of selfhood,
which engages moral responsibility and requires a broader context of study (see also
chapter 66 ). Thus it is not action but personhood that constitutes the primitive notion
of any “ philosophy of action. ” The problem of personal identity is fi rst raised through
this double attribution. Among English - speaking philosophers, it was Peter Strawson
who proposed the most elaborate theory of the agent, through his idea of “ mutual
dependence. ”
Within Ric oe ur ’ s framework, the problem of action arises in a way which further
relates to a number of other issues. In response to the centrality of Anscombe ’ s question,
“ Which action? ” (an intersection between ‘ What? ’ and ‘ Why? ’ ), Ric oe ur sets up a
series of questions we might ask about action – who does what, why, how, where, and
when – awarding the fi rst question, the one about the agent ( ‘ Who? ’ ), a privileged
place. Ric oe ur ’ s aim is to show that, once all the other questions are answered, ‘ Who? ’
becomes more powerful than ever. By contrast, Anglo - Saxon philosophers on the one
hand and Heidegger and Arendt on the other do not recognize this primacy. Their
preclusion of the question ‘ Who, ’ Ric oe ur observes, opens their respective theories of
action to the possibility of being myopically reduced to mere theories of events.
Ric oe ur is nevertheless far from being straightforwardly opposed to either Anscombe
and Davidson, let alone the Anglo - Saxon tradition as a whole. He admires their capacity
to eliminate numerous pseudo - concepts such as kinaesthetic sensations, “ which
would allow us to know as an internal event our production of voluntary motions, ”
where the alleged internal observation “ is constructed after the model of external observation
” (Ric oe ur 1992 : 62). Moreover, he greets Davidson ’ s anomological theory of
mental causation with much enthusiasm. Indeed, Volume 1 of his own Time and
Narrative contains an analogous conception of the singular causal explanation of historical
events, 5 and he is even more open to von Wright ’ s quasi - causal model of action
as described in Explanation and Understanding (Ric oe ur 1992 : 110).
Mistaken Dichotomies
Once action is granted an autonomous ontology, it becomes indeed natural to impose
on it a number of distinctions that may subsequently become the subject of sophisticated
philosophical discussion (see the reasons – causes and action – event distinctions).
Ric oe ur recognizes the ambition of these distinctions as belonging to philosophy proper:
“ the argument claims to be logical and not psychological, in that it is the logical force
of the motivational connection that prevents classifying the motive as a cause ” (1992:
63). He sees the opposition between reason and cause as “ strictly parallel with the
anna c. zielinska
616
opposition between action and event ” (ibid., p. 64). Reasons and actions are said to
belong to one language game, cause and event to another, and these should not be
confused. Ric oe ur rejects this dichotomy, seeing no reason to take the two categories
as granted; questions such as “ what made you do this? ” cannot be relevantly answered
without mixing purportedly separate language games. He claims that the clear - cut
distinction made between reasons and causes was only possible because the place of
the agent was left obscured: if we kept in mind the initial idea, that both mental and
physical predicates apply to the same person, we would not be able to distinguish these
two questions. With this in mind, Ric oe ur proposes a category of “ wanting, ” which
includes relevant features of reason and causal explanations while also allowing the
agent the ability to make clear the point of his action.
Dichotomies of this kind are less pervasive (if not silenced) in Anscombe ’ s work and
explicitly combated in Davidson ’ s. Ric oe ur contrasts both with other philosophers of
action, such as A. I. Melden or Stuart Hampshire. In Intention , Ric oe ur notes,
we observe the esprit de fi nesse of this analysis, which will erode the clear - cut dichotomies
of the preceding analysis and, paradoxically, will open the way for the esprit de g é om é trie
characterizing a theory of action diametrically opposed to the preceding one. (Ibid., p. 69)
This remark is an allusion to Pascal ’ s idea that
all geometers would then be intuitive if they had clear sight, for they do not reason wrongly
from principles known to them. And intuitive minds would be geometric if they could bend
their thinking to the principles of geometry to which they are unaccustomed. (Pascal
2005 : 207)
In our context, it seems that, although able to have both esprits , Anscombe somehow
does not manage to make them work simultaneously.
Ric oe ur ’ s own ambition is to propose an alternative conception of motivation which
(1) rejects the above - mentioned dichotomies and (2) satisfi es what he calls “ phenomenological
intuition ” ( 1992 : 77). The sharpness of the distinction between reason and
cause is only plausible if we ignore both the passive aspect involved in the notion of
desire and the grammar of several crucial intentional notions (emotion, affection, and
so on) whose explanation is essentially causal. The explication sought for is teleological,
yet this teleology is only dependent upon a self - imposed order. Consequently, the event
to be explained is not hidden, for what is being related is a (chosen) system and its laws.
This is what can be called the normative part of the investigation, whereas Ric oe ur ’ s
originality lies in his capacity to make it inseparable from the descriptive one (which
provides us with a description of reasons). He correlates the essential features of the
causal explanation of action with the reason - structured descriptions, and then concludes
(somewhat provokingly) that “ [t]he epistemology of teleological causality is thus
the explanation of the insurmountable nature of ordinary language ” (ibid., p. 79). This
statement is not to be understood as the end of an investigation, but as its starting point,
since it opens new perspectives for a more attentive study of the ‘ intentionto. ’ (For
Ric oe ur, Davidson ’ s main mistake is to have misunderstood the substantive role played
by the ‘ intention to, ’ as compared to other uses of the term ‘ intention. ’ )
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617
The temporary dimension associated with ‘ intentions to ’ and with the pragmatic
aspects of judgments presuppose a fundamental entity, namely the agent, and Ric oe ur
is, unsurprisingly, reticent about its quasi - absence in Davidson ’ s version of the story
(Ric oe ur 1992 : 80 – 81). Ric oe ur thereby questions the relevance of the whole ontological
project advanced by Davidson, in which events, and not persons, are credited with
the status of substances. The phenomenologist, by contrast, seeks “ a different ontology,
one in harmony with the phenomenology of intention and with the epistemology of
teleological causality ” (ibid., p. 86).
Intention
The continental tradition has had a long - time interest in the problem of intention. It is
therefore not surprising that Ric oe ur found Anscombe ’ s choice of focus appealing.
While aware that her Wittgensteinian take on the notion was quite different, he also
noted that the Aristotelian roots of her work were also shared by Husserl – namely
Aristotle ’ s medieval commentators, read both by Anscombe and by Husserl ’ s master,
Brentano. What Ric oe ur viewed as Anscombe ’ s “ piecemeal ” approach ( 1992 : 68) he
took to be relevant only to a part of the problem of intention. Undertaking an analysis
of several grammatical problems related to intention expressions (in order to understand
better the appealing character of Anscombe ’ s proposals), he was subsequently
able to make clear the chief points of disagreement.
The notion of ‘ intention to ’ (do something) occupies a privileged place in the phenomenological
study of intentionality, admitting the purported transparency of consciousness
to itself. Yet, Ric oe ur remarks, both the privileged place and the transparency
are rejected by Anscombe, chiefl y because this sort of intention is not (immediately)
verifi able through behavior and thus much better known to the agent than anyone
else. Anscombe concentrates on an adverbial form of the notion of intention, “ intentionally,
” which refers to phenomena that are altogether different from those associated
with the ‘ intention to. ’ Ric oe ur, for his part, distinguishes three distinct kinds of intention
- related expressions: to act intentionally, to act with a certain intention, and have
an ‘ intention to. ’
Past actions are said to be done (un)intentionally, which links the adverbial form of
the term to descriptions (and explanations) of past actions. Likewise, when we say that
we act or acted with a certain intention, we refer to our past or present actions (we
never say “ I am going to act with the intention of doing so and so ” ). Intention talk
about the future differs in an important way from other uses, since it is “ the only one
that is amenable to analysis solely on the basis of its expression. ” The two other uses,
by contrast, are “ secondary qualifi cations of an action that can be observed by everyone
” (Ric oe ur 1992 : 68). This “ expression ” ( d é claration ) presupposes a priority of the
agent who, at this point, has complete control over his own intentions: if she does not
express them, they will remain entirely unknown. The superfi cial grammatical study
of this problem seems insuffi cient, given that predictions of the future look exactly like
the expressions of ‘ intention to, ’ and are thereby not capable of giving an account of
any specifi c personal engagement of the agent (like promissory utterances such as “ I
am going to help you, ” and unlike warnings such as “ I am going to be sick ” ).
anna c. zielinska
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The future - related intentions in Ric oe ur ’ s sense are inexistent in Anscombe ’ s analysis:
Anscombe braces her fi eld of study through the well - known criterion of the application
of “ a certain sense of the question ‘ Why? ’ ” (Anscombe 2000 , § 5). Such analysis
of the variety of contexts in which we can ask this question encourages a piecemeal
approach which is – here – quite satisfactory. This also renders plausible the moving
apart of agent and analysis of intention (which is coherent with Anscombe ’ s former
presuppositions concerning the agent - independent character of action). Ric oe ur further
remarks that her choice of the word ‘ wanting ’ over the expression ‘ I want ’ contributes
to the project of eliminating the agent:
what is eliminated is the one who, in intending, places this intention on the path of promising,
even if the fi rm intention lacks the conventional and public framework of explicit
promising. ( 1992 : 73)
By implication, the problem of personal identity (of whether the person who does the
intending and the one who later comes to act upon it are one and the same) disappears
too. 6 This leads Ric oe ur to examine Derek Parfi t ’ s Reasons and Persons and to propose a
novel criticism of his ideas. 7
Ric oe ur understands Anscombe ’ s and Davidson ’ s project as one of eliminating a
number of “ mysterious ” inner entities from their ontology (and he is thereby surprised
by Davidson ’ s admission of mental events). He thus recognizes Anscombe ’ s attack on
the conception of pure intention (in section 32 of Intention ) as a “ seeing eye in the
middle of the acting, ” since the conception belongs to the paradigm of representation. 8
Be that as it may; Ric oe ur maintains that it would be suffi cient to modify our understanding
of this “ pure act of intending ” and that it would be necessary to preserve at
least a part of it if we wish to give a complete account of embodied intention having a
concrete spatio - temporal dimension. In order to prepare the ground for such a conception,
he introduces the notion of veracity (different from the truth – v é rit é – of descriptions),
as a part of a wider issue of attestation . This enables him to set criteria of
correctness (for intentions) that might be known only by the person who has them (her
“ shared confession ” does not therefore amount to a public description: Ric oe ur 1992 :
72 – 73). This specifi c notion of attestation (involving the notions of sincerity, lying,
illusion, and so on) allows for an inner and refl exive side of intention, with no commitment
to the Cartesian conception of the self.
Action as a Story about the Agent
As noted above, Ric oe ur chose a non - naturalist and transcendental perspective, in
which the text becomes the place where our humanity deploys itself. He accordingly
assigns a crucial role to the notion of narrativity in the formation of the identity of a
character (in the sense of a character in a novel). The roots of this conception lie in
Aristotle ’ s P oetics , where action receives a privileged place not in virtue of its intrinsic
properties, but (only) because it constitutes a useful means for transmitting views about
the agent. Action so understood is an instrument, or a mere point of convergence. In
Aristotle ’ s P oetics , it is praxis and life, not people, that are central to the tragedy genre
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619
as a genre. 9 Ric oe ur retains the double meaning of the word “ tragedy, ” referring both
to literary genre and to the archetypical dilemma in ethics where one has to choose
between two equally bad courses of action. In ethics, from his agent - focused perspective,
Ric oe ur is open to the tragic dimension of action, which, as he sees it, is by no
means manageable through the philosophical apparatus. This dimension reduces the
force of any ethics of obligation; our understanding of ethical issues needs to be much
richer than most moral systems might suggest (leaving room for the lack of a preferable
solution). This understanding goes beyond the fi rst understanding of the term ‘ tragedy ’
and, unlike it, offers no hope of catharsis . It invites the action, in its narrative complexity,
to move “ [f]rom tragic phronein to practical phronesis : this will be the maxim that
can shelter moral conviction from the ruinous alternatives of univocity or arbitrariness
” (Ric oe ur 1992 : 249). 10
The second source of infl uence on Ric oe ur ’ s conception of narrativity in relation to
action is the Russian literary critic Vladimir Propp, whose infl uence on the French
structuralists was crucial. Just as Propp wanted to identify basic components of
narrative structure of Russian folk tales, Ric oe ur aimed to identify action through its
narrative ( r é cit ). 11 Narrative contains the essence of action, which has no independent
ontology.
Narrative also contains a number of dichotomies; but they differ greatly from those
of action theory. The fi rst appears to oppose patient and agent: those who endure given
processes and those who make them happen (see also chapter 26 ). 12 In parallel, Ric oe ur
evokes Greimas ’ idea of the actant – a type of character having a metalinguistic (as
opposed to concrete) status 13 – that has the ambition “ to subordinate the anthropomorphic
representation of the agent to the position of the operator of actions along the
narrative course ” ( 1992 : 145). In this framework, all action is inter action, 14 and a
character ’ s identity is correlated with the notion of action. Such identity is by no means
reductive and constitutes an antidote to Parfi t ’ s conception of it. Nonetheless, it is far
from being classical: the identity of the story makes, according to Ric oe ur, the identity
of the character (ibid., p. 148). The effect of contingency disappears in this kind of narrative
model: any “ it could have been otherwise ” is “ inverted ” into “ it must have been
like that ” ; a new kind of necessity is “ produced at the very core of the event ” (ibid., p.
142) from a backwards perspective. The narrative perspective, as it incorporates the
temporal dimension, contains what is called a “ dynamic identity ” of characters. These
include both identity proper and diversity. Like Aristotle, 15 Ric oe ur sees the person as
an open project, to be understood better through (the general context of) passing time.
Ric oe ur maintains that narrative cannot be ethically neutral and that, if it is to
constitute the foundation for thinking about the action and the self, an “ objective ”
theory of action is an illusion. Consequently, for Ric oe ur, “ the dialectic between episteme
and doxa will never be completed. What he seeks therefore is a space between ‘ mere ’
opinion and science [of action] ” (van den Hengel 2002 : 88). Yet Ric oe ur ’ s idea of individual
action as (only) a derivation from interactions involves no commitment to any
‘ profound ’ subjectivism.
See also : action theory and ontology (1); speech acts (8); pluralism about action
(12); intention (14); reasons and causes (17); agency , patiency , and personhood
(26); aristotle (54); hegel (66); von wright (72); davidson (73); anscombe (74).
anna c. zielinska
620
Notes
1 This tradition had its own ‘ linguistic turn ’ (it took place around 1950 – 1960, being marked
by the rediscovery of Saussure ’ s writings by young structuralists).
2 The expression was coined by Fran ç ois Wahl in 1989 (Dosse 1997 : 619).
3 See Ric oe ur 1965 .
4 This corresponds to an extremely diffi cult period in Ric oe ur ’ s life. Weeks after the lectures
in 1986 his son Olivier committed suicide, and Mircea Eliade, one of his closest friends, died
around the same time too.
5 It is not, however, clear that Ric oe ur perceives the difference between the two kinds of
studied phenomena (history and the psycho - physical mental sphere).
6 Ric oe ur distinguishes here two kinds of identity, which he calls ips é ï t é (selfhood) and m ê met é
(sameness). This allows him to put forward a “ dialectic of the self and the other than self ”
( 1992 : 3).
7 See the fi fth study in Ric oe ur 1992 , “ Personal identity and narrative identity. ”
8 This expression is not Ric oe ur ’ s, and should be understood as opposing the idea of a ‘ paradigm
of action ’ ( paradigme actionnel ), as developed by Denis Vernant.
9 “ Tragedy is essentially an imitation [ mimesis ] not of persons but of action and life ” : Aristotle,
as quoted by Ric oe ur ( 1992 : 157).
10 The chapter on tragedy from Oneself as Another is dedicated to the memory of Ric oe ur ’ s son
Olivier.
11 He fi nds a number of similarities between his position and the notion of “ the narrative unity
of a life, ” present in MacIntyre ’ s After Virtue , only to notice that this narrativity does not
have to be naively unifi ed (for we do not have a mastery of the beginning and of the end of
our lives). This is why stories – narratives of action – always include arbitrarily imposed
limits and viewpoints.
12 Ric oe ur here quotes Claude Bermond ’ s Logique du r é cit (Paris: Seuil, 1973).
13 See Greimas 1966 : 75.
14 This interactional dimension is also present in Ric oe ur ’ s reading of speech - act theories: he
thinks that the analyses they offer us are interesting, yet limited to a purely linguistic sphere
of dialogical exchanges (see e.g. the second study in Ric oe ur 1992 ). What is needed, according
to Ric oe ur, is an account of how different speech acts lie at the origin of a genuine
dynamic co - alteration of speaker and interlocutor. Not only words, but the whole of action
must be analyzed in order to enrich our response to the initial question (the “ who? ” of what
is going on).
15 For details, see L é andri 1997 : 45 – 55.
References
Primary s ources
Ric oe ur , P. ( 1965 ). De l ’ interpr é tation. Essai sur Freud . Paris : Seuil .
Ric oe ur , P. ( 1983 ). On interpretation . In A. Montefi ore , Philosophy in France Today . Cambridge :
Cambridge University Press , 175 – 197 .
Ric oe ur , P. ( 1991 ). F rom Text to Action , translated by K. Blamey and J. B. Thompson D u texte à
l ’ action. Essais d ’ hermeneutique II [1986] . Evanston, IL : Northwestern University Press .
Ric oe ur , P. ( 1992 ). Oneself as Another , translated by K. Blamey [ Soi - m ê me comme un autre, 1990] .
Chicago : University of Chicago Press .
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621
Ric oe ur , P. ( 2004 ). Discours et communication [1973] . In Paul Ric oe ur. Cahiers de l ’ Herne . Paris :
Herne , 51 – 67 .
Secondary s ources
Anscombe , G. E. M. ( 2000 ). Intention , 2nd edn [1963]. Cambridge, MA : Harvard University
Press .
Dosse , F. ( 1997 ). Paul Ric oe ur: Les sens d ’ une vie . Paris : Editions de la D é couverte .
Greimas , A. J. ( 1966 ). S é mantique structurale . Paris : Larousse .
Van den Hengel , J. ( 2002 ). Can there be a science of action? In R. A. Cohen and J. L. Marsh (eds),
Ric oe ur as Another. The Ethics of Subjectivity , Albany : SUNY Press , 72 – 92 .
L é andri , A. ( 1997 ). L ’ action et la v é rit é . In J. - Y. Ch â teau (ed.) La V é rit é pratique . Paris : Vrin .
Pascal , B. ( 2005 ). Pens é es , translated by R. Ariew Indianapolis : Hackett .