H e r m e n e V t I k a in humanistika II

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A

NDRZEJ

 W

IERCINSKI

: H

ERMENEUTIC

  L

EGACY

Ricoeur’s role as mediator between European and Anglo-American Philoso-

phy cannot be overestimated. No one has better bridged the gap, dialoguing

with such analytic philosophers as John L. Austin, Donald Davidson, Derek

Parfit, and John Rawls, while continuing his conversation with Edmund Hus-

serl, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jacques Derrida. He is one of

the great commentators of the European Tradition. His hermeneutics can be

seen as an alternative to postmodern deconstruction.

The title of the volume, Between Suspicion and Sympathy: Paul Ricoeur’s

Unstable Equilibrium, refers to the dialectical tension between Ricoeur’s two

modes of hermeneutic investigation. Ricoeur himself stresses the importance

of acknowledging the dialectical tension in his work:

It is with great joy and gratitude that I receive the volume of the “herme-

neutic series” which you have gathered and published. The title /Between

Suspicion and Sympathy: Paul Ricoeur’s Unstable Equilibrium/ renders

precisely the tension which runs through all my work: between suspicion

and sympathy. This tension resonates with another one which is equally

dear to me, between critique and conviction. I am conscious of the fragility

of the balances that in turn threaten the unity of my work, and welcome the

dynamism which pushes me from one work to another. I am grateful to the

pleiad of authors you have solicited. The totality of my work is thus covered

and the dominant tone of the authors themselves situates it … “between

sympathy and suspicion”!

74

When we last met in November 2003 at the International Symposium, Her-

méneutica y responsibilidad: Homenaje a Paul Ricoeur in Santiago de Com-

postela, Spain, Ricoeur once again expressed his appreciation for the volume,

calling it “a thorough and comprehensive companion to his work.”

75

Opening a spectrum of possible interpretations, Ricoeur creates unstable yet

tenable equilibriums. According to him, a narrative is produced by predicative

assimilation, which “integrates into one whole and complete story multiple

and scattered events, thereby schematizing the intelligibility attached to the

narrative taken as a whole.”

76 

Equilibrium, disruption of equilibrium, and res-

74

 Paul Ricoeur’s letter to Andrzej Wierciúski, dated June 11, 2003, translation mine.

75 

The proceedings have been published as Villaverde, Fernándes, Henriques, and Vicente, ed.,

Herméneutica y responsibilidad: Homenaje a Paul Ricoeur.

76

 Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory, 185.

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toration of equilibrium create a dynamic of strategy implemented by each mi-

cro element in establishing the unity and meaning of the narrative.

Ricoeur’s hermeneutics has influenced not only literary criticism, but the hu-

manities, theology, and the social sciences. According to him, hermeneutics is

“animated by this double motivation: willingness to suspect, willingness to

listen; vow of rigor, vow of obedience.”

77 

Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion

is in fact a hermeneutic circle. “Openness,” the dynamic between the reader

and the text, cannot be closed, since the written text is a disembodied voice,

which only comes to life in being interpreted. Ricoeur’s hermeneutic project

attempts to develop a hermeneutics that will uncover the ontological structures

of meaning, the worlds which unfold in front of the text. “Three masters, seem-

ingly mutually exclusive, dominate the school of suspicion: Marx, Nietzsche,

and Freud.”

78 

These three masters of suspicion opposed interpretation as resto-

ration of meaning. Ricoeur’s exploration of their work led to the coining of the

now famous phrase, “the hermeneutics of suspicion.”

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Ricoeur’s theory of reading enables us to talk about interpretation without be-

coming trapped in the binaries of sympathy versus judgment, historical objec-

tivity  versus subjective response. Ricoeur works out a hermeneutics that ex-

tends beyond the reading of literary works to constitute a theory for reading

life. The radicalization of a lingually oriented hermeneutics inscribes the read-

ing subject into the process of interpretation.

Suspicion must be balanced by sympathy. The hermeneutics of historical sym-

pathy does not overlook the problems of the ethics of sympathetic reading:

reading sympathetically still means reading critically.

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 Hermeneutic reading

treats any author and text as an “other” to whom we have an ethical obligation.

77

 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (New Haven, Conn.: Yale

University Press, 1970), 27.

78

 Ibid., 32.

79

 Ibid., 32–35; Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and The Human Sciences, trans. and ed. John B. Thom-

pson (Cambridge; Paris: Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de

l’Homme, 1987), 34. See also Hans-Georg Gadamer, “The Hermeneutics of Suspicion,” in Gary

Shapiro and Alan Sica, ed., Hermeneutics: Questions and Prospects (Amherst, Mass.: University

of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 54–65 and David Stewart, “The Hermeneutics of Suspicion,” Jour-

nal of Literature and Theology 3 (1989): 296–307.

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 Erin White, “Between Suspicion and Hope: Paul Ricoeur’s Vital Hermeneutic,” Journal of Lite-

rature and Theology 5 (1991): 311–321.

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