10.13125/CH/4183
Today we are witnessing an unprecedented crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Its unparalleled and unpredictable character, added to its expansion and the way it has affected contemporary society, also emphasizes the underlying question, who are we? Why and in what sense? In the current context, where, on the one hand, there is a loss of confidence in the ways in which we govern ourselves, as well as an uncertainty regarding the direction that this crisis may take and the threshold to which it can lead us, the question certainly arises as to whether what we are has a background on which to support ourselves; if anything, that "who" that we claim to be and to whom we bear witness in our work can withstand the test of the unpredictable and unexpected, of what has plunged us into a situation as unusual as it is incomprehensible. As tragic as this situation affects us worldwide, it affects us both collectively and personally. With all the momentum with which this even strikes us, do we not live it precisely as a challenge to the security whereby we usually respond to the question of our personal identity? Is it not at such an exceptional moment as this, when the question of personal identity worries us greatly as soon as our temporal condition takes on real importance, which, irreversible as such, offers us in turn the opportunity to reverse the situation we are involved in? Is it not during this worldwide crisis, which we first experienced as a personal rupture, which in turn gives us the opportunity to appreciate the tension we live in, but which is present, however, most of the time, invisible to us, namely, that of being engaged in a habitual, inhabited space, consolidated by a sense that we inherit, at the same time that we believe we are called to innovate on that? Isn't this time the one that certainly makes history in our personal and social fabric? However, it seems that we also can, in an unprecedented way, experience this crisis as an identity crisis insofar as it enhances its problematic dimension.
application/pdf
2533-1825
4183
2
en
Patricio Mena Malet
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Critical Hermeneutics
Editors’ Introduction
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
3
Articles
2020-07-10
2020-07-10
2020-07-10
2020-07-10
I_VIII
1
Patricio Mena Malet
2019
10.13125/CH/4183
I_VIII
2533-1825
2
I_VIII
Editors’ Introduction
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/4183/3787
3
Critical Hermeneutics, 3(2), 2019
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/4183




                            Editors’ Introduction




Today we are witnessing an unprecedented crisis caused by the
Covid-19 pandemic. Its unparalleled and unpredictable character,
added to its expansion and the way it has affected contemporary
society, also emphasizes the underlying question, who are we? Why
and in what sense? In the current context, where, on the one hand,
there is a loss of confidence in the ways in which we govern
ourselves, as well as an uncertainty regarding the direction that this
crisis may take and the threshold to which it can lead us, the
question certainly arises as to whether what we are has a background
on which to support ourselves; if anything, that "who" that we claim
to be and to whom we bear witness in our work can withstand the
test of the unpredictable and unexpected, of what has plunged us into
a situation as unusual as it is incomprehensible. As tragic as this
situation affects us worldwide, it affects us both collectively and
personally. With all the momentum with which this even strikes us,
do we not live it precisely as a challenge to the security whereby we
usually respond to the question of our personal identity? Is it not at
such an exceptional moment as this, when the question of personal
identity worries us greatly as soon as our temporal condition takes on
real importance, which, irreversible as such, offers us in turn the
Editors’ Introduction




opportunity to reverse the situation we are involved in? Is it not
during this worldwide crisis, which we first experienced as a personal
rupture, which in turn gives us the opportunity to appreciate the
tension we live in, but which is present, however, most of the time,
invisible to us, namely, that of being engaged in a habitual, inhabited
space, consolidated by a sense that we inherit, at the same time that
we believe we are called to innovate on that? Isn't this time the one
that certainly makes history in our personal and social fabric?
However, it seems that we also can, in an unprecedented way,
experience this crisis as an identity crisis insofar as it enhances its
problematic dimension.
      The articles we present here have the quality of confronting this
question from multiple perspectives that, irreducible between them,
still manage to give certain lucidity to that which we comprehend
around the question of “who am I?, which is especially necessary at
this moment. In this sense, the texts put us, in one hand, on the
phenomenological-eventual scope just like it has been elaborated by
the French thinker, Claude Romano, who interrogates the human
being in his capacity to embrace the events that shock the subject’s
existencial unfolding. On the other hand, we have collected articles
that revolve around the hermeneutic phenomenology of Paul Ricœur,
focusing their attention both on the ontological condition of human
beings, as well as on the perspective of his hermeneutics of action
and narrative. We finally conclude with a text by Shaumann which
questions       the     relationship   between   identity   and   alienation,
interrogating the philosophies of Paul Ricœur and Martin Heidegger.
      In the following paragraphs we recapitulate the contribution of
the authors in the articles that make up this issue. The text by
Ignacio Vieira, Singularity and Power-to-Be-Another: Ipseity and
Event in Claude Romano”, is questioned, from the resources offered
by the phenomenology of events by Claude Romano, about the


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                                               Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




opportunities offered by ipseity to reinterpret the personal singularity
that mourns the notion of the modern subject. Thus, the aim is to
cross-examine the problem of personal identity, putting this way of
being oneself - ipseity - at the center of the discussion regarding the
events that reshape the possibilities of    each new experience. The
subject who experiences an event that transfigures him cannot be
understood in a substantial way, as modern philosophy did, from
Descartes to Fichte, and even Husserl. In what way does the event
demand a new effort to understand the personal identity of the
exposed person, who is also capable of undergoing the irruption of an
event that can, upon occurrence, shock the totality of his self-being?
This question is addressed by Ignacio Vieira, assuming, in turn, the
task of explaining the Romanian approach, as well as to highlight it
through the examination of the issue of forgiveness, as an event, in
Victor Hugo's Les Miserables.
    The text Ipseity: A confident Odyssey of 'I Can' and Thrown
Courage of 'I Do', by Beatriz Contreras Tasso, addresses the question
about ipseity considering as a hypothesis, that the ethic of Ricœur's
request can be understood in all its depth insofar as the affective
anchorage of Ricœur's early phenomenological inquiry is shown as
the moment of inchoative gestation of this ethic. The Ricœurian thesis
of the mixed human condition allows us to base the ethical sense of
ipseity developed on the hermeneutical phenomenology of the self.
The phenomenon inquired to show the affective complexity of the
human condition is courage. According to the author, its relevance
lies in the fact that courage exhibits that role of anthropological
“hinge”, which goes beyond the dualistic vision of the human
condition, integrating into its existential structure the voluntary and
involuntary components that form the capacities of the capable
human being. The metaphor that runs through the analysis, quite
recurring in Ricœur, is the odyssey that characterizes existence and


                                                                           III
Editors’ Introduction




its finite condition. The odyssey brings together the ontological sense
of the precariousness of existing and its constitutive noncompliance.
This fragility is, however, the nucleus of the possibility of freedom:
the questioning of the other tests the capacity of oneself to respond
to himself and fulfill its promises. In this process of appropriation of
oneself, the self discovers its resources of practical wisdom, in
borderline      situations        where   the   conviction    of   its   decision    is
inseparable from the courage to be oneself as another.
      In    the         article   Between   Affectivity      and   Initiative:      The
Anthropological Bases of a Hermeneutical Ethics, Vinicio Busacchi
presents an interesting articulation between affectivity and initiative,
developing the complexity of Ricœur's hermeneutical vision to
understand human freedom beyond a naturalistic, substantialist, or
dualistic approach. The highly documented development of the issue
of affectivity from a psychological perspective, making a review of the
contributions of psychoanalysis and psychology in general, allows us
to understand this irreplaceable basis of action and move towards the
existential field, which will be the thrust of analysis. What is
interesting is that the notion of initiative is integrated in the broad
context of human capacity and in the global framework of action, in
which the responsibility and consideration of the other in the social
and institutional world are key to understanding the hermeneutical
sense of its ethical-anthropological position. In other words, on the
structural basis related to the psychic field of human identity,
progress is made in terms of the anthropological reflection on the
affective capacities that underpin action based on the interrelation
between initiative and alterity.
      On the other hand, the article by Francesca D’Alessandris, The
Person, a ‘Material’ Story: The Construction of Ipseity and the Writing
and Reading of the Shared Space, focuses on realizing the importance
of place, shared space, in the construction of personal ipseity,


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                                                    Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




particularly in the dialectic between writing and reading. In this way,
one can find, on the one hand, the rehabilitation of the lived space as
a founding moment of identity; it does not arise as a problem from
temporal experience and all its complexity, nor does it emphasize it.
On the contrary, the identity question also concerns the experience of
the lived space and, hence, of the corporality of the person. The
interest of this article lies, particularly, in the way in which it
emphasizes and makes explicit the deep relationships that exist
between the act of reading, as a fundamental moment in the
construction or formation of the subject's ipseity, and its bodily
dimension, from which it takes place in the surrounding world. Thus,
the Ricoeurian carnal hermeneutics - as it has been developed lately,
for example, by Richard Kearney - and the hermeneutics of narrative
that the French philosopher deploys in Time and Narrative and
Oneself as Another are found in an original way.
    In Paul Ricœur: Imaginative Variation and Narrative Identity,
Angela Monica Recupero examines the issue of narrative identity,
based on the distinction between the Idem and Ipse identity, a
milestone in Ricœur's hermeneutics. Overcoming the Cartesian
approach of the Cogito, the author remarks, allows showing the
richness   of   ipseity   in   Ricœurian   terms,   due     to   its   linguistic
performativity. Narrative identity is thus inserted in the broader
discussion of the domain of writing versus orality. Here, Ricœur's
hermeneutical thesis on the independence of the written text in
relation to the author is recovered, the synchronic readers of the text
and the context from which the text arises. With a careful analysis of
writing and its repercussions on narrative identity, the positive
hermeneutical implications of this step are emphasized in terms of
the broadening of self-understanding. Then the inquiry focuses on the
potential of imaginative variation, which Ricœur takes from Husserl,
to determine new possibilities of understanding based on the


                                                                                 V
Editors’ Introduction




imaginary function of the narrative. In other words, the contribution
of the author's analysis consists in carefully showing the unity that
records Ricœur's narrative theory between narration and self-
understanding, although the emphasis is on the linguistic issue itself
and this last aspect of self-understanding is less developed in the
text.
        The   text Identity   and   Alienation,   by Shaumann, critically
addresses the issue of personal identity, as it is thought by Paul
Ricœur in Oneself as Another, in his double display of identity-idem
and identity-ipse, the stress being on the problematic dimension of
ipseity and promise as its paradigm. The issue, interestingly enough,
in which the author is located, is to think about whether promise-
keeping, as a paradigm of ipseity, no longer implies a certain
alienation of oneself. To do this, this issue is approached in a critical
way through Black's concept of Humbug, Heidegger's notion of On
and Bourdieu's Habitus. Could keeping a promise, despite the
vicissitudes of time, and rather than fidelity to oneself and to the
other, be considered rather as a form of alienation from oneself? This
type of considerations, approached by the author, certainly sheds a
critical, and therefore clarifying, light on the scope of Ricoeur's
hermeneutic of the self, and, arguably, its unthought-of.


        As can be seen in this introductory presentation, the question of
personal identity has a variety of scopes that can be considered and
each one of them can shed light, not necessarily by giving an answer,
but in giving a peek of the depth of these types of questions. Depth
because matters like these are not raised to be resolved, but rather
to be deepened. It seems to us that, as these different approaches
show, it is not typical of a good philosophy to rush to answer a
question that calls, first of all, to self-examination, to examine it with
due attention and to accept being imbued with its problematic. This


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                                                 Critical Hermeneutics, 3 (2019)




issue of Critical Hermeneutics has sought to respond to this desire,
the one that consists of holding the air, thus, pausing our habitual
discourse, stopping at the extensive and detailed examination of the
various edges that personal identity opens up for your questioning.
The perspectives exposed are multiple, there are those that are
mainly concerned with exposure to events, others that focus on
affectivity and the power to act, and those that question the ability to
build stories from the ones the subject is understood and recognized
as the same. Similarly, there are critical perspectives that confront
the matter of identity with that of alienation. All these ways of
questioning the problem, which is ours here, come to enrich a
discussion that today seems more essential than ever, but which is
called to remain open, in times when the temptation of closure, at all
levels, harasses us on both sides.
     This closure, which is a distinctive phenomenon in this global
catastrophe, affects discourse in the public and private spheres, as
has been explicitly stated, and bodily grieves us, revealing the depth
of our carnal vulnerability. We are exposed to the brutal event of the
interruption of our voluntary relationship of human closeness and
distance and our, now regulated, spatial mobility. The closure
dramatizes our susceptibility and relativizes our priorities and
projects, testing the human capacities of initiative to perform a
responsible action. Although we cannot, for now, get out of this
spatial closure, at least there remains the possibility of displaying our
narrative identity, an always lucid way to recreate actions that
illuminates our daily life and inspires our inventiveness against the
difficulties and tragedies of life. Identity as Ipseity is not assured, its
alienation is perhaps it's inevitable risk, but the alienation of oneself
also threatens the care of the other, and affects their reception.
Extreme moments like nowadays are also scenarios that challenge
our courage to make the right and wise decision.


                                                                             VII
Editors’ Introduction




       In short, each of the authors' proposals contribute, with these
underlined keys, to the hermeneutical exercise of thinking about our
finite human condition on a phenomenological basis, which is
reinforced in this pandemic. Therefore, this issue becomes a situated
reflection, which delves into          the   anthropological dynamism of
existence,      exemplary   exposed     to   the   event   of    loss   and   the
appreciation of the essential. The physical confinement, the psychic
closure or the times fatigue, paradoxically open a renewed reflection,
although       always   provisional,   in    search   of   the    uninterrupted
understanding of that underlying question that asks, who are we?


                                                      Beatriz Contreras Tasso
                                                           Patricio Mena Malet




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