10.13125/CH/3896
In his 1965 work on Freud, Paul Ricoeur states and reasons that the hermeneutic field, as a space of interpretations, is constitutively fragmented and is, at the same time, a structure for hosting different interpretations formed in language, as a place where different human perspectives on the nature of reality converge. This justification emerges from epistemological and ontological conditions.
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2533-1825
3896
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Fernanda Henriques
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Critical Hermeneutics
Editor's Introduction
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
Articles
2019-12-02
2019-12-02
2019-12-02
2019-12-02
I-VII
1
Fernanda Henriques
2019/12/02
10.13125/CH/3896
I
2533-1825
en
VII
urn:nbn:it:unica-25603
Editor's Introduction
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/3896/3464
Critical Hermeneutics, special 2 (2019)
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/3896




                               Editor’s Introduction



In his 1965 work on Freud, Paul Ricoeur states and reasons that the
hermeneutic field, as a space of interpretations, is constitutively
fragmented and is, at the same time, a structure for hosting different
interpretations formed in language, as a place where different human
perspectives on the nature of reality converge. This justification
emerges from epistemological and ontological conditions. On the one
hand, it is based on the idea of a real that is always surplus, which
makes it inaccessible to a total knowledge, and that the topics of evil
and time are paradigmatic figures in Ricoeur’s thought. On the other
hand, it emerges from the limited character of human reason, a
theme that passes through all Ricoeurian philosophy – a post-
Hegelian Kantianism, as he says and reiterates several times. In fact,
the reason that operates in the French philosopher’s thought and
work is a reason inherited from Kant, condemned to a transcendental
dialectic and constantly working under the threat of the ghosts of
transcendental illusion and not Hegelian reason, able to create a final
summary. The incommensurability between the nature of reality and
human rationality establish that the human word is always a penulti-
mate word and that its different expressions form imperfect media-
tions, with poetics becoming, essentially, the final level of philosophi-
cal practice.


This special issue of Critical Hermeneutics, Path to the Hermeneutic
Field, is directly incorporated into that perspective of hermeneutic
field, presenting a set of interpretations that explore Paul Ricoeur’s
work directly or as points of reference. The texts in this issue create a
Editor’s Introduction




dialogue between Ricoeur’s thought with a range of other thinkers,
and cover a rich panoply of themes, focusing on the contemporary
nature, relevance and constitutive dialogism of Ricoeur’s thought and
work.
The issue begins with a text by Gonçalo Marcelo, Ethical Hospitality,
Linguistic Hospitality, because it discusses the theme of hospitality
that, ultimately, can be read as the root of the very idea of the her-
meneutic field as presented by Ricoeur. Without hospitality, that is,
without a structure of possible hosting, there cannot be a place (even
if such a place were virtual or poetic) where hermeneutics come to-
gether and face each other.
The text explores the problem of hospitality in its connection with
translation, first challenging specific perspectives of Ricoeur and Der-
rida and then exploring Richard Kearney’s point of view, specifically in
the context of the Guestbook project.
Based on an exploration of the etymological roots of the word hospi-
tality – which involve opposing meanings, guest and enemy – the au-
thor presents hospitality as a procedural “work” that is to some ex-
tent infinite. It is clearly always at risk, and negotiation and adjust-
ment have to be constant because it is based on the difficult path
from the impossible to the possible, from hostility to hospitality.
As well as dealing with the eternal problem of the aporetic relation-
ship with the different and the unfamiliar, which can be found
throughout the history of culture and thought, the text reflects on the
ethical topic that is most incisive at the moment; our being able to
live with peace and justice depends on its ability to resolve.
The next text, by Vinicio Busacchi, Subjectivity as a Hermeneutical
Process:      The       Anthropological   Implications   of   Ricoeur’s   Course
Through Translation, is an excellent moment of anthropological re-
flection on the vulnerability and effort binomial in dialogue with
Levinas and Ricoeur. Both authors are included because they devel-



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                                            Critical Hermeneutics, special 2 (2019)




oped, although taking different paths, a philosophical anthropology as
analysis of existence, positively exploring the gap opened by criti-
cisms and strong concepts about subjectivity that not only required
the transparency of subjectivity to itself, but also placed it at the ori-
gins of meaning. While accepting the validity of these criticisms, the
authors do not, however, discard the importance of continuing to
think about the being of the human being and it is within that frame-
work that they propose a new anthropological perspective based on
the categories of fragility, vulnerability, frailty. In presenting the posi-
tions of the authors cited, the text highlights the fact that, moving
forward along different paths, both articulate human vulnerability
with the question of otherness, whether experienced or the otherness
of another individual. Vinicio Busacchi dedicates the final points in his
text to delving into the evolution of the Ricoeurian anthropological
perspective – from Le volontaire et l’involontaire to Soi-même comme
un autre, naturally passing through his work on Freud – showing how
the paradigm of translation can be essential mediation for under-
standing what is at stake in Ricoeur’s perspective and also how the
author continues to work on the reflexive question on the theme of
acknowledgement, dealt with almost at the end of his life.
The next article is by Carlos A. Garduño Comparán and is called Ac-
tion and Language: A Poetic of the Will. It is a text that goes through
important works by Paul Ricoeur at different times to shape the role
of imagination and corresponding poetic features in discourse and in
action, establishing it as having a quintessentially practical function.
The text can be split into two parts. Part one covers the two first
points, discussing two essential themes. First, the Ricoeurian position
about metaphor as predicative impertinence and the role of imagina-
tion as the ability to restructure semantic fields subverted by meta-
phor, causing a new signification with referential value and, there-
fore, creating new perspectives of signification for reality. Second,



                                                                                III
Editor’s Introduction




taking Ricoeur’s definition that “imagining is figuration of the absent”
shows the role of imagination in ordering desire. The other part of the
text, returning to the dialogue that Ricoeur himself establishes with
Marx and Althusser to define his position on ideology and utopia, at-
tempts to show that the practical function of the poetic is, similarly,
essential in the intervention and transformation of the world.
The text carries out an interesting reflection and is able to show the
fertility of Ricoeurian thought not only for personal understanding of
oneself but also as a benchmark for the way we inhabit the world that
we seek to transform.
Next, there is a text by Luís António Umbelino, Feeling as a Body: On
Maine de Biran’s Anthropological Concept of Sentiment. This article,
as the title describes, deals with the anthropological perspective of
Maine de Biran which, as mentioned at the start of the text, “in addi-
tion to illustrating the internal coherence of Biranian thought up to its
last developments, still holds today all its interest, as can be con-
firmed, for example, in comparison to P. Ricoeur’s analysis of feeling
developed in L'homme faillible”. The text presents the anthropological
perspective of Maine de Biran, which should include three aspects:
“human life (based on a perceptive consciousness), animal life
(grounded on the fluxes of affectivity) and spiritual life (connected to
moral and religious experiences)”. It also argues that such a point of
view is part of a theoretical framework that “removes the concept of
feeling from the classical horizon of the Treaties of Passions”, while at
the same time describing the actual meaning of the human condition.
The next text is by Tomás Domingo Moratalla, with the title Translat-
ing Reason: J. Ortega y Gasset and P. Ricœur: Hermeneutical Hori-
zons of Translation and defends that translation can be taken as a
paradigm not only of what it means to be human but of rationality it-
self. For this task, Moratalla appeals to the positions of Ortega y Gas-




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                                          Critical Hermeneutics, special 2 (2019)




sett and Ricoeur, aiming to, as he says, “present Ricoeur through Or-
tega”.
It starts, then, with Ortega, presented as having proposed a sugges-
tive and creative philosophy of translation, anticipating many of the
most contemporary ideas on the theme, and looking for closeness be-
tween Paul Ricoeur and Ortega’s positions. It discusses themes such
as “translation as paradigm of human action”, “the constitutive in-
completeness of translation” and translation and linguistic hospitality”
or even “translation and the ethical dimension of existence” that
Moratalla presents based on Ortega’s text, then showing connections
with the thought of Paul Ricoeur.
The final text is by Fernanda Henriques, with the title The Conflict of
Interpretations as an Essential Epistemological Tool for Women’s
Studies, and it directly introduces the idea of hermeneutic field and
its possibilities. The goal of the text is to show how Paul Ricoeur’s
hermeneutics, particularly in the specific category of Conflict of Inter-
pretations, is a rich resource in the formation of Women’s Studies. It
also aims to legitimate the need to integrate the field fully into the
canons of humanistic knowledge in general which, until now, contin-
ues to ignore the enormous wealth of knowledge and perspectives
that Women’s Studies have produced.




                                                      Fernanda Henriques




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Editor’s Introduction




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