10.13125/CH/5462
application/pdf
2533-1825
5462
2
en
urn:nbn:it:unica-28979
Vinicio Busacchi
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Critical Hermeneutics
Ruled Imagination
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch
6
Varia
2023-01-27
2023-01-27
2023-01-27
2023-01-27
297-322
1
Vinicio Busacchi
2022
10.13125/CH/5462
297
2533-1825
2
322
urn:nbn:it:unica-28979
Ruled Imagination
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/article/download/5462/5374
6
Critical Hermeneutics 6(2), (2022)               Submission date: 5 January 2023
Biannual International Journal of Philosophy     Acceptance date: 5 January 2023
http://ojs.unica.it/index.php/ecch/index         Date of publication: 27 January 2023
ISSN 2533-1825 (on line); DOI 10.13125/CH/5462




            Ruled Imagination: Representation and
                 Factuality in Historical Knowledge


                      Pier Luigi Lecis - Vinicio Busacchi


Abstract
This paper aims to show how Paul Ricoeur’s inquiry on memory,
trace, and testimony contributes to rebalancing a framework that, at
the dialectical level between imagination and representation, would
essentially present historians’ work as hermeneutical. In Ricoeur’s
later writings, we find a differently balanced perspective by focusing
the (neurobiological and psychological) substrate of representation
behind trace and memory. Representation precedes interpretation.
And neither memory’s fidelity nor history’s epistemic truth belong to
a game that would be solely played within the communicative space
of a plurality of cognitive agents who are exchanging, controlling and
sharing their experiences. Consequently, the reality of the past itself
emerges in the practice of memory’s background.
Keywords: realism, memory, imagination, trace, testimony


1. Critical realism or anthropological anchorage?
Paul Ricoeur’s interest in the relationship between truth and history
dates to his youthful philosophical work, a work that has varied pro-
gressively throughout its stages. It has been a complex movement, in
some parts of a karstic nature, to polarisation on more definitely
methodological and epistemological themes in the 1980s and, above
all, the 1990s. Especially in these decades, Ricoeur’s theoretical mat-
uration on the historical knowledge question should be placed, for
Pier Luigi Lecis, Vinicio Busacchi, Ruled Imagination




abandonment of a more general and, at least in part, ‘militant’ ap-
proach (it was intertwined, for example, with ‘existential’ questions,
as ‘Le socius et le prochain’, in Historie et Vérité [1955], reveals);
and even for characterisation of a new research modus, always
speculative, but focused on issues of historical knowledge construc-
tion (beyond the pure hermeneutical horizon, which is its most proper
terrain) in reference to thematic-problematic and bibliographical itin-
eraries constituting axes of the historiographical debate and the con-
temporary ‘Philosophy of History’. In this way, Ricoeur fits into the
current debate on historical knowledge’s nature and the gnoseological
functions involved in it. He starts from an anthropological concern, of
phenomenological and hermeneutical substance, about human be-
ings’ historicity. He does so, however, penetrating the exact node of
the technical-speculative dialectic between objectivity’s claim and his-
torical knowledge’s truth, on the one hand, and, on the other, the
(inevitably) representational character of the historian’s reconstruc-
tive work, through which, and for whose only means, this knowledge
is pursued. Then, what is the reference of historical representation?
Which is the balancing or the procedural, safest alethic formula to
guarantee objective referentiality to historical knowledge or to guar-
antee a true/right synthetic formula (truthful synthesis) between the
order of empirical or empirically verifiable, usable elements (e.g.
finds, objects, documents, oral or written eyewitness accounts) and
the order of representative functions (i.e. cognitive, linguistic-
conceptual and rhetorical-narrative)?
      Ricoeur’s critical realism approach intercepts and addresses this
tension through tripartite dialectical intertwining, that is, adding the
hermeneutical-speculative dilemma of human historical identity. It is
an aggravation, if not an imbalance, perhaps, of the dialectical prob-
lem; but, perhaps, it constitutes a path for identifying a new argu-
mentative resource in favour of the epistemic and heuristic force of


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an (well disciplined) ex-post representational reconstruction. (1) On
the one hand, history is the past that has been, that is, the past of
facts inscribed in the space of time, memory and traces, or in materi-
al and cultural supports. Within this framework, the princeps referent
concerns the unitariness or referential objectivity of time (and of facts
framed in it, namely facts ‘that were’ and ‘that were as they hap-
pened’); of time (ontologically) as such and/or of time in the sense of
‘past human vicissitudes’ (non-cosmic-physical time, but rather cal-
endar time, the time of facts inscribed and ordered over time). On
this point, Ricoeur adheres to a realist epistemic conception, overlap-
ping and identifying historical time with physical time according to a
position that we could call of objectivist ontology. The historian can-
not alter facts’ ‘so-and-so happened’ but rather only their representa-
tive, narrative, interpretative re-figuration. Even representation eval-
uated/verified as the most faithful and truthful remains, in any case,
a representative reconstruction, something that in the specific field of
history, which is a discipline exerted to order, explain and understand
a partly intangible, fragmentary and ‘obscure’ heritage invariably re-
quires operations of cognitive processes of pragmatic measurement
and hypothetical reconstruction, of explanation and interpretation, of
observation and representation, of description and imagination (see
Ricoeur 1994). (2) On the other hand, history is the field of historical
knowledge, something that exists only through cognitive and repre-
sentational functions. From this perspective, Ricoeur’s position tends
towards an epistemological orientation with hermeneutical preva-
lence. Indeed, while his hermeneutic arc theory constitutes an epis-
temological and methodological model transversely arranged between
explication and comprehension, on the other hand, precisely for coor-
dination of this model’s two functional mechanisms, Ricoeur poses
interpretation in a mediatory position, imagining a similar exercise
within disciplines having problematic epistemological status, such as


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psychology, sociology and history. In Memory, History, Forgetting
(orig. 2000; trans. 2004), he presents the concept of interpretation
as follows:


      To speak of interpretation in terms of an operation is to
      treat it as a complex of language acts—of utterances—
      incorporated in the objectifying statements of historical dis-
      course. In this complex several components can be dis-
      cerned: first, the concern with clarifying, specifying, unfold-
      ing a set of reputedly obscure significations in view of a bet-
      ter understanding on the part of the interlocutor; next, the
      recognition of the fact that it is always possible to interpret
      the same complex in another way, and hence the admission
      of an inevitable degree of controversy, of conflict between
      rival interpretations; then, the claim to endow the interpre-
      tation assumed with plausible, possibly even probable, ar-
      guments offered to the adverse side; finally, the admission
      that behind the interpretation there always remains an im-
      penetrable, opaque, inexhaustible ground of personal and
      cultural motivations, which the subject never finishes taking
      into account. In this complex of components, reflection pro-
      gresses from utterance as an act of language to the utterer
      as the who of the acts of interpretation. It is this operating
      complex that can constitute the subjective side correlative
      to the objective side of historical knowledge (Ricoeur 2004:
      337).


      The net problematic aspect mirrored and summarised in this
passage is considerable. By many paths, we will return repeatedly to
it.




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    In Memory, History, Forgetting, not only reference to, but even
use of hermeneutic arc theory is massive and strategic; and it is so
exactly within moments technically more complex in reference to the
historical knowledge’s constitution and synthesis as determined by
certain procedures and operations of ‘selection’ and ‘connection’ (see
Ricoeur 2004: P. II, Ch. 2).
    One cannot deny the presence in Ricoeur’s work of a certain
component of epistemological realism or, at least, a problematising
consideration of this component’s irreducibility. We see it mirrored
both in his treatment of human action and in the way in which he
questions historiographical operation of complex conceptual entities’
constitution. On the one hand, human actions cannot be treated ex-
haustively, they cannot be understood in the same way as natural
events, although in a certain sense they are so, and an aspect of em-
pirical description (physical-biological support) is also required. Ac-
tions incorporate intentionality; they are ‘endowed with meaning’
(Weber even before von Wright is a very dear author to Ricoeur). On
the ground of the Lebenswelt, so to speak, the ability to grasp actions
as anything other than mere events or physical movements is spon-
taneous and unreflective: it is immediate. Nobody ‘taught us’ that a
mother’s gesture consists of a physical aspect with an overlapping in-
tentional element. Words are immediately grasped as meaningful, dif-
ferent to mere sounds, even when we do not know the speaker’s lan-
guage.   Here,   the   element   of   immediate,   pre-theoretical,      pre-
conceptual understanding dominates, linked to our common belong-
ing to human life. Innate and acquired ‘baggage’, as implicitly and not
reflectively connected to the world of life, is what counts. On the oth-
er hand, we have complex conceptual entities, referable to human
actions’ complex macro-aggregates. Here, the hermeneutic question
of interpretation rises in a specific way. Here, deciphering of extended
and complex event cycles, arising from many intertwining actions,


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Pier Luigi Lecis, Vinicio Busacchi, Ruled Imagination




requires recourse to ars interpretandi as reflective and advanced
techniques. This work cannot be reduced to empirical explanation of
natural processes. It requires reading skills, comparable to decipher-
ing texts in philology; and requires going far beyond understanding of
individual intentionalities. In fact, it uses dialogic truth’s methods and
ideals and intersubjective consensus’s construction, partly detached
from criteria of correspondence to things’ objective states. Interest-
ingly, the hermeneutical arc theory seems to offer a procedural effica-
cy and balancing legitimisation of the two instances, empirical and
hermeneutical: on the one hand lies, the accomplished action and, on
the other, the interpreted action; on the one hand there are survey,
analysis, measurement and empirical-factual study of single collected
finds, data and documents; on the other, lies interpretative-narrative
synthesis of the whole (microhistory/macrohistory).
      Here, we see coming into play the dialectical problem between
paradigms and historiographic models. It is a dialectic with respect to
which Ricoeur (unlike his ontological disposition) does not take a real-
ist position, not even an anti-realist one, but the position of critical
realism as anticipated. It is a position or middle way whose most ex-
plicit dialectical counterpart is represented by Hayden White’s model,
on the one hand, that is, history as rhetorical-poetic knowledge or,
also, aesthetic-practical knowledge and, on the other hand (always on
the same front line) by Hans Kellner and Frank Ankersmit’s models,
that is, history as a narrative operation and history as hermeneutical
discipline. Comparison with the latter perhaps weakens Ricoeur more,
from the perspective of his model’s effective alternative characterisa-
tion. In fact, alongside suspicion of his propensity for historical
knowledge as a substantially interpretative operation, and of the in-
terpretation understood in a certain way (as we can see from the
quotation above), we see a tendential convergence of interest in en-
hancing the narrative dimension and, with it, precisely in enhancing


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those rhetorical-hermeneutical aspects in some respects rejected (or,
in any case, resized) in Kellner and Ankersmit’s examination. Moreo-
ver, the narrative dimension constitutes the third major paradigm of
Ricoeur’s hermeneutics understood as a general philosophy (which
passed from interpretation of symbols in the 1960s, to hermeneutics
of text in the 1970s and, from there, to the narrative problematic in
the 1980s, the hermeneutical phenomenology of the self in the 1990s
and, indeed, the hermeneutics of history).
    (3) Finally, the field of history is the field of human experience,
of the subject that knows the world, intervenes in it, manipulates it
and creates and recreates its own cultural, identity and intersubjec-
tive relations, and which [or through which one] represents and ima-
gines [himself/herself]. According to some of Ricoeur’s major inter-
preters, his philosophical course would be characterised by a general
anthropological background. He would be passed (from Soi-même
comme un autre, 1990), ‘de la grammaire de l’identité personnelle à
sa déclinaison dans la condition historique effective des êtres hu-
mains’ (Jervolino 2002: 48). The implication at the front of historical
knowledge’s problematisation would be direct and pervasive not only
because of the speculative connotation’s peculiarity in understanding
historical truth according to truth’s problematic perspective (1) in his-
torical knowledge and (2) in historical action, or in the dialectic be-
tween history understood as res gestae and history understood as
historia rerum gestarum. On the ‘human factor’ so to speak Ricoeur
seems to weigh significance for what concerns the speculative and
gnoseological perspective and for the methodological and epistemo-
logical side of historical knowledge’s construction. The dense quota-
tion referred to above, concerning interpretation, well reproduces
these elements, indicating in them an operation of mediative tension
anchored to a given ‘vision’. Interpretation is conceived as an opera-
tion framed in a complex of linguistic acts forming historical dis-


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Pier Luigi Lecis, Vinicio Busacchi, Ruled Imagination




course, and simultaneously, as an instrument of an interlocutor’s
(cognitive and comprehensive) clarification, also in the (intersubjec-
tive) game of the possible ‘re-readings’. Furthermore, interpretation
is also conceived, as a reflection of motivational, subjective and cul-
tural instances, referring to the questions of ‘Who’ as an expert sub-
ject (i.e. the historian) and/or as an interested person. Within the
same channel must be framed a wider discourse, strictly implied (ac-
cording to Ricoeur and philosophical hermeneutics in general) in the
methodological-epistemological problem of historical knowledge as
bearer of further difficulties and criticalities or, conversely, of poten-
tial productive keys pro argumentum. We can introduce it through a
formula of questioning: ‘What is the relationship between argumenta-
tive and imaginative components in historical knowledge’s construc-
tion?’ Not only does Ricoeur not accept such a polarised formulation
of the problem from which, from letters, we intend to suggest (at
least hypothetically) a distinction of structure and/or system between
linguistic-cognitive-rational                 functions   and   symbolic-
psychological/ideological-representational functions within argumen-
tative weaving, he rather sees operating the intervention of motiva-
tional and rhetorical-argumentative instances. In addition, to him, a
strategy is chosen that of an all-round analysis of the function or,
better still, of the imaginative faculty which still reflects an anthropo-
logical-hermeneutical sensitivity for construction of a theoretical ar-
gumentative position.
      In the essay on imagination (Ricoeur 1976), this faculty is con-
sidered to play both an innovative role, as an ability to open up to
other points of view, and a ‘critical-cognitive’ role, central in the his-
torical scientist’s work of knowledge, interpretation and reconstruc-
tion of past events. This appends by virtue of the ability (precisely,
‘imaginative ability’) to identify with the other in past events, and by
virtue of an intersubjective openness, which is linked both to this


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specific aspect and to       more general research conducted and
knowledge measured in the historians’ community. Therefore, not on-
ly on the side of understanding the historian’s cognitive operation,
there is a potential configurability of ‘ideological position’ from the
perspective of rhetorical-narrative functions (a necessity historical
knowledge’s cognitive-comprehensive and communicative synthesis),
as potential identifiability of persuasive components within argumen-
tative construction (in one way or another, intertwined with previous
functions). Not only this (or even for that?), imagination would be a
mediated and synthetic faculty between perception and measurement
in general cognition and symbolic and performative contributions, be-
tween ‘external’ or acquired data (i.e. objective components) and hy-
pothetical-hermeneutical elements; also between causal elements
analysed in a descriptive-explanatory way and motivational elements
comprehensively considered in narrative reconstruction (all under
auspices of interpretation, according to the provisional procedural ar-
rangement of hermeneutic arc theory).
     Thus, this centralisation of the imaginative faculty directly calls
the function of representation and the problematic of historical
knowledge’s representational construction. In fact, to the extent that
the historian’s reconstruction massively depends on the imaginative
faculty’s functioning, the historian’s narration, narrative synthesis,
comprehensible-explanatory framework and general operation of ‘in-
terpretative reordering’ must be framed with reference to this faculty
and must inevitably find an outlet, first of all, in something represen-
tational.


2. Cognitive     scope     and     social    practice       in     historical
representation
Ricoeur’s (theoretically) critical-realist stance with reference to histor-
ical knowledge has been said to result from historiographical and


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Pier Luigi Lecis, Vinicio Busacchi, Ruled Imagination




phenomenological-hermeneutical research in his maturity. This is a
position that, in itself, limits action’s cognitive range for hermeneuti-
cal operations, operations, in fact, close to reality’s unalterable datum
and, at the same time, favours use of specific hermeneutical ‘para-
phernalia’, on both the epistemological front (i.e. hermeneutic arc
theory) and the front of linguistic-aesthetic and poetic-narrative in-
struments. For this reason, a critical itinerary through a narrative
theory such as that exhibited in the trilogy of Temps et récit (1983–
85) is not at all impromptu or marginal in an inquiry into Ricoeur’s
theory of historical knowledge (and this beyond acceptance or not of
the validity of the ‘anthropological hypothesis’ introduced above; and
more, just in this trilogy’s general conclusions, Ricoeur introduces a
substantially narrative dimension of personal identity...). Indeed,
since it systematically investigates fictional and historical narration,
narrative theory precisely focuses on the key problematic point of the
‘dialectic’ (let us say) between fait historique and représentance (with
explicit passages of analysis and interpretation in Temps et récit). On
the one hand, it is a dialectic that brings to the surface Ricoeur’s dis-
position toward a position of critical realism; on the other, it refers to
the question of historical representation, understood as cognitive syn-
thesis between cognitive-understanding functions and the quid of the
fact, of the datum, of the past that ‘has been’. This immediately re-
veals itself in tension with representation from hermeneutical dis-
course on the imaginative faculty that places historical representation
(and knowledge in general) as creative and productive synthesis, as
cognitive intentionality: (1) on the world and on facts that is, on the-
oretical terrain of events and, at the same time, (2) on the human
being as subject of motivation and action or on the theoretical-
practical terrain of the initiative. Still, this tension is reproduced on
the narration’s terrain, as the first ‘material’ and ‘performative’ out-
come of representational operation in the historian’s synthesis. On


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the one hand, we have narrative synthesis as an epistemological
break with the form of narrated truth, which is prevalently rhetorical-
poetic and orally transmitted (or, also, in written form) under control
of the memory’s exercise. That is ‘epistemological rupture’ as synthe-
sis of explanatory and descriptive-interpretative prevalence, which
results from research ‘on field’ around findings, clues, data, docu-
ments on archival materials, etc. On the other hand, narrative syn-
thesis constitutes an objectified expression (of the operation and of
the historian’s imaginative work) in a formulation susceptible to an
‘autonomous life’ (and, therefore, of verification) within the scientific
community, in contrast to expressive synthesis still conveyed by the
memory, which depends on modelling work in memories and experi-
enced facts, that is, the psychology, the existential sphere and the
experience of the facts’ narrator.
    Already in itself, the rich semantic notion of representation re-
veals conceptual and theoretical density for which it can become
catalyst and vehicle. Conversely, philosophical research in itself has
proven since antiquity both the speculative fertility of this notion and
its polyvalence. Aristotle, for example, frames representation both as
a cognitive intellectual function and as a psychological capacity to re-
present the perceived in the memory. This is a position that refers
analogically to the articulation that, centuries later, Immanuel Kant
introduces between representation as intuition (Anschauung) and as
concept (Begriff). The reference is not accidental: In using this notion
within his research on historical knowledge, Ricoeur shows how to ar-
ticulate his analysis precisely in reference to an analogous polysemy
of representation. He conceives this notion as essentially articulated
in three aspects: psychological sense and experience (cognition and
work of memory), cognitive and intellectual (descriptive-explanatory
synthesis, comprehension), productive and expressive meaning (im-
agination, creation of meaning, innovation). Such polysemy gener-


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Pier Luigi Lecis, Vinicio Busacchi, Ruled Imagination




ates complex interdisciplinary dialectic that determines the effect of a
‘spiral’ theorisation, based on binomial représentance-representation.
It is a spiral moving between psychology and philosophy of mind on
the one hand, and phenomenology of memory and historical
knowledge on the other; and also between, on the one hand, histori-
cal ontology, narrative theory and rhetorical-poetical creation, and,
on the other hand, hermeneutics of action and self (see J. Michel
2013: 278 ff).
      Perhaps we are entering such a level of dilatation/deformation of
representation and its uses, to be able to judge it as a useless notion
both as progress and as this examination’s perspective of Ricoeur’s
theoretical position. However, (1) this notion is particularly significant
in historical knowledge’s construction and is implicated in its major
problematic cornerstones. Moreover, (2) Ricoeur develops an orderly
progressive treatment in Memory, History, Forgetting (see, in particu-
lar, Ricoeur 2004: P. II, Ch. 3), reflecting critical hermeneutics’ style:
that is, an articulated interdisciplinary approach on several levels of
discourse and disciplined according to levels and degrees of analysis.
In addition, (3) today, the most important advancements around the
‘representational objects’ even within the philosophy of history and
concerning ‘representational life’ of great interest in cognitive science,
come from interdisciplinary research. In particular, cognitive science
offers a point of support to representation’s foundational argument on
subjects’ substantial unity and psycho-biological regularity. This is a
useful argument; to recognise in historical knowledge, on the one
hand, the validity and ‘ontological hold’ of assumptions such as per-
manence of motives for action and reasons based on behaviour of
historical agents, and on the other, acceptability and ‘methodological-
epistemological’ strength of cognitive operations based on the imagi-
native faculty, i.e. interpretation, identification and narrative recon-
struction. Naturally, it does not constitute in itself a sufficient factor


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to overcome critical elements connected to representational construc-
tions and historical knowledge. On the contrary, this same factor can
sustain those theories of historical knowledge that have a prevalent
hermeneutical-narrative basis, as in Frank Ankersmit, or sustain
those with a post-structuralist feature, that is, rhetorical-linguistic or
aesthetic-linguistic, as in Hayden White. Ricoeur refuses both such
polarised perspectives, placing himself onto a sort of mediative and
tensional position between instances connected to realist ontology
(essentially, the problematic historical representation/reconstruction
and the reference to the past’s factuality) and instances of an epis-
temology based on interpretation (arc herméneutique) that conceives
representation as both a cognitive-comprehensive synthesis and as a
metaphoric relation or report. The impact of this second aspect (and,
therefore, of the representational aspects) on the question of realism
is due to its specific ontological implication. The ‘seeing-how’ of his-
torical reconstruction grasps and mirrors (in a more or less faithful
and truthful way) the datum that ‘has been’, but not in-how-is-in-
itself and for itself but for-as-it-is-given, that is to say for-as-it-was-
experienced. In this lies the function of representation that defines
the analogical relationship (see Ricoeur 1985: 282–283), and reflects
substantial intertwining on the point of ‘historical fact’ among episte-
mological, ontological and anthropological dimensions (the human be-
ing as actor and historical subject).
    (1) For the mature Ricoeur of Memory, History, Forgetting, as its
functional and onto-epistemic characterisation, representation is con-
ceived differently from White and others, resulting from mobile dia-
lectics ruled along the line of imagination and interpretation among,
on the one side, experience and lived time, ‘hermeneutical formula-
tion’ and the work of memory, and, on the other side, between cogni-
tion and factual concatenation (under natural time), between the
world’s reality and linguistic-conceptual maps applied to it.


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Pier Luigi Lecis, Vinicio Busacchi, Ruled Imagination




      (2) As procedural characterisation, essentially, representation is
to him a refigurative and narrative expression always the result of
functions’ government under the aegis of imagination-representation.
At the same time, it is not the concern of a rhetorical effect of per-
suasion, or aesthetic of beauty, gusto and appreciability/availability of
the whole reconstructive work; nor narrative for a narrative effect as
such (that is, concern for a credible, balanced, meaning of the plot, a
beginning, a weaving of intrigue, a final outcome and conclusion). It
is under the concern of an operation of measured and controlled syn-
thesis (thanks to procedures’ support, their application in accordance
with known, reproducible standards and ways, and to the support of
material elements and empirical data or, in any case, empirically trac-
table data); at the same time it is under the concern of a plausible
and truthful synthesis (thanks to the interpretative work’s continua-
tive anchorage to (available) material and documental supports and
to narrative reconstruction elaborated on these factual elements’
basic framework following a unifying weaving explicitly operating be-
tween the ‘void’ and the ‘full’ of the research object).
      (3) Finally, below the anthropological-philosophical dimension
(referred to as representational function), we do not find neuro-
cognitive, psychological and memory discourse, but narrative dis-
course and discourse referred to identity; in a word, we find the cul-
tural dimension and the dimension of socio-historical-cultural consti-
tutional level of personal identity and human experience. This com-
ponent’s consistency and significance emerges in all its strength (a)
varying the scale of research, reconstruction and writing of history
and (b) sensitising the historian’s operation with insertion of tools and
sociological knowledge theories. These are two operations that in
Memory, History, Forgetting, Ricoeur performs explicitly and inten-
tionally the former focusing on ‘microhistories’, the latter using some
key concepts and terms of Durkheim’s sociology. Ricoeur writes, in


310
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particular: ‘If we broaden our gaze beyond macrohistory, we see out-
lined in other societies than those studied by microhistoria entangle-
ments of great complexity between the pressure exercised by models
of the behavior seen as dominant and the reception, or better the ap-
propriation, of received messages’ (Ricoeur 2004: 219).
     Not only on the principle of structural and psychological unity of
human perception and cognition, in a word, of neuro-psycho-
biological human functions, can procedural functionality and cognitive
validity of the imaginary-interpretation-representation circuit be sup-
ported, but also for a certain historical stability, in a given period, of a
cultural or socio-cultural habitus that is, a given set of values, ideals,
conceptions of the world, habits, relational behaviors, normative sets,
oral codes, and so on. In short, even functions or symbolic forms
contribute to substantiating interpretative reconstructions’ veracity
and the very substance with which facts that ‘have been’ turned out
to be such: truly historical and unmodifiable facts.
     There is a strong connection between regularity of social action
(in different contexts, according to different epochs) and the perma-
nence of ideals and motives of action. The connection between events
and experiences given in a specific time (socio-historical-cultural) and
the constitution of those experiences and events as events is no less
strong; those events are objectified (as facts separated from experi-
ences), but they are objectified according to that particular configura-
tion (and self-representational) socio-cultural representation. The his-
torical facts of the history of human civilisation are inscribed in natu-
ral time as events, once passed. However, they remain events not
treatable as objects of nature or existing as configured data within an
independent and neutral, natural space. Like a pile of stones, the on-
tological constitution of a boundary wall can happen only within cer-
tain (cognitive, cultural, social and institutional) conditions, so only
under certain conditions (still cognitive, value-related, cultural and


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social) a given series of objective events attributed to the history of
human civilisation, configured as such in an exact natural time, as-
sume ontological characterisation of events historically objective. No
historical fact as a human fact can occur in purely objective natural
time.
      Ricoeur’s perspective seems to lead us in this direction and in
many ways induce a ‘downward’ revision of the incidence and truth of
the real’s component. Ergo, is it a kind of weak realism?


3. Memory, Testimony, Trace
We therefore seem re-awakened on a ridge with hermeneutical
prevalence, a ridge within which the approach emphasising the cen-
trality of the linguistic-narrative and poetic-rhetorical dimension on
historical knowledge’s empirical and objectivistic dimension seems to
acquire greater incidence. It should be an imbalance that would
leave, pending effectiveness of the right, procedural and epistemolog-
ical, balance of an approach based on hermeneutical arc theory.
However, Ricoeur’s research offers important functional elements to a
vision that sees the interpretational function as operating between
imagination and representation according to a sense that rebalances
the involved parts. This is a minority line compared to that frankly
hermeneutical, yet significant on which Ricoeur focuses, particularly
in his study phase on memory (more precisely, on memory, trace and
testimony), compared to his study phase on imagination, on narrative
structures and on historical construction’s poetic dimensions.
      In the great work of 2000, memory, as power to retain and reac-
tivate memories as well as a naturalist psychology of cognitive facul-
ties and abilities, must be investigated by phenomenology of inten-
tional modes typical of experiential consciousness, internally articu-
lated over time. Its cognitive dimension intertwines with the prag-
matic dimension of individual and collective use made of it. Like any


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effective exercise of a faculty, it is exposed to risk of abuse. These
are the most characteristic and well-known motifs of Memory, Histo-
ry, Forgetting related to the ethical-political sphere and centred on
history’s formative impact on psychic and cultural memory. It is in-
teresting to explore the dialectic between two great themes trace and
testimony in unstable equilibrium in Ricouer’s analyses of the rela-
tionship between memory and history. On the one hand, the theme of
testimony seems to emancipate historical knowledge from that of
trace, giving it a clear dialogic, linguistic scope in which the fiduciary
dimension, not strictly cognitive, plays a decisive role at the base of
social bonds. On the other hand, according to Ricoeur, the question of
trace, with its perceptual and causal conditions, reappears at the root
of testimony. We can still use the paper ‘Mémoire: approches histo-
riennes’ to clarify the point. Given a phenomenological, not empirical,
key (oriented to define memory’s typical, essential forms), research
identifies a plurality of components of the power to remember, in
each of which arises the problem of reference to the past. Ricoeur
distinguishes at least three aspects:
    1) The ability to retain a memory, understood as a mere appari-
tion and presence in the image of a past thing. An experience natu-
rally referring to something from the past occurs spontaneously, as in
the Greeks’ mnēmē (μνήμη), particularly focalised by Aristotle (Ric-
oeur 2002: 46; Id., 2000: 732; Id., 2004: 6–7). Remembering as an
appearing, question du quoi, is a mental function, with a passive fea-
ture (pathos) (Ricoeur 2004: 4). The sentiment of temporal distance
is fundamental here: for this paradoxical capacity, we can say that an
event happened before we tell of it; memory as a temporalising func-
tion (see Ricoeur 2002: 57);
    2) The ability to recall the past through a search (rappeler le
passé), to the extent that oblivion, or other obstacles allow it. The
memory loses its characteristic of a simple and spontaneous appari-


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Pier Luigi Lecis, Vinicio Busacchi, Ruled Imagination




tion; it is now the object and fruit of a search, aroused by removal of
the primary impression and aimed at its recovery and recognition. It
is the Aristotelian anamnēsis (ανάμνησις) (Ricoeur 2002: 46), placed
at the end of an intentional process and specific effort. The pragmatic
approach to anamnesis complicates the picture and favours transition
from the quoi to the qui question: Remembering is not just about re-
ceiving; it is doing something that certainly interferes with the claim
of memory’s fidelity) (Ricoeur 2004: 4); this aspect can also be
traced to what Bergson calls survivance and Husserl, retention and
reproduction (Wiedererinnerung) of a memory (Ricoeur 2002: 57);
      3) The memory’s constitutive belonging to a subject, which has
direct and privileged access to it, the mienneté; thus, we could speak
of the memory’s phenomenic subjectivity. A memory is the object of
appropriation in the first person (singular or plural); the memory of
an individual or a collective subject is irreducible to that of any other.
      As is evident, the trace theme is unavoidable at this level of
analysis. Within layers emerged from long tradition, memory seems
inextricably linked to enigmas of the presence of the absent and the
similarity between original and image, which make its need for ‘fideli-
ty’ (fidelité) fragile, controversial and problematic. In itself, it seems
insufficient, even inadequate before historiographical truth’s closest
constraints and standards of control.
      As for testimony, from the perspective of Memory, History, For-
getting, it plays a crucial role as a moment of transition from memory
to history, especially in the passage from oral to written form. (In
‘Mémoire: Approches historiennes’ testimony, as it offers itself in
comparison with other witnesses’ discourse, places itself in a strategic
position as a transitional element between history’s fidelité and véri-
té. Memory’s originality and privilege on the plane of reference to the
past, as a happy moment of immediate recognition, is what makes it
the matrix of history, whatever the history’s degree of autonomy to-


314
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wards it (see Ricoeur 2002: 56). As stated previously, memory (as its
third aspect) has a dialogic, not solipsistic dimension; we must speak
of mémoire à plusieurs. As we mentioned above, this point is particu-
larly important for theoretical emancipation from naive realism. In
testimonies’ dialogic comparison, the question of resemblance loses
importance (see Ricoeur 1998: 7) and seems to open a way to avoid
aporia traditionally linked to memory’s first dimension (mnēmē and
anamnēsis).
    But let us look more closely at how history, through testimony,
comes to depend on memory. Ricoeur stands on this line: We have
no better memory to ensure our memories’ reality. We have nothing
better than testimony and its criticism to accredit the historical repre-
sentation of the past (Ricoeur, 2004: 278). Testimony transmits to
history the force of declarative memory (Ricoeur, 2004: 497). Beyond
this level, nothing is left but transition to the extralinguistic, eventu-
ally rooted in ce qui se donne, sous le nome de trace, comme l’effet-
signe de sa cause. Historiography can bestow, correct or reject testi-
mony, but cannot eliminate it.
    Three basic stages mark transition from memory to testimony
and autonomous historical discourse: declarative memory, narration
and inscription. With narration, the witness opens in public space, ac-
companying reality’s assertion with self-declaration of being a credi-
ble author of testimony. Willingness to repeat and compare testimony
and to inscribe outside the body via any material support constitutes
the next decisive step.
    Now, let us get some other ideas from a paragraph in Memory,
History, Forgetting (see Ricoeur 2004: 161–166) that provides an an-
alytical framework of testimony’s pragmatic and performative aspects
and of the highest levels of discursive processing to which its content
is subjected after a perceptual event. It has a fundamental function,
fixed at a first level, as a frontier (frontière nette) between réalité


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Pier Luigi Lecis, Vinicio Busacchi, Ruled Imagination




and fiction via the factualité attestée. The perceptive original node
differs from simple imagination (referring to something absent, but
not attested auparavant from perception. This is a distinction that, as
we already saw, emerges from ancient times with notions of eikòn
and tupos). Phenomenology of memory shows all its ambivalence.
What is attested inseparably blends the past’s reality and the narra-
tor’s presence in the event’s places, highlighting the fiduciary dimen-
sion and therefore remaining fundamentally intersubjective as to tes-
timony (Ricoeur 2004: 163–164).
      Certainly, emphasis on testimony’s pragmatic aspects (confiance
and    subçon),       which     show      theoretical   advantages   of   historical
knowledge’s foundation as far as possible, independent of aporia of
memory’s first level, conditioned by the ‘image’ and ‘imprint’ meta-
phors tends to overshadow original expression’s role. However, we
can ask ourselves whether the graft in testimony’s intersubjective
and linguistic space really dissolves riddles of trace and image and
completely exorcises the phantom of realism. Ricoeur himself indi-
cates the problem in ‘La marque du passé’ and in Memory, History,
Forgetting. As previously stated, testimony depends in the last in-
stance and also in its registered, archived form on memory. Along
this line, however, the original impression returns to the limelight as
an irreducible component of memory’s phenomenological description
and presents itself as an original datum of the experience of the past,
a sort of natural evidence that any social actor and historical agent
has in its ordinary practices. This line of discourse, certainly second-
ary, survives and acts as a counterpoint to Memory, History, Forget-
ting’s main track. Some very clear texts favour this reading. We can
concentrate the question around three reasons: 1) common passivity
in memory, image, trace and oral testimony at the origin of each ‘in-
scription’; 2) psychic trace’s receptive character as a primary impres-
sion’s persistence, as reception of shock, of affection by an event that


316
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has struck us; and 3) ante-predicative belief, which is natural in the
past’s reality and around the fact that something actually happened,
is the basis of recognition of the past’s images in oral testimony.
    Memory remains the primary source of assurance that something
happened (before we were able to speak of it). Historiography in it-
self, with its methodical elaboration, does not modify the certainty
that, no matter what the past is, it is the memory’s ultimate referent,
and our reconstructive practices objective correlate. In ‘La marque du
passé’, the point had been addressed, developing history and
memory’s referential dimension through representation, lieutenance,
as already introduced in Temps et récit. From this perspective, motif
is always connected to memory’s perceptive root; a moment of pas-
sivity, a receptive aspect pathique connect the icon and the trace.
One and the other refer to something’s occurrence, a shock, an im-
pression’s inscription, a passage that left its mark. At its root, testi-
mony hides an enigma of the same type: before saying, witnesses
have seen, heard, felt or believed they saw, heard, felt; what matters
is that they are afflicted, struck, wounded, by the attested événe-
ment. We are on the same ground as the feeling of temporal distance
inherent in memory that comes to mind. Testimony conveys by say-
ing ‘c’est quelque chose de cet être-affecté par ... the empreinte’;
from a previous event, testimony conserves energy (énergie) and
even violence (violence), which passes from a first-level witness to a
listener, a second-degree witness.
    We re-discovered this motive at different moments according to
different hints in Ricoeur’s later texts, starting from articulation of
trace in Memory, History, Forgetting. Within ‘L’oubli’ of the Part III ‘La
condition historique’, beyond its interesting correlation between forms
of oblivion and of memory, there is trace’s tripled distinction, relevant
for investigation into memory and history’s relationship (Ricoeur
2004: 415). First, Ricoeur speaks of trace mnésique, sustaining that


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Pier Luigi Lecis, Vinicio Busacchi, Ruled Imagination




what we know about the human brain is complex. The cerebral, corti-
cal trace, a field of neuroscience, is external (Ricoeur 2004: 416),
known only from the outside, scientifically, without correspondence
with what is felt and what humans actually ‘live’. In this sense, we
say, ‘to see with the eyes’ and ‘to take with the hands’, but we do not
say, ‘to think with the brain’. From his standpoint, Ricoeur focuses on
what, in the controversial conscience in philosophy of mind, is dis-
cussed as explanatory gap. The written trace, which became a docu-
mentary trace in the historiographical operation (source of its first
‘distance’ from memory; see Ricoeur 2000: 737), is a material trace
(e.g. cortical), so it can be altered and destroyed. The archive is also
set up to respond to this threat of destruction (Ricoeur 2004: 416).
The psychic trace defined as impression, rather than as imprint, in
the sense of affection, left in us by an event, ‘marquant’ or ‘frappant’
(Ibid.) is presented by Ricoeur as an inner trace. Above all in this pa-
per, we are interested in characterisation of the psychic trace; it cor-
responds to the recognition experience, typical of memory as anam-
nesis. Notably, Ricoeur claims autonomy and irreducibility for this an-
alytic level, raising the problem of the relationship between traces of
skill and psychic traces. He tries to safeguard the epistemological gap
between the two levels, the neuronal and the psychic viewpoint, pro-
tecting it from any form of ontological, spiritualist or materialist re-
ductionism. Formation of psychic traces is not a process explainable
in merely neuroscientific terms because trace has an unavoidable se-
miotic component.
      We have now to focus on an aspect that, is somehow surprising
compared to the main line of Ricoeur’s approach, based on the idea
that we cannot understand memory without starting from the antag-
onist form of oblivion. In the psychic trace, we have to do with an
oblie de réserve, instead of an effacement, and this requires refer-
ence to notions like duration, persistence (rémanence), and reliving


318
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(Ricoeur 2004: 417), elaborated from the phenomenological tradition
and from Bergson. By analysing Ricoeur’s lexicon, we easily find a re-
alist substrate. Images of the past can be recognised. We discover,
for example, that many rememberings of childhood were not de-
stroyed, but only made inaccessible (see Ricoeur 2004: 416–417). In
the moment of recognition, the current image is considered faithful to
affection première, au choc de l’événement. Other impressions, con-
vergent in this hint, are presented in the section ‘L’oubli et la persis-
tance des traces’. The following represents its short list: persistance
des impressions premières en tant que passivités: un événement
nous a frappés, touchés, affectés et la marque affective demeure en
notre esprit (Ricoeur 2004: 418–419). The point concerning recogni-
tion and memory’s relationship is quite intricate, but synthesising
contradictory aspects is possible, as follows: recognition is defined as
superposition of current mental images and psychic trace lived from
the primary impression that constitutes the original datum of remem-
bering’s whole process, and then of telling stories and explaining
events with cognitive intentionality (see Ricoeur 2004: 418, 430),
which cannot considered without referring to a shock’s specific causal
antecedent, a perceptive nature that leaves its impression (internal
trace). In the first pages of Memory, History, Forgetting, Ricoeur re-
members how Aristotle shifted the metaphor of the seal on the
graphic plane, of the portrait and highlighted the presupposition of an
agent who imprinted the trace, a sign of passage. Behind a shape in
wax is the act of imprinting a seal. We have an implicit reference to
the sign-imprint’s external cause. To be valid as a footprint, a thing
must include a dimension of otherness concerning its origin (Ricoeur
2004: 12).
    In ‘Entre la mémoire et l’histoire’, published digitally in 2002,
provides a brief but penetrating presentation of Memory, History,
Forgetting’s themes. Three aspects of memory are identified, some-


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Pier Luigi Lecis, Vinicio Busacchi, Ruled Imagination




how, as enigmatic: a) the presence (of the mind’s image or imprint);
b) the absence (of the past thing to which the image refers); c) the
anteriority of an event (feeling of temporal distance, expressed by
verbal time or adverbs: remembering something that existed aupara-
vant).
      Memory depends on original perception, on an event’s impact
that refers to past actions of agents similar to us. History is bound to
the perceptive nucleus of memory (of which it inherits aporias). This
is particularly forceful for traumatic events, that is, the living experi-
ence of a wound sedimented in the faire histoire, of events at the lim-
it of the representable, of the stroke with which the actual story af-
fects the collective and private memory; something that asks to be
told, told and not forgotten (no matter if it is terrible or admirable, as
in archaic history). Great events such as the Holocaust and the twen-
tieth century’s great crimes, despite being at the limits of representa-
tion, like all events that have left their traumatic imprint on hearts
and minds, ask to be told, narrated and understood (see Ricoeur
2004: 457, final section ‘Le pardon difficile’). The source of the re-
quest for truth is pragmatic and vital: it is not in representation, but
rather dans l’expérience vive du ‘faire histoire’ tel qu’elle est diverse-
ment affrontée par les protagonistes (see Ricoeur 2004: 259).


4. Memory and the reality of the past
We can now draw some conclusions about the potentiality of the
memory-history relationship in relation to Ricoeur’s hermeneutical
itinerary and, more generally, with respect to these realist motives’
fecundity. Belief in the past’s reality is, at least partly, a correlate of
memory’s practice; the certainty that something has actually hap-
pened is an implicit element of our ordinary way of seeing things. In
the sense explained above, we could say that these are background
aspects of everyday linguistic and non-linguistic practices. Ricoeur


320
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talks about croyance antéprédicative, et même prénarrative on which
fundamental matrices of historical knowledge rest: recognition of im-
ages of the past and oral testimony (Ricoeur 2004 : 499).
    Memory’s fidelity or history’s epistemic truth does not pertain to
a context that has only to do with the communicative relationship
between plurality of cognitive agents that reciprocally exchange,
control and share their respective experiences. Construction of
individual and collective memory depends both on dialogue between
witnesses and on originary strength of impression, hit and passivity
that primarily characterise memory’s experience. In parallel, the
referential aspect of the discourse of the past is not at risk from the
irrecuperable absence of the memory’s ultimate reference.




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