The Decentered Subject in Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics
Journal Name:
- Kaygı: Uludağ Üniversitesi Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi Felsefe Dergisi
Keywords (Original Language):
| Author Name | University of Author | Faculty of Author |
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Abstract (2. Language):
Through the different phases of his thought, as the hermeneutics of symbols, the problem of the interpretation of texts, or the question of otherness, Ricoeur develops a particular conception of the subject. Its specificity lies in his concern to be opposed both to the sovereign subject initiated by Cartesian philosophy and to the negation of the subject found in Nietzsche or Heidegger. The Ricoeurian subject is a “decentered” subject, a “wounded” Cogito, who realizes his identity, through the mediation of otherness, the otherness of a symbol, of a text or of the other. Our purpose is to show initially how Ricoeur thinks the secondarity of the subject in front of the text, which remains first and central, preventing the reader to reduce the meaning to his own prejudices. Thus, this decentered subject is a reader who changes through his reading. But, in the second time, we will show that Ricoeur does not go until the annihilation of the subject in the text. Indeed, he remains within a reflexive philosophy, to which he gives a vitalistic orientation. For Ricoeur, the subject, thought as the “self”, is not at the beginning of the process of interpretation, but in the end, as a project. And what allows the self to remain himself while changing in the reading is located in the part of otherness that he carries in himself, and described by Ricoeur through the duality between idem and ipse in the narrative identity.
Faithful to his constant concern to connect the opposite, to make the conflicts fertile, Ricoeur is situated between the reflexive philosophy which comes from Descartes and the ontological turn which, with Heidegger and Gadamer, refuses to think the subject as a sovereign and autonomous being. The challenge on a hermeneutic plan is to make sure to avoid both the disappearance of the text in front of the subject as the disappearance of the subject before the text. Because in the first case the risk would be to reduce the text to be only a pretext for the reader and in the second case it would be that the subject, with what makes its characteristic, its identity, disappears completely in the act of interpretation.
The idea of a decentered subject represents a way of solution to this dilemma. Because, on the one hand, it prevents from reducing the “world of the text” to the horizon of the reader; so that taking distance with the intention of the author has not for consequence the control of the sense by the reader. Thus, a good reading is a reading which changes the subject, which plays on his imaginative variations so as to open before him new manners to live in the world. But, on the other hand, the subject therefore is not denied; because even “wounded” the Cogito remains an “infinite horizon” (Michel 2004: 654). This vitalistic subject is less an ego cut off from life, than a “self” who realizes himself through the mediation of the text or of the other. It is what explains Ricoeur when he declares that he “exchange the me, master of itself, for the self, disciple of the text" (1991a: 37).
The passage of the otherness of the text to the otherness of the other offers, by the same occasion, the possibility of thinking the ethical challenges of interpretation. Indeed, the refusal of a strict epistemological approach does not mean giving up asking how to interpret the text well. The question of the right attitude in front of the text thus arises as much as the question of the right attitude before the others. To interpret well supposes a posture of humility, but the recognition of the text as an other needs the maintenance of the self as an ethical subject; what Levinas has not seen, according to Ricoeur. And The Course of Recognition, which is one of his last books, testifies to the importance of the issue of recognition – recognition of the other but also of oneself by the other – for his philosophical anthropology.
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Abstract (Original Language):
Ricoeur, ele aldığı semboller hermenötiği, yorum felsefesi veya başkalık sorunu gibi farklı konularda kendine has bir özne felsefesi oluşturmuştur. Onun temel özelliği, hem Descartes’tan gelen egemen özne fikrine hem de Nietzsche veya Heidegger’de karşılaştığımız öznenin reddine karşı çıkmasıdır. Ricoeur’ün öznesi, kimliğini bir metnin başkalığı dolayımıyla kazanan “merkezdışı” bir özne, bir “yaralı” Cogito’dur. Bu çalışmanın ilk amacı Ricoeur’ün, yorumlayan özneye metnin karşısında nasıl ikincil bir pozisyon kazandırdığını incelemektir. Ricoeur’e göre, merkezî ve birincil olan metin, yorum esnasında benin (le moi) değişimine yol açar, ve öznenin, metni kendi önyargılarına indirgemesine engel olur. Ancak, çalışmanın ikinci bölümünde görüleceği gibi Ricoeur, özne fikrini tamamen yok etmez. Bu geleneği sorgulamasına rağmen, refleksif felsefeye bağlı kalan filozof, özne anlayışına dirimselci bir boyut kazandırır. Ricoeur’e göre kendi (le soi) olarak düşünülen özne, yorumlama sürecinin başında değil, bir proje olarak sonunda yer alır. Değişmesine rağmen, özünde taşıdığı başkalık sayesinde kendiliğini muhafaza eder. Bu bağlamda, yorum felsefesindeki merkezdışı özne fikrini, başkalık kuramında anlatısal kimliğin taşıdığı idem/ipse farkı çerçevesinde değerlendirmek gerekmektedir. Bu şekilde hem kendinin, hem metnin ve hem de ötekinin başkalığıyla yüzleşen merkezdışı özne fikriyle Ricoeur, bir yorumlama etiğinin zeminini hazırlar.
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