Paul Ricoeur's Dialectical Phenomenology of Proclamation 🗣️ #kerygma

Welcome everyone. I'm Dr. Donald

Wallenfang. The title of this live

stream is

Paul Ricoeur's dialectical phenomenology

of proclamation. So, we want to think

together

about the unique character of Paul

Ricoeur's

phenomenology, how it's different than

that of Husserl, Heidegger,

Jean-Luc Marion,

and many others.

What are the unique features of it? Um

I've been doing some previous live

streams about this topic, and it's one

that for me doesn't get old at all. It's

always very

interesting to think along with with

Paul Ricoeur because he takes the long

route in philosophy.

He does not settle for,

you could say, half-baked, undercooked

philosophical conclusions

without warrant, but instead he presses

on toward

the truth in its fullness that involves

discourse,

a dialectical movement back and forth

between

uh a unity and difference.

Uh and this is really the truth about

truth that

it does not occur immediately to the

human subject,

but truth is a prize won after a

hard-fought

contest to find it, to discover it, to

let it show itself

through the layers,

the interstices

of interpretation.

So,

if we were to sum up Paul Ricoeur's

philosophy in a word, it could be

interpretation,

uh or hermeneutics. So, we can call

Ricoeur's phenomenology

a hermeneutical phenomenology or also a

dialectical

phenomenology of

proclamation. So, I would really want to

pursue this in this livestream. How is

Paul Ricoeur's phenomenology that of

proclamation? Why proclamation?

Uh, and the counterpart would be

manifestation.

He's very aware of the phenomenology of

manifestation that develops through

Husserl and Heidegger.

Uh, and will take be taken even further

with Jean-Luc Marion.

But, at the same time, Ricoeur is

attentive to other parts of lived

experience than Husserl and Heidegger

were. Um, and namely, it's what's going

on with subjectivity interpreting this

or that phenomenon.

So, first, I want to think with Ricoeur

in more general terms

about how he understands

our approach to truth and truth's

approach to us human subjects. So,

I'm going to take excerpts from my 2017

book Dialectical Anatomy of the

Eucharist and Atonement Phenomenology

forwarded by Jean-Luc Marion.

And I want to take from a couple

sections in this book.

Uh, page 42 and 43.

Um,

thinking about this universe of

discourse with Ricoeur.

This world that we live in, that we

experience,

is configured according to a universe of

discourse. This we want to think along

with Ricoeur.

Uh, and so, Ricoeur in his book The Rule

of Metaphor says that

my inclination is to see the universe of

discourse

as a universe kept in motion

by an interplay of attractions and

repulsions

that ceaselessly promote the interaction

and intersection

of domains whose organizing nuclei are

off-centered in relation to one another.

And still this interplay never comes to

rest in an absolute knowledge that would

subsume the tensions.

So this passage from the rule of of

metaphor is worth spending some time to

unpack and understand.

So Paul Ricoeur thinks about a universe

of discourse.

The um Lebenswelt of every Erlebnis,

every lived experience. The

um the lived world,

the life worlds, um

Lebenswelt,

uh

Heidegger also calls the Umwelt,

uh the context of every lived

experience.

He's calling this a universe of

discourse

and how phenomena light up according to

the symbolic order of meaning,

language, discourse.

And I really like that term a lot,

discourse.

We could say discourse is the course of

truth. It's how truth makes its way to

uh epistemological recognition, how a

human subject can know that such and

such is the case,

uh to recognize one meaning from

another.

It's through discourse where meanings

are differentiated and we don't have

just one

uh

nebulous cosmic soup of givenness.

So a discourse, a universe of discourse,

Paul Ricoeur says it's kept in motion by

an interplay of attractions and

repulsions. We think of this even with

the laws of nature and electromagnetic

force, gravitational force,

attractions and repulsions.

It's like the law of the universe,

including the law of interpretation, the

law of sense making, meaning making, how

language works, attraction and

repulsion.

There's a unity through plurality, a

universe of discourse, kept in motion,

he says, by an interplay of attractions

and repulsions

that ceaselessly promote

the interaction and intersection of

domains,

which

Maurice Merleau-Ponty calls a chiasm,

an intersection

of domains.

What are the domains he's talking about?

We could say the domain of the world

that gives itself to a human subject and

the domain of subjectivity

itself.

There's There's a dialectical difference

between the human subject and the world

he or she experiences.

An interaction of domains

whose organizing nuclei,

the center of each domain, are offset,

off-centered, in relation to one

another.

And still this interplay never comes to

rest

in an absolute knowledge that would

subsume the tensions, as in Hegel.

So, this is where Ricoeur is different

than

than Hegel, and he's he's different than

this phenomenology of manifestation

that wants to interpret things only in

terms of manifestation and givenness

uh wants to work toward um

resolution

of the living tension between

this off-centering of domains that of

the world, that of the self, that of the

other, that of the self

that of two others uh

that of um the multiplicity of

phenomenal givenness

givenness in relation to interpretation,

manifestation in relation to meaning

So, Ricoeur is thinking about this that

uh knowledge

is not going to become absolute, come to

a rest. It's different than Hegel's idea

of sublation.

What in German aufheben.

In Hegel, there's

a resolution

of the dialectical tension between self

and other

between

um thesis and antithesis, assertion and

negation.

Hegel wants a synthesis, a sublation.

And Ricoeur says, "No."

The universe of discourse

um resists

and deflects such an attempt to reduce

it to something

that would be a sublation or subsumation

of the tensions involved

in

what we could call the elliptical

relationship

between these

different organizing nuclei or domains.

Again, between something like the self

and the Lebenswelt in which the self

finds him or her self.

Uh so, instead of a platonic dialectic

that would resolve itself through

rational discourse or Hegelian dialectic

in which a sublation would resolve our

polarity,

Ricoeur's proposed dialectic remains

unresolved and open to further

possibilities.

For Ricoeur, the universe of discourse

is constituted by a perpetual play of

polarities between questions,

assertions, and meanings.

In a word, communicative wonder

is what Ricoeur helps us think about.

Going on within Erlebenis, within

Ereignis, within the appropriation of

meaning within every lived experience.

Much like the interplay of atoms in the

material realm, where we have a positive

charged nucleus with uh neutrons and

protons and the negative charged

electrons whizzing around the nucleus of

the atom, so there we have a unity and

plu- plurality

and polarity. So, much like the

interplay of atoms in the material

realm, the generation of meaning depends

upon difference in proximate play.

So, this Ricoeurian dialectic is an

ellipsis

with two foci of equivalence

and proximity. So, it would look

something

like this. What's called an

ellipsis.

It's a very important term for Ricoeur,

a very important term for philosophy.

So, an ellipsis instead of

a circle where we have

a center point uh

and a equidistance from that center

point to the edge of the circle uh

through every moment of its radius.

An ellipsis

is

something else. There's two

center points.

There's there's two nuclei.

So, an ellipsis looks more like this.

And there's an equivalence. They're

They're equal in importance.

Um there there there's a kind of of

shape here

where we have a kind of symmetry and

balance.

But, what's crucial for a court is the

interaction between the foci, between

the nuclei. This ellipsis.

And in language, an ellipsis is the dot

dot dots.

It's the waiting for more.

Uh and so, to think elliptically

is to think like Paul Ricœur.

It's something quite different than

the tendency toward a reductionism

to one thing against the rest.

This confusion that often happens in

various kinds of philosophical

fundamentalisms,

uh

various ideologies, worldviews

that want to resolve in a closure of

alterity,

a closure of otherness. But, it's

otherness that opens this elliptical

form. There's two foci.

And concerning the self, this is very

important because often we interpret our

experience in terms of the zero point of

orientation of the self alone.

And everything has to um

come back to to me, myself and I.

Uh with Hegel, there's a sublation of

difference and assertion negation

sublates into just one.

And so with the circle form,

we have the sense of oneness, but not

necessarily that of difference,

alterity, otherness. With the ellipsis,

we have the otherness, the alterity. We

still have a symmetry. We still have a

form. We still have coherence. It's not

just a bunch of random points

um, without some kind of logos. We still

have a logos, but it's it's a logos that

is grounded in

unity and plurality.

Ellipsis, again in language.

Um,

I ask, does anyone out there love me?

You know, to ask Marion's question. Dot

dot dot.

Um,

it's not I resolved that nobody out

there loves me, period.

For now, I feel like nobody loves me,

dot dot dot. But we await the

possibility

of love.

The advent of love, for example. That's

an example. So, ellipsis we find very

helpful in language so that we don't

prematurely

close the event of meaning, the event of

meaning making. But we we leave the door

open for more meaning to be made.

So, Ricœur teaches us

the dialectical nature of truth

and that truth shows itself through this

universe of discourse.

So, the ellipsis is a form that is

discursive,

whereas the circle is a form that can be

reductive. And applying this analogy of

shape and points to thinking,

we see the difference between a Husserl,

a Heidegger, Heidegger of a kind of

movement towards solipsism,

which can at the same time be a movement

toward narcissism.

And and everything always revolving

around the self, orbiting around the

self, the self same self.

But for Ricoeur, it says

there's the self and there's the other.

There's the interpreting subject and

there is the world that gives itself for

interpretation.

There is manifestation, but there's also

meaning to be made.

Ellipsis,

very important for

uh Ricoeur to understand where he's

coming from

in a a heuristic device there.

So, the elliptical form depends on two

and not only one of the foci.

Dialogue,

as in Plato,

is the impetus of this form, but

likewise is Hegel's counterposing of

positive and negative,

negative in terms of tragic assertions.

However, rather than following Hegel's

notion of Aufhebung, a sublative thrust

toward absolute knowledge, the

interaction between two different

components resists reduction,

conflation,

or oversimplified synthesis.

The law here

Ricoeur is bringing into view or into

into hearing

is

unity

in and through plurality.

Or we could say diversity

rather than unity and sameness

rather than just unity as uniformity or

homogeneity.

But with Ricoeur, it's an understanding

of unity presupposes different parts to

be united.

And that's what's happening in his his

philosophy in taking the long route.

So, there is a wholeness in Ricoeur, but

not a totality

per se, like in Hegel.

And such, for example, is Gregory of

Nazianzus' conception of God, divinity

as Trinity.

Where Nazianzus says the one God, one in

diversity, diverse in unity

wherein is a marvel.

Unity.

God is a unity having from all eternity

arrived by motion and duality finding

rest in Trinity.

So, that's a an example within religious

experience in theological terms of

divinity what Ricoeur is getting at with

the elliptical nature of truth.

A a kind of expansion

a cleavage of the sublation into an

alterity of difference

bringing about the universe of discourse

because there's no discourse to be had

if everything's reduced to one.

If everything is reduced to only one

nucleus.

But we have nuclei with Ricoeur. We have

foci.

Not just one center points, but

two forming the elliptical shape.

So, with this in mind, we want to think

about Ricoeur's phenomenology of

proclamation

inside

of this living dialectical tension

of discourse.

So,

we're going to get a bit um

theological here.

Uh not losing

uh the rational philosophical grounding

of of the thought process,

but allowing the thought process

to be stretched vis-a-vis religious

experience.

Uh we could say the theological

phenomenon, which is simply to say

philosophically that we want to deal

with

um

the penumbra

of reason.

And what do I mean by that?

We want to deal with

um

questions at the limit.

We want to deal with our limit

experiences.

We want to deal with boundary

and question the boundary.

We want to engage in a philosophy

that goes the distance to the margins of

thought,

the alleged periphery

of thought. We want to go there. We

don't want to be content

with what we already know,

with what we already think we know,

and we've gotten so good at.

We want to explore some new frontiers.

And this is what Ricoeur is doing in in

his philosophy.

It's it And every good philosophy does

this.

Uh we inherit something

in order to augment it,

in order to develop it further.

So, we want to think toward

the fringe and the frontier

of philosophy.

And that

fringe, that frontier

is the concept of divinity.

Pure and simple. I mean,

what compares to the the wealth of this

concept and

uh the enigma of this concept, even

beginning with a concept.

And for phenomenology,

divinity as a concept signifies

the saturating heights of possibility.

So, to disqualify divinity from the

start is to short-circuit the whole

project of phenomenology.

For which Heidegger says, "Higher than

actuality stands possibility."

Uh but signified by divinity is the the

unlimited

uh

abyss of possibility. So, Ricoeur wants

to explore this and he does so

by being attentive to

the phenomenality of religious

experience that we can call

kerygma

in Greek.

So, what is meant by

kerygma

and how we explore this with Ricoeur?

Uh so, yes, he is

uh being influenced by his own

indigenous religious

experience,

um

religious tradition, Christianity.

But for that reason, it doesn't

disqualify all other religious

traditions. It's It's just simply

a point of entry

for dialogue across religious

traditions, which is in

extremely important for us

um human beings who have a solidarity of

personhood, no matter what culture,

ethnicity

um around the world with no matter what

language.

But the colossal task of

philosophy is is to become a global

citizen as much as possible

and to listen

out of both sides of the head

uh to listen in multiple directions, to

become a polyglot.

And as much as one respects all

languages, all cultural expressions and

beliefs

in the miracle of interpretation.

But also

not just a polyglot, but a polymath to

think in an interdisciplinary way.

So, to be influenced by one religious

tradition or another

is not to disqualify dialogue with the

rest.

But it's to find some common ground that

we might call religious experience for

philosophy

and then um to proceed from there.

So, for Ricoeur, a key term

that influences philosophy

is kerygma.

A kind of phenomenon within religious

experience, how might we translate this

Greek word in English?

As

a message

a saying, an articulation of

of truth or even salvation.

Uh a message or also

closely related, a proclamation.

A proclamation of of the message.

And related to kerygma

within Christianity is this other Greek

term

euangelion

uh that we get the English word angel

from here and evangelize,

evangelism, evangelization.

Eu in Greek, happy, blessed, good.

An- angel, message.

So, these things are related in the

Christian New Testament, for example.

Kerygma, euangelion.

And And Ricoeur is being attentive

within religious experience

to

the kerygmatic

dynamism of truth. That truth comes to

knowledge

by way

of testimony

interpretation

through a universe of discourse.

Truth as kerygma makes its way

to subjective apprehension

through this network

of truth-telling.

So, kerygma, euangelion.

For Ricoeur, all of this is involved.

So, these are the general terms that we

want to unfold with him

in his phenomenology of proclamation.

Because the difference here between

Ricoeur and Husserl and Heidegger

is that for Ricoeur

a phenomenon appears

to the degree that it is interpreted.

It lights up for subjectivity. It means

something to the degree that it is

interpreted and has some linguistic

mediation

for record, linguistic mediation.

Um

linguistic intercession.

Otherwise, we have mute

uh unapprehensible

saturating manifestation

in the lived experience. But, for

record, again taking the signal from

Heidegger, we have not just Erlebnisse,

but Ereignis.

An Ereignis that that interprets,

appropriates

the phenomenon, and then attests to this

meaning within

a performative lived experience. That's

that's Ricoeur. I've talked about that

before in previous live streams, that we

have

uh this this hermeneutic

hermeneutic circle of appropriation

become attestation.

So, we're thinking about the

kerygmatics, you could say, the

kerygmatics,

the proclamatory

uh

phenomenality

of lived experience in Ricoeur. So, in

his book, The Conflict of

Interpretations,

Ricoeur writes that there has always

been a hermeneutic problem in

Christianity

because Christianity proceeds from a

proclamation. So, so any religious

tradition has this character of of

proclamation and is more text-based

and things.

Um

we can see this in Islam with the Quran.

We can see this in Judaism with uh Torah

and the Tanakh, the Hebrew scriptures,

Midrash,

uh the Talmud.

Uh uh

we can see this in Buddhism as a reform

movement of Hinduism.

Uh and when we get

a charismatic proclamation happening

within religious experience,

we we are really

working within this universe of of

discourse. And again, a kind of play of

truth that does not occur immediately to

any human subject in their solitude.

Uh, but it's it's mediated through a

universe of discourse. So, Christianity,

for example,

begins with the fundamental preaching

that maintains that in Jesus Christ, the

kingdom of God has approached us in

decisive fashion.

It's very interesting that Jesus of

Nazareth,

we have nothing he wrote.

Uh,

it's it's just the writings of his

witnesses.

So, the kerygma about Jesus,

uh, as God become flesh, as dying and

yet rising from the dead, ascending into

heaven,

uh, as bringing salvation to the world,

all of this about Jesus of Nazareth

comes by way of testimony. There's no

other way to access him

than through his witnesses, than through

his church.

Um,

and and and so,

uh, it's a in Christianity, we have a

fundamental preaching. This word this

word of God that is already um,

happening in Judaism with prophecy, all

these different proce- prophets, major,

minor prophets of the Hebrew scriptures,

then in Jesus, who is said to be the

word of God become flesh.

But the word,

uh, this word comes to us through

writings, through the scriptures, and

these must constantly be restored as the

living word if the primitive word that

witnessed to the fundamental and

founding events of the life of Christ is

to remain contemporary.

So, something like the scriptures,

something like the creeds, the

liturgical textuality of the faith,

all of this has to be

restored as living, the living traditio,

the living traditioning of the faith,

if the primitive word,

what Christianity calls the sacred

deposit of faith,

uh that witnessed to the fundamental and

founding events of the life of Christ is

to remain contemporary. So, we have the

fundamental founding events

of Christ,

what he did,

where he moved in the flesh,

uh the miracles he worked, the demons he

drove out,

um

his his saving death and resurrection.

We have these events,

and they're full of manifestation,

they're full of theophany.

But, how are they um

extended in time and history?

Through the word of the witnesses,

through the tapestry of texts.

And and so,

for these events of of the life of Jesus

to remain contemporary, to remain alive

with us,

the living word of

the witnesses has to be restored as just

that, living,

developing,

an ongoing traditioning of testimony.

If hermeneutics in general is in Wilhelm

Dilthey's phrase,

the interpretation of expressions of

life fixed in written text, a beautiful

definition of Wilhelm Dilthey, what is

hermeneutics?

The interpretations

of expressions of life fixed in written

texts.

Now, there is is a phenomenological

process to attend to.

Uh the phenomenology of interpretation,

this movement of lived experiences

become expressions of life,

manifestation become meaning, then fixed

in written texts.

It's causing me to think in doing a live

stream of video, what's the relationship

between a video and a fixed life

expression fixed in written text.

I suppose we can have a transcription of

the words,

uh but we also have something of a

manifestation

uh

in in the video.

And so it's a kind of um best of both

worlds, I guess, to do

a live stream in this way, not just

writing an article or a book,

uh but to capture a teaching, to capture

a new event of charismatic proclamation

uh through a visual video, but also the

oral

um soundtrack.

So, Dilthey

hermeneutics, the interpretation of

expressions of life fixed in written

text. And this is what Ricoeur talks

about. First, there's a discourse of

life that is expressed gradually through

meaning and its uh hermeneutical uptake,

we call interpretation.

Then, for instance, Christian

hermeneutics deals with the unique

relation between the scriptures and what

they refer to,

the kerygma of Christ, the proclamation

of salvation through

Christ.

Why does it matter to someone?

If someone cares about being saved from

from sin, death, misery, ignorance,

alienation, all of these things,

we have a message called the gospel, the

good news

in Christianity, but it is a message.

It's a saving word

for Ricoeur especially. And Ricoeur's

background in Christianity is

Protestant. It's uh reformed

church. Uh

Calvinist, the the French Huguenot

tradition there in in France.

And so he's very attentive in

Christianity to um biblical

interpretation,

uh to this kerygma of Christ more so

than

the sacramental phenomenon that we have

in someone like Jean-Luc Marion. So

that's why in this book I combine their

forces together as well as the Jewish

voice, the roots of it all in Levinas

approaching this Christian phenomenon

called Eucharist, liturgical phenomenon.

Uh so so Ricoeur

says this relation between writing and

the word and between the word and the

event and its meaning

uh is the crux of the hermeneutical

problem.

But this relation itself appears only

through a series of interpretations.

So what we're trying to do with Ricoeur

here is return interpret carefully

the how

of phenomenological givenness within

lived experience.

And we're putting it in more explicit

terms here

uh with with kerygma.

But he says again for Ricoeur, there are

two events within every lived

experience.

Two events.

And the first one, he admits,

is

manifestation.

So, we can say in Christianity, we have

the Christ phenomenon, the givenness of

Christ, of Jesus of Nazareth,

not just

words about him or words he allegedly

spoke, but a real historical life.

Uh a real human being in the flesh, a

person,

uh who um

there's a an eventfulness about Christ

in his life.

But then we have, again, the second

movement,

the event of meaning.

Manifestation

becomes intelligible through the course

of meaning, through what Ricoeur calls

this universe of discourse.

And meaning itself attests to the

original manifestation of the givenness

of the event.

And so, Ricoeur is saying here,

in Christianity, we have um the word and

the event,

uh the word become flesh

as event, we call incarnation in

theology, but then it's meaning through

uh the oral tradition, first of all, and

the biblical textual witness, second,

the redaction of testimony.

And and all of this appears to us

as witnesses of the witnesses

through

interpretation.

It's the only way.

It's the only way, the labyrinth of

language, the gauntlet of

interpretation.

And so, we wrestle with

the givenness and the meaning

of the divine revelation.

It comes by way of interpretation, but

interpretation isn't to say

we interpret it however we want, we make

it mean whatever we want because

meaning, even the meaning made within

our interpretation is still tethered to

the

original

event, the original giveness. And there

is an objectivity there. We would say

there is

a universal,

going back to Husserl, universal

immanent data of giveness that anchor

this whole process of interpretation

back to, we could say, the source

without just talking metaphysically

about cause and effect. But we're

talking about

a a matrix

of meaning making.

A matrix that is intelligible, coherent,

meaningful, has criteria of adequacy

that So, we're thinking about this

philosophically.

And there's criteria of adequacy that

allow us to

uh connect to the original

events in the life of Christ, for

example, in Christianity.

So, for Ricoeur, there's a primacy of

proclamation within this living

dialectic between the self and the

otherness of the phenomenon, the

otherness of the revelation,

uh and the examples we're you're taking

from Christianity.

So, we've seen earlier that for Ricoeur,

symbols

declare meaning through an intention of

signifying.

And that even natural realities take on

a symbolic dimension only through this

universe of discourse. He talks about

this in his book The Symbolism of Evil.

So, in our following analysis,

we're going to observe how proclamation

serves as the signal word for Paul

Ricoeur, signifying all modes of

discourse, including the metaphorical

dimension of the symbol.

Especially in the case of the religious

phenomenon, proclamation will be shown

to be the primary term for Ricoeur. That

is, proclamation over and against

manifestation.

So,

to think a bit further in the present

livestream with Ricoeur about this,

Ricoeur asserts that a religious fact

is never a naked, mute experience, but

one which is documented in texts.

The Old Testament, the Gospels, the

Quran, for the Western tradition, some

examples. The meaning of which is

forever being reinterpreted in a

cultural tradition that differs from the

one they were written in.

Uh so, that's very interesting that

uh for adherents of these different

traditions of faith today,

we interpret

a text that was formulated, that was

compiled, that was written, committed to

writing,

in an era not our own, far removed from

our own historically,

often times in a language not uh our

own,

not contemporary with what we speak,

uh by witnesses

who lived, we could say, in a different

world than we do. And yet, we're trying

to interpret these meanings for

ourselves and even live by them.

So, the religious fact is born by

meaning that is transcribed into written

texts comprised of a variety of forms

and genres.

Paul Ricoeur has a tremendous essay

about this called

a toward a hermeneutic of the idea of

revelation

uh

in in his book essays on biblical

interpretation.

Uh so

Ricoeur identifies what he sees to be

the most significant vicissitude

that a phenomenology of religion is

required to confront.

He says this

uh in an essay entitled experience and

language in religious discourse.

So Ricoeur writes

to the linguistic mediation

a cultural and historical mediation is

added of which the former

the linguistic mediation is a mere

reflection.

This weighty fact condemns phenomenology

to run the gauntlet of a hermeneutic and

more precisely of a textual or

scriptural hermeneutic. So what Ricoeur

is saying there is is we have

interpretation of texts but when it

comes to religious texts not only do we

have bare texts but we have the original

cultural and historical mediation

of of the text in which it was

originally written and also our presence

historical and cultural situation.

So this is what he calls the process of

distanciation where an interpreter is

met with a text that is not uh

contemporaneous with his or her own

presence historical cultural situation.

And so there there's a hermeneutics of

history and culture a bridge that has to

be formed

to access

meaning

uh and have something to do with the

original meaning

not only the authorial intention but the

meaning the author is witnessing through

the writing.

Uh so, it's quite

um

an intricate process, this

interpretation.

So, if I if I pick up a Bible

and I I want to interpret a text, let's

say in the book of the prophet Isaiah,

and I go to it in my English

translation. Of course, there's many

different English translations.

And uh and I start reading in English

uh

to read this text in the most

responsible,

educated, careful way,

I need to uh not just read it in my

English translation,

but I need to go to the original

Hebrew critical edition

and read the text

in Hebrew.

And Hebrew is not what I'm speaking, not

what I'm reading, not what I understand.

Uh but a scholarly

um

thing to do is to go back to the

original text, first of all. Not only

that,

but to know quite a bit about the

original historical period, culture,

context in which that text was written

in

Hebrew. What's going on historically?

What are all these events?

And then when I read in English

uh the translation,

it's a much more

responsible,

uh careful, accurate reading. I'm

actually getting to the the truth the

text conveys through this process

of interpretation. So, in theology, this

is the heavy lifting we have to do. We

have to it's called biblical exegesis

and we have to be attentive to all these

different layers of meaning in the

original language, the original

historical, cultural, political setting

of the text uh and modes of expression,

idioms within this ancient Hebrew um

prose

uh poetry, you know we have to be

attentive to all these things

to let meaning mean.

So, there's an accountability

for the interpreter with record.

Interpretation doesn't mean relativism

at all.

At all. There's an ongoing

objectivity

that we want to be precise, very precise

about

uh for the sake of of um truth

accuracy, precision, exactitude.

So, within

uh the chiasm of the interpreting

subject vis-a-vis the phenomena

that give themselves, that mean

uh there is this intersection of history

culture

language

text

even

um patterns of interpretation.

So, to interpret a text from the

Christian scriptures

is to need to know a lot about how to

interpret a text in the Jewish

scriptures.

And the whole tradition of rabbinic

interpretation called Midrash.

And if if you have a Christian who

doesn't know about Midrash

they're in incomplete.

Uh they're they're lacking a lot

actually.

Um

if someone is ignorant of the roots of

their own tradition, this is a a

problem.

And and and there've been many heretical

movements in the history of

Christianity, for example, where there's

a negligence

as to the roots of the tradition. Very

early on, Marcionism, for example.

So, Ricoeur is saying

that through this commitment

to interpretation,

but interpretation

understood, I dare say, and I publish

this in places, it's an obedient

hermeneutics.

An obedient hermeneutics

to

the original

event of manifestation,

the original

uh penumbra of

interpreting witnesses around that

original event,

and

the you know, the the ongoing layers of

penumbra that come with the next

generation of interpreters and the next

one and the next one. So, to interpret

the Christian Bible

in the year 2024

is to interpret the Bible through the

century the centuries as as um

responsibly as possible.

Uh it's not just what I want to make of

it based on my own life and

circumstances and my own English

translation.

It's how do I interpret this text

in light of the whole tradition of

interpretation

going back to Judaism.

How do I philosophize

uh within a certain tradition of doing

philosophy, too, within within all of

this.

So, Ricoeur, you know, he's not unaware

of the traditions in which he finds

himself.

In 20th century France,

uh in the reformed Christian tradition

uh speaking French uh in in the

continent of Europe.

This this is how his philosophy goes.

It's the key it's played in. It's the

timbre and texture of of what he's

saying, what he means. So,

um

we have to come clean with the context

in which each one of us thinks does

philosophy writes in terms of language,

in terms of locating ourselves within

a coherent tradition of interpreters.

So, the unavoidable gauntlet that

Ricoeur identifies recalls what Ricoeur

says about the critique of Husserlian

idealism.

For Ricoeur we have no S gibt.

In

uh it's um we know we have no S gibt. We

have no original

givenness of a phenomenon received in

its naked immediacy, but instead every

phenomenon appears in and through

language and its interpretation. S gibt

aus. I've talked about this in a

previous live stream. Not only this, but

Ricoeur asserts that language and the

art of interpretation are themselves

embedded in an ever-shifting

cultural-historical matrix that cannot

be bracketed in the name of the

phenomenological epoch. Okay? Without

retrograding back into a blissful first

naivete

and a historical consciousness. So,

Ricoeur says phenomenology can't do

this. It shouldn't do this. We we

shouldn't drift into uh an ahistorical

atemporal consciousness

uh as if we can receive givenness with

with no context.

Uh Ricoeur is saying any givenness

receive from phenomena is coming through

the filters of context.

Um, our own present situation that's

been developed according to a symbolic

order of meaning, how we were raised,

Merleau-Ponty is so good about this, the

psychology of childhood, uh, thinking

about uh, phenomenology through uh, the

lived experience of the child,

not understanding or interpreting the

child as an miniature adult or

something,

but the immediacy of a child's

perception,

uh, and nevertheless now this in this

phenomenology of proclamation of Ricœur,

it's it's this um,

the it's this philosophy of adulthood we

see also with

Levinas, with Derrida,

and it's something different than

a more muted in terms of speech

phenomenology, philosophy of childhood,

and and there's a complementarity

between the two. So in this book I

that's what I ultimately get at, but

taking one thinker at a time, thinking

along with each one in turn.

So,

phenomenology Ricœur claims is not

uh,

is not a historical,

atemporal,

uh, this kind of blissful first naivete

which he calls pre-understanding,

phenomenology is meant to expose that

through critique, and the

phenomenological epoché itself

for Ricœur is part of that critique of

the natural attitude, the

pre-understanding, the first naivete, in

order to arrive at the post-critical

understanding or the second naivete.

It's still a naivete,

it's still phenomenology,

but it's an informed phenomenology. So,

it's at this point

that Ricoeur can rightly be called the

owl of Minerva

in so far as he acknowledges the lag

time of philosophy to depict a

historical state of affairs

conducting its rumination during the

belated upshot of history.

Uh so, Ricoeur

says also

to speak of linguistic mediation is

already to summon up the grand edifices

of speech and writing that have

structured the memory of events, words,

and personalities

all equally endowed with a founding

value.

To put it briefly, religion is like

language itself, which is realized only

in different tongues.

The comparison can be pushed even

farther to the degree that the

difference between religions duplicates

that of different tongues sometimes

fixing and consolidating it

if it does not serve to establish it.

So, um

it's very helpful, I think, what Ricoeur

is is getting at here. Again

every linguistic mediation for an

individual interpreter

comes through

uh the mediation of speech and writing

structured uh structuring the memory of

events, words, personalities, you know,

one's

upbringing

that we don't

uh do philosophy

in some kind of cultural vacuum.

But, each one of us is nestled within a

particular culture, history, language

and we can do no other than to think

within it.

So

in the

quest for universality in phenomenology.

What we requires is bringing back into

the picture

is the frame.

Um

and in other words, there's no there's

no picture without a frame, without a

context,

without a kind of horizon of

interpretation.

Uh

and

and so it's the keyboard of language

that that lights up the givenness. It's

the palette of color

um that allows manifestation to mean

something to the interpreter.

So at the at the threshold of this

gauntlet

of interpretation,

according to Ricoeur,

one has no choice but to take the long

route in order to resist the temptation

of claiming to have crossed the finish

line.

For this gauntlet admits no finish line,

nor does it bequeath a crown of laurels.

The gauntlet of hermeneutics calls for

perseverance

and determination without the promise of

a final word on the matter.

The sun may set on one day's

conversation only to rise again at

tomorrow

of resumed discussion.

Yet for Ricoeur, a promise remains on

the future horizon

summoning the contestants

onward in hope.

So, this is Ricoeur. This is Ricoeur.

Um understanding interpretation as

proclamation,

the proclamation of each and every

phenomenon in its own generic sense.

Uh by proclamation is meant the manifest

phenomenon means something.

As Heidegger says, "Etwas

als Etwas."

Something as something.

The phenomenological as is charismatic.

Uh

and this is what Paul Ricoeur is adding.

He's enhancing our understanding of

phenomenology that we have from Husserl

and Heidegger

by filling out

the observation and description of the

structure of phenomenality itself.

We have receptivity,

but through interpretation we get

description. Through interpretation

by attending to

uh

the the proclamation of each phenomenon

as meaning, what each one means, we have

interpretation and moving to a

phenomenological description,

appropriation,

response,

attestation.

This this hermeneutical circle of uh

phenomenality itself.

All the more so when we're dealing with

meanings of ultimate concern that we

call religious ones.

Religion simply refers to those meanings

as human beings deal with in life that

we find of ultimate concern and import

and we think it most important.

Uh and so religare in Latin, where the

word English word religion comes from,

to bind like a ligament, and to bind re

again, again, again.

And so when we when we uh analyze these

phenomena, which we call happening in

religious experience,

uh this

proclamatory charismatic dimension is

all the stronger. The meaning means

very definitively,

decisively,

and it's like the meaning takes the

human subject

grabs the human subject and pulls

pulls along this course of meaning

because

it's so meaningful within this type of

experience.

And our lives

um

come on come upon these along the way.

Maybe a lot.

Maybe not much.

But you know, if if we simply ask the

question again

uh what meaning am I seeking in the

present moment? What meaning am I

seeking now today?

We can trace

um

follow the breadcrumbs

breadcrumbs to what each one of us finds

as ultimate concern as an absolute kind

of meaning

without rival.

And that is what we worship.

That is what we live for.

And no matter what that is

it could be in the form of an idol

or an icon.

It could close the gaze uh to

uh the myopic self and the curving in of

the self on the self.

Or it could open in an iconic fashion

to the possibilities of otherness and

divinity.

Uh

where the question signifies

uh new doors that have yet to be opened

and explored.

So this is part of Ricoeur. What I want

to introduce today

uh and I'll have several more live

streams coming about Ricoeur and this

phenomenology of proclamation

uh the dialectical nature of truth and

interpretation.

Uh so if there's no questions or or

comments

I will um wrap up for this session.

Uh but always you're welcome to raise

questions, make comments in the chat,

and uh the comment section below the

video once published.

I thank you so much for thinking along

with me, trying to think along with Paul

Ricoeur.

Um may you continue to think toward the

whole, to pray from the heart,

and to live as a witness. We'll see you

on the next one.