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A curious reference to Nietzsche, opens Ricoeur’s reflections on the relation between epistemology and ontology in History. The Philosophy of Nietzsche was characterised by Heidegger as the “Philosophy of life”, whose aim it was to combat the influence of abstract thought, especially insofar as areté(virtue) was concerned(Nietzsche, Heidegger, M, Trans. Krell D. F. San Francisco, Harper and Row, Vol 1 The Will to Power as Art, 1979, P.5). For Nietzsche, the target of his remarks, is his view of historical culture: an aesthetic view of life that focuses specifically upon fluctuating processes, rather than the substantive epistemological and ontological aspects of of memory.
Ricoeur(in sympathy with Nietzsche) wishes to highlight in his reflections, what he calls “the excess of history” that is “harmful to life”. Nietzsche uses his perspective to criticise modernity, and the role of the modern human being in modern life He points to the harmful characteristics of History, when it is conceived of scientifically. The past, Nietzsche claims ought not to have power over the present. He means by this evocative statement that, for those who possess the will to build the future, it is only those who presently are in power that have the right to sit in judgement upon the past. This sounds initially like a variation of the argument of Thrasymachus against Socrates in book 1 of the Republic, in which an attempt was made to justify the actions of those in power by the argument–“What people in power do, by definition is right”. Socrates’ counterargument, was that without knowledge of what one is doing, one would never know whether what one was doing was in ones interest or not. Nietzsche, however, wishes to use this argument to give a licence to those in power to forget the past. This is the “pharmakon”(remedy, poison) that will prevent historical culture from suffocating life. The question to raise here, is whether Plato and Socrates are representatives of the scientific historical culture which, according to Nietzsche, is “suffocating life”. Ricoeur sides to some extent with Nietzsche, against those who claim the important role of knowledge in organising life, on the grounds of an objection to what he sees to be an “absolutist” view of epistemology and rationalism. He claims that there is a dogmatic refusal to embrace any sceptical objection to the position described by scientific history. Ricoeur claims, that we need the assistance of critical hermeneutics to navigate a middle course between the rocks of dogmatism and shallows of scepticism. This middle course is founded on a rejection of rationalism.
It is not clear, however, how Ricour’s account (with its anti-rationalistic commitments), relates to Heidegger’s view, that the “will to power” is connected to “eternal recurrence”. This connection, for Heidegger, is the key to understanding Nietzsche’s Philosophy. Nietzsche claims that Western History is the history of nihilism, and presumably the claim rests on the “observation” that the laws and principles inherited from Ancient Greece and Christianity, have lost their hold on the lives of modern men. Nihilism is, Nietzsche continues, a naked force of History, which may lead to the destruction of man. This “observation” is then further supported with a form of dialectical reasoning in which it is claimed that “truth is error and error is truth—a form of argumentation that Heidegger characterises as a “reversal”. In this “reversal” Nietzsche argues, a new order of values will emerge, based on the “will to power”.
Dialectical reason aims at identifying and using polarities, and one such “polarity” that Ricoeur “constructs”, is related to the difference between historical and judicial judgements. He invokes the idea of singularity in general, and the singularity of the great war crimes of the 20th century, in particular. Ricoeur locates this reflection in a concept of History which:
“includes, in addition to its renewed temporal meaning, a new anthropological meaning: history is the history of humanity, and in this worldwide sense, the world history of peoples: Humanity becomes both the total object and the unique subject of history, at the same time as history becomes a collective singular.”(P.300)
Ricoeur goes on to link this chain of ideas to to the idea of “human plurality” suggested by Hannah Arendt, which, Ricoeur claims, raises the question of whether it is even possible for history to be written from a cosmopolitan point of view. The Aristotelian idea of “significant difference” suggests itself here. Surely we can conceptually reflect upon whether the idea of a cosmopolitan kingdom of ends requires that the “significant differences” between people can be reduced or neutralised?
We have, both in earlier parts of this review, and in other earlier publications( A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness and Action, Vols 1-4, Lambert Academic Press), argued in favour of a rational Cosmopolitan perspective. Such a perspective would sceptically doubt Nietzsche’s “observation” and dialectical reasoning(truth is error, error truth), and claim that this position risks violating the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The Cosmopolitan perspective would, moreover, maintain that these principles hold in relation to all forms of discourse related to our lives, especially insofar as willed actions are concerned. Testimony, and the passing and implementation of laws must obey these laws/principles, and it is not clear how Ricoeur sees the relevance of Nietsche’s “observation” and reasoning in relation to these key legal activities.
Moreover, he sees that in spite of Nietzsche’s complaints about the shortcomings of “modernity”, he might well fall into the category of “new men” proposed by Arendt in her work “Origins of Totalitarianism”( New York, Harvest Book, 1968). For these “new men” Arendt argued, “everything is possible”, including presumably violating the principles/laws of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Arendt might, given her later work on “the Human Condition”, view Nietsche’s claim that nihilism is a naked force in history, favourably and, to some limited extent ,agree with this position. Her emphasis upon what she terms “vita activa” (to be distinguished from vita contemplativa) is an emphasis upon a “force” which may well resemble in certain respects the will to power that Nietzsche wishes to promote. Both of these ideas certainly emphasise “flux”and “becoming”, rather than the stability of laws and principles, in contexts of explanation/justification. Cosmopolitanism in the eyes of such anti-rationalists would be regarded as a utopian pipe-dream. Rationalism, of the forms envisaged by Aristotle and Kant, and anti-rationalism in its various forms, both refer to the will, but in the former case the reference is to a part of our psuche which is regulated both by our discourse and our reason whereas in the latter case reference is to a naked force in the stream of becoming. Nietzsche wishes to relate both will and being to power, and Heidegger to a limited extent in his work on Nietzsche agrees with this from a more ontological and metaphysical point of view. Typically, Nietzsche modifies his account of the will in his work Zarathustra, where he bluntly claims that there is no such thing as will, and that will is only a word(XII, 267).
Ricoeur, in his discussion of the ideas of progress and cosmopolitanism, refers to what he calls “an apriori superiority of the future”(P.302), and in so doing opposes the two processes of historicisation and relativisation. The former is clearly connected to the Hegelian “idea”, rather than the Kantian “kingdom of ends”. This latter idea is also associated with the Christian eschatological “topos” of “salvation history”: a “topos” that relies on a schema of “Promise” and its “realisation”. Ricoeur then concedes that Nietzschean relativity risks self-destructing on the principle of “self-reference”, but he also insists that the “grand narratives” of, for example, Christianity have also lost credibility(P.313). Alongside of these grand narratives, there are also sceptical doubts voiced over History itself and The Law.
Indeed a crucial test of the position Ricoeur is attempting to outline, is the intelligibility of a discussion he undertakes on the relation between the roles of the Historian and the Judge.(P.314). Ricoeur’s discussion begins with a contentious characterisation that the aim of the Historian is to produce truth, and this is to be contrasted with the role of the Judge whose concern is with Justice(as if these were mutually exclusive alternatives).There are many problems with the formulation of such a position, but the first is the presence of the most obvious uncomfortable fact, namely, that the legal process requires that testimony be true, and this fact is just as important for the judgement of the judge as it is for the judgement of the Historian. There is also the equally obvious fact that there is a logical relation of the law to the judgement running through the middle premises relating to the evidence in the trial. Such a logical relation requires the truth of the premises including the truth of the major premise that expresses the law in relation to the charge brought by the prosecution against the defendant. Ricoeur wishes to characterise this judgement-complex in terms of the grammatical category of the third person, and he wishes to use grammatical distinctions in his attempt to sharply distinguish between the Legal and the Historical contexts of explanation/justification. This impartial third person or third party “point of view”, is then also accused of being “perspectival”(P.314). There is, Ricoeur argues, a “structural difference” between a court tribunal and the historiographical critique emanating from the “framework of the archives”(P.316). Testimony is characterised as a “linguistic structure”, and the dubious example of witchcraft trials is used to cast doubt upon respect for the law and legal institutions, which every polis/nations demands of its citizens. Here Ricoeur also cites the less dubious examples of modern “treason” and “terrorism” trials, which are better used to illustrate what happens to a justice system when the political and legal systems are not independent of one another. This failure to ensure independence is hardly the task of the judges in the legal system.
Ricoeur acknowledges the historical aspect of the trial in which events are reconstructed via testimony and documents, and adds that whereas judges are compelled to come to a judgement in every particular case, this is not the case for the Historian. Nevertheless one recalls the great war crimes trials of the 20th century, where there is a clear integration of the interests of Law and History. One interesting question to pose in relation to this reflection is whether a Historian can question a judgement in a great war crimes trial without invoking judicial forms of argumentation. One can also wonder whether a Legal judgment could raise a question about the historical authenticity of what happened in a particular place at a particular time. The two kinds of judgement appear to mesh in a way that is not explained by Ricoeur’s account. We should also point out that any verdict, recorded in any trial, would inevitably become a part of the archives a Historian must consult in his/her research. It would seem that there is no reason to doubt that there is a similar relation between the major premises of the Historian and his concluding judgements as there is between the Charge and the judgment in a legal trial. Both processes rely on the principles/laws of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Ricoeur asks whether historical argumentation could be used to assist in the formulation of the sentences of great war criminals. This problem cannot find a resolution in Ricoeur’s account because:
“the historical reality, because it is human, is ambiguous and inexhaustible.”(P.334)
This argumentation, however appears to rest upon an unwarranted conflation of the fictional narrative with the historical narrative. We know that the fictional narrative does not aim at appropriating the past in the name of the truth. Even if it did perform such a function, it is difficult to see how, on Ricouer’s account, that aim could find its target, given the underlying claims that life is in flux, and subject to dialectical forces attempting to make sense of “an incoherent world”(P.335). The art of interpreting documents is similarly dogged with uncertainty because, it must allow the interventions of a free subjectivity which cannot be captured in the ambiguous narrative that attempts to report such events.
When the archive meets the living testimony of living witnesses, this, argues Ricoeur, brings the present into tension with the past. He discusses the problem in terms of the distinction between what he calls the self of research and the self of pathos. He attempts to circumvent the problems associated with the idea of subjectivity, by referring to what he calls a “good subjectivity, but it is not clear that this term is coherent unless one accepts the questionable bipolarity of the subjectivity-objectivity distinction, especially when inserted in a grammatical context of first-person/third-person. Understanding, on Ricoeur’s view, then, is a matter of interpretation of a complex of language acts(P.337), and this characterisation ensures the relevance of the role of hermeneutics in any philosophical investigation of these matters. Such a strategy also marginalises the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason which, in turn, shifts the focus from the self of research, to a linguistic soul of the solipsistic kind that we encountered in the early work of Wittgenstein(who claimed that the limits of ones language is the limit of ones world). Ricoeur’s grammatical investigations, however, are very different to those we find in the later philosophical investigations of Wittgenstein. Wittgensteins war cry “Dont ask for the meaning, ask for the use!” initially looked like a demand that one confine oneself to describing the use of any aporetic term, but the issue is in fact more complex involving appeals to “forms of life” and principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.
Ricoeur, in his discussion of the content of historical archives, talks in terms of chaos, citing Collingwood, “Everything in the world is potential evidence for any subject whatever”(P.337), and also takes up the issue of “discordant” testimony that might be placed in the archives(P.338), thereby raising the issue of trust, not just in the documents, but also in institutions that provide these documents. Historians, of course have been trained to distinguish between the documents provided by the mass media, and documents provided by legal and political institutions. No historian, for example, would place more trust in the newspaper reporting of a trial, than in the official records from the court, unless there were special reasons to doubt the motives/competence of the Judge/jury. In such circumstances we are dealing with the motivations of subjects rather than the objective characteristics of events.
Ricoeur invokes the polysemy of words and the poetic interpretations of texts, as part of his attempt to conflate historical text with other forms of text such as poetry. In this latter kind of text it is part of the skill of the poet to deliberately use the ambiguity of words to create intended effects. What we see occurring in such texts is clearly part of the purpose of the text.
In a discussion of naming, the death of Philip II as an event is discussed, and the suggestion is that this raises the issue of historical representation. Again “poetics” is invoked in what, on the face of it, seems to be incontestably a political matter. The de-legitimation of the institution of the monarchy is , on Riceour’s view, both a poetic and a political matter. The “interpretation” of the event is thus tied to the idea of a “surplus of meaning” of the words used to report events this point also relies on the conflation of different uses of language. Words, Ricoeur argues, are more than “tools of classification”(P.342). Here he refers to what he calls “founding narratives” and an anti-mimetic substitute discourse that appeals to the masses.(P.342.) Of course, prior to the criticism of poetic characterisations of the Gods that the ancient greeks complained about, there probably was a problem with the separation of the poetic from other forms of discourse, but this has changed over the course of 3000 years, and what we have now might not be language-games but certainly different uses of language which find articulate expression in the different regions of the sciences–be they theoretical, practical, or productive.