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Phenomenology and Hermeneutics are the philosophical tools Ricoeur uses to articulate the relations between time, as opaquely lived, and time as transfigured through the process of mimesis, which in its turn results in the narrative that is organised by a plot. The field of application for the use of these tools is the field of meaning in which we find “the arc of operations”:
“by which practical experience provides itself with works, authors, and readers.”(P.53)
Ricoeur appears to believe that the foundation of our epistemological relation to reality rests upon the field of meaning, which is a significantly different entity from the Aristotelian field of the “many meanings of Being”, and a significantly different entity to the field of philosophy defined by the 4 Kantian questions:
“What can we know? What ought we to do? What can we hope for?What is man?”
Ricoeur’s declared intentions are, as we know, neither connected to Aristotelian hylomorphic or Kantian critical Philosophy, but sail closer to the winds of Heideggerian ontology and Hegelian dialectic as part of an investigation into the medium of language.
The poetic adventure begins with a pre-comprehension of the form of life which is centred upon the meaning of Action: its symbolic structure, motives, and goals as well as upon the practical kind of knowledge involved in techné. In this realm, the critical Philosophy of Kant regard the categories of Agent and Patient as critical elements which Kant expresses in terms of what the agent does, and what happens to the agent. Heideggerian instrumentalities embedded in an instrumental context of involvements, unfortunately, efface this ontological distinction in favour of a practical-theoretical distinction between what is ready-to-hand and what is at present-at-hand. Agency, and its relation to the will disappears in this account in favour of a discussion of the relation of objects to one another, and our relation to these objects. The desk is related to to the pen which in turn refers to the paper. This context must involve the motives and goals of the agent, but these are marginalised. This, of course, is part of the Heideggerian strategy to avoid what he calls the subjective-objective dialectic that threatens to envelop all action into the sphere of a relativistic sphere of subjectivity.
The motives of the agent engaged in the mimesis of the temporality of everyday life, which transforms the temporality of the kind of “poetic” narrative we find in a technical object such as a tragic play, involves a process of transfiguration of the temporality of everyday action. This process requires a philosophical investigation that involves the categories of the understanding, as well as the teleological reasoning required in the explanation/justification of actions, and the technical objects created by such action. Insofar as we are also dealing with the fate and destiny of characters as determined by the plot of the work, the plot itself must embody a telos that relates to the Kantian practical idea of freedom, and the exercise of reason that is involved in the agents desire and practical search for a flourishing life. This reference to Aristotelian hylomorphism or Kantian critical Philosophy would not be acceptable to either Ricoeur or Heidegger’s existential/phenomenological approach, which seeks as part of its mission to neutralise these forms of rationalism.
Ricoeur calls the transfiguration of Time that we encounter in mimetic narrative, “constructed time”(P.54). What may be a source of confusion in this discussion is a recognition of the difference between a theoretical account of Time(the measurement of motion in terms of before and after) and a practical account of time, the experience of which is both lived and regulated by the sensory powers we possess. Time, of course, can be conceived of in terms of “events” that “happen” in our lives, but it is also the case that our sensory powers play an active role in organising our life-world activities, especially in relation to that final “event” of our life-world—our death. We all owe nature a death and it is on the journey toward this ultimate terminus that we form our destinies and determine the quality of our lives. Heidegger’s contribution toward this discussion lies in his idea of what he calls the being-toward-death that characterises the practical active life of Dasein.
Narratives, Ricoeur argues, focus on both acting and suffering but the emphasis is on “description” rather than explanation/justification. It is “method” in a context of exploration/discovery that is important in phenomenological investigations:this methodical emphasis occurs at the expense of “principles” and their determining role in the understanding of phenomena. It is, to be more precise, the understanding of the principles of acting and suffering that determine the art of plot composition, and the art of plot interpretation. The “Implicit phenomenology” of “doing something” isolates itself deliberately from the organising principle of a will considering alternative avenues of action (from the rational perspective of universality and necessity). If the kind of action under consideration is self-evaluative, and related to the worth of the agent as measured by arché, areté and diké, then the choice is categorical, and the categorical imperative both explains and justifies any action or suffering on the part of an agent concerned with the task of “knowing thyself”. If, instead, we are concerned with imperatives justifying instrumental action, hypothetical imperatives will explain/justify the action concerned. These will not necessarily be a concern of the tragic narrative, where the issue is exactly that of determining the worth of the agent. Here we are not in the realm of “meaning” but rather in the domains of knowledge and ethics, and by implication, concerned with the metaphysically loaded questions, “What can we know?” and “What ought we to do?” The attempts to answer such questions cannot confine themselves to merely “describing phenomena”.
For Ricoeur, the notion of “symbol” is important in all activities concerned with the interpretation of the “meaning” of what is occurring. The role of the principle of “the Good” is however, obscure and not articulated in Ricoeur’s reflections on the interpretation of tragic narratives. Ricoeur, indeed, raises the possibility of an ethically neutral narrative, where the controlling idea is to establish what he calls an “ethical laboratory”(P.59), thereby clearly situating this particular phenomenological investigation in a context of exploration/discovery. The spirit of such enquiries is that best expressed by the question “What do we have here?”, rather than “Why did X do A?” The answer to this latter question must of necessity be a rational answer given that the question is obviously asking for a reason for an action that has been freely chosen.
Ricoeur contrasts Augustine’s emphasis upon the present-ness of Time with Heidegger’s commitment to the future expressed in the idea of being-towards-death. Heidegger rests this particular argument on Care, which he claims constitutes the unity of Dasein– that being for whom his being is a question. Care testifies to the commitment of Heidegger to an instrumental form of practical reasoning that Kant would characterise in terms of hypothetical imperatives. Heidegger also speaks of the past, and uses the term “historicality”. We are, Heidegger argues, thrown into the world and into a temporal structure that he characterises as “within-time”. We reckon with time in our life-world before we measure time, it is argued. This reckoning occurs in the context of “work” which occurs “within” the span or fundamental unit of a “day”. The term “work” obviously has essential connections to both acting and suffering. To the extent to which we measure the time of our work by referring to clocks and the time that it is “now”, we can divide our day theoretically into a string of “nows”, “before’s” and “after’s”. It is only if we detach this string of denominators from Care for the work, that we are able to create a theoretical linear chain of causality, in which the motion of one event “causes” the motion of another event in the spirit of the Humean analysis of causation. The actual understanding we have of the causes and reasons for acting and suffering, create no need for the construction of a mathematical spatio-temporal coordinate system, that is best used in order to give an account of the relation of material-physical objects and quantities of motion.
The “moments” or “nows” of a narrative, e.g. “Is this a dagger I see before me?”, are clearly connected in the plot to befores and afters, and the kind of question which naturally arises in relation to this moment is not merely “What is the cause of this experience?”, but also “What kind of future is this moment signalling?” (“What is the teleological reason for this moment?”). It is obvious that the artist cannot discover the meaning of this moment after he creates it, if he does not possess a prior idea of its telos. The momentum of the narrative is forward pointing, and it is the future of the narrative that motivates the continued interest of the reader/audience in the proceedings.
There are important differences between History and Poetic Tragedy(both of which are narratives of care even if the former is concerned with the befores and the latter with the afters in the temporal continuum of the respective narratives). Aristotle elaborates upon this difference, and favours poetic narrative over historical narrative because of its “universality”. The genre of historical writing was, however, only to establish its subject-identity later in the cultural development of the West, and when it did, it would not do so as merely a record of a totality of particular facts ordered on a spatio-temporal continuum, but must rather include judgements relating to our Care for a human form of being-in-the-world—-universal judgements embedded in a context of principles of explanation/justification. Historical understanding too, must connect to the future in this context. The Delphic prophecy, namely, that all things created by man is destined for ruin and destruction, of course, hover over the judgements of the Historian like Banquo’s ghost, as do the words from the Enlightenment “Sapere Audi”(Dare to use your reason!”). The words of the oracle may contain much truth but there was, for both Aristotle and Kant, a logical space for a meaningful answer to the question “What can we hope for?”. Kant’s philosophical answer to this question is that in the far distant future there is a state of the world in which ruin and destruction are a thing of the past.
The difference between the role of factual knowledge in the two different types of narrative, are nevertheless important. In the poetic tragedy of Macbeth, the hallucinatory experience of the dagger, is an important event, and whilst it is true that Macbeth is hallucinating, it is nevertheless not true that he is in the presence of a real dagger. In the historical account of Macbeth, there may be no trace of this experience or the presence of witches. Such an account will only contain verifiable facts which are founded upon documentary evidence. That is Macbeth may not have been an agent of ruin and destruction at all but merely a ruler attempting to rule in difficult circumstances.
The mimesis of Shakespeare’s tragedies are important from the point of view of providing the cultural community with insight into the mind of a tyrant. In this respect the tragedy of Macbeth is merely a dramatised account of the philosophical dialogue we find in the late books of the Republic. In Socrates´ narrative, the consequences of tyrannical rule are outlined in terms of the ruin and destruction it brings down upon the city, and also in terms of the inevitable violent death of the tyrant. This discussion is part of a response to Glaucon, in the earlier books of the Republic, demanding that Socrates prove that Justice is both good in itself, and good in its consequences. In both kinds of narrative the imagination obviously supplements the work of the powers of understanding and reason. The artistic genius of Shakespeare uses the cathartic formula of Aristotle in his presentation of the deterioration of a mind intent upon usurping the throne at all costs. That it is, in fact, probably not true of Macbeth is less important than the fact that it is important to focus aesthetically upon the forces of good and evil in order that audiences may learn how to avoid the ruin and destruction brought upon the city by agents that fail to understand how their own minds are functioning( the major focus is nevertheless on the future of the city). You will not find any attempt by Shakespeare to install an “experimental laboratory” in his theatre. The learning experience, for both Shakespeare and Aristotle, resides in the Platonic insight we are given into the human mind in general, and pathological minds in particular: an insight that is in accordance with another Delphic challenge, namely to “Know thyself!” In this process diké was presented by Socrates as something that was both good in itself and good in its consequences, and getting what one deserved was part of this concept of justice. If in the modern spirit of creating an experimental laboratory, elements of experience were all thrown randomly into the cauldron of the work, without any idea of the good or justice, and a narrative was produced in which a tyrant brought down ruin and destruction upon the city he ruled, but prospered and led a flourishing life. This would be anathema for the classical mind and the work would be experienced as a farce rather than a tragedy. In this witches cauldron of bits and pieces of experience, nothing significant could be learned about life, and it’s relation to justice. One philosophical hypothesis that has been produced in this “experimental” spirit is that our Western tradition is on its way to a ruinous end–an apocalypse– and there will be a period of “The last days of terror”. This hypothesis has played no small part in the installing of the fear of terrorism in our modern consciousness. A fear that left very little space for pity, except perhaps a form of narcissistic self-pity. There is, of course, a limit to how many times one can say that something is coming to and end without that end actually occurring. The hypothesis sooner or later will become otiose, but the danger is that in the process of “living this hypothesis” the mind loses interest in the classical matrix of arché, areté, diké, epistemé and phronesis. These ideas form the bedrock of our hopes and expectations, and without such a foundation there is a distinct danger that life and action lose their meaning, and our value system becomes inverted as part of this process of “forgetfulness”.
The History of suffering certainly calls for a human response, but perhaps not one in which terrorism features: a scenario in which our thought moves to vengeance and a vision of the last days of our civilisation. The ancient Greeks provided us with a matrix of ideas which they believed was a philosophical formula for leading a flourishing life. It is this matrix, rather than the modern experience of alienation and despair that best structures human expectation, and the hope for a better and brighter future. The learning experience that follows from the mimesis or imitation of actions, centres around characters that may die. If, however, they die in a value-vacuum without in some sense deserving to die because they brought down ruin and destruction upon themselves and everyone else, then we are in the realm of the meaningless: what we would be witnessing would be a form of existence that is possible but not desirable(a scenario constructed by an imagination that is functioning in a value-vacuum).
Ricoeur, in this chapter also embarks upon a reflection upon the role of language in a work of art. Appeal is made to the sense-reference distinction that Frege introduced in his “Theory of meaning”, and the claim is made that reference to reality is indeed important in the interpretation of the language of poetic works(P.80). The language of such works is, however, not descriptive, but “metaphorical”. This is all part of a hermeneutical account of literary symbols, and Ricoeur elaborates upon this position by claiming that in reconstructing the temporality of action and suffering, we are also dealing with “metaphorical” language. The fictional narrative, Ricoeur argues, is presented in the spirit of “as if”. The events in some sense do not exist and this is part of the hermeneutic attempt to escape a subject-object argument which would place much that is of human importance into a category of “the subjective”, and embrace positions which encourage experimental laboratories in which our human values are neutralised in favour of hypothetical world views. Heideggerian hermeneutics and its appeal to being-in-the-world, and being-towards death, is a form of reflection which has classical motivations and to that extent is less fixated upon the phenomenological attempt to describe, and more prepared to seek explanations and justifications for phenomena. It is in this spirit that Ricoeur claims that History is a guardian or night watchman ensuring the remembrance of the dead.