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Ricoeur admits, in his Introduction to this volume, that he has been guided in his investigations by the “point of view” of the Phenomenology of time-consciousness. This, of course, became obvious in his choice of situating his principle of “point of view” in a Hegelian dialectical framework in which the focus is the refiguration process in relation to which temporality is mysteriously transformed in a dialectical synthesis.
Ricoeur refers again to his earlier thesis of the dissymmetry of fictional and historical narrative, and again appears to rest his entire case on an epistemological appeal to Frege’s concept of Reference. This appeal must have the consequence that, in the case of any attempt to specify the essence of fictional narrative and its appeal to underlying imperative concerns, the idea, form, or principle of “The Good” must be regarded as “unreal”, presumably because of the contrast with the “real” concern of historical narratives, that are based on actual documentation of events emanating from significant institutions of society. This concern with a “real past”, in contrast to the concern of fictional narrative with a possible past and possible future, also becomes a major differentiating characteristic between the two forms of narrative.
All activity, Aristotle argued in his Nichomachean Ethics, aims at The Good, and this surely must cover both fictional and historical narratives. This is not to deny that narratives concerned with the statement of facts about past states of affairs, have a different structure to narratives whose primary function is to appeal to the Good that has been brought about by the rational contemplation of Action by a character or agent. It is also important to note that however different the structures, we are still dealing with a logic of argumentation, in which premises are related to each other in rigidly definable ways that lead to universal and necessary conclusions. The major premise “We ought to keep promises”, is a “real” imperative, demanding real action, and real reasoning, should we ever find ourself in an arena where such activity is required.
Ricoeur argues that there is a considerable degree of tension between the phenomenological and cosmological accounts of Time, and he clearly considers Augustine to represent the former position, and Aristotle the latter. He does, however, have critical views of some aspects of Augustine’s account. In his opening chapter entitled “The Time of the Soul and the Time of the World. The Dispute between Augustine and Aristotle”, we encounter the following:
“The major failure of the Augustinian theory is that it is unsuccessful in substituting a psychological conception of time for a cosmological one.”(P.12)
Ricoeur adds that, even when it is the case that the cosmological account can be supplemented by a psychological account, there is nevertheless an irresolvable disagreement, when the alternatives are presented independently of each other. Augustine, he argues, provides us with a lasting solution to what he refers to as Aristotle’s problematic failure, to articulate the relation between soul and time. Apparently, the major issue for Ricouer, is to reconcile the measurement of motion with, for example, the Augustinian postulate of distentio animi, and the souls “experience of time”. This experience is primarily related to the activity of memory and expectation. Ricoeur does, however, point out that Augustine does not succeed is providing us with a measure of this activity of the mind, which can then be applied or correlated with movement or motion in the external world. It is also claimed that the phenomenology of perception does not play any significant role in Augustinian theory. This, of course, is an allusion of things to come in the name of giving an account of the problematic relation between the intuitions of space and time in the activity of the measurement of time. This kind of problem does not arise in Kant’s example of the perception of the boat sailing downstream. For Kant, there is no problem that there is both a before and an after in both the movement of the boat and in the consciousness involved in the perception of this movement. Kant’s solution to the Augustinian problem makes recourse to the Aristotelian Hylomorphic solution. The boat, water, and everything material in the above experience is given to the mind of the perceiver, and the mind then actively organises the experience in accordance with the one dimensional continuum of befores and afters. The category of causation which attributes causal power to the boat and the motion of the water are part of this process of organisation.
In the above example of the boat sailing downstream, we see the concepts of form(principle), matter, potentiality and actuality, interacting to form a relatively simple phenomenon. The pure temporal intuition of the movement of the boat may not on its own, involve the category of causation, but is purely a sensible movement of the mind brought about by the movement of the boat. There is absolutely no point, in interiorising this experience and subsequently asking if there is an impression localised in the mind which is independently identifiable, and which calls for independent naming or describing. Since, however, the mind, as Aristotle points out in his Metaphysics, “desires to know”, there will undoubtedly be engagement of the above pure intuitions with other cognitive powers of the mind such as the understanding and reason: and we might well end up making the judgement “The boat is sailing downstream”. The power of the imagination will also be involved in such a judgment, and its activity will consist in providing the “schema” to organise the representations connected to this entire perceptual scene. This will be a prelude to thinking that the boat is sailing downstream. It is not the case, however, as the phenomenologists(Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Ricouer) maintain, namely that it is the imagination that is the primary power responsible for organising this experience. Perception(discrimination) the categories of the understanding/judgement, and the principles of reasoning, are all involved in the knowledge claim, “The boat is sailing downstream”.
Trying, as Frege did, to distinguish between the sense and reference of the above statement might be useful if the concept of “sense” and not the concept of “reference” becomes the primary bearer of the meaning of the above statement. Sense, characterised that is, as away of presenting the reference, would then be related to intuitions, categories, and reasoning). Ricouer, however, as we know, prefers to locate the concepts of Frege in a phenomenological context, especially a Husserlian context of internal time consciousness, which emphasises sensibility at the cost of other higher cognitive powers.
The pure experience of time, then, must of necessity be relative, considering the fact that we are dealing here with an infinite medium(we cannot conceive of a beginning or ending of time without presupposing time, i.e. for every before there must be a conceivable event before and for every after there must be a conceivable event after). The elements which assist in the division of this infinite continuum are the elements of “nows” and “thens”, conceived of in a hylomorphic framework of potentiality and actuality, form, and matter, in a context of a desire to know and a desire to aim at the good. Once we add the activity of measurement into this equation, there must be something external to measure, since our thoughts per definition do not have magnitude, and can not therefore be mathematically measurable. Of course, it is true that were there no minds in existence, there would be no measurable time, because there would be no minds to measure the motion of external events.
After discussing the problems involved in the “experience of time”, and the introduction of discontinuity into the continuum at that point when a now is actualised, and becomes a potential then, as time goes by, Ricoeur calls again upon Augustine and the idea of a “threefold present”(which maintains that the past and the future only manifest themselves in the present). This, Ricoeur points out, is a theoretical account that appears to abstract from the movement perceived. Aristotle’s account, on the other hand, rightly insists upon external movement or motion, as an essential component in any experience of time, on the familiar grounds that thought does not have a magnitude, and therefore cannot move or be measured.Time is, Aristotle argues, as does Kant, a one dimensional infinite continuity.
Yet it is Augustine who is Ricoeur’s lodestar in this discussion and this is illustrated in the following quote:
“The distension of the soul cannot produce the extension of time: the dynamism of movement alone cannot generate the dialectics of the threefold present.”(P.21)
This dialectic is then conceived of in terms of the contrast between the phenomenology of internal time consciousness and the objective succession of the boat sailing downstream.