Philosophy, Politics, Education, Ethics, Psychology, Religion, Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics, Humanism, The Arts, Ancient Greek Philosophy, Enlightenment Philosophy. A site dedicated to the humanistic art of lecturing and the synthesis of Aristotelian, Kantian, and Wittgensteinian Philosophy: The Pre-Socratics, Socrates, Plato, The scholastics, Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Heidegger, Freud, Arendt, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Jaynes, Cavell, O Shaughnessy, Shields, Lear, S. Gardner, Korsgaard, P.M.S. Hacker, G.E.M. Anscombe
Author: Michael R D James
Lecturer, researcher, author of "The World Explored, the World Suffered: The Exeter lectures" and "The World Explored, the World Suffered: A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action"(Volumes one, two, and three--translated into 8 languages)
The dialectical opposition of phenomenological time, and what Ricoeur calls cosmological time, might not be the most useful strategy to use in order to clarify what Newton referred to as “common or ordinary time”. We claim this, because it appears as if a more fruitful dialectical opposition would have been that between, a theoretical account such as that of Newtons and a more metaphysical account such as that provided by Kant. Ricoeur, in the context of his discussion of cosmological time, claims that cosmological time is to be identified with “instants”(P.96). This claim rests upon a misinterpretation of Aristotelian metaphysical theory, which is less concerned with “instants” or “nows”, and more concerned with an extensive metaphysical framework connected to the “before and after” structure of time. It ought also to be pointed out that, Kant too, would reject any analysis of the temporality of a boat sailing downstream into a series of “instants” or “nows”. For Kant, the boat at a previous instant was further upstream and at a subsequent instant was further downstream. Where the boat is at any particular instant is irrelevant to the concept of sailing downstream unless the statement is made in relation to the description “The boat is sailing downstream”. For both Kant and Aristotle, motion requires movement, if it is to be measured, and we know Aristotle rejected Zeno’s, attempts to prove that motion was impossible via the division of space into an infinite number of spaces which would then require an infinite number of “instants” or “nows” to transverse.
The Kantian Metaphysics of Morals claims that “anthropology”, or the empirical study of the phenomenal soul, is a condition of the execution of the moral law. However, the pragmatics of what an agent in fact does, in moral contexts, can be an empirical observational matter belonging in the context of exploration/discovery, which in its turn is related in various ways to the context of explanation/justification. Empirical contexts of exploration/discovery, are obviously important for both the disciplines of History and Sociology. It is in the relation between these two types of context that we encounter the important condition of the role that human powers play in both scientific and ethical situations. Aristotle would have, in these situations, referred extensively to the complex relation of the ideas of areté, epistemé diké and arché. Tragic literature has both its empirical and metaphysical aspects, and the Aristotelian notion of character is an important consideration in any attempt to define the scope and limits of human nature. The roles of Time and Death, would also be important elements in both the creation and appreciation of such tragic writings. It s, however, important to note that, in the case of tragedy and literature in general, the common or ordinary sense of time is presupposed and that furthermore, it is not out of the question that Aristotle’s technical definition of time(the measurement of motion in terms of before and after) is also presupposed.
It is not, however, clear how the phenomenology of internal time consciousness can support this external exercise of “measuring” the conditions and consequences of tragedy. We can say the same of History, namely, that it has a temporal structure in common with tragic literature, and both of these remind us of the temporal structure associated with the moral law, whose primary purpose it is to bring order into the chaos of the humanly created world.
The Phenomenology of Heidegger is, in many respects, more suited to the investigation of aporetic issues such as “What is Time?” “How ought we to deal with the issue of death?” “What is the role of tragedy in our lives?” “What kind of knowledge do we obtain from History?” Relating the investigations connected to the above aporetic issues to the understanding of Being, of course, provides us with a more helpful framework for the likelihood of a positive rational outcome. Ricoeur raises the question whether Heideggers phenomenological investigations are merely “anthropological” in what looks like a pejorative sense, and he also raises the question whether the existential analysis Heidegger provides, is focussed exclusively on the “present” at the expense of the temporal dimensions of the past and the future. Ricoeur answers this latter concern in the negative, and points out that, in fact, Heidegger’s account of Time is primarily focussed on what has been(the past) and what is coming to be(the future) The focus on the present we find in Heidegger, is a consequence of a holistic understanding of how the past-present-future continuum is organised. Heidegger’s account, by implication, refutes any characterisation of Time in terms of a series of instants or nows, but he might well accept that Time is related to events ordered in a series, in which the elements are conceptually related to each other. In such an account the present has intimate conceptual relations to the past and future.
Insofar as Time is connected to the initiation of an action as a result of a decision-process, the decision process is clearly the origin of a process that projects forward along a continuum until the point at which what has been decided has been done. Clearly, in this context both the decision process and the action-sequence are both active and not passive processes, and insofar as this is the case, what is required is the mobilisation of powers which include perception, imagination, understanding, and reasoning. The completed action, is thus the telos, and the formal account of this action is given as an answer to the questions: “What was done?” and “Why was it done?”. The ultimate telos of psuche, is a form of life entailing an ultimate death, which, to some extent, will weigh upon the consciousness of complex human forms of life. The “passive” perception of a boat sailing downstream, will not of course mobilise as many powers as planning the downfall of a king and executing such a plan.
The Heideggerian concepts of Dasein and Being-in-the-world, are helpful in many contexts of explanation/justification, including that of the boat sailing downstream, and the activity of planning to dethrone a king. In the former case Care for the fate of those braving the elements, is the same kind of Care we ought to share for those who have decided to shoulder responsibility for the fate of their communities. Ricoeur, however, claims that the problematic of Dasein:
“overturns the received notions coming from physics and psychology”(P.62)
Which required notions? Einsteins relativity theory merely speaks about a normal clock being attached to a system of coordinates, and presumably that clock(although appearing on the face of it to be a totality of instants), requires two hands in motion moving across its face, to register the passing of seconds, minutes, and hours. The clock, it must be noted, is a cyclical instrument, in contrast to the timing of the passing of days, weeks, months and years of the calendar. Both clock and calendar, however, function in accordance with the logical notions of “before and after”, in the recording of temporal phenomena. Clocks and Calendars are in fact the system of coordinates we use in everyday life, to orient ourselves in relation to the passing of events in the course of our Being-in-the-world. This is a system of coordinates that both the common man and the Historian use as the context of their temporally-related judgements. Is this what Ricoeur calls “objective time?”(P.62). If “objective” is contrasted with a psychological or subjective notion of internal time consciousness, then, there is a risk, that in such an adventure of reflection, we exclude reference to higher mental powers such as understanding, judgment and reason. Such a phenomenological position also requires that the future be described rather than explained or justified. Heidegger’s Phenomenology, on the contrary, does allow reference to a wider field of experience, whose temporality can be explained in the following manner:
“This phenomenon has the unity of a future which makes present in the process of having been: we designate it as temporality.”(Heidegger “Dasein and Temporality”, Being and Time)
Ricoeur acknowledges that in dealing with Dasein, we are dealing, not with the categories that apply to things, but rather what we have called “Existentials”(P.63) In a sense, this is correct ,if we bear in mind that Categories such as “The hypothetical” and “The Categorical” are both applicable to judgments about our human form of life. Ricoeur, in the name of Hermeneutic Phenomenology, wishes to introduce a distinction between understanding and the activity of interpreting. It is interpretation, he argues, that brings Time to our understanding of Language. Such interpretative activity, it is claimed, will unfold what he refers to as the “ecstatic unity” of the future, present, and past. Ricoeur agrees that Heideggers notion of “Care” is vital to the “possibility of Being-a-whole”.(P.64). It is important to note that the spirit of such an investigation is closely related to the spirit of the ancient Greeks. Dasein, Heidegger argues, is a being for whom its very being is a question or an issue for it. This question is responded to, by the emphasis upon Care and possible ways of Being-in-the-world, which are “authentic”, and these two factors testify to the presence of “conscience” and “resoluteness” in the human form of life we share together. Resoluteness brings us full circle back to the issue of Death and the way to deal with it. The best historical example of resoluteness in the face of death, is that of Socrates in his death cell, calming his distraught friends down in the face of the execution of his death sentence. Ricoeur notes the connection of resoluteness to the Stoical position, but accuses Heidegger of advancing a personal conception of authenticity, thus placing his work in a category together with the works of Pascal, Kierkegaard and Sartre. Our view is that Heidegger would oppose much of what is being claimed in these works, but he also would not agree with much of what has been said in the works of Plato, Aristotle and Kant. Sartre’s view of death as an interruption of our “potentiality for being”, is taken up, and Ricoeur asks whether it is not the case that both Sarte and Heideggers accounts would not resolve the aporias around the issues of historicality and cosmic time.(P.67) Ricoeur’s controversial claim, then, is that the Heideggerian idea of Being-towards-death is a conceptual overreaction to the aporias that arise from the dialectical relation of historicality and cosmological time.
Ricoeur claims that Heidegger is attempting to transcend the accounts of Time given by Augustine and Husserl. This, apparently, is especially manifest in Heideggers insistence upon the priority of the future, and its relation to a derivative past, leaving the present to “emerge” as the “time of concern”(P.70) generated by Care. The Aristotelian concept of actualisation also contains an interesting relation of the past, present, and future, and enables one to focus on the way in which potentiality is inherent in any interpretation of the “meaning” of present events–thus avoiding the problem of construing these events as present-at-hand and bracketing our essentially practical relation to the world. Modern Scientific theory may well force us to construe the events happening in the world, in terms of something happening “present-at-hand”, and this in turn may well then force us to “project” temporality onto such a scene through an appeal to an abstract totality of “instants” or “nows”. The more harmless consequences of such a position, is evidenced in Einsteins appeal to the phenomenon of time in the form of a clock, rather than any attempt to analyse the phenomenon, i.e. he develops a position which ends with attaching a clock to a system of coordinates in order to correctly situate events in a space-time continuum.
Ricoeur acknowledges a debt to Heidegger and the concept of historicality, which together with Care, provides us with the beginnings of an interesting practical account of Time. Such an account can be used in pure contexts of observation, such as watching a boat sail downstream. Here there is no appeal to any pure succession of instants or nows which are then merely counted. The “order” of events is much more complex, and better conceived of, in terms of the actualisation process referred to by Aristotle, which in turn, can then be connected systematically to the categories of Judgement Kant proposed. All this, of course, goes well beyond the mere “stretching along” the temporal continuum Ricouer refers to in his attempt to answer the question of the “Who” of Dasein.(P.73). He does, of course, also mention the important aspects of resoluteness, promising, and guilt in the context of this discussion, and this again appears to conjure up the actualising process of hylomorphism and the Critical Philosophy of Kant. Kant’s contribution is to complement the idea of resoluteness with that of Duty. For Kant, then, the “Who” of Dasein, is very much tied to the future outlined in his idea of a kingdom of ends, in which globalisation results in a world-community where we are all “cosmopolitan citizens”. For Kant, all peoples, all nations, are involved in the creation of a future in which all activities aim at the Good, and in which areté, epistemé, arché and diké will play an important role. Heidegger’s concept of being thrown into a ready-made world at birth, is also a helpful account, if the “meaning” of the past for those who find themselves in the future of that past, consists of living in the midst of a massive number of projects in the process of being actualised. To this extent the past exerts an inevitable influence upon the present, and also on the possibility we all have to realise our inherent potential. An early death is especially tragic in such circumstances because the “promise” of the future has been annihilated. Whether or not I can actualise my potentiality may well depend on the influence of the community and its projects. Heidegger refers to this community as “They”, and “they”, for example, may well eschew all peaceful attempts to achieve a world cosmopolitan society, and may furthermore see their relation to other communities through the spectacles of “us and them”, harbouring warlike attitudes to all who beg to differ on important issues such as race and ethnicity—as was in fact the case in 1929 in Heidegger’s Germany.
Ricoeur also refers to Heidegger’s idea of a “moment of vision”, which assists us in moving from being enveloped in the attitudes and platitudes which originate from the “They”, and toward an authentic form of existence, where one is no longer a prisoner of ones thrown-ness into the world. These reflections take us inevitably into the domain of the social and human sciences, which appear to base their case on a multitude of concrete facts that have largely been selected in a spirit of description, rather than with any intent to explain or justify. This former spirit, then, wishes to identify what is objective with what is presently verifiable, in accordance with scientific procedures dominated by observation, and the subsequent manipulation and measurement of variables.
Heidegger detects in the above discussion of objectivity in the social sciences, an epistemological commitment to what is present-at-hand and ready-to-hand: he sees a form of inquiry that ignores Dasein’s commerce with the world, and which , furthermore, involves both existence alongside the things of the world, and existence with other human beings, Science in general and social sciences in particular, concern themselves not with the way in which we “live” time, but rather with the way in which we “reckon with time” and quantify time.
Ricoeur believes that Aristotle connected Time with a soul that distinguishes between two instants and counts the intervals.(P.85). This account omits a key reference to “motion”, and “before and after”, which actually enables the philosopher to glimpse the essence of world-time, whether it be via a boat sailing downstream, or the death of Macbeth. It also omits key references to arché, which, when connected to time, becomes the transcendental principle that makes temporal experience possible. Heidegger suggests that the modern conception of cosmological time has its origins in the Aristotelian writings on Physics, but this is misleading given the importance that is placed on metaphysics in these writings, and given the fact that metaphysics of the hylomorphic kind is largely rejected by both modern Natural and Social Scientists. Ricoeur is doubtful about this Heideggerian diagnosis, but he too misconceives Aristotle’s position:
“the lesson we have drawn from our reading of the famous passage in Aristotle’s Physics is that there is no conceivable transition—either in one direction or the other—between indistinguishable, anonymous instants and the lived-through present.”(P.88)
Reading just the passage referred to, is not sufficient evidence for the accusation that Aristotelian “Nows” are “anonymous instants”. The suggestion by Aristotle, that the lived through present, is a future of a past actualised, is also evidence against the above interpretation. Physical concepts such as “stretching along”, have no place in the principle-regulated Aristotelian synthesis of past-present-future. Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis, however, is infinitely preferable to those analyses provided by Husserl and Augustine, but this too must be qualified by his somewhat confusing accounts of Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy.
Ricoeur mentions the scientific revision of the age of the world from 6 thousand to 6 billion years, and the resistance that needed to be overcome before acceptance of this so-called “fact” could be stablished. Aristotle, in spite of his belief in principles, also believed in the infinite apeiron, which aligns best with the steady-state scientific theory of an everlasting universe without beginning or end— a universe without limits but not without principles.
Ricoeur claims that ordinary time, like cosmological time, relies on a “picture” of point-like “nows” in a series. Time, according to this picture runs from one now to another, it is claimed, but reference to the “before-after” component is omitted, as is reference to actualisation processes. The principles governing ordinary time, insofar as Aristotle is concerned, are to be found in his work “Metaphysics”. Here he presents three principles: 1. That from which a thing changes.2. That toward which a thing changes. and 3. The thing that endures throughout the change. Change, for Aristotle then, is the arena for actualisation processes of various kinds: processes which are related to their own essence specifying principles. This, as we have noted, is not situated in a continuum of change stretching from a beginning point, but rather on an everlasting cycle that continues forever. The scientific “hypothesis” that the universe is 6 billion years old remains just that, until it is “proved” that “nothing” preceded the Being of the universe, i.e. that there was no space before the Universe began . Presumably this means that rejecting such a position entails maintaining that space just sprang into existence like Sartre’s partridges from pools of nothingness.
The Philosophical scientist, then, has no choice but to accept the Kantian claim, that Time is a transcendental condition of both inner and outer experience. Such a scientist ought also to accept the principles of change outlined above, and the metaphysics upon which hylomorphic theory is grounded: a theory that refers to 4 kinds of change, 4 causes of change and 3 media of change(space, time, matter). Philosophical science ought also to accept ordinary or common time as measured by clocks and calendars(with some minor adjustments), and feel no need to perform any kind of “reduction” upon ordinary temporal experience ordered in terms of before and after, and Care for origins and ends. The extent to which origins and ends are disguised in the discourse of “They”, is the extent to which we note that ordinary authenticity is an achievement of no small measure, requiring epistemé, areté, diké and arché.
Ricoeur ends with the conclusion that he believes phenomenology to be an important interlocutor in relation to the above questions. He also admits that the aporias connected to Time outrun the resources of phenomenological investigation.
Ricoeur concludes this chapter with the claim that Kant is blind to any account of Time which attempts to understand the phenomenon of time via a phenomenology of internal-time consciousness. This state of affairs, Ricoeur attributes to a commitment on the part of Kant, to the Newtonian objective view of Time, which in its turn, is committed to an epistemological ontology of nature. For those familiar with the writings of Kant, especially his work “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View”, we find Kant defining the scope of the domain of Philosophy in terms of 4 fundamental questions, the fourth one of which is “What is a human Being?”, and throughout this work we find this question answered by reference to a number of Aristotelian hylomorphic assumptions. It is important to note here that, in the Anthropology, Kant presents the soul as inserted in a cosmopolitan context which immediately calls into question the above claim by Ricoeur, namely, that Kant is committed to an epistemological ontology of nature.
Aristotle begins his essay “On the Soul” with an account of psuche which relies on the fundamental elements of “movement” and “sensation”. Aristotle also claims that principles “form” these elements and reference is made to Anaxagoras:
“Anaxagoras, as we have said above, seems to distinguish between soul and thought, but in practice he treats them as a single substance, except that it is thought that he specially posits as the principle of all things…..He assigns both characteristics, knowing and origination of movement, to the same principle when he says that it was thought that set the whole in movement.”(405, 14-18)
Aristotle summarises his initial historical summary of views on the soul, in the following way:
“All, then, it may be said, characterise the soul by three marks, Movement, Sensation, Incorporeality, and each of these is traced back to first principles.”(405b10-14)
The term “Principle”, for Aristotle is equivalent to the complete account of what it is that the principle is attempting to explain or justify. In terms of the concepts of actuality and potentiality, Aristotle maintains that the soul is the actuality of a human body, and its potential for life, discourse, and rationality. The organised system of organs constituting the human form of life is, of course, a decisive material cause or condition of this form of life. The body is the material base from which the concrete activities of life and knowledge actualise themselves(Book II 1. 20-28). The account of the soul Aristotle finally settles upon. is complex, but can be summarised in terms of his essence-specifying definition, namely, rational animal capable of discourse. Actuality is part of this account but it is not the stark reality of a referent standing present-at-hand. Rather, the following kind of account is given:
“Suppose that the eye were an animal–sight would have been its soul, for sight is the substance of the eye which corresponds to the account, the eye being merely the matter of the seeing.”(II,I,18-20)
Matter, on this hylomorphic account, is actual being, and form is potential-being. The psychic powers of man are spread out over forms of life stretching from nutritive activity to the most complex forms of thinking activity, e.g., the powers of discourse and rationality. The essence of the power involved is thus captured by an essence-specifying definition of the principle involved, e.g. rationality is connected to the principles constituting the categories, and the principles used in reasoning,(noncontradiction, sufficient reason). Thinking is a power connected to both the powers of discourse, and the powers of rationality. Aristotle likens thinking unto perception, because both powers, in their different ways, discriminate and are aware of “what exists”.(427a, III,19-22). Thinking does, however, differentiate itself from perceiving in its relation to the normative. Thinking is:
“..that in which we find rightness and wrongness—rightness in understanding, knowledge, true opinion, wrongness in their opposites: for perception of the special objects of sense is always free from error, and found in all animals, while it is possible to think falsely as well as truly, and thought is found only where there is discourse of reason.”(III, 427b, 9-14)
Aristotle continues in a Kantian vein and claims:
“Thinking is different from perceiving, and it held to be in part imagination, in part judgement, We must, therefore, first mark off the sphere of imagination and then speak of judgement.”( III, 427b,28-29)
Imagination, for Aristotle, is a sensory power which, in itself, cannot “know” anything, but has important contact with material objects and events in the external world. Thought, on the contrary, is in a sense immaterial, and without any nature, being a pure potentiality, and it is this part of the soul that is, on Aristotles account, the “place of forms”. Forms, or principles, then, are intimately related to judgements. On Kant’s account these principles or forms were embodied in his “categories” of judgement. Aristotle, however , spoke of “categories of existence” rather than “categories of judgement”. These two positions are not necessarily contradictory, but there is nevertheless no attempt by Kant to deal directly with the issue of their relation.Aristotle concludes by claiming that existing things:
“are either sensible or thinkable, and knowledge is, in a way, what is knowable and sensation is in a way what is sensible.”(431b III, 21-23)
The relation of sense to knowledge claims(judgements) insofar as the soul is concerned is stated in the following:
“It follows that the soul is analogous to the hand: for as the hand is a tool of tools, so thought is the form of forms, and sense the form of sensible things.”(432A, III, 1-2)
The complexity of judgements is reflected in the claim that thought appears to be about what one encounters with ones senses. The grammatical form of the judgement reflects this fact—the subject is the matter, and the predicate is the form the matter takes( the predicate, that is, is the further conceptualisation of that matter of the subject which is already conceptualised in the presentation of the subject). The consequent “form” of the judgement is, that it judges something about something, aiming at the truth. Judgements, in Aristotle’s logic, then, combine to form arguments, which also produce the knowledge of what is true, on the condition of the truth of the premises and the correctness of the reasoning process. In these arguments, thoughts(and not images) are synthesised. This is confirmed by Aristotle:
“Imagination is different from assertion or denial: for what is true or false involves a synthesis of thoughts. In what will the primary thoughts differ from images? Must we not say that neither these not even other thoughts are images, though they necessarily involve them?”(432a III, 10-12)
Kant gave us an account of how the imagination schematises our concepts at a level prior to that of judgement, in which either sensory identification or a concept is related to another concept. In the context of action, however, both Aristotle and Kant would agree that deliberation can be associated with imagination, and both can be involved in a decision-making process of whether to do X or Y. Insofar as judgement is involved in such a process, it is the particular judgement at the end of a chain of reasoning, that moves the agent to act. Imagination is not obviously present in the universal premise that inevitably begins such a chain of reasoning. Such a chain relates concepts to what ought to be done universally and necessarily.
There is no direct reference to Time in the above Aristotelian reflections upon the nature of the soul and the human being, but Aristotle’s essay “On the Soul”, does close with a discussion of death, and how it involves a permanent loss of the sense of touch which Aristotle claims founds our relation to the external world:
“without touch it is impossible for an animal to be”( 435b III, 17-18)
It is when a human being is conditioned by a lapse of time, that memory supervenes as a modification of his sensory relation to his environment. Some animals possess memories but, Aristotle argues, no animals possess the powers of recollection, language or reason. Memory is, of course, necessary for the perception of time, and the relational perception of before and after. Recollection, on the other hand is, Aristotle claims, a “mode of inference” which is a simpler kind of investigation, and also a part of a context of exploration/discovery in which imagination is involved. This is an important part of the process of how we acquire sensory knowledge.
Now it is clear, that Kant relies on the above principles in relation to his reflections upon Time. Newton, as Ricoeur wishes to maintain, does not contribute anything essential to Kant’s account of the a priori form of inner intuition, which is involved in recollection, perception, and expectation. Newtons essentially mathematical accounts of Space and Motion, carry with them temporal implications, but Newton does not think of Time in terms of our faculty of an inner phenomenon:
“Absolute time and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equally without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration: relative, apparent, and common time is some sensible and external (whether accurate or inequable) measure of duration by means of motion which is commonly used instead of true time such as an hour, a day, a month, a year.”(Scholium to Newtons Philosophiae Naturalis Principa Mathematica)
Aristotle would reject the claim that the mathematical idea of Time is the true absolute, which “flows equably”. For Aristotle, on the contrary, the mathematical idea of a number series presupposes the “before-after” structure of time. He would, however, acknowledge that the number series is necessary to measure duration, if one wishes to compare durations with one another. These durations must nevertheless be measured “in terms of before and after”.
For Kant too, the Newtonian mathematical view of time, suggests a relativity(to absolute time) we do not encounter in the Aristotelian or Kantian accounts. In contrast to this trio of thinkers(Aristotle. Newton, Kant), Husserl wishes to bracket what he called “objective time”, and interiorise the intuition of time: thereafter enabling him to attempt to “describe” the phenomenon in terms of a phenomenology of internal time-consciousness:
“But what is actually excluded from the field of appearing under the name of objective time? Precisely world time, which Kant showed is a presupposition of any determination of an object.”(Ricoeur, P24)
On the Husserlian account, the “flow of consciousness” is synchronised with the so called “objective flow of time”(P.24), which is then characterised in terms of “one after the other”. Husserl is clearly not engaged in either an Aristotelian or Kantian investigation, in which one begins at the level of Principles, and moves to the level of phenomena. Rather, the reverse is the case, and instead of principles, Husserl goes in search of descriptive a priori truths, that mysteriously emerge from the phenomenological reduction of a world that is placed in brackets.
What emerges from this investigation is not an objective continuum organised in terms of before and after, but rather a field of consciousness, from which one derives the activities of protention, retention, and recollection. A very simple perceptual encounter with an enduring sound, is used to illustrate these concepts. For example, there is a retention of the phase of the sound that has just passed, and a protention of the coming phase. A very physical/materially oriented discussion ensues in which there is talk of:
“the fusion of the present with its horizon of the past in the continuity of the phase.”(P.29)
and this is subsequently translated into the mental language of consciousness. It is maintained that an “impressional consciousness” is transformed into a retentional form of consciousness. Remembrance is then invoked, in order to relate retention to memory and “remembering”. This in turn introduces the role of the imagination into the account, and we are then invited to consider the differences between present retention and representation in general. Representation associated with expectation, however, is not discussed, and it may well be that the focus of Husserls account on the primacy or perception is the reason for the omission:
“Husserl conceives of expectation as little more than an anticipation of perception.”(P.37)
Ricoeur points to this anomaly in Husserl’s account, and refers to the concept of Care in Heideggers work “Being and Time”. Care is fundamentally a future oriented phenomenon: intentionality is projected into the future. The Husserlian reduction, on the other hand, appears to be committed to the present and the past: a past in which memory preserves the intentionality of what was once present in a “flux of consciousness”, ” a flux that constitutes itself”(P.42). Representation, on this kind of account, becomes merely an impression in this flux.
The Kantian account is principle-oriented, and exactly for this reason is, contrary to Ricoeurs claims, a refutation of the type of account Husserlian presents us with. Insofar as “representation” can be both what happens to one when one is passively affected, as well as something which we do(an activity), it takes both intuitive and conceptual forms. Insofar as we are dealing with representation in its intuitive form, we are dealing with objects that are affecting us, and insofar as we are dealing with representation in its conceptual form, it is primarily an activity of the faculty of the understanding(that is, of course, as we have claimed, connected to the schemata of the imagination and the faculty of sensibility). Schemata, related to Time via the category(of the understanding)of substance is characterised by Kant as follows:
“The schema of substance is permanence of the real in time, that is, the representation of the real as a substrate of empirical determination of time in general and so as abiding while all else changes.”(a143, B183)
This is an important aspect of our understanding of what is real ,and consequently also an aspect of our judgements relating to the real. The permanence of the real is evident in the example Kant chooses, of the boat sailing down the river. This is a real event actualising in the present and relying on the following Aristotelian principles:
That from which a thing changes
That toward which a thing changes
That which stays the same and endures throughout the change.
This is more than the mere “following of a rule”. Rather, what we have here, is a principle guided succession taking place in accordance with the organisation of sensible experience in terms of “before” and “after”.
Ricoeur acknowledges in the context of this discussion the distinction between contexts of exploration/discovery, and contexts of explanation/justification. In the former we are concerned with the actualisation of the schematisation of the concept, and in the latter, we are concerned with a category that is related to the schema via principles. For Ricoeur, however, this transcendental determination of Time does not reach down into the depths of the consciousness of our existence. We need, Ricoeur argues, to take a more indirect path, if we are to correctly describe the phenomena involved in such consciousness, namely that of the phenomenology of internal time consciousness. But even this indirect appeal will not suffice for a complete account because, Ricoeur argues, both the Kantian and the phenomenological accounts “borrow from each other” and “mutually exclude each other”(P.57)
Ricoeur then startlingly claims that Kantian Transcendental Critical Philosophy lies closer in spirit to Augustinian Philosophy than it does to Aristotelian Hylomorphic Philosophy. The chapter ends with the accusation that Kant is attempting to tie Time to an ontology of nature that is more ideal than real, but here again the argument presented is obscuring the fact that it is Aristotle’s view of nature and time that is being presupposed in the Kantian account(and not the Newtonian mathematical view of nature and time).
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.
In the previous essay, it was suggested that it is the conceptualisation of the world that gives rise to Dasein’s understanding of Being-in-the-world, rather than, as has been suggested, the imagination and its sensory “point of view”. The imagination, then, can provide us with a “representation” of lived time, a representation that certainly has a structural commonality with the temporality of actual lived time. We also suggested that the epistemological characterisation of fictional narrative, which prioritises its relation to particular states of affairs in the real actual lived world, is not helpful insofar as ontology is concerned—insofar, that is , that this approach will not enable us to arrive at an essence-specifying characterisation of narration. We maintained that the “historical voice” is probably being used in fictional narrative, and whilst the actual past may be the primary focus for the historian, it is a possible past and possible future, that is the focus of attention for the fictional narrator.
“Ordinary temporality”, Ricoeur argues, is refigured in fiction, in a process which he describes in terms of “imaginary variations”. We should recall, in the context of this discussion, the appeal in the previous chapter, to “games with time”, and the experimentation with rules that could even include “shattering” the normal temporal relation Dasein has to its world. In the world of the imagination, “everything is possible”, i.e. everything is a possible schema of something.
Ricoeur explores three works in order to illustrate this re-figuration of time and its “imaginary variations”, as part of the process of elaborating upon what he calls the hierarchical depths of temporal experience. Literature, Ricoeur argues:
“proceeds by way of imaginative variations.Each of the three works under consideration, freeing itself in this way from the most linear aspects of time, in return, explore the hierarchical levels that form the depth of temporal experience. Fictional narrative, thus detects temporalities that are more or less extended, offering in each instance, a different figure of recollection of eternity in or out of time, and, I will add, of the secret relation between eternity and death. Let us now allow ourselves to be instructed by these three tales about time.”(P.101)
The above reference to eternity, to a time that stretches beyond the scope of human sensibility, and therefore presumably of the sensory aspect of our imagination, must be something which is conceptualised, and therefore understood by the categorical part of our minds, interacting in accordance with the principles of the reasoning part of our minds. It is possible, of course, in the case of any concept, to discover in a process of conceptual analysis, the intuitive schema of that concept which, of course, is a construct of the power of the imagination. Referring to this in terms of “recollection”, and as a “secret relation between eternity and death”, appears to exclude conceptualisation and reasoning, thus leaving the imagination free to operate without constraint, and in the spirit of “everything is possible”(perhaps in relation to the rules of sensibility, whatever they may be).
Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs Dalloway” is the first “tale about time” Ricoeur consults. The description he provides of the events of the novel, however, in no way “shatters” the temporality of the represented time of the characters. Indeed the whole scene of the narrative appears to be a June day in 1923. Time is represented in the same way it would be in any report given by someone to someone else, of the activity of people they know on a particular summer day. The actions, thoughts, and emotions of the characters of Mrs Dalloway occur in a before-after sequence, and there is no difficulty with understanding the represented time of the narrative, which occurs in hearing distance of Big Ben—clocks and calendars appear to be functioning normally in the narrative in the same way in which they do in actual lived time. The above “dating”, anchors the represented time in the lived time of History, and the events and activities are all conceivable in the same way as they would be in a narrative report about the real events of that time.
The problem with attempting to define fictional narrative in terms of its epistemological correspondence with reality is that this kind of approach does not acknowledge Aristotle’s “many meanings of Being”, nor is there any acknowledgement of the Late Wittgenstein’s insistence that Language can indeed be used for saying how things are(even if there are many other uses as well). There are, as Wittgenstein perhaps misleadingly put the matter, “many different language games”, and language games are, on this account , intimately related to the Aristotelian sounding notion of “forms of life”(Psuche). Forms of life are obviously more related to practical activities than theoretical speculation, and the activity connected with the speaking of language moves, for Wittgenstein, from asking for the meaning of a word, to asking for how the word is used in a language game embedded in a particular form of life. Heidegger and Wittgenstein concentrate in their very different ways upon the representing of “possibilities”. For Heidegger, this concentration involves the representation of “possible ways to be”. The representation by Virginia Woolf of one day(in 1923) in the life of Mrs Dalloway represents possible human interactions on that day, but there is also involved in the creation of this work, an important universal dimension which intends to say something important and necessary about the characters of the novel and the time they lived in. We can see in this literary example, a startling similarity to the way in which language is used in Historical writings. The difference, between these two different forms of narration, relates to the the difference of intention with which historians write( attempting to provide knowledge of historical events) and the intention of a creative artist who is seeking to provide knowledge of a very different kind to their readers, e.g. knowledge of ethics and what ought and ought not to be done. In the case of the Historian, documentation from significant institutions of society, and evidence, form the scientific foundation for the judgements that are being made. Of course, it is true that the name “Mrs Dalloway” is not the name of a real person, and is not therefore connected in the normal way with an actual birth, childhood, adolescence, and adult life. Historical writings concern themselves with the real actions, thoughts, emotions, and judgements of real people.Fictional names have a complex logic of their own, but the logical relation between a real action and its reason in History, and a represented action and its reason in fiction, is the same: the same holds for represented judgement and the reasons for the judgment.
The Kantian analysis of aesthetic judgment refers to the idea of exemplary universality and it is this type of universality that is operating in the realm of the aesthetic choices being made by Woolf in the creation of the characters for her novels. This, of course, is not the same form of universality the Historian is aiming for, in the production of their writings. The skill of both types of narrators lies in their use of language to accomplish the different goals that arise from these different forms of life. In the case of Virginia Woolf the aesthetic quality of her work will largely be determined by her skillful use of the language she uses to represent the characters and the time and place they live in. The temporal structures that are represented, accord well with the temporal structures of our life-worlds. Big Ben signals the time in this “possible world”, in exactly the same way as it does in our actual real world.
It is only if one is a prisoner of an epistemologically oriented theory of language(which claims that the “actual” existence and description or naming of this existence, is the primary use of language overshadowing all other uses of language) that one can allow oneself to believe that “everything is possible” in fiction, even the dissolution of temporality. The mere potentiality of the fictional medium to conceptualise possible pasts and possible futures, maintains the structure of a coherent past-present-future continuum. The language of fiction is embedded in a human form of life in the same way as our everyday language is embedded in our everyday forms of life. The account of a character committing suicide is not significantly different to the real account of a real suicide and the one account could never be confused with the other, because we know that in the case of fiction we are dealing with mimesis(imitative representation). If, for example, Mrs Dalloway sat on a pin, her behavioural reaction will be evaluated in exactly the same way as it would in an everyday context in which we express sympathy. If she cries out in pain we understand that the pin was the cause. If she sat on a pin and did not respond at all, we would understand that there was a reason for the inhibition of a reaction.
Ricoeur claimed that there was a refiguration of time occurring in fictional narrative. It is not clear what is meant with this term. All that appears to be happening is that we are encountering “time represented”. We suggested in the last part of this review, that the term “point of view” may be playing a supporting role for Ricoeur’s epistemologically oriented theory. This is contained in Ricoeur’s concluding remarks about Mrs Dalloway:
“This experience of time is neither that of Clarissa nor that of Septimus: it is neither that of Peter nor that of any other character. Instead, it is suggested to the reader by the revelation of one solitary experience in another solitary experience. It is this network taken as a whole, that is the experience of time in Mrs Dalloway”(P.112)
This notion of a “point of view” and its connection to “solitary” or solipsistic experiences, is a clear reference to the interiorisation of experience that occurred as a consequence of the epistemological discussions of the 20th century. Once this interiorisation of experience has established itself in our theoretical speculations, there can be no other explanatory/justificatory appeal than to mythical ideas of a whole created by the sum of its parts: or a whole view created by the sum of the points of view involved. We do not need to return to Gestalt Psychology to realise that the whole is more than the sum of the parts, or rather, that it is something completely different—something like the meaning of Being.
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann is, Ricoeur argues, a novel about time(P.112,) but the analysis is once again steered by this solipsistic idea of “point of view”, applied collectively to both those that live on the Magic Mountain, and those that do not. The mountain-dwellers that live in the sanitorium do not, Ricoeur claims, follow the rhythm of clocks and calendars, and this is sufficient for him to invoke a dialectical method which emphasises the discordance in the two “points of view”, and also to take a discordant view of Time which discards the Time of the Philosophers(Aristotle and Kant). The principal scene of the action is the Berghof sanitorium, which treats patients suffering from tuberculosis–a deadly sickness in the early 1900’s. Time, sickness, and a nihilistic view of Western Culture are the three dimensions Ricoeur fixates upon in order to dialectically interpret this work. We see this dialectical approach at work in his concluding remarks, suggesting we divide the internal from the external in order to set up an Augustinian discordance:
“As the relations between those down below and those up above are weakened, a new space of explanation unfolds, one in which the paradoxes brought to light are precisely those that afflict the internal experience of time, when it is freed from its relation to chronological time.”(P.130)
Proust’s work, “Remembrance of Things Past”, is the third novel Ricoeur consults in his attempt to illustrate what he calls the “refiguration” process that is taking place in fictional narratives. Ricoeur claims that what is at stake in this work, is a search for the truth. Whether or not the idea of “lost identity” is really the central theme of “Remembrance” is an issue for Ricoeur, who claims that this may not be the best description of what is going on in this work. Ricoeur suggests instead, the alternative, the “search for lost unity”:
“The question is then no longer how the philosophy of lost unity could have degenerated into a quest for lost time but how the search for lost time, taken as the founding matrix of the work, accomplishes through strictly narrative means, the recovery of the Romantic problem of lost unity.”(P.133)
Proust is obviously exploring the power of memory in relation to the problem of which memories can become available to consciousness, and which cannot . The physical image Ricoeur uses to elaborate upon this theme is that of the archipelago—a group of separated islands symbolising incommunicability. This, of course, in turn is an effective symbol of the difficult quest for truth in relation to the past:
“One must give up the attempt to relive the past if lost time is ever, in some as yet unknown way, to be found again.”(P.141)
This must invoke a remembrance of Freud’s work in which what was once “lost” to the unconscious realm of our existence, is recovered by the special techniques of psychoanalysis. The realm of knowledge here, however, is not that of the past of the historian, but rather that of the the realm of self knowledge, so valued by the Delphic oracle and serious writers.
Ricoeur claims that a death of desire is involved in this process: a death that must have wider consequences. Only the revelations of art can prevent the more extreme consequences of the death of desire, which presumably also entails a dimming of the light of consciousness for those phenomenologically-inclined investigators. Literature, Ricoeur argues, is ” a rediscovery of the real”(P.151). In spite of this, however, Ricoeur notes that life is a work destroyed by death(P.152). This accords with the Freudian view that the artists work is not fuelled solely by conscious memory, but also by the power of the defence mechanism of sublimation. Sublimation, was as we know, defined by Freud as a nonsexual form of substitute satisfaction, and it was a form or vicissitude of the life-instinct that makes a compromise with the death instinct in the wake of the suffering of the artist. This kind of compromise, nevertheless aims at happiness, and an expanded enjoyment of life that opens a window onto the world. For Kant, this artistic endeavour appeals to the appreciator, and encourages a response in which both the imagination and understanding are involved in the production of a pleasure related to that which we experience when we learn something. Perhaps we learn that memory has lost contact with some regions of our past, and that therefore sublimation is needed as a substitute form of satisfaction in which learning about oneself is a necessary precondition for opening the window onto the world. Once “past things” are restored, perhaps a firmer grasp on reality supervenes.
The above digression via Freud and Kant would, needless to say, by rejected by Ricoeur on the grounds of a rejection of their rationalistic views of understanding and reasoning: views that rely on principles(arché) and laws. Aristotle, Kant, and Freud all believed in the explanatory power of the categories of the understanding and the principles of knowledge and they would not have shied away from any of the metaphysical implications flowing from such a belief.
Ricoeur concludes Volume Two with some reflections upon his use of the term “narrative”. He asks himself whether he has illegitimately confined his remarks to the diegetic mode of the novel, to the exclusion of the dramatic mode of mimetic representation. In defence of his account, he points to the fact that both muthos and action have the same “scope”. He notes, in connection with this that the idea of plot seems to cover the activity of both Homer and Sophocles. The problem, put simply, is that in identifying these two modes in terms of “Points of view” and “voice”, which Ricoeur admits has not been proven to be present in dramatic works, the real philosophical issues become marginalised. His dialectical reflections lead him to wonder whether in fact the novel is an “antigenre genre”(P.154). It ought also to be pointed out that Ricoeur does not identify the novel with the classical format of “epic”. Epic narrative consequently becomes a problem because , as he claims, it appears to create a “distance” between the author and the public, which he wishes would disappear. Historically, critics like Goethe and Schiller, divide literature into the categories of epic, drama and lyric. Part of Ricoeur’s problem in achieving clarity over these issues, is that he does not provide us with a clear account of the relation between the world of the text and the life world. This problem , Ricoeur claims can only be addressed when:
“The world of the text is confronted with the world of the reader.”(P.160)
This is not an epistemological issue but requires arguments with ontological commitment. Yet Ricoeur persists in claiming that what we are dealing with here is the issue of “reference” or “referential intentions”(P.160). He uses this term which is a part of the analytical apparatus of Sense and Reference, that has its origins in the work of Frege. This combined with a commitment to the “descriptive theory” of Husserlian phenomenology, helps to create the conceptual framework which resulted in an analytically inspired solipsism that is the theoretical inspiration to the concept of “point of view” and “voice”. Neither of these concepts can easily be used in the context of explanation/justification, or indeed, in any context where principles and laws are used rationally and universally. The question remains as to whether a “voice”(incapable of understanding universal or general conceptual truths), is capable of communication at all. Kant taught us that intuitions without concepts are blind, and that consequently even the simple act of pointing out what one refers to, probably also requires a conceptual framework connected to categories and principles. Wittgenstein taught us that Names do not constitute a language, but rather presuppose a language-framework. A language is certainly required to constitute a linguistically structured point of view. A window that opens out onto the world is also more than a “point of view”, yet it is a good metaphor for the relation between the “point” that is looking out the window onto a world that is so much more than an analytical collection(sum of the parts) or totality of states of affairs that can be pointed to.
Aletheia is the term Heidegger would prefer to use in the context of this kind of discussion, and it has the advantage of emphasising the moment of unconcealment or revelation that occurs in the “window onto the world” metaphor. The window becomes a symbol of the conceptual framework needed for revelation of the truth to occur. Aletheia can occur in many different ways including narrative accounts of History as well as the fictional narrative accounts of characters exploring their memories.
Ricoeur, in the spirit of analytical Philosophy, wishes to split narrative structure into two dialectical components of utterance and statement. This is a surprising move, considering his commitment to Heideggerian Phenomenological existentialism, but it does link up to some elements of Heideggerian reflections upon assertion and interpretation, which also manifests “analytical” tendencies, e.g.:
“The primary significance of assertion is “pointing out”(Heidegger Being and Time: 154)
” “Assertion” means no less than “predication”. We assert” a “predicate ” of a “subject” and the “subject” is given a definite character”(Heidegger : 155)
” “Assertion” means “communication”……letting someone see with us what we have pointed out by way of giving it a definite character….that which is “shared” is our Being-towards what has been pointed out.”(155)
This contrasts with the Kantian view of a judgement which, when it discusses predication, speaks of the about-ness relation rather than the fact that the subject is given a definite character. In Kant, the “pointing out” of the “subject”, is also omitted, and this might be because of an unwillingness to equate the logic of conceptualisation with the possible way in which we learn some concepts in relation to the identification of a subject. The third quote, in the above series, indicates a fundamental difference between Heideggerian hermenutical-existentialism and an analytical Philosophy inspired by St Augustines theory of language, names, and ostensive definition. In this quote Heidegger, for example, speaks about “Being”, which is revealed to us in far more complex ways than the mere act of “pointing out”. “Assertion” for Heidegger is also a more complex matter than merely communicating a fact about an object or state of affairs. The key term for Heidegger is “judgement” as a mode of interpretation of Being: judgement is a mode of Being-in-the-world. For example, in the judgement “The hammer is too heavy” there is of course a prior ready-to-hand relation to the hammer, which is part of the content of the judgement, as is the intention to say something about the hammer that one wishes to replace. The hammer, as a consequence of this judgement, becomes something present-at-hand and it is at this stage of the proceedings, Heidegger argues, that properties emerge. When this happens we have abstracted from a totality of involvements, and the whole experience “dwindles” to the mere seeing of what is present-at-hand. This account of what is present-at-hand is to be compared with the account of the ready-to-hand which is presented and interpreted in more positive existential-hermeneutic terms(Heidegger: 158). What is being described here, is a contrast between an abstract theoretical assertion, and a concrete existential assertion. It is clear from this that the abstract “logic” of assertion is, from an ontological point of view, inadequate:–hence the term “dwindles”.
Language, for Heidegger, contains assertions but is to be conceived more broadly as “discourse” or “talk”:
“Discourse is existentially equi-primordial with state of mind and understanding”(160)
Discourse, then, is the logos of interpretation and assertion, and can be characterised in terms of a “totality of significations”, expressing our Dasein(Being-there) in relation to Being-in-the-world. Discourse is also particularly focussed upon our “Being-with-one-another”(161), whose ultimate aim is not merely to say something about something but rather:
“discourse helps to constitute the disclosedness of Being-in-the-world”(162)
State of mind and understanding are also disclosed in discourse, along with other “existential characteristics”(162) that make language as a phenomenon possible.
Heidegger claims, questionably, that in ancient Greece, Logos is equated with “assertion” and present-at-hand properties. This would not be true for either Heraclitus, for whom logos was connected with the ontological basis for identifying one thing to be logically identical to another, e.g. the road up and the road down are the same, or for Aristotle(the inventor of logic), for whom the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason were constitutive of the logos of a phenomenon such as assertion.
Heidegger, in fact discusses Aristotle’s essence-specifying definition of man, namely “rational animal”, and claims that this definition disguises the existential characteristic of man, namely discourse. Aristotle, however, specifically amends this to “rational animal capable of discourse ” in a definition in a later work, where he specifically relates this definition to his hylomorphic framework. This framework refers to the importance of principles(arché), and a manifold of potentialities(powers), that can be actualised as part of the “logos” of being human. Logic, therefore, for Aristotle, was never a technical (techné) device designed for the purpose of analysing what Heidegger referred to as present-at-hand properties, but rather a rational activity very much connected to the ideas of arché, areté, and epsitemé. Aristotle was committed via the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason to an idea of truth resembling aletheia( unconcealment of Being), and for Aristotle, such a disclosure of Being could occur in many ways(the many meanings of being) connected to different human potentialities(powers).
Heidegger claims that it is not just what is ready-to-hand and its circumspect form of concern, that is juxtaposed to what is present at hand, but also a form of concern he calls Care, that manifests itself partly in our concern for others. He calls this form of concern solicitude, probably because it occurs in an existential context of the Anxiety every human feels at the prospect of being thrown into the world. This is not to be confused with the fear we feel at the presence of particular objects or events that occur in the world. This anxiety is related to the future orientation of Dasein which is expressed thus:
Dasein is an entity for which in its Being, that Being is an issue.”(191)
This is also an important part of the temporality of Dasein. One of the consequences of, firstly, experiencing existential anxiety in the face of Being-in-the-world, and secondly, Dasein being an issue for itself , is a “being-towards death”, which can take authentic and inauthentic forms. This is a mode of being in which there are no longer any possible ways to be-there. In this final state of our Being, we are transformed into an entity present-at-hand. Everyone, in virtue of the fact that they are a form of life(psuche), must universally and necessarily end in this state(die), but nevertheless this is my fate to experience, and is to that extent singular and individual. Death is the last event on the journey of actualising my possibilities. At one point in Being and Time, Heidegger acknowledges that Dasein is life(psuche)(246,) and this merely raises once more the questionable relation of his work to hylomorphism and its commitment to knowing psuche(forms of life).
The problem of the ontological characterisation of fictive discourse is not discussed in the above Heideggerian terms ,but rather, curiously, in the analytical terms of the self-reference of a grammatical sentence which takes the form of an assertion. The fictive text, Ricouer argues, presents itself in present tense grammatical form, yet at the same time unrelated to the real presence normally implied by assertion. Ricoeur in the context of this discussion curiously claims:
“preterite loses its grammatical function of designating the past”(P.65)
and he elaborates upon this line of argument in the following manner:
“we have the right to speak of the absence of temporality in fiction”(P.65)
This, of course does not follow at all on any reasonable principle.
Ricoeur claims that the respective discourses of the narrator and the characters of the plot, are dialectically related. There is, however, no doubt that, in fictional narrative, the narrator is narrating in the past tense, but this is obscured by Ricoeur’s claim that:
“it is not the past as such that us expressed by the past tense but the attitude of relaxation, of uninvolvement”P.69)
An alternative explanation for the impression Ricoeur is attempting to describe above, is that what we are dealing with in relation to the narrator speaking in the third person, is psychically distanced from the characters being spoken about, in much the same way the historian is, when describing the events that are historically important: indicating not uninvolvement but rather a kind of objective involvement that one is prepared to defend with objective argumentation if called upon to do so. There does not appear to be any disruption of the tense system of language, as Ricoeur suggests(P.72). The time of fiction must have a natural and not an artificial constructed relation to both the tense systems of language and “lived time”. Designating what fiction is about as the “quasi-past”, is a problematic implication of the preceding reasoning. Ricoeur’s reasoning shares much with the epistemological concerns of analytical philosophers over our relation to reality via our descriptive discourse. Heidegger’s more existential and holistic relation to the function of discourse in all its forms in our lives, is discarded in the above reasoning. The outline of a Heideggerian solution to the problem of the philosophical nature of fictive discourse lies in Ricoeur’s claim that the fictional text has the power to “project a world”. Unfortunately, for him, the key to understanding what is involved in this projective power, is the power of the imagination. Furthermore this power is conceived of in the spirit of “everything is possible” rather than in terms of the Heideggerian account of Dasein, and its power of understanding possible forms of life, and ways to be. This latter is obviously a conceptual power determined by categories of judgement which determine the “form” of life-related judgements. The imagination obviously, according to Kant, provides schemata for these concepts, but it is the “I think” that is the primary power which organises the imaginative content. “Projection” therefore, is an unfortunate choice of term and perhaps the term “conceptualise” would have been more appropriate.
Ricoeur explores, in the context of the above discussion, the differences between the time of narration, and narrated time, and claims that what we are witnessing is a “game” with time in which the quantities of the time of narration:
“agree with the qualities of time belonging to life itself.”(P.80)
The rules of the game indicate a discontinuous structure, Ricoeur argues, manifesting a dangerous adventurous conceptualisation, whereas a more linear continuous structure designate themes of growth and the actualisation of potentialities. Portraying these “forms” in terms of the idea of a “game” thus allows Ricoeur to claim that changes can be made to the rules of the game: changes which allow radical experiments which may even radically:
“shatter the very experience of time”(P.81)
In such “experiments”, the voice of the narrator is given peculiar qualities which may not be easy to describe, using our rational categories of evaluation. Ricoeur fixates upon the term “point of view” , which, as “modernism” has “matured” has modified and attenuated its meaning, to such an extent, that it can tolerate the possibility of describing it in terms of the “shattering” of the temporal structures of our experience. Ricoeur invokes Aristotle’s central and controlling concept of “character”, and its intimate relation to action and thought. For Aristotle these three organising features of mimetic narration, together constitute the represented basis for the organising of time in what is narrated. This is done in such a way that there is a commonality of structure between this narrated time and the lived time of our experiences.
Ricoeur discusses Käte Hamburger’s claim that it is third person narration that is best able to represent the above structure, which also enables the narration to proceed in the spirit of “know thyself”, a spirit Ricoeur prefers to characterise in terms of :
“the inspection of what goes on inside minds”(P.89)
This form of characterisation, may, however, be an unnecessary interiorisation of what is primarily the thought of an active agent engaged in external action. The voice of a narrator is sometimes characterised in terms of omniscience, but this may be an overreaction to the universal and necessary quality of the voice that may be commenting on ethical matters in accordance with the telos of a plot. The term “point of view” has come to suggest a relativisation of values, which does not easily integrate itself with a universal voce pronouncing over the possibility of necessities. The Wittgensteinian concept “world-view” perhaps escapes this kind of integration problem. Ricoeur concludes with the claim:
“On the whole the two notion of point of view and voice are so inseparable that they become indistinguishable.”(P.99)
The notion of “point of view” obviously shifts the ground of inquiry from the question “What is being said?”, to the question “Who is speaking?”, and this shift tends to marginalise the world that is being conceptualised, The focus is then on the source of conceptualisation which is actually just one technical aspect of fictional narration.
Ricoeur believes that the science of linguistics is deductively structured, and he is, moreover, prepared to use it as a model to analyse the language-forms of a plethora of narrative types which he otherwise claims is so varied that it would be an impossible task for induction to arrive at any explanatory results. He quotes Saussure and his distinction between the code of language, which is systematic, and the message of language, which is diachronically historical. The limitation of such an approach is, of course, that the sentence is the primary object of analysis, and larger units such as “texts” are composed of the “atoms” of these sentences and subjected to a structural analysis.
Ricoeur quotes Roland Barthes on the topic of the so-called organic whole of the literary text, but this account relies on a transactional relation between a sender and a hearer which materialises the “message” to such an extent, that it is no longer recognised to be something that is “understood”. Ricoeur also, in the context of this discussion, recommends detaching nomological considerations from contexts of understanding, on the grounds that there is no identity relation existing between them.
The strategy of Saussure’s linguistic theory is to some extent shared by Ricoeur, and involves the marginalisation of diachronical historical concerns, in favour of a synchrony of structure, but this in this turn involves a failure to acknowledge the extent to which History, in fact, favours synchrony of structure. On such an account of History, historical diachrony is explained, justified and understood in terms of operative principles and laws. Ricoeur, in the course of this discussion, suddenly sees the need for some kind of rational structure and invokes the “atomistic” science of linguistics, rather than the more molecular approach we find in historical reasoning.
Structuralism also has a tendency to invoke abstractions which are ethically neutral, e.g. “functions” which are means-ends variables, that tend to divide the whole significance of action into “action segments” manifesting different instrumental concerns. Ricoeur refers to Propp’s “Morphology of the Folk-Tale”:
“Propp’s morphology is essentially characterised by the primacy it gives to functions over characters. By a “function” he means segments of action, or more exactly, abstract forms of action such as abstention, interdiction, violation, reconnaisance, delivery, trickery, and complicity.”(P.33)
The actions listed, are actions that are attributable to an agent or character, and it is clear that Propp is attempting to transfigure an essentially cultural object, into a scientific object(P.38) The science of preference that is invoked by Ricoeur, in support of this position, is Sociology, and it is then suggested with reference to the work of Claude Brenaud(Logique du récit), that characters ought to be transformed into roles, and a list or principal narrative roles should be drawn up(P.40) It is then suggested that roles ought to be inserted into a ” field of evaluations”(P.41). Ricoeur then claims, paradoxically:
“a logic of possible narrative acts is still only a logic of action”(P.43)
It is the task of the plot, it is argued, to transform action into narrative. What is missing from this account, however, is the extent to which the principles that are operating in the process of plot-construction, are essence-specifying(ethically speaking) with a teleological emphasis that prioritises ends, and the power the end has of conferring meaning on the beginning and middle segments of the narrative. The reader is led from the beginning to the end of the narrative, and they are encouraged to think in a context of exploration/discovery. The creator’s perspective, however, is embedded in a context of explanation/justification which begins at the level of the essence-specifying principles and the teleological “end” of the narrative.
Seeking for rationality via an exercise of dialectical logic that attempts to synthesise two activities abstracted from very different kinds of context, is not a useful exercise seen from the context of explanation/justification. Both hylomorphic and critical Philosophy, see a fundamental logical difference between propositions referring to activities and these logically distinguishable types of context. Principles regulating an inductive exploration on the part of the audience and principles regulating the creation of the narrative, however, can be shared, on the condition that ,the context of explanation/justification is primary: but this is clearly not the position Ricoeur occupies.
Todorof does not speak of principles, but of ” a synthesis of the roles of a plot”(The Grammar of Narrative) and Ricoeur criticises this position thus:
“to know all the roles–is not yet to know any plot whatsoever.”(P.43)
Mink is also referred to, and he takes us further up the ladder of rationalist abstraction with talk of an “act of judgement”, which, it is claimed, relates to the praxis of narrative. Ricoeur neutralises the rationalist implications of this appeal, by claiming that this act of judgement has little to do with what he characterises as the “logic of the narrative”.
St Augustine’s view of time is preferred to that of Aristotle’s, perhaps because of the metaphysical implications of the Aristotelian account, and perhaps also because of a prior commitment to Structuralism, which lies behind the doubt about the relation between the logic or rationality of the narrative and our understanding of narrative. Add to this the wish to locate this debate in the transactional circumstances of sender and receiver, and we have marginalised the context of explanation/justification, in favour of the context of exploration/discovery. Of course, it is always an empirical possibility that the receiver of a message will not understand the intent of the message(e.g. that X was an evil tyrant). The creator of the message, however, assumes that the message is sufficiently universal to reasonably expect that the message will be understood as intended.
Ricoeur’s transactional commitment rests partly upon an interest in Danto’s theory of action and narrative sentences:
“This structure of sentences that describe action has been the object of much detailed work in analytic Philosophy……One noteworthy characteristic of these sentences is that they involve an open-ended structure running from “Socrates says….” to “Brutus killed Caesar on the Ides of March in the Roman Senate with a knife….” It is this semantics of action that, in fact, is presupposed in the theory of the narrative sentence.”(P.57)
This reliance on the intentional logic of the analytical Philosopher, for whom the world is essentially a totality of facts, and scientific investigation proceeds principally in the context of exploration/discovery is, to say the least, surprising. Given the commitments to Husserl and Heidegger, reference to an essentially descriptive position embedded in a methodologically oriented science in which variables are manipulated and measured in accordance with hypotheticals, is problematic, given that narrative is essentially and imperative-driven enterprise. Action-sentences that are open-ended(without clear intent?), are sentences that do not belong within the domain of the tribunal of explanation/justification. Very General Open-sentences are by definition strategically ambiguous, and subject to a logic of probability, which most creators of narratives would seek to avoid. The ethical imperative that is operative in narrative works, is not hypothetical or instrumental, but rather, subject to a necessity that must be categorical in nature. The ethical message must be universal and necessary, and not subject to strategic ambiguity.
It is true that the creator of a work of art must also produce a unique object, but this does not involve introducing ambiguity into the ethical message, by varying the essential nature of the message. The uniqueness condition in such circumstances has more to do with varying the way in which the message is presented. If one chooses to invert the ethical image and “per impossibile”, in Aristotles terms, “aim at the Bad”, rather than the Good, the result might well be shocking and raise questions as to whether one is any longer dealing with a “work” of Art.
Ricoeur’s hermeneutical approach to Philosophy acknowledges a debt to Heidegger which, in turn, engages in a form of metaphysical and transcendental speculation about the power of the imagination that would have been rejected by both Aristotle and Kant. Kant is criticised by Heidegger for failing to recognise the scope of the power of the imagination, and this is linked to a “forgetfulness-of-Being”- thesis proposed by Heidegger, as one of the foundation stones of his phenomenological-existential approach to articulating the relation of Dasein(Being-there) to Being-in-the-world. Ricoeur believed that Heidegger’s philosophical results were essentially sound, but the route he took to arrive at them,were short-cuts, and therefore not ultimately satisfactory from his phenomenological/hermeneutic point of view. Ricoeur preferred the Cartesian inspired phenomenological route, outlined by Husserl, that proceeded via the description of objects of experience which relied on the use of a method that put the world in brackets(whatever that means). Language was also a focus of concern for Ricoeur, and he chose to focus on the idea of “meaning”, rather than “truth” which, he claimed, better articulated our relation to a life-world that , for him, seemed to require “interpretation” rather than articulation in terms of the principles of reasoning and the categories of the understanding(so important for knowledge). For Husserl, the “knowledge” that the sciences claimed to possess or discover, was “putative”, and largely a consequence of what he referred to as a “crisis” that manifested itself in the Western sciences in general.
Ricoeur discusses briefly the history of the term “plot” in the opening chapter of this work, and notes that, during the time of Aristotle, the focus of attention was upon tragedy, comedy, and the epic forms of narrative. He cites the relatively modern emergence of the novel, and characterises this phenomenon in terms of “convention-busting” (a laboratory for experimentation). In this experiment, he maintains, we may have witnessed the disappearance of the concept of “plot” from the “horizon of literature”(P.7) In volume one, it was claimed that it was the disappearance of the plot paradigm that was the primary reason for the choice of the term “quasi-plot”, which was also accompanied by the curious term “quasi-character” in Historical forms of narrative. In all these forms of narrative, there is a clear and distinct retreat from the paradigms of argument, to the “forms” of “analogy” and “interpretation”. The term “quasi-plot” was, of course, an attempt to generalise the concept of plot, so that the term could still be applied to, amongst other things, the modern novel. In this situation, the imagination was clearly conceived by Ricoeur to be the organising power in relation to the consciousness of the characters of the plot. For Aristotle, on the contrary, the plot was the “form” which organised the “matter” of the action and thoughts of the character, and Language was merely the “medium” for the messages of the work. Language, for Aristotle, as was the case for Kant, could be used irrationally to produce both false and meaningless statements as well as rationally ( to produce true and universally necessary statements). Insofar as language was being used intentionally by the author to create a narrative with a meaning that may largely be generated in the imperative mode, because it is being focussed on the Good rather than the True, there is no necessity to argue that because the statements are not strictly true, they do not possess a mode of objectivity. It would not be correct to say, that the statements the author produces, are false, because they are not aiming at what is the case, but rather at what ought to be the case.
There are, in fact, alternative explanations (to the one provided by Ricoeur) for the emergence of the modern novel that has, according to Ricoeur, loosened its ties to the notion of “plot”, and strengthened its ties to a modern notion of “character”. “Modern” representation of character, is often in accordance with modern personality theory, which in turn is the result of the “separation” of Psychology from Philosophy in the 1870’s( in the name of “Science”). The multi-faceted representation of a “person”, that we found in the writings of Aristotle and Kant, were largely jettisoned in the divorce between Psychology and Philosophy, with the exception of the work of Freud. Practical understanding and reasoning, connected to the ethical dimension of character, were ruled out as “subjective”, in accordance with materialistic and dualistic theories that had earlier been neutralised by Aristotelian and Kantian arguments. “Raw behaviour” and sensation-like forms of consciousness became the “atoms” of a theoretical approach, that phenomenologists such as Merleau-Ponty criticised in his work “Phenomenology of Perception”. Yet even in this work we saw an attachment to Cartesianism, and a criticism of science which construed it as some form of second-order account of reality, in comparison with the first order description of our activity in the life-world. Both the categories of the understanding, and the principles of reasoning, were marginalised in favour of more sensible aspects of the powers of our mind. This, together with a materialistic commitment on the part of science, resulted in methodologically committed observers, devoted to the manipulation and measurement of independent and dependent variables. Both Logical positivism and logical atomism, and their commitment to methodology, combined to promote observation and criticise introspection( as a method of producing data for manipulation and measurement). Many modern personality theories confined themselves to sensible and behavioural powers, and avoided what they regarded as “speculation” upon those higher cognitive powers and processes, so necessary for being a person in our complex cognitively constructed worlds(e.g. understanding and reason). It is obvious that, from a hylomorphic and critical point of view, both understanding and reasoning have been parsed away in the processes of scientific and phenomenological reductions. An endless journey on the path of exploration/discovery is preferred, to sitting in the auditorium in which phenomena are submitted to the tribunal of explanation/justification.
With reference to the reflection above, we can maintain that there are at least two other explanations for the phenomenon of modern art in general, and the modern novel in particular. Firstly, one of the reasons the journey on the path of exploration is necessary, is because the task of the sojourner appears to be that of discovering something new and unique. What is often not taken into account, is that the medium, for example, of narrating the lives of characters embedded in their life-worlds, is a finite medium: i.e. at some point there will be nothing new to discover because the medium is exhausted. This may have happened in the eight-tone based classical music, whose disappearance gave rise to the twelve tone atonal modern music, and other modern art exhibitions such as Cage’s 4 minute 33 second silence. Whether modern novelists felt this way about their creations becomes, in the light of the above, an open question. This is one possible explanation for the phenomenon Ricoeur refers to. Another possible explanation is connected to Heidegger’s thesis of the “forgetfulness of Being”. Now, we do not accept that preferring to focus on the sensible power of the imagination, (at the expense of the higher cognitive powers of understanding and reason), is “remembering” something that has been forgotten, because this, in our view ,is merely an extension of the modern rejection of the work of Aristotle by the “new men”(Descartes, Hobbes, Hume), which continued with the rejection of Kantian critical theory by Hegel, and a scientific movement, that eventually culminated in logical positivist and logical atomist theory where the world was “reduced” to a totality of facts. Our argument is that ,if we refuse to discard our powers of understanding and reason, narrative retains the possibility of being imperative-driven, and motivated by the Aristotelian “aim at The Good”, and its ought system of concepts. On this kind of account, the idea of “plot” too, is salvaged, and the claim is that it is driven by principles that are teleological and essence-specifying. This kind of account also manifests a refusal to situate this discussion in a context of exploration and discovery, and an insistence to remain in the auditorium in which the tribunal of explanation/justification is taking place. Hannah Arendt’s references to the role of the “new men”, for whom “everything was possible”,(including the colonisation of the planets for profit) and the rest of us for whom, as a consequence, “nothing was possible” anymore , gives this whole discussion a political dimension and suggests that the “phenomenon of the modern had totalitarian aspects. Since the occurrence of two world wars and the dropping of two atomic bombs on civilian populations in what Arendt called the “terrible 20th century, in every age and every generation there is no absence of evidence that we are still in the grip of the “philosophy” of these “new men”.
Ricoeur summarises his position in relation to the modern novel in the following manner:
“It is within the realm of the modern novel that the pertinence of the concept of emplotment seems to have been contested the most. The modern novel, indeed, has, since its creation, presented itself as the protean genre par excellence. Called upon to respond to a new and rapidly changing social situation, it soon escaped the paralysing control of critics and censors. Indeed, it has constituted for at least three centuries now a prodigious workshop for experiments in the domains of composition and the expression of time.”(P.8)
Ricoeur cites Virginia Woolf and what he describes as a stream-of-consciousness methodology, claiming that the primary issues for here were:
“the incompleteness of personality, the diversity of the levels of consciousness, the subconscious, the unconscious, the stirring of unformulated desires, the inchoative and evanescent character of feelings”( P.10)
The above description of Woolf’s work, however, appears to be sufficiently multifaceted to manifest the more classical concerns about narrative, which stretch well beyond the imagination, and our impulsive emotional life. Desire, for example, for Aristotle, included the desire men have to know. The unconscious, as described and explained by Freud, also was embedded in a system of principles(the energy regulation principle, the pleasure-pain principle, and the reality principle), that required both understanding and reason to comprehend. Freud’s principle-based personality theory, inspired by Kant, was a very different kind of theory to the “new” variable-based trait theories, searching for correlations instead of causality.
Ricoeur also discusses the modern attempts to create a “new” genre, in which exact correspondences between reality and the world of the literary work, was the aim—the kind of resemblance that memory had, to what it remembered, appeared to be the focus of attention in some attempts. Now, whilst the power of memory is related to many other powers(e.g. semantic memory), it is its relation to sensory circumstances that appear in these attempts to be most important for Ricoeur. The question also arises in relation to this venture: how complex is the reality that one is attempting to duplicate or imitate. If, for example it includes actions of magnitude which aim to restore order in a chaotic world, in accordance with ethical principles, e.g., the defeat of Richard III, then there does not seem to be much substance in Ricoeur’s criticism.
There is an awareness in the writings of Ricoeur, of the modern malaise, our modern discontentment that so often focuses upon our civilisations. It surfaces in the following:
“Today it is said that only a novel without plot or characters or any discernible temporal organisation is more genuinely faithful to experience, which is itself fragmented and inconsistent, than was the traditional novel of the 19th century”(P.13)
He poses the curious question of whether the modern style of narrating includes within itself the possibility of “dying out”(P.20), and he appears to think that an affirmative answer to this question is conceivable, pointing to the example of the deliberate choice of an author not to provide an ending to their work. If action, as a matter of fact, possessed merely an episodic character, this would suggest an attempt to imitate an action without any vision of its end, and perhaps also without any vision of the more distant goods it may bring about. Action, in reality, in contrast to the fragmented experience referred to by Ricoeur above, is embedded in an ought-structure, in which the imperative mood prevails. Heidegger draws attention to inauthentic forms of action connected to the failure by “They” to acknowledge the “good” associated with death(e.g. as manifested by Socrates in the face of his own imminent death.). Inauthentic forms of action are, of course, pathological and defensive, even if the imagination, fuelled by fear, is one of the sources for the denial of the meaning of death.
Ricouer makes an interesting detour in his account, and ventures into the realm of religious writings in the Bible, which contains both a mythic-historical account of Genesis, and a vision of an Apocalypse that necessitates the wish for salvation and a life after death. Ricoeur realises that this biblical representation is comprehensible, only under the condition that the narrative form has not died out:
“For we have no idea of what a culture would be where no one any longer knew what it meant to narrate things.”(P.28)
Historical narratives also require an understanding in terms of categories and principles and they too must aim at “The Good” in a context of explanation/justification.
Aristotle claimed that we are so constituted in terms of the power of our mind, that the question “What happened?”, is not merely asking for the facts of the matter ,but immediately poses another question, namely, “Why did it happen?” The “Why? question is not a fact-seeking question, but rather a principle-seeking question, and these principles in turn can be related to a number of different kinds of explanations(aitia). Men desire to know, Aristotle argued in his “Metaphysics”, and the invention of History is partly a response to this desire: a response which provides us with the answers to the questions “What happened?” and “Why did it happen?”. History, in a sense, is a tran-scientific discipline in which we are provided both with the facts, and also indirectly a practical knowledge of what ought or ought not to be done(areté).
The activities of man stretch over many domains, meeting both the concrete and abstract needs necessary to provide him with the life he believes he ought to lead: a good spirited, flourishing life(eudaimonia). We should recall here, the words of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, namely, that all activities of man aim at the Good. Wars(both foreign and internecine) disrupt the pattern of mans life at all levels, threatening the possibility of meeting both his concrete and abstract needs, and perhaps there is no greater need than the need to study a subject which documents the occurrence of wars, and the ways in which they are avoided and come to an end. This study has not, thus far, had much effect in the prevention of conflicts, in spite of the empirical evidence(facts) of the destruction they bring. Add to this evidence, the rational argument that wars are practical self-contradictions(massive loss of life to prevent massive loss of life), and one can indeed wonder whether the Delphic oracle’s prophecies relating to “Knowing thyself” and “Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction” are not moral, but rather empirical warnings, relating to the importance of knowledge in all mans activities.
The question to raise, given our knowledge of History is, considering the thousands of years of wars man has experienced, whether knowledge of the facts, and knowledge of what we ought to do, is sufficient for man to begin living in the “perpetual peace” Kant imagined and hoped for, when mans rational powers mature and his activities become fully rational. Until this “telos”actualises itself, man must perhaps count himself among the Freudian discontents, insofar as his relation to our civilising activities are concerned. Both History and Philosophy, are obviously, two disciplined approaches to The Good, but their approaches differ, and the way in which they do may be instructive to explore in future writings. The History of Philosophy and the Philosophy of History would seem, then, to be a necessary aspect of Sophia—the wisdom we need to answer the aporetic questions thrown up by the human powers of mind we possess.
The rationalism of both Hylomorphic and Critical Philosophy insist that explanation/justification and theoretical and practical understanding are important moments involved in the contextualisation of facts, which are of course, spatio-temporal entities embedded in our experience. The question “What happened?”, implies the question “What happened, when, and where?” If, to take a historical example, the facts support the generalisation that the key sphere of influence upon the world has shifted from the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic, one cannot avoid posing and attempting to answer the question “Why?” In the answer, we can expect to find references to knowledge(epistemé) justice(diké) well-judged activity(areté) and a grasp of fundamental principles of both theoretical and practical activity(arché), especially insofar as we encounter these elements in the contexts of power and influence.
Shifting spheres of influence are part of the Transcendental Aesthetic of History. Yet even here, the focus is on the quality of the civilisation-building activities that the Historian closely monitors in accordance with the Kantian question “What can we hope for?” This question, for Kant, is one of 4 questions which, for him, define the scope of Philosophy. Part of the answer Kant gives, is that we can hope for a global civilisation that not merely aims at the Good but has actualised it in most of its institutional structures. On such a world-view, The Good consists in men treating each other as ends in themselves, and not instrumentally as means to serve other arbitrary ends.
Another aspect of the Transcendental Aesthetic is the Historians penchant for categorising and charting the course of events during long periods of time, e.g. The Middle Ages. The Transcendental Aesthetic also engages with a Transcendental Analytic, and both together constitute a context of explanation/justification. Aspects of the Transcendental Analytic include the importance of knowledge in civilisation-building, the importance of justice, good judgement, connected to wise action, and respect for others. Historical reasoning primarily moves in this arena that is constituted by the context of explanation/justification. Long term processes(e.g. the globalisation process) which take, according to Kant, hundreds of thousands of years are subject to an underlying telos, e.g. Cosmopolitanism, operating in the Historians explanations and justifications.
Ricoeur discusses the removal of the explanatory element from the fabric of literary narratives, and to the extent that this means that the Historian emphasises the explanatory element, it is not at the expense of the description of the facts. In the example of the shift of power and influence from the Mediterranean, there would appear to be no problem with admitting that the Historian is using the facts to narrate the course of events that brought this shift about. The narrative obviously has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and there is also the presence of an underlying possibility of the working of a complex “story” of globalisation as it unfolds and moves toward the end of Cosmopolitanism. It is difficult to fathom exactly what Ricoeur means by the above claim that the Historians explanations/justifications are not part of the “fabric” of the narrative. They are certainly part of the assumptions that are operating in the production of historical documents and texts.
A Phenomenological discussion of the “objectivity” of History follows, and there is no mention of explanatory or justificatory principles/laws. The focus is, instead, upon the consequences of the operation of principles/laws: consequences such as the linking of facts together, and the completeness of explanations/justifications. Ricoeur claims, that it is the aim of historians to make their explanations/justifications “autonomous” and independent of the “self-explanatory” intent of the narrative. Ricoeur also points out that History concentrates its attention upon a different type of object, compared to that of the narrative. One is, he argues, no longer concerned with the attribution of responsibility to individuals, as a consequence of their actions, but rather the concern is with “nations” “societies”, “civilisations”, social classes”(p.177). The characters we encounter in narratives are replaced by more abstract entities(quasi-characters), and the assumption is made that the differences between characters, and these entities, are more important than their ethical identity. Socrates, for example, pointed out how all entities concerned with justice and the work of civilisation, ought to be considered in terms of the “soul writ large”, which would retain the identity of these entities with that of psuche. This would in turn indicate that agency, action, and the types of explanation/justification associated with them, are very relevant to both the description and explanation of these so-called more “abstract” entities. This, then, suggests that if the “covering law model” or the “covering principle model” applies to the narrative and plot involving characters, it ought also to apply to historical narratives. Ricoeur, as we have pointed out in previous essays, rejects this reasoning, and retreats to the vocabulary of “generalisations” and “warrants” of the kind that we find in the work of Gilbert Ryle in his work “The Concept of Mind”. “The term “plot” may, of course be the wrong term to apply to the teleological process of globalisation that leads to the end of Cosmopolitanism, suggesting as it does the negative ethical activity of “conspiracy”. We suggested the term “story” but “Telos” may, be a better technical term and also be more appropriate ethically.
Both fictional narrative and historical narrative, are capable of charting causation of different kinds and logically related explanations/justifications of different kinds. If this reflection is correct, then the application of the idea of a “story”, is common to both forms of narrative. The “story” of Globalisation, and its end Cosmopolitanism is, of course, a more abstract form of narrative, but it is considerably more than merely a “point of view” and can be regarded as an “account”.
The issue of historical intentionality is sketched in phenomenological terms that focus upon the “differences” between History and the other disciplines, rather than upon what these disciplines have in common. Husserl’s idea of a “life-world” has proven to be a useful concept in many contexts, and it has proven its value in combatting “analytical” views of action, which emphasise causality at the expense of the reason for action and its associated intention. The application of Husserl’s apparatus of phenomenology, and this technical term(life-world) becomes difficult in History because of Husserl’s Cartesian rejection of Aristotelian hylomorphism. Husserl’s pupil, Heidegger, however, has managed to provide us with an architectonic of concepts which are more applicable to the domain of historical activity. The concepts of Being-in-the-world , historicality, and Being-there(Dasein) can all be used to explain/justify what is going on in the world of History. Dasein, for example, understands itself in terms of its possibilities–its possible ways of Being-there. Living in perpetual peace in a Cosmopolitan world, is obviously something that is both ethically and politically desirable. Historicality is, to take another example, for Heidegger, an important aspect of the temporality of Dasein and this includes the “possibility” of making the past ones own, as Heidegger puts the matter. What he partly means by this, is that we have forgotten an important way of thinking about Being, in favour of a more inauthentic mode of thinking about our existence. This is certainly something Kant might have claimed in relation to our modern forgetfulness(beginning with Descartes and Hobbes) of the work of Aristotle, but Heidegger paradoxically, claims that both Aristotle and Kant are examples of Philosophers who have forgotten “the meaning of Being”. Both, on his view are rationalists, who have failed to appreciate the transcendental power of our imagination.
As far as Ricoeur is concerned, the plot of the narrative, is not the work of rationality and the faculty of reason, but rather the work of the faculty of Judgement operating in conjunction with the power of imagination, which somehow accounts for the connection of particular facts. There are, however, assumptions operating in the selection of the facts, characters, actions, and expressed thoughts of the narrative, and it is highly likely that not just judgements are involved, but also the categories of the understanding and the principles of reason. Ricoeur would deny this, and insist that it is the “point of view” of the narrator, that is determining the flow of the narrative. This “point of view” is composed of a number of elements which all combine to produce what Ricoeur calls an “explanatory effect”. He invokes Husserlian phenomenology, in connection with his judgement that the Sciences are all experiencing a crisis of legitimacy. The suggestion of genetic phenomenology is that the type of explanation one finds in science, differs significantly from the kind of understanding demanded by the narrative produced by a narrator. It is then, paradoxically suggested, that causality is the nexus of all explanation in History.(P.181) Ricoeur means here, that the type of causality we encounter, is dissociated from the teleological and formal forms of explanation discussed by Aristotle in his discussion of systems of knowledge and the logical structure that manifests itself in the essence-specifying attributes of universality and necessity. Neither Aristotle nor Kant would accept that a system of knowledge could be supported solely by the faculty of judgment, and a power of the imagination. Such a combination could not produce a system of knowledge that requires principles of logic as well as those principles we use to regulate our use of concepts, e.g. categories. On both Aristotelian and Kantian accounts, explanation and understanding are different aspects of the same knowledge-complex and not the bipolar opposites suggested by Ricoeur.
Ricoeur refuses to accept the validity of the essence-specifying attributes of universality and necessity, and prefers instead to talk in terms of structures, e.g. the structure of singular causal imputation. The sociological account of Weber is invoked to investigate the “logic” of singular causal imputation which:
“consists essentially of the constructing by our imagination of a different course of events, then of weighing the probable consequences of this unreal course of events, and finally in comparing these consequences with the real course of events.”(P.183 in Ricoeur)
Ricoeur chooses to illustrate this with the example of Bismark, and his decision to declare war on Austria-Hungary in 1866. Weber asks us to consider the hypothetical question of “What would have happened if he did not make this decision?” This question transports us into an unreal hypothetical world, in which the context of explanation/justification is replaced by a context of exploration/discovery. In this “investigation” the categorical and logical reasoning of Bismark, relating to reasons for actions and decisions are banished from the discussion, in favour of a form of reasoning about imagined particulars and the degree of probability of their consequences, insofar as these are capable of determination by a “calculating mind”. There is, it must be pointed out, a contradiction in this reasoning, since according to Bayes’ theorem, the degree of probability of an event can only be calculated if one has complete information about the event concerned,.e.g. there are 50 white balls and 50 black balls in the sack we are withdrawing our ball from. Bismark of course, did not have all the information necessary for making the right prediction of what would happen as a result of his decision, because his situation was not a “closed system,” like that of the sack containing a definite number of white and black balls. The type of “calculation” involved in Bismarks decision, can not contain any explanations or justifications, but only hypotheticals, arrived at inductively in the practical context of statecraft. This, of course, puts Bismark into a “relativist position”, connected to the “psychology of discovering hypotheses”(P.186). Neither Aristotle nor Kant would concede that what is going on in the Bismark case has anything to do with “knowledge”, i.e. justified true belief , best illustrated by the more modern terminology of a “nomological-deductive model”.
History was not a systematically organised discipline during the time of Aristotle who, as we know, saw no universality and necessity in a chain of singular judgements about past events. Insofar as there was no reference to formal and final aitia(causes, explanations), there could be no universal and necessary explanations/justifications. From a Kantian point of view, judgements receive their universality and necessity from both the categories that determine our judgements, and the principles of reasoning that serve to connect these judgements into nomological-deductive arguments. Reasons can be given for the shift of power and influence from the Mediterranean to the North Atlantic, and these will not be hypotheticals torn from the womb of imagining the unreal. Reasons can also be given for the conclusion that Bismark was either a good leader of Germany or not. All activities, Aristotle argued, aim at the Good. The possible exception in the Historical context is the decision to go to war ,which always brings ruin and destruction in its wake even if there are good instrumental reasons for the activity, e.g. stopping a tyrant from colonising a very large area of the world and, as a consequence, denying freedom to hundreds of millions of people. As a matter of fact, Bismarks decision can be evaluated from two different Kantian viewpoints: firstly from the instrumental civilisation-building perspective, where the outcome of the unification of Germany certainly provided Germany with considerable power and influence in the world well into the future. Secondly, in terms of his attachment to using war as a means to unify Germany, the failure to treat other states as ends in themselves is a contravention of the Kantian categorical imperative(second formulation). Aristotle too would have agreed that Bismark’s decisions were not for the sake of the principle of The Good. These two different judgements appear, at first sight, to be contradictory, but they are not so, because the principle of noncontradiction clearly qualifies itself with the words, “at the same time and in the same respect”. The positive judgement about Bismark is clearly a judgment that falls into the practical category of instrumental judgements and the negative judgement is a categorical ethical judgement.
Weber is again referred to in relation to the problem of causality and its consequence , determinism. The human decision can be situated in the context of causality or the context of freedom of choice. The idea of freedom is not completely detached from causality, because, on Kant’ theory, the free will causes itself to be active. Freedom, for Kant, is architectonic, i.e. an idea which orders the world in terms of ends, but it is also an idea that does not flow from experience. It is, rather, a principle which orders experience, by making our concepts, real or actual, in the world. According to Kant there is a detachment from the principle “Every event has a cause”, because this event of activity is self-causing. Also the relation of the act of will to an actual action, is not a causal one, where one can identify an independent cause and an independent effect. Bismarks decisions to go to war, can then be situated in a chain of causes situated in the “phenomenal world”(Kant), but they can also be situated in the noumenal world, in which, according to Kant, war may not be constitutional because it is not consistent with the ethical/political principle of bringing about the maximum freedom for everyone. This does not deny the fact that the eventual outcome for Germany was instrumentally useful in the future insofar as generating power and influence over its neighbours was concerned. The evaluation of Bismark’s legacy, which is the task of the Historian has, then, both instrumental and ethical components.
Weber’s claim that:
“causal analysis provides absolutely no value-judgement and a value judgement is absolutely not causal explanation.”(P.189 in Ricoeur)
needs further elaboration. Surely insofar as the concepts of power and influence are concerned, Bismarks legacy was obvious, and just as surely, in the noumenal world, there does not have to be a first cause or beginning of things: time is infinite and the causal chain will stretch into the past ad infinitum. In such a world a chain of causes can be begun by an act of will willing to make something happen in the world, and whilst this does not preclude situating this act in a causal chain, extending back into the past, neither does it preclude viewing this act of will as a first beginning of that chain, and thereby holding the agent concerned responsible for the consequences or ends of their action. Indeed, on the contrary, this self-causing of the chain is a condition of applying the concepts of responsibility and the associated praise or blame.
Ricoeur’s reasoning rests upon viewing individual decisions as singular events that cannot be generalised except in terms of “exemplary” necessity and “exemplary”universality(P.190). This reasoning confines us to charting the causal relation between, for example, the Protestant ethic and capitalism in terms of what Ricoeur calls” a singular causal chain”. Given the fact that ethical evaluations in their essence are universal, this approach eliminates them from the outset. Instead sociological generalisations are sought via the work of Weber, e.g. in terms of roles, attitudes and institutions which become the focus of attention(P.191). It is the Protestant “view of the world” rather than their ethical adherence to duty, that becomes the major issue. Predestination is obviously a critically important doctrine that testifies to the absence of one of the foundation stones of ethical theory, namely freedom. Predestination, Ricoeur argues:
“divests the individual f ultimate responsibility”(P.191)
Weber calls the rational ideas of God and freedom, “spiritual” ideas. Perhaps “responsibility” also falls into this category, which are set side in Ricoeur’s account, in favour of what he calls a “probability calculus”. This move reminds one of the consequentialist “hedonic calculus”, which rests upon an idea of “happiness” that Kant described as “the principle of self-love in disguise”. Neither happiness, nor the application of probability, to the events under consideration, can be connected to the kind of universality and necessity we encounter in contexts of explanation/justification related to reasoning ethically. Ricoeurs solution to the problems that emerge in his reflections, is to turn toward the concept of “plot”, and apply it in accordance with a concept of “analogy”, to the singular causal chain. The idea of “plot” becomes a carpetbag that holds the heterogeneous elements of “circumstances, intentions, interactions,, adversity, good or bad fortune”, together. Ricoeur then almost immediately modifies the term of “plot to “quasi-plot”, probably partly because of the difficulty of the possible connection of plot to ethical assumptions which do appeal to the characteristics of universality and necessity that are present in contexts of explanation/justification, and also present in Aristotle’s characterisation of tragic plots.
Historical knowledge, as we have pointed out is presented in Husserlian rather than Heideggerian terms, e.g. “noetic intention” is a favoured technical concept with its origins in genetic phenomenology(P.194). Ricoeur notes with approval Mandelbaum’s definition of society:
“individuals living in an organised community that controls a particular territory: the organisation of such a community is provided by institutions that serve to define the status occupied by different individuals, and ascribe to them the roles they are expected to play in perpetuating the continuing existence of the community.”(P.195 in Ricoeur)
This, according to Ricoeur, is:
“the ultimate reference of history”(P.195)
There is, also, reference once again to the singularity of societies–they are defined by their difference to one another, rather than in terms of their essential characteristics. It is, that is, the singular identity of a society , rather than the principles that constitute it, that become the primary issue for Ricoeur. The differences appealed to, are often empirical differences. Narratives, Ricoeur argues, allow us to portray singular individuals as characters, thereby conferring upon them a kind of exemplary universality that can be reconfigured into causes in historical accounts. The connection between cause and effect on this account is hypothetical:
“Causal necessity is therefore a conditional necessity: given the complex set of causal conditions that took place(and not others) it was necessary that the effect that was actually produced occur.”(P.201)
Part of this process involves a transition from the descriptive nature of facts in the historical account which are an attempt to answer the question “What happened?”, to the question “Why did it happen?”. Ricoeur believes in what he calls the “autonomy” of the Why-question from the What-question, because he rejects the “natural connection” proposed by Aristotle. This is partly because he demands a particular type of answer to the Why-question in terms of:
“factors, phases and structures”(P202)
This type of “analytical” approach dissolves the unity of the phenomenon being investigated which of, course, at some point, has to be “reconstructed” into a “structural unity”(P.202). Webers notion of ideal types is invoked in the ensuing discussion, which insists that the notion of a plot must have both singular characteristics and general typical characteristics. It must be acknowledged, that in certain types of historical explanation, e.g. the shift of power and influence from the Mediterranean region to the north Atlantic region, the idea of a “plot” structuring what is happening, may be strained, and not be an effective means of referring to the material and efficient causes that are operating in such Historícal changes in the world. Material causes, according to Aristotle will include such elements as the territory and character of the peoples, and the efficient causes will include the decisions made by the important figures of the time. So-called “final” causes or explanations of this regional shift of power, may well include the idea of the freedom of the peoples of the region, and also perhaps an awareness of the role of the democratisation of society. This latter aspect was of course in no small part formed by ancient Greek ideas of Justice and knowledge as well as the importance of the understanding of rational principles connected to these ideas.
There does not seem to be any difficulty with using the term “narrative” to describe what is happening historically in the cases of either Bismarks decision or the regional power shift. The term “plot” may be more appropriate, however, in the Bismark case, but it must be pointed out that this literary term does not always best capture the kind of universality and necessity we encounter in historical explanations. When the “message” of the narrative account is ethical then the term becomes more appropriate.
Ricoeur again discusses the notion of event, and is keen once again to seek differences. The event, he claims:
“distinguishes the historians concept of structure from that of the sociologist or economist.”(P.217)
The event, however, is not on this account, a universal concept, but rather a differentiating mechanism situated dissonantly in different time zones(P.217). Structures too are, on this account, “transitional”, and can, as Ricoeur puts the matter, “die out”(P.217) Human works, Ricoeur continues, are “fragile”(P.217). Events are divisible, and become “quasi-events”, that occur in a quasi-plot. Ricoeur uses Von Wrights technical concept of a “system” and claims that a plot can be composed of “rival systems”(P.220). The “revolution” for example, is one “system” or “model” that contrasts with the more powerful “model” or system of “evolution”.
Ricoeur ends this chapter with a dialectical account of the chronological component of the episodic event versus an achronological component, which is configurational, and best suited for the portrayal of longer time spans. “Historical structures”, he argues paradoxically, can die out. He then qualifies this with the claim that whilst the Mediterranean region cannot die, Philip II can ,and does.
In his separate conclusion to volume one, Ricoeur maintains that his ideas of quasi-plot, quasi-event, and quasi-character, are intended to call into question our traditional and rational accounts of History, in favour of an idea of narrative that appeals not to our understanding and reason, but rather to a perspectival view of the world and its relation to the power of our imaginations.
At stake in many of Ricoeur’s discussions, is the question of how to correctly characterise the complex issue of Causality in a Historical context. We do, for example, understand that the question “What caused X?” is an important question for a historian to answer. Ricoeur, consistently refuses, however, to directly adopt the Aristotelian position which argues for 4 different kinds of cause(Aitia–a word which also means “explanation”) regulated by 3 principles in the context of 4 kinds of change, 3 media of change(space, time, matter) and three different types of science(theoretical, practical, productive). For Aristotle, the metaphysical issue which drives all scientific activity in general, is manifested in the claim “all men desire to know”. History, we claimed in an earlier essay, is trans-scientific(concerned with all three types of science), and insofar as practical science and the ethical content of History is concerned, historical reflection is in Aristotelian terms “aiming at the Good”. This is not to be construed as it has been in analytical Philosophy as subjective or psychological, but is very much regulated by the categories of the understanding and the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason.
Ricoeur turns his attention to analytical Philosophy and refers to the “covering law” model of History, calling, upon the critical work of William Dray:”Laws and Explanation in History”:
“Three fronts are opened up….On the first front, a purely negative criticism is carried out that concludes by disconnecting the concept of explanation from that of law. On the second front he pleads for a type of causal analysis that cannot be reduced to subsumption under laws…Finally, Dray explores a type of “rational explanation” that cover only a part of the field emancipated by the criticism of explanation in terms of empirical laws.”(P. 122)
Ricoeur elaborates upon this theme by acknowledging that the explanations we encounter in our History books, are ” a logically miscellaneous lot”(P.122). In the previous chapter Ricoeur pointed to “logical deficiencies” in the covering law model, but at issue in his discussion is a theoretical idea of law, and not the kind of laws we encounter in morality or a bona fide legal framework. We can certainly agree with Dray that the idea of “subsumption” is problematic, when used in the attempt to discuss the relation of the event to its explanation. For example, the event/action of failing to keep a promise not to pay money back to a creditor, is logically related to the “principle” “Promises ought to be kept”, and the use of the term subsumption in such circumstances is certainly problematic. Making the Judgement “Promises ought to be kept”, in relation to the event of non payment of debt, indicates a possible request for further explanation: “Why ought promises to be kept?”, and this in turn indicates that a reason can be given for the judgement in the form of the Categorical Imperative(“So act that you may will that the maxim of your action can be willed to become a universal law.”). Subsumption is a term better used, not at the level of a complex subject-predicate is-ought claim, but rather in the case of the subsumption of the subject under the concept expressed by the predicate. In such cases it is the categories of the understanding that regulate whether the subsumption is legitimate or not, whereas in the case of the relation of the subject-predicate claims to each other we are in the realm of reason and the principles of logic. In the case of the relation of the categorical imperative to the principle and the relation of the principle to the event of the non payment of the debt, it needs to be recognised that the term “moral law”, used to designate the categorical imperative, is an appropriate use. The term “covering law”, however, does carry with it implications of the mechanism of subsumption.
The emphasis upon subsumption and the way in which a concept relates to an object( a particular object) is continued in Ricoeur’s discussion of the uniqueness of a particular event. He points to the role of explanation as that which differentiates one object/event from another:
“historians do not proceed from the classificatory term toward the general law but from the classificatory term toward the explanation of differences.”(P.124-5)
This is an account of explanation in an inductive context of exploration/discovery, but it is less likely to be found in a historians writings, and more likely to be found in an academic discussion about historical thinking. Classificatory terms, on a Kantian account, are, of course, related to the categories of the understanding/judgement, if we are dealing with the case of statements claiming to be true. The way in which a concept of a subject relate to other concepts, is part of both the sense and reference of the statement. A revolution, to take a central historical example, may or may not be in the name of freedom, and the Categorical imperative. A Historian, that is, may wish to categorise the intention of a revolution in terms of the law of freedom, but as the revolution develops over time the Historian may be increasingly reluctant to use positive moral judgements in those cases where violence is used, because of an attachment to democratic principles, which in turn favours the rule of law and non violent means of settling disputes in a nation. Kant, in fact, found himself in this ambiguous position in relation to the event of the French Revolution.
Ricoeur believes the categories of the understanding, and principles of reason to be irrelevant to his phenomenological/hermeneutic attempt to provide an account of historical explanation. The focus is turned upon judgement, and the procedural principles of justice that are used to decide whether a defendant is guilty or non-guilty. The weighing of evidence is necessary, Ricoeur argues, to arrive at the judgement of guilt or innocence. This, in the legal sphere, is activity that falls clearly in the context of exploration/discovery, and until the judgement is final, it is the “hypothesis” of the state that the defendant is guilty. As we shift from this context to the context of explanation/justification and ask, for example, why the defendant was found guilty, we may refer to both the evidence and the formulation of the law that was broken. The judge in this context is using his knowledge of the law to direct the proceedings of the court , hear the evidence, and move logically toward a correct judgement. Here we do not see induction alone deciding the proceedings , but rather see a deductive movement from the law to the evidence to the judgement. The principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason will be intimately involved in this context of justification. This nomological-deductive structure is not, then, only applicable to the activity of the natural scientist, but is also operating in the realm of ethics and the law, and there is no reason not to believe it is also operating in the realm of History. Ricoeur prefers to focus on the context of exploration/discovery and would regard appeals to the nomological-deductive structure in these contexts as dogmatic. He believes, that is, that:
“another explanation different from that by laws is referred to as a “warrant” which will be called causal explanation.”(P.125)
Causal explanation, that is, becomes in Ricoeur’s eyes, an alternative to explanations in terms of the principles and laws outlined above. This of course requires accepting the following condition:
“if there are singular causal connections whose explanatory force does not depend on law.”(P.125)
The picture that is struggling to emerge in this discussion is that of Hume’s account in which one singular billiard ball strikes another singular billiard ball, and the mind moves from “one event occurring after another”, to “one event occurring because of another”. This account characterises causation as something “psychological”–a habit of mind. The description given here is clearly favouring a process of induction in a context of exploration/discovery: a process which hopes to arrive at some kind of particular terminus.
Ricoeur takes up a Historical example of what he calls an “alleged causal law”: “tyranny causes revolution”. He claims that this is not a law but rather a second-order generalisation based on an inductive gathering of particular facts. There is no doubt that in the minds of Plato, Aristotle, and Kan,t this was a law-like principled presupposition that had to be part of the political organisation of a well-ordered polis. Certainly, for Plato and Aristotle, this “alleged causal law” was a principle of justice(diké). For Kant too, this would have been an important categorical principle of his political philosophy, and intimately connected to the freedom of the people in a polis. Kant would certainly have used this principle as a premise in arguments explaining the occurrence of some revolutions . Ricoeur claims that there are causal laws integrated into the fabric of what he calls “narratives”, but unless he wishes to acknowledge a much wider meaning of the term “causal”, such as we encounter in hylomorphic and critical philosophy, the only way in which “cause” can be integrated into a plot is in terms of “one thing after another”. The plot of Shakespeare’s Macbeth is driven by a cause involving the usurpation of the power of a king, and the effect of the deterioration of the mind of the guilty party, and it is clear, because of the universal intent of this plot, that we can legitimately say “one thing occurred because of the other”. The universal intent of this plot is clearly connected to the ancient Greek project of “knowing thyself”, and this project in turn “aims” at The Good.
Ricoeur’s preference for the term “warrant” reminds us of Gilbert Ryle’s appeal in his work “The concept of mind”, in which he referred to dispositions as “law-like”, and whilst the word “warrant” may concretise the problem, it does not solve the aporetic problem of the universality and necessity of causal laws, or the problem of whether these can be found in History.
Ricoeur turns to the work of Dray and agrees surprisingly to the use of rational explanations in relation to the action of agents, but it is also clear that what this amounts to, is not a logical connection between action and its circumstances, but rather some kind of hypothetical means-ends calculation. Means-ends judgements are instrumental /hypothetical judgements which fall into a different category of judgement in comparison with judgements that are characterising “ends-in-themselves”. The former do not command the same level of universality and necessity as the latter. Ricoeur appeals in this discussion to Aristotle’s theory of deliberation, and claims that in order to establish what he calls the “logical equilibrium of this calculation” we must:
“inductively gather the evidence that allows us to evaluate the problem as the agent saw it.”(P.129)
Ricoeur also argues that Dray’s account of “calculation”, is related to “probability”, but there is a suggestion that if we proceed in the above fashion we might find ourselves defending a position of methodological individualism, and opening up an abyss between individual explanation and the explanation of large scale historical processes. Ricoeur leaves this discussion hanging in the ai,r and turns instead to a consideration of how causal explanations and teleological inferences may be related. Aristotle is paradoxically invoked as being dialectically opposed to a “unified scientific method” in the name of “methodological pluralism”, a term which Ricoeur has a tendency to interpret relativistically. Aristotle, we know, was not opposed to unifying all science under a universal and necessary “desire to know,” and he would also claim that all the three different types of science(theoretical, practical, productive) are concerned with the unifying themes of the media of change, causes of change, and the principles of change. Aristotle would also openly admit that the three different types of science differ in their methods and domain of application.
Von Wright is appealed to in relation to the Tractarian view of the world: a world composed of atomic states of affairs combined into a totality. Von Wright asks the obvious question of whether the world we live in satisfies the criteria laid out in Wittgensteins Tractatus-Logico-Philosophicus and his answer is that this is a:
“deep and difficult metaphysical question, and I do not know how to answer it.”(P.133 in Ricoeur)
Reference is then made to “ontological building blocks” whose constitution is unknown to us. This deep and difficult metaphysical discussion, however, makes no reference to Aristotelian metaphysics in which “change”, rather than “states of the world” is the starting point of all philosophical reflection. Kant’s critical Philosophy would also appear to accept the above Aristotelian starting point, and perhaps claim that we live in both the phenomenal and the noumenal world. Kant’s position implies that the ontological claims of atomism are trying to say something that cannot be said. This reminds one of Wittgenstein’s long time reluctance to give an example of an atomic proposition. He too claimed that the propositions of the Tractatus were attempting to say what cannot be said, and should be used as ladders which must then be discarded after being used. Von Wright thinks it sufficient to add “tense-logic” to the Wittgensteinian world-view, in order to generate historical statements. He also adds the idea of a system defined as :
” a state-space, or initial state, a number of stages of development, and a set of alternative moves for each stage”(P.134)
Systems are subject to interventions by “free and responsible agents”(P.134). On this account, states take the place of events and actions, and this appears at first sight to be problematic, given the static nature of states and the dynamic nature of events and actions. We know that Wittgenstein characterised states of affairs in terms of the concatenation of objects. We also know it would be difficult to fully analyse the Kantian event of a ship sailing downstream with this “model”. Artificially breaking the event up into a number of temporal atoms(nows), would seem not to capture this event as lived by an observing subject. On Von Wright’s account, it is possible to characterise the event of the ship sailing downstream as a “systematic state” that is “developing”. Action, on this account, becomes a problem that is solved by construing it as a “closed” system, and is characterised as “interfering” with the world. On this account it is difficult not to regard the subject as just another cause in a chain of causes transforming a closed system into a deterministic system(which of course has always been an ancient aim of atomism). Wittgenstein tried to avoid this problem by mystically situating the subject at the boundary of the world or outside the world. Von Wright calls upon the work of the analytical Philosopher Danto, and his work on basic actions to resolve the aporetic questions that arise in relation of the linking of Action to causality. Teleological explanation is invoked in order to neutralise the impression that there is only a causal bond between different phases of action. Von Wright claims that the tie between a reason and an action, is a “motivational mechanism”(P.138) and he also makes an appeal to the concept of “intention”: behaviour is “intentionalistically understood”, it is argued, and this is necessary in order for it to be teleologically explained. History, Ricoeur argues in this context, is connected to a theory of Action and he refers to Von Wright’s claim that:
“the behaviours intentionality is its place in a story about the agent.”(P.139 in Ricoeur)
Narrative , Ricoeur argues, includes both the circumstances of any action plus its unintended consequences, and the action is likened unto the use of language which is characterised in Wittgensteinian terms as “:
” a gesture whereby I mean something”(P.139 in Ricoeur)
Ricoeur continues with the claim that historical explanations are not fully teleological but are rather “quasi-causal”. This claim is then immediately mitigated by an acknowledgement that there are indeed many different kinds of explanation in historical texts. In addition to the internal relations between an intention and an action and its consequences, there are also external relations between two events, e.g. the assassination in Sarajevo and the outbreak of War.
Ricoeur regards Von Wrights account as incomplete and wishes to tie into one intelligible whole, “circumstances, goals, interactions, and intended results”, using the emplotment strategy of narrative. Ricoeur insists, in the context of this discussion, that causal explanation is preceded by narrative understanding. This, he insists paradoxically, requires the rejection of the “covering law” model which construes narrative as episodic and not as a configurational or transfigurational mechansm. Ricouer refers to Danto’s account of “narrative sentences”, in an attempt to link historical explanation and our understanding of narrative. He points out that Danto is an analytical Philosophy and also that analytical Philosophy is:
“in essence a theory of descriptions”(P.144)
Danto, like many analytical philosophers, hold up the idealism of Hegel as a position to avoid –not because of its controversial use of the dialectical method, but because of its pretension to understand the whole of history. Following upon this criticism, it is bluntly stated by Ricoeur, that it is not possible to make judgements about the future unless they are extrapolations from the past. Narratives, it is maintained, on the other hand, possess the power to re-describe past events in the light of events that occur subsequently, and it is this power that primarily interests Ricoeur, because, as he puts it:
“there is no history of the future”(P144)
Danto, on the other hand, claims that every narrative sentence written by a historian is subject to revision by a later historian, and that some historical explanations do not have a narrative structure. No reference is made in this discussion to the fact that Classical historians recommended waiting 30 years before writing about events, because some important chains of events take time to complete themselves. This enabled these historians to have a knowledge of the future of past events. On this classical view, it is maintained that a history of the present and the future are not possible until 30 years later. This “waiting period” was also important because it allowed for the appearance of important documents. Even if at present, documents are becoming available much quicker, there is the problem of completely and correctly describing events such as the 30 year war whilst it is still ongoing. There is of course more than a whiff of logical atomism and logical positivism in Danto’s account that Ricoeur does not comment upon. The description of an earlier event in terms of a subsequent one, of course, occurs on the logical level of particular events, and this leaves us with the problem of accounting for the abstract entities of principles and laws(e.g. the future will resemble the past), as they are presented in historical writing. Some forms of explanation rely heavily on these abstract entities. Danto replaces the “covering law” model with a “covering descriptions” model that is essentially describing particulars. This is why Danto is forced to admit that descriptions in the end will have to “count” as explanations. Such descriptions will certainly allow us to characterise efficient causes in a Humean manner, but there will be problems in using Danto’s account to characterise the universality and necessity of formal and final causes.
Ricoeur criticises Danto’s account for its failure to distinguish between the narrative sentence, and a narrative text which connects particular events. He looks then to the work of W B Gaillie, “Philosophy and Historical Understanding”, to fill a whole left by Danto’s account of narrative sentences.(P.149) Gaillie’s thesis is that historical explanations are intimately related to the narrative form in which they are embedded. Explanation, that is, is derived from the structure of narrative. Ricoeur argues that the following of a story to its conclusion is to be distinguished from following an argument to its conclusion, in that whilst the former has to be merely acceptable, the latter has to meet the criteria of universality and necessity, and provide us with some kind of prediction. Ricoeur then claims that the type of intelligence involved in these two cases is different.
Aristotle is accused by Ricoeur of being the source of what he refers to as the “subjective factor” or “subjective teleology” involved in the appreciation of a narrative. Expectations and attractions are, he argues a part of this “psychology of reception”(P.151). This, needless to say is not consistent with Aristotles account of art. which he characterises as a productive knowledge-using practical science, in which the elements concerned are not subjective but rather present in the creation because of the artists conducting his creative activity in the spirit of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). All activities, we are also told by Aristotle in the Nichomachean Ethics, aim at The Good, and Art is no exception to this universal claim. The aim of art is also to help us with the task of knowing ourselves by understanding the role of what is subjective and what is objective, in this search for The Good in the form of the Beautiful.
Aristotle would have been bewildered if confronted by the account of the world we are given in the Tracatatus, namely, that the world is the totality of facts and not things. He would have pointed out that, given the complex structure of our powers of mind, we cannot be satisfied with a mere description of the facts, but would demand explanations in terms of the principles that explain the facts: we wish, that is, to understand both what is happening and why it is happening. Aristotles account of tragedy puts causality clearly on display, and the learning that occurs in this case is not subjectively connected with a modern “psychology of reception”, but is, rather, concerned with the message the artist is attempting to communicate with “universal intent”, or as Kant would put the matter, in a “universal voice”. If the narrative of a tragedy can incorporate causality—“one thing because of another”—there ought not to be any difficulty with History manifesting the different kinds of causation Aristotle spoke about. Transplanting Aristotle’s ideas into the modern subjective-objective philosophical jargon, and the modern context of a “psychology of reception”, does not appear to be helpful, if we are to understand the logical structure of narration. In Historical narrative, the idea of the Good is important, but in a different way to the way in which the idea of The Good forms part of our idea of the beautiful. There is no doubt, however, that in terms of the nomological-deductive structure of Aristotles productive science, narratives satisfy the desire to know, and laws and principles are operative in the form of presuppositions even if they are not always articulated in the text.
Historical narrative must therefore be structured to answer “Why?” questions and must, as a consequence, allow principles to be operating in the course of events that are the objects of the narrative. Ricoeur, as we have seen, dismisses the nomological-deductive structure in favour of the ability of an audience to “follow” the story. This is clearly a descriptive rather than explanatory activity. Remaining at this descriptive level allows Ricoeur to search for a pragmatic justification:
“the criterion of a good explanation is a pragmatic one”(P.155)
which of course takes us back to the idea of a mind calculating means to ends, rather than a mind understanding categories and principles. The activity of contemplating “The Good” does not, as Ricoeur claims, take us back to the realm of judgement about particulars related to other particulars, or the connection of episodic causes, but rather takes us into the realm of practical understanding and practical reasoning and the architectonic structure of concepts and principles.
Narratives are often produced by someone in order to describe a course of a chain of events for various purposes: e.g. to inform, to educate, to entertain. Responding to this form of description, demands acts of understanding and reasoning that involve different cognitive powers which are not involved in investigations, (situated in contexts of exploration/discovery), where the issue may be to arrive at the formulation of a principle, rather than proceeding from a principle, as is the case in investigations situated in contexts of explanation/justification. In this latter case, what we are witnessing, is a categorically driven conceptual investigation aiming, not primarily at description, but rather at larger concerns connected with second-order questions relating to “Why” things are as they are, i.e. concerns related to Truth/Knowledge and Justice/The Good.
In the case of the production and understanding of fictional narrative, we are more concerned with the dignity and worth of character, than with a historical account of the forces of ruin and destruction ravaging our civilisations. We know, for example, from the dramatic accounts of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, that the ruin and destruction supposedly caused by Duncan may well have been fictional, but that fact nevertheless does not detract from the value of the play, which centres around an account of the deterioration of the mental health of a tyrannical ruler(similar to the one given in the later books of the Republic as part of an account of “justice”). Much can be learned in the process of appreciating this work, which involves a therapeutical cathartic play of the emotions of pity and fear. Ethical principles are also involved in a process which is clearly aiming at self-knowledge, and knowledge of the world and how it actually operates, rather than how it ought ideally to operate. For example, the Kantian principle “Promises ought to be kept”, does not say that it is a fact that promises are kept, but rather, in the case that they are not kept, this principle is invoked in relation to the categorical imperative to make the judgement that promises ought to be kept.
The medium of fictional narrative centres around the key concept of mimesis, as understood by both Plato and Aristotle. For both philosophers, fictional narrative imitated the forms or ideas that were the principles of understanding and reason, operating in the real world of the city, whether that be in the everyday milieu of the agora, or the more esoteric milieu of the offices and institutions of the city. The mimesis of these activities involves representing them for a purpose that is not real but rather ideal, and related to the artists intentions and the ideas he has about his art. Here there is a hylomorphic structure to this activity, but it has different material, efficient, formal and final causes or conditions compared to those we find in the real world. As mentioned above ethical considerations, practical categories of understanding and principles of reason, are also important constitutive elements of the plot of the narrative of the tragic poet, and are an important part of his creative intentions. Techné and epistemé are important aspects of the productive and theoretical sciences involved in this creative process. Phronesis, diké and areté are also involved, but have their home in the practical sciences. Understanding therefore, must on such a complex account, be a complex power operating at several different levels regulated by both the categories of the understanding and the principles of reason(e.g. principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason). The context of this artistic operation must be primarily that of explanation/justification and the question “Why did X occur?”, if X is an action, demands a reason for the action, in contrast to the situation where X is an event in which case the “Why?” question might be asking for a cause or condition. The reason for an action is teleological and can either refer to the maxim for the action or the principle governing the action(e.g. the principle of happiness or self love or the principle of the categorical imperative).
Ricoeur wishes to relate the narrative structure of history to the above form of fictional narrative, and this is an important claim to make, given the inevitable relation of History to the beginnings, middles, and endings that are constitutive of the human life-process. Both forms of narrative also concentrate attention upon actions and events of magnitude. In the case of History, it is the spatial entity of the city or nation and the forces of ruin and destruction which threaten civilisation, which is in focus. In the case of fictional narrative we are concerned primarily with the fate of individuals, although the question of the flourishing life of the city or nation may also be the concern of the artist.
One problematic claim made by Ricoeur in this context, however, is that the narrative of History is derivative from the fictional form of narrative whilst at the same time being rooted in the temporal structures of action. Ricoeur argues that History “constructs” its own temporality which refers to reality “obliquely”(P.92). The reality being referred to is that of actual events that have taken place in the past. Part of the intentionality of historical thought is connected to its epistemological commitment to knowledge about the past, and also connected, from a practical point of view, with the powers of understanding and reason. This latter commitment occurred in the spirit of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). In this field of praxis, History and Law share many of the same concerns. Historical laws have, of course, a different logical structure than the laws of theoretical science, which relate to reality in the mode of what events must of necessity occur. Historical laws are norm-constituting in the mode of the ought(of what ought to occur in reality), e.g. the future ought to resemble the past. This kind of law will also be integrated with ethical and political laws(relating to diké, justice). The idea of event will be less important in the case of the ethical laws that are justified by the categorical imperative, which may take different forms , e.g. treat everyone as ends in themselves but which all imply action(So act…). Ricoeur’s characterisation of an event moreover, that a historical event is a one time unique event in the temporal history of civilisations, abstracts from all non-temporal characteristics and adopts the Cartesian spatio-temporal coordinate system, which is essentially a mathematical system designed to measure motion and physical change. Such a view is, then, the result of a mathematical view of time that is connected to an obsession with scientific methodology by English and German positivists. Ricoeur in fact criticises this position, but nevertheless presents an account of “event” which many positivists would embrace:
“Whether it be a question of statistical frequency, causal connection, or functional relation, an event is what only happens once.”(P.97)
In a discussion of the work of Aron and Weber, Ricoeur elaborates upon this position by quoting Aron:
“As for the probability born of the partial character of historical analyses and causal relations, it exists in our own minds, not in things.”(P.98 in Ricoeur)
Ricoeur continues in his reasoning:
“In this respect historical appraisal of probability differs from the logic of the scientist and is closer to that of the judge.”(P.98)
This reasoning is then confronted with Marrou’s claim, which rejects the proposition that historical understanding is subjective( as defined by the methodological individualism of many social scientists). Ricoeur’s discussion takes on an “atomistic” character, and a formula is sought to relate the “atoms” of the event and the individual. The “method” used is one of dialectical confrontation. The question “Is history the history of events or individuals?” is, of course, from the point of view of historical understanding, a poorly formulated question, which may well require abandoning the characterisations of event and the subjective-objective distinction referred to in this chapter.
Ricoeur then introduces Hempel into the discussion . Hempel’s is a scientific view which rejects all connections of the idea of an “event” with narrative transfigurations. The event is depicted in terms of a “universal-particular” relation in which historical events are no less mystically “subsumed” under a more general concept of event of a specific type, which, in turn, is logically related to antecedent conditions and so-called “regularities”. Clearly the kind of universality invoked here is theoretical, but may well also be related to the assumption that the future will resemble the past. This attempted detachment of the practical intention, practical understanding, and practical reasoning, from the historical conceptualisation of historical events removed History from ethics and the practical sciences and this was viewed with suspicion by many professional historians.
Ricoeur criticises the above account by Hempel on the grounds that it is too prescriptive!. According to Ricoeur, History is not yet a fully developed science, and is therefore prone to idealistic characterisations. Both Ricoeur and Hempel agree that historical explanations are in some sense incomplete. Hempel-followers settled upon a compromise position that History may not possess laws, but rather law-like principles which provide us with explanation-sketches. This is not an action-focussed account of History, which would, in fact, require consideration of the prescriptive form of imperative and a narrative motivated by Reasons for Actions rather than the causes of events. The criticism of Hempel offered by Ricoeur, is that he fails to distinguish between a historical event and a physical event. Historical events, according to Ricoeur, are characterised in terms of singular statements that refer to the occurrence of unique events at very specific and unique times and places.
Such historical events cannot be the matter of narratives which clearly possess the logical characters of universality and necessity. This view of “event” does, however, allow Ricouer to artificially attach a value to the event, and assign the event a cause, which the hermeneutic method can then “Interpret” the meaning of. Here, what Ricoeur calls the “terminal consequences”(P.119), are important, but he also insists that there may well occur a conflict of interpretations in the assigning of terminal consequences in a causal chain. Marx is mentioned in the context of this discussion and Ricoeur claims:
“Either interpretation can be objective and true with regard to the causal sequences upon which it is elaborated….there is a place for critical pluralism.”(P.119)
It is, of course, not merely the dialectical materialism of Marx that is historically problematic, but also the fact that the ancient view of diké(justice) is marginalised as is the Enlightenment insistence upon the importance of the practical idea of freedom in important actions/events such as revolutions.
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.
Ricoeur is one of the most significant writers in the realm of the relation of myth to Philosophy. The following is from his work “The Symbolism of Evil”:
“Myths will be here taken to mean what the history of religions now finds in it: not a false explanation by means of images and fables, but a traditional narration which relates to events that happened at the beginning of time and which has the purpose of providing grounds for the ritual actions of men today, and, in a general manner, establishing all the forms of action and thought by which man understands himself in his world. For us moderns a myth is only a myth because we no longer connect that time with the time of history as we write it, employing the critical method, nor can we connect mythical places with our geographical space. This is why myth can no longer be an explanation…But in losing its explanatory pretensions the myth reveals its exploratory significance and its contribution to understanding which we shall later call its symbolic function—-that is to say, its power of discovering and revealing the bond between man and what he considers sacred.”(P.5)
The limitations of myth may well have given birth to Philosophy, when it came to providing explanations demanded by aporetic questions, and raising issues relating to the infinite media of change, namely space, time and matter. It no longer seemed efficacious to personify Time by the figure or image of Chronos, engaging in the curious activity of eating his own children and being castrated by one of the most powerful of his children. Such images just did not seem to respond appropriately to the awe and wonder of a newly awoken consciousness in the face of the sublimity of life in a world of such complexity. These images did not possess the required universality and necessity of the philosophical principle of sufficient reason.
Cassirer in his work “Language and Myth”(Trans by Langer, S., K., New York, Dover, 1946), opens his work by reflecting upon the master of Myth himself, namely Plato. In the Phaedrus Socrates shows his impatience with claims of the god-like wind carrying someone away in order to account for their death. Reasoning in this way, he argues, risks allowing the imagination to run free which in turn merely raise the demand for explanations relating to the existence of monsters and gods. Such investigations, Socrates argued distracted one from the aporetic question par excellence of Philosophy, namely the Delphic task of knowing oneself.
Cassirer quotes Max Muller(The Philosophy of Mythology, London, 1973), and highlights his claim that myth arises from the illusions of language, making it some kind of pathological phenomenon. This conflicts with Ricoeur’s account above. Cassirer rejects Mullers account on Kantian grounds and argues instead, that the figures of myth:
“refer to some given reality by means of suggestion and allegorical renderings, but in the sense of forces each of which produces and posits a world of its own.”(P.8)
The question to raise here is whether Plato, the master of the mythical illustration we find in the later books of the Republic, would have found some truth in the above quote. His allegories of the cave, the divided line, and the sun are after all, not merely artistic embellishments, but are meant seriously to complement the rational argumentation in this work. The physical sun, for example, is an analogue of the good, and there is nothing pathological about seeing the resemblance between the sun and its relation to physical life, and the good and its relation to the ethical good-spirited, flourishing life. True, there is no obvious connection of such allegories to religion, but we also know that there have been religions in which worship of the sun played a significant role. For Aristotle, we know, Being had many meanings, and awe and wonder in the face of this Being, gave rise to the desire to understand these meanings. For Plato it was the “form of the good” which was the primary form, and this strategically suggested that for him practical rationality was more important than the more theoretical pursuit of knowledge and Truth. It is also important to point out that this priority is to be found in Kantian critical Philosophy too. Cassirer insists that the words we have for divine entities carries with it a suggestive power that ought not to be underestimated. Heraclitus, we also know, found what he thought to be a philosophical connection between what he termed “logos” and the divine. The two terms “logos” and muthos”, insofar as Ricoeur is concerned, form a coordinate system for discourse in the arena of religious discourse. This borders on the territory of Poetry which Aristotle concerns himself with, but in Aristotle there is a clear distinction between the ethical focus of the Poetics and the kind of mythical speculation that attempts to say something about the beginning of time in a context of the infinite media of change.
The term “mimesis”, however, aligns us more closely with the Socratic rejection of myth in the search for self-knowledge. For Aristotle mimesis praxeos has very clear ethical and aesthetic implications. Aristotle’s Poetics gives us an account of the function of narrative that ties the beginning, middle and end of the attempt to represent or imitate action into a composite whole. This composition or plot refuses a reduction into episodic point-like events, because the creator is concerned to connect events/actions in a universal manner. The theme of this universality is more concerned with areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) and diké, than the divine logos. The Spectator of the drama learns from what he witnesses, the possibilities related to a tragic reversal of fortune from good to bad. Involved in this learning process is a recognition that we all get what we deserve, in the spirit of diké. The universals involved in this context are not theoretical but related to the logos of ethical and political action and thought. For Socrates the logos of these forms of the good were also related to his need to consult with his inner daimon, when elenchus appeared to fail to provide the wisdom(phronesis) he needed. This change of focus, from Homers Gods living on Olympus, to an inner voice, was also linked to the Socratic complaint about Homer and his depiction of the Gods as engaging in unethical actions. This shift in focus, for Socrates, was part of his search for the principles that communities need to reason their way to the telos of the good spirited flourishing life. Aristotle elaborated upon the examined life by including in his contemplative life, an account of the logos of Poetics, and the importance of plot, character, thought, language, melody, and spectacle. The plot of a tragedy, Ricoeur claims, is the “soul” or “telos” of tragedy, and he further claims that mimesis and muthos are equivalent ideas in this context. It is difficult to understand his point here, but its seems connected to his claim that the narrating of events, and the enacting of events in drama, are in some sense the “same”. The fictional enactment of events requires the temporal structure of a narrative in which the beginning necessarily “causes” the middle which in turn necessarily gives rise to an end. In this fictional process we take pleasure in the recognition of images for what they are: a recognition of the “universal intent” of the dramatist. Aristotle clearly differentiates historical narrative from poetic narratives in terms of the difference between the ordering of particular events and the universal intent of a drama in which there is a catharsis of emotions in relation to the reversal of fortune of the major. character(s) Unhappiness is a key moment in this process that is evaluated in terms of diké( getting what one deserves). The catharsis of the Spectator involves the recognition of the role of The Good and the True in what has happened and the inevitability of what has happened is recognised in relation to a set of circumstances.
Ricoeur interprets Aristotle dialectically when he links the processes internal to the composed work to what he calls the “external” role of the spectator in the process of catharsis. Cognition, imagination and feeling are all “at play” here and perhaps the idea he presupposes of “recognition” is not a sufficient characterisation of the way in which knowledge(epistemé) and areté are constitutive of the complex composition we are presented with.
Augustine is famous for his sceptical rehearsal of various answers to the aporetic question “What is Time?” Ricoeur attempts to sum up what was achieved :
“Augustine’s inestimable discovery …reducing the extension of time to the distension of the soul.”(P.21)
This, to some extent, is reminiscent of the Kantian account of time which we know relates to activity of the faculty of Sensibility, but a more detailed look at Kant’s position here will reveal that there is no “dogmatic” reduction of the extension of time to the so-called distension of the soul . Instead we find in Kant, a nuanced account of the interplay of the role of movement or change in the external world and and the measurement of such movement or change. Indeed there is much in the Kantian account to suggest that he was committed to the Aristotelian essence-specifying definition of time:
“The measurement of motion in terms of before and after.”.
An illustration of the Kantian position can be seen in his example of the boat moving downstream on a river:
“I see a ship move downstream. My perception of its lower position follows upon the perception of its position higher up in the stream, and it is impossible that in the apprehension of this appearance the ship should first be perceived lower down in the stream and afterwards higher up.”(Immanuel Kants Critique of Pure Reason, A 192)
The real motion of the ship is what is being measured, and that cannot be reduced to any “distension” of the soul, even if the unity of the representations of the soul is irrevocably an inner phenomenon. In the above example, the relation of the representations is in accordance with a rule necessarily connecting the representations. Kant further elaborates upon this by contrasting the above activity with that of the perceptual activity connected with a large house from a point of view where the whole house requires a number of representations in order to be perceived completely. In the case of the succession of representations of the house, this succession is an arbitrary one, and the reversibility of these representations is possible without the internal structure of the perception being threatened with collapse. Kant claims:
“In conforming with such a rule there must lie in that which precedes an event the condition of a rule according to which the event universally and necessarily follows…..The event, as the conditioned, thus affords reliable evidence of some condition and this condition is what determines the event.”(A 193-4)
The resemblance of the above form of reasoning, to that which we encounter in Aristotelian hylomorphic theory of principles and first principles, is striking. In the hylomorphic theory of change there is reference to a “totality of conditions”, which include the infinite nature of the media of change(space, time, matter), 4 kinds of change, 4 causes of change,3 principles of change and the powers or capacities of a soul involved in the experience of this change, e.g. Sensibility. Kant’s Transcendental Aesthetic is a significant elaboration upon this already complex theory:
“In whatever manner and by whatever means a mode of knowledge may relate to objects, intuition is that through which it is in immediate relation to them, and to which all thought as a means is directed. But intuition takes place only insofar as the object is given to us. This again is only possible, to man at least, insofar as the mind is affected in a certain way. The capacity(receptivity) for receiving representations through the mode in which we are affected by objects, is entitled sensibility. Objects are given to us by means of sensibility, and it alone yields us intuitions, they are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding arise concepts. But all thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.”(A19)
The hylomorphic character of the above text becomes more evident in following remarks in this Transcendental Aesthetic section which refer to sensations as the matter and the rule which orders sensation as the form of appearances. This “form”, Kant argues:
“must lie ready for the sensations a priori in the mind, and so must be considered apart from all sensation.”(A20)
Furthermore, Kant adds, in Aristotelian spirit:
“The science of all principles of a priori sensibility, I call Transcendental Aesthetic.”(A21)
From Aristotle’s perspective this form of kowledge would fall into the category of Theoretical Science, e.g. Metaphysics. Aristotle begins his work “Metaphysics”, by claiming that it is the aim of this queen of all sciences, to provide the first principles of knowledge for us “rational animals capable of discourse”, who desire to know. The work continues with a review of a number of aporetic questions which are meant to be defining of the scope and limits of this Philosophy of “First Principles” (or “First Philosophy”). Kantian metaphysics is also focussed on conditions or principles, and this is demonstrated in the Transcendental Aesthetic where the metaphysical conception of Time is presented in 5 sections. Time, insists Kant initially, is not empirically derived concept but rather it is:
“Only on the presupposition of time can we represent to ourselves a number of things as existing at one and the same time(simultaneously) and at different times(successively)”(A.30)
Secondly:
“Appearances may one and all vanish, but time( or the universal condition of their possibility) cannot itself be removed.(A31)
Thirdly,
“Time has only one dimension; different times are not simultaneous but successive(just as different spaces are not successive but simultaneous but successive)”(A.31)
Fourthly,
“Different times are but parts of one and the same time: and the representation which can be given only through a single object is intuition.”(A.32)
And finally, fifthly,
“The infinitude of time signifies nothing more than that every determinate magnitude of time is possible only through limitations of one single time that underlies it. The original representation, time, must therefore be given as unlimited.”(A.31-2)
In a section entitled “The Transcendental Exposition of the Concept of Time”, Kant further emphasises the fundamental role of time in all change, saying specifically that change and the concept of motion are conditional upon an a priori representation of time.
Time, then, is on Kant’s account, manifesting itself in our sensible attempts to measure change or motion, and it is, Kant insists, a form of inner intuition concerned with the intuition of ourselves and our inner state. Time is also a fundamental condition of the possibility of outer appearances. It is also important to note that in the Transcendental Aesthetic our concern is not with objects thought of conceptually, but rather “objects of our senses”(A.34). It is only when objects are subject to the categories of the understanding and the power of thinking(“I think”), that knowledge can then be organised by both analytical principles and transcendental logic. It is only in the special and general uses of understanding that logical principles can regulate the totality of conditions necessary for scientific thinking. It s in this context of explanation/justification that Kant then focuses upon the role of “judgement” in scientific discourse:
“Judgement is therefore the mediate knowledge of an object, that is the representation of a representation of it. In every judgement there is a concept which holds of many representations, and among them, of a given representation that is immediately related to an object. Thus, in the judgement “all bodies are divisible”, the concept of divisible applies to various other concepts but is here applied in particular to the concept of body, and this concept again to certain appearances that present themselves to us. These objects, therefore, are mediately represented through the concept of divisibility.”(A68-9)
Judgements are also logically ordered(via the special use of logic) by the categories of the understanding: an order that results in 12 logical types of judgement. These “categories of judgement” are indeed a very complex elaboration upon the so-called “categories of existence”, Aristotle formulated. In this account, the matter and form of knowledge are clearly distinguished, the former obtained via the senses, and the sensible faculty, and the latter via universal concepts and the principles of pure understanding. Logic and the power of reasoning as manifested in the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason, are seamlessly integrated into both the categories of the understanding and this logical system of judgements. Yet it has to be insisted that it is general, special and transcendental logic rather than dialectical logic which are the constitutive and regulative elements of any science employing these judgements and categories.
Augustine’s sceptical rehearsal of the aporetic questions he formulates in his investigations of time, are not metaphysical, in either Kantian or Aristotelian terms. He, rather launches a two pronged attack upon the humanistic rationalism manifested in both Aristotle and Kant. The first prong is in the form of an epistemological/phenomenological account of our experience of time, and the second in the form of a Philosophical Psychology that would also fall into the field of phenomenological investigations. Augustine asks how we can have access to the past which is no longer and a future which is not yet here, and instead of biting the bullet and saying that we do as a matter of fact know the past and the future which are both real, he focuses upon negation and the absence of the past and the future in order to create a field of primacy for the present (a solipsistic commitment to what can be known here and now). He then argues that memory and expectation are what is measured, rather than past or future “extended objects”. The condition required for such quantification is that the mind or soul be spatially conceptualised into the “circumstance” of an inner theatre of the imagination and its contents, which are then referred to as being located “in” this inner theatre. Scenes wax and wane on this inner stage, and it is this “logical space” Augustine appeals to with his idea of the distension of the soul, an idea which stretches over the present of the past, the present of the present, and the present of the future.
Augustine steers away from real external examples such as ships sailing downstream, whereas it is this kind of example the scientist Kant uses to generate the account he needs in his architectonic of sciences. Instead, Augustine prefers to use private soliloquy in which a psalm is being inwardly recited in order to generate a dialectical manifestation of expectation, attention, and memory. One moment passes away, and another moment waxes into the thought space, as expectation is transformed into memory in a dialectical process that Ricoeur describes in terms of a “living metaphor”. We are never given a precise account of the scope and limits of these “powers” in the Philosophical Psychology of Augustine. His aim, rather, appears to be one of phenomenologically describing the appearance and disappearance of these powers on a solipsistic inner stage in a context of presence and absence that resembles the example Freud referred to in his essay “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”. In Freud’s essay, a one and a half year-old boy missing his mother enacts out the scene with a cotton reel which he throws out of his cot uttering the word “Fort! and pulling it back in via its thread uttering the word “Da!”. This game of “gone!-here!” is a solipsistic exercise that might also be appreciated by many existentialist and phenomenological philosophers who appeal to the notion of “negation” in their accounts of mental mechanisms that regulate our thought processes. One important point to note in the above “presence-absence” game, is that nothing unifies the representations involved. Ricoeur points to how both metaphor and narrative have the task of unifying representations and might almost be considered as organising principles of the literary productive sciences.
The dialectical materialism of Hegel and Marx rest upon key moments of discordance, in which a thesis claiming the truth of something, is challenged by an antithesis claiming the truth of the negation of the thesis. The next stage in this process is a synthesis, in which certain elements of the thesis are integrated with certain elements of the antithesis. This looks a promising outcome, until we learn that this synthesis is merely a new thesis in disguise awaiting the arrival of another discordant antithesis. Scepticism has obviously won the day in this dialectical process, because, on this account, no theses can ever categorically possess the logical characteristics of universality and necessity. At best we are dealing with a judgment that falls into the category of the “hypothetical”. Kant and Kantians would, of course, reject both the scepticism and dogmatism of the Hegelian and Marxist positions on the grounds of the formulation of a critical rationalism which enables them to reject both the materialism and dualism of these times.
Augustine’s meditation on Time then takes a new turn when the idea of eternity is discussed again in terms of the present (that never ends). Our intellect, Augustine argues, contrasts our humanly lived time, with the idea of this never-ending present and a new dialectical argument begins to take shape. Eternity is linked to the eternity involved in words that express the Truth that never changes(P.29), but this is again immediately neutralised by a moment of negation, in which the idea of eternity introduces nothingness rather than being into our idea of Time.
Fear, Ricoeur argues, has a determinate objective in contrast to the object of anguish which is contrastingly indeterminate. Furthermore Anguish threatens, not just a part of me, as may be the case with fear, but the self in its totality–the threat in this context is to the freedom of the self. Wittgenstein in his work “Philosophical Investigations” distinguishes between the cause and object of fear, and he appears here to conceive of “cause” in terms of a causal stimulus that prompts a response from the sympathetic nervous system. The cause is linked to an effect by the observational knowledge we have of their relation: whereas actions precipitated by anguish appear to be connected to reasons that we possess non-observational knowledge about.
Anguish is a phenomenon that occurs at various levels including at the vital level of life and death. Ricoeur argues that death is not implied by life but is rather related to some external cause which threatens: a cause which I witness empirically(observationally) in the death of others who are permanently absent from our common life-arenas. Ricoeur argues, somewhat mysteriously, that the form of knowledge we are concerned with in this case, is “abstract”, presumably because “reasoning is involved:
“All men die, therefore I, too”(P.289)
The death of an acquaintance, friend, or family member is, he claims, “internalised”. I then anticipate my own absence in all my life arenas in a non-intellectual non-cognitive spirit of anguish. A Freudian analysis of the movement from the fear of my own death to the knowledge that I too must die involves the mechanism of sublimation which in turn is related to a substitute form of satisfaction that removes the anxiety or anguish from the resulting act of judgement. This process is no easy transition for the agent concerned as psycho-analytical therapy clearly demonstrates. The more natural mechanism psychoanalytical patients engage in, is that of the repression of the awareness of ones own mortality. Heidegger characterised this phenomenon as fleeing away from the fate of ones death. Such repression or fleeing prevents more authentic relations to ones death such as we encounter in the Socratic sublimation of death into something good, something free from anxiety and anguish but at the same time intimately connected to the holistic worth and dignity of man. In the case of Socrates, the fact that he was , as the Bible put the matter “full of years”(three score years and ten), obviously contributed to the acceptance by Socrates of his own unjust fate.
Existentialism and Phenomenology in their different but related ways question this classical account, and in the case of the former we are invited to characterise our relation to our deaths in terms of an ambiguity connected to the fundamental contingency of having been born. Such ambiguity incorporates:
“The non-necessity of having once been born, thus the anguish of death, the primal anguish that eats away at my being-in-the-world is not completely immanent to my existence…… when death is here, you are no longer: when you are here, it hasn’t yet arrived.”(P.290)
Apparently my totality as a whole is threatened by anguish which is then transcended by “reasons for living”, which are also “reasons for dying”(P.291) This reasoning is Hegelian, an exercise in dialogical logic in which consciousness is both contingent , fragile, and associated with the notion of negation, which Ricoeur characterises as the “nothingness of freedom”. This idea of freedom is anguished over abandonment, and also possessed of a will to live that manifests itself in an upsurge of projects directed at a future that could make history. The will, so far as Kant is concerned, expresses itself in maxims for action which can both be the source of good and evil. For Kant, but not for Ricoeur, Hope is the organising idea for lives thrown into an arena where the choices of others and indeed ones own choices can bring misfortune upon oneself and others. Ricoeur embraces a notion of “dialectical hope” which does not surmount this chaos or reconcile one stoically to the misfortunes of life, but rather is offered as a “consolation”—being as it is associated with “anguish”, “until the last day”(P.304).
The question of negation and the finitude of my being, which evidences itself in ones perceptual relation to the world and ones moods, are taken up in the final essay of this work:”Negativity and Primary Affirmation”. This finitude has powers that are expressed in potentialities in the form of “I can” and these powers, Ricoeur argues, can be summarised in terms of the concept of “character”. This idea is linked to the “tragedies” of want and suffering, and can become the subject of an account in which these wants and sufferings can be evaluated by a character taking up a position, making a stand on the ground of his powers. Yet it is not a Greek analysis of character or the human psuche we will encounter in these reflections, but rather a phenomenological excursion into the realm of meaning in which negation and negativity appear to find a natural home. Kant is evoked in this reflection on the nature of value which, it is argued implies the absence of what is valued. What is not acknowledged, however, is the role that reason and understanding plays in the Kantian account. Rather the emphasis is placed on the Hegelian idea of “recognition” of the perspective and value of “the other”. On this account discourse has a negative structure in which the dread of death is embedded, and the question arises over a differentiation between what is objective, and what can be “described” in existential and phenomenological analyses. The conclusion of this reflection on meaning, point of view, and the will to live, is that the negativity referred to above is :
“not an immediate negation, but rather a negation of negation.”(P.318)
Sartre is invoked in the context of this discussion and a reference is made to an analysis of imagination in which it is claimed:
“The imagination which nihilates the whole of the real for the benefit of absence and the unreal.”
Freedom, on the Sartrean account, is not conceived of in Kantian terms, where freedom is characterised in terms of the power of a being to act to bring about what is real. Sartre’s account appeals rather to a notion of “nothingness”, that is discontinuous with the ontological comprehension of Being. Ricoeur appeals here to Anaximander who, it is claimed, maintained that being has a dialectical structure and linked to what Ricoeur terms a “primary affirmation”(P.327), and this in turn is linked with the ambiguous structure of the negation of negation. This requires a Philosophy of Nothingness which is:
“The transition from things to being”(P.328)
In this reflection the ancient Greek ideas of “form” and “arché” are discarded in favour of an act of existence connected more to anguish than to the eudaimonia of the Greeks or the eschatological hope of Kant. Mans questioning of the being of being or the origin of origin entails, on Ricoeur’s argument, that we can negate the principle of Being not by claiming as Plato did that the form of the Truth flows from the form of the Good, but rather by insisting that knowledge does not have a categorical structure, by claiming, that is, that existence is both particular , contingent, and ambiguous in its nature. On this account every question raised potentially leads to another question. This is undoubtedly a sceptical position that in its attempts to avoid rationalism and materialism ends with a dualistic account:
“Ontology….is the common root of being in the sense of the factual and of being in the sense of value.”(P.326)
Aristotle’s conception of the philosophy of first principles is not directly reflected upon. The pre-Socratic Anaximander is the source of the view that being is “primordially dialectical”(P.327). What this amounts too is not just a denial of reason and its justified conclusions but also a denial of the categories of understanding and by implication a rejection of General and Special Logic: a logic that claims, for example, that the principle “all men are mortal” cannot be meaningfully contradicted because of its categorical and conceptual nature.
History on the Kantian account is regulated by the concepts of Hope and the worth and dignity of man, and by extension, his civilisations and cultures(in which his soul is writ large). The roles of the Good and the True are manifested in our historical texts in a way similar to, but different from the way in which these roles are manifested in our aesthetic works, in which there is, of course, a greater role for the imagination, the psychological process of recognition and the logic of the dialectic.
Ricoeur begins his essay by defining the problem, as he sees it, of “modern universal civilisation”:
“The problem is this: mankind as a whole is on the brink of a single world civilisation, representing at once a gigantic progress for everyone and an overwhelming task of survival, and adapting our cultural heritage to this new setting. To some extent, and in varying ways, everyone experiences the tension between the necessity for the free access to progress and, on the other hand, the exigency of safeguarding our heritage. Let it be said at the outset that my thought does not result from any contempt for universal modern civilisation: there is a problem precisely because we are under the strain of two different necessities both of which are pressing.”(P.271)
This is a fascinating introduction raising a whole host of further questions relating, firstly, to the correct way in which to characterise this “single world civilisation””(as a zone of comfort and security made possible by technology or as a Kantian Kingdom of ends or an Augustinian city of God?) Secondly , how does it go about safeguarding its heritage in the three very different case mentioned above. Thirdly, whether there is progress toward a kingdom of ends would be a very difficult matter for even the eagle-eyed study of history to establish, given Kant’s claim that the kingdom of ends lies at least one hundred thousand years in the future. Given that span of time there is space to accommodate what Arendt called a “terrible century”(the 20th century) without abandoning the Kantian philosophical conviction that progress is being made.
Ricoeur continues his reflection by intuitively focussing upon one of the major difficulties of conceiving perspicuously of our situation: the pretension of the spirit of science to endow civilisation with a universal character. Modern science appears to express itself best in terms of the consequences of its theory, namely technologically. This is not the case with Greek science in which the spirit of techné is connected to areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). The use of epistemé in Greek science is also involved in the science of nature, but in a different way to the way in which it is in the ethical/practical context of explanation/justification of action. Ricoeur poses the question: “”is Science Greek in its origins and European, through Galileo, Descartes, Newton etc.” One immediate response to this question is to point out that Greek science had a more complex relation to Mathematics than its modern counterpart. It is common knowledge that both Plato and Aristotle and presumably also Socrates believed Mathematics to be a discipline whose basic “objects” are “images” and whose definitions are “explanations” of the nature of such images, e.g. a straight line is the shortest distance between two points”. The epistemé of Plato and Aristotle was not constituted by mathematical operations but rather by principles(arché) regulating activities ranging over, not images, but rather objects, causes and individual actions. The problem with the inclusion of Mathematics in the scope of Greek epistemé is that it relates only to the physical reality/substance that is most amenable to quantitative operations. This categorical assumption becomes, however problematic because quantifying actions for the purposes of forming images does not answer questions relating to actions that are not classificatory/descriptive, but rather explanatory/justificatory in nature. There appears to be a confusion of what-questions with why-questions in many attempts to introduce mathematics into domains of concern requiring other forms of explanation.
Machines, Ricoeur argues, are merely more sophisticated tools requiring more technical thought for their production and use. Universality, in the sphere of techné, means, he claims, that as soon as an invention appears in one place in the world it can be spread over the whole globe. This is one consequence of globalisation—an ethically-neutral form of cosmopolitanism: we support the whole world in principle, insofar as possessing mobile phones is concerned, but not atomic weapons of mass destruction. Ricoeur, in the context of this discussion prefers to ignore Kantian Cosmopolitanism and he claims, somewhat controversially, that the first philosopher to reflect upon the universality of the state was a in fact Hegel. He claims:
“Hegel is the first to have shown that one of the aspects of more rationality, and at the same time, of his universality, is the growth of a state which institutes laws and develops the means for their enforcement in the form of an administration.”( P.273)
Aristotle’s definition of practical rationality, and its fundamental connection to the creation and maintenance of laws in the city, is also being ignored in Ricoeur’s praise of Hegel. Ricoeur does, however, insightfully fixate upon the importance of the concept of power, and he claims that once a certain level of comfort and security is reached we see authoritarian power-structures transmute into democratic power-structures. There is a case to be argued, for the position that democratic power structures make the exercise of power more difficult and tenuous, and Ricoeur claims, again insightfully, that one possible response to such a state of affairs, is to attempt to personalise power. This fails to appreciate the Aristotelian position that the greater the number of people that there are involved in a discussion of an issue over which a decision has to be made, the better the quality of the decision.
Ricoeur, then, moves the discussion on to a consideration of what he calls somewhat paradoxically “the rationalisation of power”, which he believes is connected to the bureaucratic administration of a government function. This process of administration involves research and investigation into the possibility and consequences of particular issues related to potential government decisions. Such research and investigation takes place in a combined spirit of exploration/discovery, and explanation/justification. In the former context, we are dealing with hypothetical investigations and technological imperatives, and in the latter we are more concerned with the categorical relation of conditions to their unconditioned arché. Both processes aim to provide us with a global picture of the means to ends , the ends in themselves, and possible “good consequences”. In such governmental investigations, calculation of all forms takes pace in the combined spirit of exploration/discovery and explanation/justification. The former context focuses upon instrumental and technological imperatives guiding decision and reasoning -processes. The latter context, on the other hand, tends to focus on ethical/political categorical imperatives claiming both universality and necessity, in tribunals that resemble processes of justice more than experimental discussion groups attempting to come to agreements based upon hypotheticals.
Investigations into economical problems involve the quantification of economic events and their consequences. There is, in our modern era, a danger that economic matters dominate the political landscape, and economic means to political ends become the favoured form of “rationalisation”, thus eclipsing the ethical and political substantive arguments required by rational political actors, for whom the term “rationalisation” carries negative connotations. Ricoeur refers to the categorical idea of a good-in-itself, and basically uses a Kantian Cosmopolitan view in his discussion of the “dangers” confronting mankind when major shifts of values occur:
“But the massive access of men to certain values of dignity and autonomy is an absolutely irreversible phenomenon, a good-in-itself. We are witnessing the advance onto the world scene of great human masses who were heretofore silent and down trodden…..a growing number of men have the awareness of making their history, of making history: in tis sense we can say that these men are really joining the majority.”(P.276)
Hannah Arendt referred to the problem these masses caused in the rise of totalitarianism in her work “The Origins of Totalitarianism”. It was, she argued during the “terrible 20th century” when political parties failed to appeal to these “mass-interests”, that we witnessed the quick dissolution of old fragile democracies. This illustrates well what Ricouer goes on to say concerning the destruction of traditional values in the process of their “universalisation”. The destabilisation of nation states in this process of “universal” cosmopolitanism obviously brought with it hidden dangers for the whole world. Ricoeur suggests that even the creative nucleus of the great civilisations of the past may become a victim of such turbulent unstable change involving the political mobilisation of the masses. We have argued in our series of works entitled “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action”, that the ancient Aristotelian-Kantian “platform” of value remains submerged in the wake of the tsunami of change that swept the world in the 20th century. This tsunami had been building in size for some time since the first of the new men, namely Descartes and Hobbes, unleashed their “new ideas” upon the masses. They were then followed by Hume, Rousseau, Hegel and their followers who also rejected the nucleus of Aristotelian-Kantian philosophising. Two new structures were being constructed by these new men in a “new spirit”, based firstly, on an obsessive methodology of science, and secondly, the methodology of Phenomenology. Ricoeur does not embrace the “movement of events” inspired by the new ideas of these new men: indeed he calls the movement threatening:
“by the spreading before our eyes of a mediocre civilisation which is the absurd counterpart of what I was just calling elementary culture. Everywhere throughout the world one finds the same bad movie, the same slot machines, the same plastic or aluminium atrocities, the same twisting of language by propaganda etc. It sees as if mankind, by approaching en masse a basic consumer culture, were also stopped en masse at a subcultural level.(P.276)
Ricoeur is relying on an idea of levels of culture similar to that implied by the Kantian distinction between civilisation and culture. The idea of the “personality” of a nation rooted in its past is also invoked, but this is not a part of the Kantian reasoning. Scientific, technical, and political rationality, Ricoeur argues, requires a transcendence of both existing traditions and “personality”, in the name of this modern en masse movement. Modern political “rationalisation” is of course not rationally or ethically grounded, as was the case with Ancient Greek or Kantian Political Philosophy. Modern political thinking, rather, is a more instrumentally based, “pragmatic” affair, where much effort and time is spent on the calculation of consequences and focussing on what is sometimes arbitrarily designated as “good consequences”. Rationality and its concern with an absolute good-in-itself, would be regarded by Ricoeur as the European “illusion”, that such a good is “universal”. The consequence of such reasoning is that the rational universal grounds which we Europeans use to distinguish reality from illusion (which include both Logic and Metaphysics). is also dismissed and disqualified on the grounds of both lacking “universality” and “necessity”.
Ricoeur then raises three questions:
What constitutes the creative nucleus of a civilisation?
Under what conditions may this creativity be pursued?
How is an encounter with different cultures possible?
In attempting to answer question one, Ricoeur refers to an ethico-mythical nucleus of a culture, and warns us against rational definitions of the kind we find embedded in the metaphysical positions of Aristotle and Kant. This would on the face of it appear to disqualify the possibility of adopting a universally necessary attitude to other cultures, e.g. as Kantian ends-in-themselves whose freedom and dignity(personality) should be respected. The discovery of other cultures where more particularistic attitudes prevail, e.g militaristic cultures, does not actually threaten any Kantian categorical imperative that we might use to judge such war-like societies–(what is the case is not logically equivalent to what ought to be the case).
Ricoeur calls upon evidence of clashes between cultures and primitive civilisations such as those reported in the studies of Levi-Strauss, in which these primitive civilisations find it almost impossible to assimilate the kinds of tools a culture uses, because their conception of time, space, and human relations will not allow an imaginative conversion to a consumer-comfort based form of life. The conclusion of this debate contains a reference to levels or layers which have to be phenomenologically disentangled, rather than rationally defined. Any phenomenological analysis, Ricoeur argues, must cut through to a core of basic images and symbols, which it is argued, rather surprisingly, can also be psychoanalytically described. The argument leads to a cul-de-sac in which it is maintained that the fundamental factor to consider here is that of difference–man is different to man as is evidenced by the fragmentariness of the different languages he speaks. One consequence of this kind of argumentation is that different contexts of civilisation cannot be artificially united by the unifying impulse of rationalism. Some civilisations, Ricoeur argues, will just not be able to assimilate the modern form of scientific rationality which requires a complex form of faith in which one can strive to lay nature bare to the scientific gaze whilst at the same time mysteriously embracing what is sacred to man(P.282). For Ricoeur, however, insofar as the relation to others are concerned, it is not rational respect for a categorical imperative that guides our principle based relations, but rather psychological functions such as sympathy and imagination. Aesthetics and the Arts are evoked and we are encouraged to consider the parallel of a character in a novel or theatrical play, in order to concretise what for him otherwise appear to be abstract relations appealing to a principle that he does not believe can be justified. Only a culture that uses creativity in the above way, is, Ricoeur argues, capable of giving meaning to the encounter with other cultures. We ought also to bear in mind, Ricoeur points out that our Greek, Hebrew, and Christian origins are not shared by many Eastern civilisations and the confrontation between very different kinds or origins has only just begun. It is also insisted in this connection that we do not possess a philosophy of History which is able to “resolve the problems of coexistence”(P.284) and this, we would maintain is because of the human totality, which Ricoeur refuses to acknowledge, may be a rationally constituted phenomenon.
This essay is about the problematic relation between power and responsibility. The relationship of History to Power is a latent problem that is only briefly touched upon, but it is claimed, that power has no history, and this pitches us immediately into the Kantian domain of Philosophical Psychology in which it is maintained that the human will causes itself to act–this is its primary power! But this is not the end of the story, because the will on Kantian theory is subject to, firstly, the categories of the understanding and in this respect is self-causing. Secondly, the will is also related to Reason and its freedom to choose. Furthermore, in his Groundwork, Kant claims that this will is universally and necessarily good insofar as its acts are determined by the categorical imperative, which explains not just what we as a matter of fact do, but also what we ought to do, what we must do, given certain circumstances. We have, Kant argues, general duties and responsibilities to treat people as ends in themselves, and also particular duties such as “promises ought to be kept” and “Value the truth”. These two last ethical maxims are also political maxims in Kantian Political Philosophy which widens its scope of concern to generate universal human rights from the duties generated in the political arena. The government, Kant claims, has a duty to keep its promises and value the truth in the court of public opinion, but it also has economic duties to distribute benefits and burdens equally and ensure that the law protects land, possessions and work. A paradox can easily be set up by turning Kant upside down, as Hegel claimed to do in relation to the Critical Project. One can, for example, deny the truth of Kant’s idea of the good will insofar as government activity is concerned, and agree with Machiavelli that the way in which the Prince ought to rule is via the manipulation and deception of his subjects. Ricoeur has several times in previous essays suggested that there is inherent evil in the exercise of power by authorities, so, the choice to invoke Machiavelli in this discussion about the nature of power comes as no surprise.
In this essay Ricoeur compares capitalist and socialist forms of government in terms of an ideal democratic organisation that rules in the name of historical rationality which cannot, it is argued, be reduced to any form of economic argumentation. The paradox at issue for Ricoeur is:
“that the greatest evil adheres to the greatest rationality, that there is political alienation because polity is relatively autonomous.”(p.249)
Ricoeur also quotes the opening of Aristotle’s ” Politics”(P.249):
“Every state is a society of some kind, and every society, like all forms of association, is instituted with a view to some good; for mankind always acts for an end which is esteemed good.”(Book 1, 1-3 Trans Jowett, B.,)
Aristotle is one of the first systematic critical rationalists and would find the view that rationality is the greatest evil, paradoxical. For Aristotle mans rationality is an essential potentiality he possesses, a potentiality which actualises under certain complex conditions. Man aims at the good, and he aims to know, and rationality is involved in both of these “ends”. He is, according to Aristotles essence-specifying definition a “rational animal capable of discourse”, and it is the “form” of being a language-user that transforms his “form” of animality(psuche). This is part of the self- actualisation process that uses the “material” of being a language-user in the knowledge-acquisition process and in the practical process of becoming a political being. If man did not, for example, live in a polis and engage himself in the process of surviving in a state of nature he would, on Aristotle’s view, revert to a primitive existential state in which neither knowledge nor ethics/politics would be important in such a life. The goods aimed at in such a state would be those of the beast.
Kant would also question Ricoeur’s proposed identification of rationality with evil. On the Kantian account, authorities that are tyrannical are perversions of the good will(the unconditioned condition presupposed in Kantian ethics): they are pathological phenomena which are the consequence of the perversion of the idea of the good-in-itself. The autonomy of what Ricoeur calls the “polity” consists, for Kant, in a concern for “serving the community”: a concern grounded in the requirement of the categorical imperative that one act in such a manner as to treat people as ends-in-themselves. This is a form of action which requires the formation of maxims possessing the characteristics of universality and necessity. In other words, if we are evaluating the phenomenon of tyranny, we are dealing with a pathological consequence of the perversion of the good-in-itself. Classical scholars will recall in the context of such discussions Glaucon’s demand aimed at Socrates, in the early sections of the Republic, that any definition of justice must meet the requirements of both being good in its consequences and good-in-itself.
Ricoeur also refers to Rousseau in his attempt to further articulate the the concept of “polity”. The Social Contract, it is argued, is presupposed in the relation between political authority and those affected. The social contract is a virtual pact that occurs principally at the founding moments of Nations: moments which inevitably include elements of violence. With this idea, the focus is turned away from the duties and responsibilities of authority, and toward the “consent” of those affected. In this context the relation is viewed in the light of the consequences of historical events. The question that is then posed is, “Do the citizens of a nation accept that conditions of the contract have been fulfilled by their government?” Much, of course, depends upon the nature of the conditions of the contract— are they for example, fundamentally ethical, or are they merely economic conditions favouring one class over another or one group of people over another(believers over non-believers). In other words: Is there alienation of large groups or minorities as a consequence of the policies and laws proposed and enacted by the government in question?
Ricoeur claims paradoxically in the context of this discussion that Rousseau is Aristotle(P.254). The argument for this strange identification of thinkers from very different “schools” of thought(classical v romantic) is that Rousseau’s terms “pact” and “general will” are in essence identical with Aristotle’s hylomorphic terms “nature” and “end” (telos). This “identification” depends on detaching teleological explanation/justification from material, efficient and formal explanations/justifications, which, on Aristotle’s account, ought not to occur if one is intent upon systematic explanations/justifications that meet the rational criteria of knowledge in general and political knowledge in particular. Rousseau’s appeal, for example, to “amour propre” was a denial of the importance of rationality in true Romantic tradition and an attempted celebration of the idea of man as a compassionate animal corrupted by his society. Man is born innocent and free, but enslaved by evil societies. For Rousseau it was Robinson Crusoe that best manifested mans original and innocent relation to nature and himself. Aristotle as a matter of fact was disliked by Rousseau, and Aristotle in his turn would have seen in Robinson Crusoe a being enslaved by Nature, a being waiting to be freed by the forces of civilisation. For Rousseau man is dominated by a sentiment which he calls “amour propre” from which flows, firstly, a tendency to favour himself over others and secondly, latent ideas of inequality which allow destructive activities performed under the banner of “honour”. Government, in the view of Rousseau, ought to be based on the general will of the people which the rulers have a duty to take into consideration in their governing activities. Unfortunately the “model” or “pattern” for this form of rule is, Rousseau claims, to be found in Rome or Sparta. In such societies we encounter a military spirit and “code of honour” which historically have had problematic relations to the ideas of justice and freedom. Rousseau, we ought to recall is a product of the “ancien regime”: a regime that did not sense the growing frustration of its citizens, did not, that is, concern itself with the “general will”. Aristotle’s view of the Spartan society was far less favourable than that of his pupil, Plato. Spartans were rumoured to have hated Philosophy and we know they admired and respected “honour-loving” heroes like Achilles and Hector. The suggestion by the Athenians that the times they were a changing and that Socrates and his love of Philosophy was the new ideal for heroism would have been ridiculed in Sparta.
The crucifixion of Jesus,(cf. the death of Socrates) was, of course an act of civil authorities and there are arguments to be made that in both of these cases, power was being exercised outside the good intentions of the law, i.e. irrationally. These were not the violent acts of founding a new order, but rather acts designed to protect civic and religious authorities from powerful criticism. Ricoeur refers to Marx and the claim that the State is an instrument of class violence in the name of the controlling forces, is put in relation to Stalins rule, which represented the dictatorship of the proletariat. History has testified to the destructive forces that were released during this period of Soviet History. Stalin rejected the “order” of “truth” and the “order” of “the law” in the process of the militarisation of the minds of the Soviet people.
Ricoeur claims that liberalism was born in the eighteenth century:
“The philosophers of the eighteenth century devised the term liberalism which no doubt goes beyond the destiny of the bourgeoisies…In its profound intention, liberal politics comprised an element of universality, for it was adjusted to the universal problematic of the State, beyond the form of the bourgeois state.”(P.267)
There is no place for any form of the militarisation of minds in the enlightenment liberalism we encounter in the Political Philosophy of Kant. On the contrary, War is the enemy of civilisation in general and education in particular, in Kantian thought. For Kant, man both understands from a purely rational point of view that war is an evil but as if this was not sufficient he has also experienced first hand the horrors and devastations of wars. For Kant, therefore, any declaration of war must be an abuse of power which ignores the knowledge we all have in relation to an activity that always has unintended consequences and even when it achieves its military aims only does so at huge cost.
Ricoeur claims that Stalinism was overthrown by justice and truth and presumably he means that these ideas were valued by the opponents of Stalin: opponents which included intellectuals, writers and artists. The end result of the successful removal of Stalin was not, as we know, the creation of a liberal democracy manifesting its general will in the creation of political parties, free elections and a professionally run parliamentary system uncorrupted by special interests. Ricoeur wonders whether the liberal democratic system is fundamentally liberal or whether it is a residue of bourgeois politics, merely a variation on an old corrupt and violent theme.. Arendt in her work on Totalitarianism noted the ease with which political parties were dissolved by mass popular movements in the twentieth century, and the question remains whether once this has happened to a nation, whether political parties can ever re-emerge in a democratic form. Ricoeur points out that liberal political parties must be “liberal” in a wider sense than bourgeois economic liberalism. They must, that is, reflect ongoing free discussions in a society. Ricoeur also acknowledges the importance of the Kantian idea of freedom which, he argues is the central “problem” of politics.
Action lies at the heart of work and perhaps also the origin of Language. The first insights into the origins of language come down to us from Protagoras who claimed that the 4 roots of language are:
commanding
questioning
answering
wishing or requesting
These are activities that are intimately related to the following grammatical moods of language:
imperative
interrogative
indicative
conditional
subjunctive
Grammarians claim that the above moods or modes reflect a speakers view of the ontological character of the event/activity that is being referred to. Actions of various kinds are also a part of the account we are given by Julian Jaynes who investigated the origins of language in the light of his brain research and familiarity with Greek Culture, as well as with the more modern study of Physical and Social Anthropology. His interest extended to the origins of consciousness, and he claimed that primitive man was not conscious in the way that we are. He possessed a relatively complex language which, during times of stress, when questions arose that could not be answered, (or difficult to solve problems arose in work contexts), a voice from the right hemisphere of the brain emerged in response to the activity in the left and provided an answer or a solution. Jaynes called this the bicameral mind(a brain in which language was located bilaterally in both hemispheres). With the emergence of Consciousness ca 1200 BC, Language became centred in the left and we became left-dominant insofar as language was concerned. Bicameral man, then, was grammatically steered by interrogatives and imperatives when there could be no recourse to the other “categories”(in situations of stress, for example).
The interrogative and indicative moods in combination with each other, when developed to a sufficient degree of complexity, are important to our epistemological concerns. Plato and Aristotle were not, of course, bicameral men but possessed a highly complex critical form of self-consciousness. Aristotle, in his Metaphysics, pointed out the importance of mans desire for knowledge, and he also referred to the important distinction between “what” questions(indicative of facts) and “why” questions(providing explanatory and justificatory answers). The life of contemplation which Aristotle recommended is largely composed of all of the above grammatical modes. Our ethical concerns are related to the imperatives connected to “The good”, the account of which, provides the necessary context of explanation/justification so important to us. The optative mode is also important in this context because it provides us with answers to “what” questions relating to what we ought to do, or what ought to occur. These grammatical “cases” serve also as demonstrations of the categorical difference that exists between is-statements expressive of the fact of the matter(the truth of the matter), and ought-statements, that rely on ones own activity/actions and the activity/actions of others in the process of transforming the hope that something occur into its actualisation in reality. It was perhaps partly such grammatical considerations that helped to convince Plato and Aristotle to philosophically distinguish the “True”(Metaphysics) from “The Good”(Nichomachean Ethics/Politics). This issue arose again during 20th century Analytical Philosophy when debates over the logical relations between is-and ought statements resulted in objections to attempting to derive ought-statements from is-statements as well as attempts to reduce ought statements to is-statements. Both Aristotle and Kant would align themselves with these objections to naturalistic fallacies as part of their argumentation against positivism and all forms of materialism.This categorical distinction, it ought to be pointed out, whilst expressive of the “many meanings of being” thesis, is not pluralistic in the anti-rational sense embraced by Ricoeur. Rational principles such as the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason prevail over all regions of discourse and are essential elements of our understanding and reason. Ought-arguments resulting in specific ought-conclusions follow the same logical principles of deduction as arguments cast in indicative modes.
Against the background of these considerations, simple technical work clearly situates itself both in the grammatical spheres of the imperative and optative/subjunctive cases. The more complex this work is, the more knowledge will be required to perform it, and this may in turn require, as part of the learning process, theoretical study of facts and the related explanations/justifications. The simpler the form of work, the more conceivable it is that the learning process can occur by imitating and doing alone.
Ricoeur appeals to the theory of Janet’s which claims that the first words of man, the finite being, can be characterised as a kind of “imperative cry” which detaches itself from action and assists in the initiation phase of activity. This cry, it is argued, emotionally connects the word to the work that awaits. Ricoeur characterises this linguistic expression as a “plan”(P.200) once it has become part of what he terms “praxis”–indicating a Marxist view of both word and work:
“..the spoken word is, in a sense, and an authentic sense, an annex of the enterprises of transforming the human milieu by the human agent. This fundamental possibility justifies a Marxist interpretation of culture in which work is seen as the power which reorganises the full scope of the human.”(P.200)
The anti-rationalist tendency of modernism does not of course permit recourse to the rationalist works of Plato, Aristotle, or Kant, and this in turn reduces the alternatives available, but choosing to rest ones case on an unholy alliance of Marxism with Christian Theology, as Ricoeur does, is surely problematic. Both Marxism and Christianity mutually shun each other for good reason. The rationalistic response to this unholy alliance would be to see in it just one more attempt to resurrect materialistic, dualistic perspectives that had been demolished twice in the history of Philosophy first by Aristotle and then by Kant. Marxists characterise religion as “opium for the masses” who cannot afford to buy real opium , and this was an interesting statement to make by the Philosopher who hoped that the mass-movements (which he was helping to create) would rise in revolution against their imagined repressors and take control of the means of production: all in the name of praxis which took the form of economic materialism. Jesus may well have stated that it would be easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven(De Civitate dei), but the Marxist materialistic societies would have seemed to Jesus to resemble Babylon(De Civitate Terrana), an earthly “work” or faithless creation by men possessing “lost souls”—men who would not fare well when the Last Day or Day of Judgement came. This dualistic view of the body and soul and the above tale of two cities would fall into the realm of mythology for both hylomorphic and critical Philosophers : a mythology which failed to recognise the role of rationality in our Cultures, a role responsible for our just laws and the freedom of our citizens.
Embedding Logos in such materialistic or dualistic contexts where language is either human praxis or the word of God, fails to understand its relation to Consciousness, thought, or truth functional normative rationality. For Kant, man is engaged in a normative project which is directed by the categorical imperative, which in turn has faith in principles that connect ones human “work” with a free flourishing life. Work, for Kant, is also driven by the hypothetical imperatives that focus on the means to ones ends, rather than on the ends-in-themselves. This civilisation-building work proceeds largely in accordance with “conditional” judgements such as “If you wish to live comfortably then you ought to find work”. In this context causality reigns, and the principles connecting the conditions with what is conditioned are causal. Culture-constituting categorical imperatives, on the other hand, focus on the unconditional grounds that possess rational connections to that which they make possible. We can see from this comparison that categorical unconditional judgments differ from hypothetical conditional judgements in a number of ways but perhaps the major distinguishing feature between the two forms of judgement relates to the faculty of origin for these judgements. Categorical judgments originate in the faculty of Reason and employ General Logic whereas hypothetical judgments originate in the faculty of the understanding which employs “special” logic. The latter insofar as it employs causal principles is calculating the most appropriate means to a given end. The former explains and justifies ends-in-themselves in terms of reasons and the deductive form of argumentation.
Language, according to Freud, was a means of bringing preconscious and unconscious “material” into the domain of consciousness, which Freud characterised as a vicissitude of Instinct. The way in which language is used will partly be determined by grammatical rules which will differ for each of the 5 cases referred to above(imperative, interrogative, indicative, conditional, subjunctive) which in their turn are related to the Protagorean activities of commanding, questioning, answering, wishing or requesting.
The use of language in religious activity will of course, differ, depending upon whether we are considering the Word of God using imperative and indicative language in the scriptures, or rather considering the parishioner praying(wishing- requesting) for guidance or salvation. This relation between God and the parishioner is reminiscent of the relation between an authority ruling unconditionally over its subjects, and those subjects which to some extent may be neither free nor autonomous, and may therefore be suffering the effects of an unjust undemocratic society (in the hope of a better form of existence upon the advent of Judgment Day). If the suffering continues with no end in sight it is just a matter of time before a Reformation or a more serious secular revolution dissolves the tenuous relation between God and the faithful. This, it needs to be pointed out, is not the relation either Aristotle or Kant possessed in relation to their religions. For both these philosophers, God was an idea, an arché or principle, explaining or justifying certain truths and norms.
The most interesting use of religious language Ricoeur points to in his work “The Symbolism of Evil”(Trans Buchanan, E., Boston, Beacon Press, 1963) is the confession made by a “guilty consciousness” of his sins. This is of interest to Ricoeur because it is an utterance of man about himself. The source of the utterance, Ricoeur claims, is the sympathetic imagination. The language involved in this activity is a mix of grammatical cases which express an emotional matrix of suffering, fear, anguish and the experienced unworthiness because the sacred bond between man and his God has been ruptured. This kind of “alienation” is a far more complex matter than that which concerns Marx, involving as it does, something more than economic “exploitation” in the external world but rather the peril of the soul in a sacred sublime form of life.
In the confession there is, of course, a possible wish or request to be put on the right path(the path of righteousness) and there are also indicative statements relating to the power of God in such matters. The secular view of prayer struggles to understand the meaning or point of the activity, and this might even place this view at odds with those philosophers who relate to their God as some form of principle. The relation of Aristotle and Kant to their Gods would appear to reject “worshipping” the sacred in any “confessional” form but there is nevertheless respect for what Wittgenstein would have called the religious “form of life”, which he sympathised with. Prayer can of course also be either an expression of suffering(similar to a cry of frustration) or even a reflective voice of consciousness that has the consequence of urging itself toward “The Good” in a life filled with problems. This latter form of prayer might take a philosophically reflective form and calmly, in an interrogative mood, pose questions about the meaning of life and expecting answers from the preconscious system of the mind–thus combining the indicative and interrogative modes of language at the expense of the wishing/requesting mode.
Ricoeur maintains that it is the imperative function of language that is the closest to the activity of work. According to him this function remains aloof from the process of living. He points out that imperatives initiate a “specific action” which is not aiming at the “production” of anything, but aims rather at influencing an outcome via the actualisation of an intention(thus making the thought involved with the intention true). Ricoeur refuses this last Kantian appeal to Truth and Knowledge and prefers to remain in his reflection at the level of “influence” in relation to the “meaning” of language. If we are to believe Frege, language is constituted of both sense and reference: applying this to the imperative form of language suggests that when we understand an imperative, part of that understanding transcends the sense of the words, and takes us to their reference. It might be that it is this dimension of reference and truth that differentiates an imperative from the wish/request mode, i.e. the wish/request form may involve removing the “natural” human authority that Aristotle pointed out in his ethics is related to the idea of “The Good”. Insofar as these words in imperative form make reference to Principles(e.g. Promises ought to be kept) they then become self-explanatory or self-justifying. Imperatives of this form thus range over what-questions and why-questions. There is, as Ricoeur emphasised, no technological or merely causal relation relation between words of this form and the result produced because, as Anscombe pointed out, an intention is specifically related to the why-question and a reason for acting rather than any cause. This form cannot be justified by the principles of the productive sciences, but rather require an appeal to the principles of the theoretical and the practical sciences. The spectre of Wittgenstein’s essence-specifying grammatical definitions arises in the context of this discussion, and we should recall his final justification at the end of the chain of what and why-questions, e.g. “This is what we do!”. Wittgensteins investigations into the uses of language and grammatical justifications are not empirical investigations but resemble more the kind of investigation we find in the Critical philosophy of Kant which Wittgenstein specifically acknowledged as an appropriate “method”. There is also an interesting similarity of the Wittgensteinian investigations, (into the concept of “forms of life”), to Aristotelian hylomorphic investigations into psuche.
Ricoeur mysteriously claims that it is the optative mode of language which is related to what he terms the fundamental act of evaluation. This view contrasts of course with the Kantian claim that it is the imperative “category” that constitutes evaluation in the ethical sphere of value. Our free lives pose many ethical problems for us, which Kant claims are best resolved by duty-steered imperatives that may constrain those “wishes which tempt us to favour our desires over the needs of others. He links self-questioning and the interrogative mode with the optative mode, and there is a suggestion of the influence of Heidegger and his definition of Dasein( a being for whom its very being is in question). Ricoeur claims that the question at issue is answered partly in the dialectic of the word of man in the realm of meaning, and partly in the work of man in the larger realm of Culture. In his earlier works, Ricoeur defined human existence in terms of the effort to exist and the desire to be. In this essay, “Work and the Word” Ricoeur returns to his Marxist analysis of work in terms of “alienation” and “objectification” thus stripping work of its cultural significance. Ricoeur claims that it is the task of Philosophy in Culture to offset “objectification” by a reflective questioning process.(P.213). This needs to be done if the discussion is to be lifted above the base-level of the “economics” of work, which is largely a reductive exercise in which the use of money, for example is regarded as a “fetish”. Ricoeur praises utilitarianism and technical education, and also the more disinterested role of the University in Culture, and concludes his investigation with the banal claim that both word and work are needed for the purposes of civilisation. For Kant, as we have noted above, it is the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason(general and special logic) and the categories of the understanding which include the categorical imperative that constitute Culture which Kant regarded as higher form of communal life than “civilisation”. The latter is, in Kant’s view driven by hypothetical imperatives which strive for homeostasis and happiness(which for Kant was the principle of self-love in disguise). The hypothetical imperatives of civilisation are of course important for the meeting of our needs for safety and security but only categorical imperatives and the principles related to them can sufficiently answer the aporetic questions raised in relation to the being of our humanity or explain the inner awe and wonder we feel when we think about the moral law within us. For Aristotle, the attachment to a dogma such as Marxism, would constitute a very limited realm of value that concerned itself only with the external world and ones basic desires. The values of the body and the soul, and their intimate relation, is bypassed in Marxist theory where men become mechanical parts in a materialistic system aiming at “production”, This, on a hylomorphic view, would constitute a very limited conception of “The Good” mentioned in the Nichomachean Ethics. Marxist theory, from the point of view of Hylomorphic political theory, appears to have omitted consideration of the most important synthesis of the thesis of oligarchic values and the antithesis of democratic values. Aristotle called this synthesis constitutional politics, and attributed it to the value-system of the middle class: a value system embracing the contexts of exploration and explanation/justification that we find in the cultural activities of the theoretical, practical, and productive sciences. Amongst such values we are likely to find the idea of freedom, the idea of justice, and the idea of the importance of knowledge which for both Aristotle and Kant could be defined in terms of justified true belief. These ideas constitute our Culture which certainly sees the word to be a part of the “work” of meaning and part of the “work” of investigating the many meanings of being.
The Renaissance, Ricoeur argues, was the moment in History when the pluri-vocal nature of truth revealed itself. He overlooked the work of Aristotle in this judgement. The period of the Renaissance can of course be conceived of narrowly or more widely, either as the era between the medieval period and the modern period that can be dated with the fall of Rome in 1527, or the work of Descartes over a century later(1637). Adrian Stokes, a psychoanalytically inspired art critic, wrote about Renaissance Art from the perspective of a genre he named “QuattroCento Art”: a genre he characterised in terms of forms that emanated from the building and walls of Mother of Architecture which could also “encase” sculptures and paintings. For Stokes, a key term for the effect of art was “emblematic”, a concept which captured the essence of a process that converted the subjective into something objective. In this process an expression resulted in an external material object produced with the intention of being responded to and in the spirit of a humanistic telos.
Renaissance art therefore did strive for a unity of the human world via its intentions and technically produced objects, and it did this as part of a wider project of restoring the classical values of Ancient Greece that had been temporarily occluded by the engineering/military spirit of the Roman World. For Stokes there was a kinship between the mass-effect of stone, the “blossoming” of wall emblems, the sublimated depressive anxiety of the naked Michelangelo figures guarding the Medici tomb, the look of alerted resignation on the face of the Michelangelo Delphic oracle in the Sistine chapel. This is the kinship of ideas but it is also expressive of the objective humanism that we can find in the hurly burly of the cosmopolitan Shakespeare plays. This “spirit” was repressed by Descartes’ essentially private meditations and discourses in front of a Northern fireside in a study far from the madding Shakespearean crowds: a study that was home to the mathematicians paper and pencil. In the work of Descartes, technical solutions to technical problems such as designing weapons for the battlefield displaced the concerns of epistemé, diké , arché (and the concerns of the great-souled men of Ancient Greece). In the Cartesian coordinate system life-forms moved mechanically in space and time but consciousness lived a life of its own in the Cartesian account of the Cogito: a life embedded in the mechanical brain. This “modern” variation on Platonic dualism has deliberately distanced itself from Aristotelian hylomorphism and its thesis of the continuity of human life-forms with animal forms of life: a continuity regulated by the principles of psuche. Descartes led the Renaissance revival of the classical spirit right back into the dark labyrinth of the dark ages, resting his final case on theology and the argument that only God can guarantee that our life is not a dream we will soon awaken from.
It is not clear what Ricoeur means with the phase “pluralistic nature of truth” but the resemblances of his phenomenological position to that of Descartes are clear. This together with a clearly articulated anti-rationalist sentiment, which rejects the first principles of Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophy, leads one to the judgement that we are dealing with a “modern” theory of man that also rests its final arguments on theological grounds. According to Ricoeur, all attempts to search for the unity of Being is a temptation and an evil that ought to be avoided. This may be a reference to a view that medieval clerics and scholars have held, namely “God is one”, and this judgement often occurs in relation to a discussion of the holy trinity of God the father, God the son, and God the holy ghost. If this is the case then the judgement that this kind of attempt to unify different aspects of the divine must be something to avoid but it is not clear why.
The Kantian view of God is not essentially an epistemological or ontological view similar to the Cartesian view in which the idea theoretically guarantees that our experiences are real and not the figment of a dream. Rather, it is the practical/politically/ethically-rational idea of freedom that Kant focuses upon in order to support the hypothetical judgement “If you lead a worthy life then the life one leads will be a flourishing life.” Ricoeur would counter such reflections with the claim that rationality is only present in mans life in the form of a “wish for reason”, and he would further claim that this is a flawed response to the fundamental ambiguity of existence. This wish for reason is furthermore characterised as a lie, but Ricoeur never engages directly with the arguments of Kant and prefers to keep a respectable distance to Critical Philosophy insofar as the concepts of freedom and responsibility(and their connection) are concerned.
Kant’s view of Truth in his First Critique is essentially a formal account and insists upon acknowledging the impossibility of a general definition of Truth. He agrees that there must be a formal agreement of knowledge and its object but points out that objects concretely differ from one another and that consequently any definition will lack this important “material” component. This position also testifies to the hylomorphic character of Kantian reflections which demands a relation between form and matter that will be in accordance with the principles of explanation/justification (which one will find are implied by the definition of knowledge that both Kant and Aristotle accept, namely “Justified True Belief”). The two principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason together constitute the “arché of Kantian metaphysical reasoning. Insofar as we do concern ourselves with the content of our knowledge claims(its objects) the categories of the understanding would indeed appear to be pluralistic and partly constitutive of the ontological structure of the different objects we confront in reality. Here too, we find Kant using hylomorphic reasoning and designating the content of knowledge as its matter, which on hylomorphic theory, is organised by “forms” (justifying principles, laws). Truth therefore also has a “form” which relates to the principle of noncontradiction that Kant claims must be regarded as a negative criterion for Truth. The matter of knowledge, on the other hand, is firmly situated in a context of discovery/exploration whose purpose it is to acquire information. Logic, on this account, teaches us nothing about the content of knowledge. Rather it is the faculty of Sensibility, combining apriori and empirical intuitions, that constitutes the “material” awaiting possible conceptualisation in terms of the categories of the understanding. Kant, we know, insisted that intuitions without concepts are blind and concepts without intuitions are “empty”, thereby drawing attention to the importance of both these elements of experience. General logic cannot be used at this level without the risk of falling into what Kant called “dialectical illusion”(Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, Trans Kemp Smith, N.,London, Macmillan, 1963, P.99). The categories of the understanding on the other hand, do concern themselves with what Kant termed “special logic” and the special principle of sufficient reason which is connected to the ontological structure of the categories. Kant also refers to the logic associated with this aspect of knowledge as “transcendental logic” which is specifically concerned with confining judgement within the scope and limits of experience. Here too, Kant warns us against generalising or using the categories outside these limits for fear of falling into illusion.
Whether or not one can regard the above Kantian view as a philosophical development of the Renaissance revelation of the pluralistic nature of truth remains an open question. One possible answer to this question consists in acknowledging the hylomorphic or Aristotelian influence in Kant’s work which carries with it a commitment both to the definition of knowledge as “justified true belief”(Aristotle begins his Metaphysics with the statement that we all desire to know) as well as a metaphysical commitment to the many meanings of being. In the light of this answer, it could be argued that if Kant is a hylomorphic philosopher this would in its turn constitute an elaboration upon the Renaissance aim of restoring the classical humanistic spirit of Ancient Greece. The special innovation of Kant was to consolidate the “home” for philosophy as a subject , namely in a university system that was at the same time operating on a principle of specialisation(probably on the model of the guild system). One important point to make in this context is that in the works of Aristotle and Kant, Reason is not merely a “wish” but rather a faculty which together with the faculty of understanding performs a regulative function with respect to the desire in general and wishing in particular. Desire and wish in the case of both Aristotle and Kant interact with the imagination. Another important question to ask is related to the extent to which one philosophically conceives of the abiding influence of Ancient Greece in our Culture(with special reference to Plato and Aristotle). Aristotle we know had great respect for his teacher and this respect was probably to a large extent mutual. Historically, however, probably because of the role of the Church, and its preference for the body-soul dualism of Plato, it was Plato that dominated the intellectual discussion up to that point when Philosophy became established in universities during the period extending from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment philosophy of Kant. It should also be recalled that both Aristotle and Kant provided powerful arguments against the dualism and materialism of their times. Both philosophers were rationalists that rejected “dialectic” in its various forms. Neo-Kantians would for example recommend against falling into the temptation of the dialectic approaches firstly, of Hegel that led later to modern “Cartesian”phenomenology, and secondly, to the political philosophy of Marx. The Aristotelian and Kantian forms of rationalism both distinguish carefully between, firstly the metaphysics of ethics which concerned itself with action and its relation to “The Good”, and secondly, the metaphysics of nature which principally concerns itself with material change and the events bringing about such change. The being of the actor and his actions belonged namely in a different universe of discourse to the material being of changing substances which retain their ontological identity throughout change.
Ricoeur surprisingly claims in his essay entitled “Truth and falsehood”(P.167) that the best known truth-activity is to be found in the domain of empirical science: a realm in which mathematics plays a decisive role in the subjectivising of our perceptual experience. It was truth activity in this realm, Ricoeur argues, that brought about the dissolution of what he calls the “philosophico-theological synthesis”. The method of verification and its relation to the facts is what was regarded as significant for theory building in this realm of truth activity. The laboratory and its instruments, for example,(e.g. the Wilson cloud chamber) become in this activity, “cultural objects”, with a particular cultural “meaning”. Ricoeur invokes the idea of unity again in this discussion and claims that different sciences will specialise in different regions of being, and any attempt to find unity in a universal conception of “Science” is problematic. Nevertheless, it is science, and not reason and the understanding, which for Ricoeur, is the “touchstone of truth”(P.170). This “modern” conception of science, argues Ricoeur, calls into question the Greek conception of epistemé, and the discovery of atomic energy is mentioned in the context of this discussion. Science recategorises man in this “conquest” and man becomes just another “substance” in a category of “things”. This view returns us to those eras in our history when dualistic and materialistic presuppositions reemerge in the philosophical landscape: a view which will eventually lead to Hannah Arendt’s conception of humanity as being partly constituted by the “new men” for whom “everything is possible”. Scientific truth, for Ricoeur, has a “dialectical” character and is related to a “circle” of perceiving, knowing and acting(P.172). Somehow, in some obscure fashion, on this account, ethical choices begin to form in relation to the historical choices we have made over time as part of an endless questioning of the grounds of our ethical commitments and subsequent action. Part of this questioning occurs in aesthetic contexts when the artist uses “imagination” to both create something new, and to criticise life and perhaps the world as a whole. Ricoeur claims that if the artist is searching for unity, this unity is a lie and merely a wished-for entity that uses the authority of the artist “violently”. In true dialectical fashion, Ricoeur then also admits that the unity of Reason and Life, is a possibility as long as one does not attempt to tie them together too soon(P.176): this is a variation of a criticism Ricoeur makes of the ontological phenomenology of Heidegger, a philosopher he admires.
Ricoeur provides us with his own solution to the problem of unity by reference to those theological truths that are revelatory of a Person. This person is characterised in the truths of the scriptures and it is these truths that preachers attempt to communicate in their sermons. Of course we are reminded that the authority of theology is also “violent” in its essence. The above concentration on the particular(the particular life of a particular person) opposes the program of Philosophy whose view of unity is in terms of universal understanding. Ricoeur does insist, however, that the word of God is a “good” authority. What Ricoeur calls the “pathos” of authority does not however integrate easily with what he calls the “pathos” of freedom (which insofar as the theologian is concerned , it is claimed, is tinged with an anti-authoritative arrogance). Insofar as Kant’s critical philosophy aims at an “integral humanism”, it falls into the realm of the illusory. Yet we find here no mention of Kant’s Political Philosophy which Kant presents as a discipline with ethical foundations (which as a matter of fact he regards as a more encompassing discipline than theoretical theology insofar as our life is concerned). Ethics, for Kant, is founded upon capacities for judgement and choice that are based on a liberal conception of freedom, which amongst other things, is a freedom from the influence of a violent subjugating authority, and a freedom which in Enlightenment spirit “dares to use reason”. Ricoeur prefers to discuss Marxism, one of the sources of 20th century totalitarianism. He praises Marxism for being the philosophy of History par excellence, presumably because it embodied a rejection of the authority of a master class, the bourgeoisie, and also because it incorporated a defence of the subjugated class, the proletariat. Marx’s mapping of this historical relation between these two classes in terms of thesis, antithesis and synthesis ignored the political philosophy of Kant, which in fact inherited the Aristotelian vision of the importance of a “middle class” that embraces the most important values of the oligarchs and democrats who were dividing the city with their disputes and conflicts during the times of Plato and Aristotle. Marxism we know arbitrarily sided with the proletariat class on predominantly economic grounds that did not take into consideration the idea of justice as conceived of by Aristotle or the idea of freedom as conceived of by Kant. Ricoeur then claims startlingly, on P.185, that only Marxism can provide us with what he terms a “rational politics”.
Unity for Ricoeur clearly has a theological eschatological character that does not have the resources to adequately conceptualise the middle ground of Aristotelian politics: a middle ground which embodies the abiding values of oligarchy and democracy and rejects the injustices, inequalities and failures of these classes to respect the categorical law of respecting and treating everyone as ends-in-themselves. One would have expected any eschatological hope for an “integrated history” to, at the very least, incorporate these class-transcendent values. Instead we are invited to interpret this eschatological hope in terms of a Judgement Day or Last Day which presumably will bring History to a close with a day of truth in the person of Jesus Christ. This account describes De civitate dei as a very different city to De civitate terrana, perhaps because it is Babylon rather than Athens that serves as the model of the earthly city. St Augustine’s tale is indeed a tale of the two cities of Babylon and Jerusalem, but perhaps the more interesting tale would be that which examines the relations between Athens and Jerusalem: between the many meanings of Being and the monotheistic total authority of Gd who presumably gave us the freedom to build our cities rather than while away our time in a Garden of Eden.
In a short essay aiming at clarifying the issue of “unity” (P.192) Ricoeur claims that our relation to unity is also related to wish fulfilment and that the Truth cannot both be one and plural at the same time. The Aristotelian principle of noncontradiction claims that “the same time” must be qualified by “and in the same respect”, which leaves the door open for the idea of the Truth having different aspects. Ricoeur further claims that there cannot be any “intuition” of this unity because our relation to the world is a relation to that which is the most concrete horizon of our existence and toward which we can have a multitude of different “attitudes”(P.192-3) It is the power of perception which explains the necessity for remaining at the concrete level of the experienced life-world which is the source of all my acts, attitudes, cultural expectations and commitments. This life-world is then transformed into the Word(Logos) which cannot grasp the elusiveness of a unity that is the horizon for everything experienced. The unity of the life world, according to Ricouer, is “too prior to be possessed and too lived to be known”(P.194). In living all his attitudes, man is forced to “suffer” the plurality of all his objects”(P.194). The preferred form of unity for Ricoeur, is what he calls “eschatological unity”. This unity for the Christian is, of course, tied up with his lived faith. In this unity the charity of Christ, which is the hidden meaning of all human experience, will reveal itself on the Last Judgement Day and the Truth will be revealed.
Ricoeur refers to the biblical message “love thy neighbour” in his discussion of the modern world’s relation to this message from the Gospels. He claims that this message, emphasising the importance of the neighbour as it does, has disappeared and become abstracted into social institutions of various kinds(factories, military camps, prisons, concentration camps, etc( P.102). The idea of a neighbour as a consequence becomes marginalised, becoming a dream that we can awaken from once this world of ours falls into the state of ruin and destruction predicted by the Delphic Oracle. Ricoeur also uses the dramatic analogy of “committing suicide” in this discussion. It is interesting to note, however, that central constitutive cultural institutions such as schools, universities, and law-making governments, are regarded as repressive of positive social relations insofar as they trade in the traditional currency of Rationality rather than the crypto-currency of the power of the imagination. The image of society we are invited to form is that of a flawed creation heading for ruin and destruction.
Ricoeur calls “social man, “socius”, and connects him to the man of history, a man for whom the “love thy neighbour” message has been marginalised and who consequently does not cohabit well with his neighbour. This historical social being is a man of regret, dream, and myth, living in a state of chaos and needing the understanding of a friend. Suffering is a natural consequence of chaos and the neighbour is witness to this suffering. The neighbour stands outside the work context and is therefore untouched by Marxism and its conception of the “specialised” work process. The question to ask is whether “charity” is an abstraction in such a context, seemingly belonging to the private space of dwelling.
For Ricoeur, Evil resides in the objectification of social institutions and their divisiveness. It is further maintained that all forms of “progressivism” fail to understand such evil. Institutions of justice, in particular, Ricoeur argues, manifest:
” a foreign and cancerous passion, the passion of an abstract administration”(P.106)
This kind of description of institutions of justice is to say the very least, contentious, and implies that there is a “heart of corruption” present. Ricouer is here relying on the fact that periodic observations of such institutions may reveal such corruption, and that this then suffices for their universal condemnation. Institutions of Justice, however, are best defined by their telos or purpose which is to make just judgments and deliver just processes in a democratic environment of transparence and accountability. Individual instances of corruption ought not to to permit universal generalisation to the whole institution, its history and future.
Power relations, whether they be technocratic, ecclesiastic, political or military, are oligarchic rather than democratic. Such relations do not, Ricoeur argues, manifest those virtuous intentions which strive for the good of the individual and the community. Kant would, of course, argue that this is their purpose or telos, and what they ought to do, but Ricoeur does not, as we have seen, accept this form of ethical reasoning in the mode of the prescriptive. The categorical imperative of treating people as ends in themselves via the law: “So act that you can will that the maxim of your action become a universal law” is a problematic abstraction for Ricoeur. This form of reasoning is, of course, one of the foundation stones of democracy and requires considerable philosophical argumentation to defend: argumentation which must invoke the practical rational ideas of freedom, justice, and equality in the justification of duties and human rights. Periodic observations of the activities of our institutions can, of course, be the ground for making negative judgements about these activities, especially if these observations concern the corruption of the purpose or telos of these institutions, but the only way to measure the moral quality of these activities is via the above practical rational ideas which are situated logically and conceptually in the prescriptive ought-system of judgements.
The relation of man to his institutions, on the Kantian view, is “organic”, and this contrasts with the accusation of Ricoeur that our social forms of existence are “artificial”. This is not to deny that negative judgements can periodically be true especially when the focus is reversed from treating people as ends-in-themselves(phronesis) to treating them as a means to some bureaucratic institutional end(techné).
Ricoeurs solution to the problem of the alienated subjugated citizen in a chaotic society, is the initiation of charitable activity in relation to ones neighbour which as a matter of fact ought to be our natural instinctive response to the difficult task of living in a difficult sometimes dangerous world. Ricoeur’s reduction of the abstract “ethical” aspect of social activity to the more concrete descriptive level indicated in the message “love thy neighbour!”, fails to acknowledge the need for abstract judgments such as “promises ought to be kept” as families grow organically into villages, which in their turn organically grow into cities. Periodic observations record the disappointing facts that promises are made at institutional levels and then not, for different reasons actualised.If the reason for the failure to keep ones promise is related to dishonesty and promises were made solely for the purpose of acquiring power then this is clearly a case of treating people as means to an end, and the only rational response to such a state of affairs is not to abandon the imperative that promises ought to be kept, or indeed the goal of treating people as ends in themselves. The goal in such circumstances , rather, ought to be to judge this corruption in the light of the categorical imperative. Charitable acts towards ones neighbour and the keeping of promises are both categorical imperatives which actualise the intention of treating people as ends in themselves. Both imperatives may be regarded as “objectifications” but regarding objectifications as evil merely on account of their abstraction requires further argumentation which Ricoeur does not provide in this work.
Ricoeur notes the failure of the Greek city-states to survive as independent political entities, and the subsequent political need for larger entities such as nation-states. This organic development itself resulted in a need for international regulation of the kind envisaged by Kant(a United Nations regulating human rights). In such transformations, institutions are created which in turn need regulation by their communities if lapses from the central purpose(injustices) is not to lead such communities down the path toward ruin and destruction. In such circumstances it may be true to say, as Ricoeur does, that charity may be nothing more than an “alibi for justice”(P.108). This sets up a dialectical opposition between “socius”(the historical man) and the neighbour which, of course, is a part of the argumentation that is supposed to establish the truth of the claim that existence is fundamentally ambiguous. In this realm of ambiguity it is the power of the imagination, and not reason, or categorical understanding, that reigns. In such a realm, discourse fixates upon images, and one effect of this can be seen in the essay entitled “The image of God and the Epic of Man”(P.110). Ricoeur is, of course, aware of the limitations of conceptualising the image as an “imprint” and attempts to add an active dimension to this power by claiming that the image of God, for example, can be interpreted as the power of human creativity—thereby transferring the debate into the arena of the will and the power of thought. This creativity, Ricoeur argues, occurs in the midst of the chaos of evil which challenges our faith in the grace of God to “save” us. On the Christian account, Ricoeur points out, Jesus Christ is the rebirth of creation and the image of God is thereby given human form which enables a more concrete link to be made to the epical life of man.
“Our humanity is broken”, Ricoeur insists on page 113. This is the case because of the fundamental conflict between the private zones of the workings of individual consciousness when engaged in charitable acts towards ones neighbour, and the public zones of activity in economic, political and social life. Both zones are “mad”, Ricoeur claims, when related to the sane forms of moderation of our lives by meditation upon the image of God. In his further reflections upon this issue, Ricoeur turns to a consideration of the role of Language and invokes the biblical meaning of “logos”, which it is claimed is the name for God the creator. Creation is thus bound up somehow with language but it is not clear exactly how(P.113). Instead ,Ricoeur moves on to attempt to navigate a philosophical course between what he calls the dichotomy of the personal and the anonymous. Surprisingly, he turns to Kants work on Anthropology for an account of the “spheres of influence” that affect the reality and history of man.These spheres of possession, power and value, are situated respectively in the economic, political and cultural arenas of the activities of man. Ricoeur does not make this point, but we should recall in the context of this discussion, that Kant makes a clear distinction between that which assists in the processes of the civilising of man(possession, power) and that which constitutes his cultural being(e.g. that which makes him a worthy man and citizen of his society). Naturally there is a complex relation between these arenas of activity but, on the Kantian view, it is the activity in the Cultural arena that ought to regulate activity in the economic and political arenas. Ethical reasoning becomes the primary regulator of all significant human activity. This is similar to the Aristotelian account of ethical virtue in which areté and arché play important roles in all spheres of influence, e.g. doing the right thing in the right way at the the singular right time in accordance with appropriate prescriptive principles. Ricoeur argues that these “spheres of influence” help to avoid the dialectical confrontation that would otherwise occur between the private and public zones of activity referred to above. Ricoeur, given his opposition to Kantian abstract ethics, wishes instead to chart the “epic of the image of God” and ask how this focus can illuminate the significance of our three spheres of influence. Evil threatens the downfall of these three spheres especially via the uses of language for lying, gossiping, flattering, and tempting. These abuses together with the misunderstandings arising because of the scattering of various languages suffices for Ricoeur to maintain his sceptical stance toward the one singular message of Kant’s Anthropology, namely, that all is well in these spheres so long as ethical principles and laws regulate activity in them.
Ricoeur praises Marx for not being a moralist(P.115) and also praises Marx’s concept of “alienation”. Capital, Ricoeur claims, in agreement with Marx, “entails a certain destruction of humanity”(P.115), dehumanising man and turning him into a possession, a slave. In a world dominated by Capital, it is argued, speech and thought become fetishes.
Power, Ricoeur argues, is hierarchical in its essence and promotes inequality between men, and it is this phenomenon that History most concerns itself with. In the Bible, Ricoeur points out, we encounter the complaints of the prophets made against the mighty and powerful kings. Many of these kings were tyrants who had in various ways enslaved their people and turned them into cowards. This passion for power, Historians have noted, so often ends in madness and death. Ricoeur wishes to use theological anthropology to pick up the scattered pieces of man whether it be those that have been alienated or violently subjugated. Hegel is invoked via the idea of the struggle for recognition of the slave against his master, and situated in a culture that provides images of man via works, monuments and objects. For Hegel this process was fundamentally historical but for Ricoeur it is theological anthropology, and the striving after the grace of God that will help save man from himself and the evil that surrounds him. Such a vision assumes an authority that is created by God and it is admitted that:
“In spite of their violent nature, empires have been influential in advancing law, knowledge, culture, the well-being of man, and the arts. Mankind has not only survived, it has grown, it has survived and become more mature, more adult.”(P.121)
This of course, is roughly the vision of Kant but there is in Kant’s Anthropology less of an appeal to the image of God, and more of an appeal to mans nature as expressed in the formula “rational animal capable of discourse”. Kantian man believes in God as a guarantor of the summum bonum of a good-spirited flourishing life. Kantian man is also to a greater extent a political being, paying more attention to the practically rational idea of freedom than the theoretically rational idea of God. For Kant, Evil is wrought by the unsocial sociability of man, which so often results in antagonism toward his fellows and it is the failure to regulate this antagonism that generates evil. Regulatory mechanisms include discourse and the rational ideas of freedom justice and equality that permeates the declared intentions of our institutions. On P.125, Ricoeur partially acknowledges the gravitas of the Kantian account by acknowledging the importance of the construction of the City that will function in his account as a sign of the Kingdom of the imago dei. This acknowledgment apart, there is very little similarity in these two accounts given the central place of the power of the imagination in Ricoeurs anthropology. For Ricoeur, it is redemption and salvation that is the theological telos of the Kingdoms of the future. The role of sound judgement and sound reasoning in this vision is not clear. Neither is it clear how freedom and responsibility could possibly be justified in terms of a power of the imagination.
Ricoeur is clearly influenced by the linguistic structuralist position in his characterisation of subjectivity in terms of consciousness expressing the powers of perception and imagination in the arena of singularity and event -causation. He characterises such expression in terms of “meaning”. This issue is discussed in his essay “Objectivity and Subjectivity”, and Ricoeur admits that History involves knowledge of the traces of the past but simultaneously and curiously wishes to use the term “observation” in relation to the activity of the processing of historical documents. He also uses, in this context, the naturalistic term “working hypothesis”(P.23).Applied to the human and social sciences this involves the ordering of singular phenomena and the search for the “same” function in other similar events(P.24). “Types” of phenomena emerge in such a process, e.g. economic, political, cultural. The historical aspect of such a process involves the establishing of historical facts that Ricoeur characterises as the “integral past”(P.24). Kant is mentioned in relation to this “regulative idea” of the “integral past”, but Kantian rationalism is on the whole rejected on the grounds of unnecessary abstraction and sometimes the kind of concretisation of the discourse appears to be in favour of the kind of discourse one encounters in modern physics. In many respects this kind of commitment to “the science of human society” provides the strategy for historical understanding of historical facts. We know that trial and error and “working hypotheses” are common to both structural analyses of texts and the inductive work of physicists engaged in their work of exploration/discovery. Ricoeur refers in this discussion to the understanding of “wholes” organically, via the use of the imagination but not, however, connected to understanding and reason as we encounter them in the sciences of space, matter, and life.
History is conceived of, then, as an integral history of the actions of magnitude of past men as well as the values of “humanity” we share with all men as defined by the parameters of “sympathy”(P.30) Ricoeur separates understanding from judgement, by associating the former with “feeling and imagination” which, for him, constitutes what he calls a “good subjectivity”: a sign of a shift from “the logical” and towards the “ethical”(P.32). He associates what he calls the “history of self-consciousness” with this so called “ethical” perspective, and Husserl is invoked as a pivotal influence. We are invited then to replace the question “What is X?” with the question “What is the meaning of X?” Justification of the meaning of a phenomenon thus replaces justification via the objective cause of, or reason for, or conditions of, a phenomenon. The kind of meaning Ricoeur is in search of is that which can be attached to individual persons and singular works(P.36). History thus becomes the development of meaning irradiating from what he calls “irradiating centres”(P.39). Reference is also made here to the sudden appearance of centres of consciousness as events and structural forces are invoked, e.g. economic, social, political, and cultural. The reflective activity of the historian is thus subtly transformed into a subjective factor and connected with the curious claim:
“The object of history is the human subject itself”(P.40)
Clearly Ricoeur is not referring to the human subject in general, or human powers such as rationality and discourse in general, but prefers rather to refer to individual centres of consciousness engaged in involvement with singular works expressing economic, social, political or cultural “meanings”. Truth on this account is the personal task of individuals situated in contexts of exploration/discovery of the many meanings of Being( hoping ontologically to arrive at a terminus of true knowledge). Considerable ambiguity is implied in such a “subjective” account but, Ricoeur argues, this is merely the expression of “the ambiguous state of mankind”(P.56).
In an essay entitled “Note on the History of Philosophy and the Sociology of Knowledge”, Ricoeur maintains that there is a significant difference between a “Genuine History of Philosophy” and a “Scientific Sociology of Knowledge”. Such a science, he argues, has the purpose of investigating the economic, social and cultural conditions of thought in the spirit of theoretical hypothesis-formation. The History of social existence plays an important role in such a venture, and Marx is mentioned in the context of describing the working form of social existence that has essential connections to the economic realities constituting such an existence. In such theoretical excursions, both functional and meaningful relationships are described. The end result of such investigations is the ontological hope that empirical laws will emerge which govern the relation between dependent and independent variables. “Common types” such as the concept of “class” are appealed to, and this in turn appears to require an account of the relation between the singular social existence of an individual and the conceptualisation of an essence which goes beyond the category of “Quantity”. Ricoeur, in the context of this discussion, appeals to the idea of “logos” and the power of discourse, which, he claims, transcends the “realities” of “work”. Such an account:
“form the story of the thinker with respect to his own social motivation”(P.61)
The Hegelian concept of “irony” is referred to but the reflection appears to be unfinished, leaving the relation between logos and functional, meaningful relations we encounter in relation to social existence and the History of Philosophy, hanging in the air. It is unclear, that is, whether the spirit of Hegel is haunting these reflections or whether some more critical spirit is involved. In a later chapter entitled “The History of Philosophy and Historicity” Hegelian Philosophy is referred to as entailing a “systematic approach to the systematic method of the Historian”. Ricoeur explores the theme of understanding via Hegel’s account of Spinoza (who separated the philosophy of substance from “subjectivity”) and the paradoxical conclusion is drawn that it is this “separation” which explains the ethical aspect of Philosophy. Whilst this may be a correct interpretation of Spinoza’s Philosophy, it certainly overlooks the history of the term “substance” in Aristotle’s thought. Aristotle moved away from characterising “substance ” as a materialistic regulative idea toward a more abstract hylomorphic idea of substance as “form” or “principle”: this hylomorphic idea entailed no alienation of the “ethical” from the objectivity-constituting principles governing our understanding of social reality. The characterisation of this important realm of our existence in terms of “irony” is problematic in that it collapses and conflates a large number of distinctions recognised by both Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of the understanding and Social Existence.
Ricoeur accuses the Historian of not penetrating to the core of singular or individual existence because of an obsession with what he calls “typology”, e.g. class. The problem of providing an account of historical understanding is thus made more difficult because of the presence of the polarisation of the field of discourse by a false pair of alternatives, namely, Hegelian “systematic” philosophy, and Spinoza’s account of singular individual essence. As a consequence of the operation of these two dialectical opposites, Reason becomes a vicissitude of self-conscious reflection, and for all intents and purposes is “psychologically reduced” to the logos or meaning of consciousness. Focussing upon meaning enables Ricoeur to finally reject Hegelian Absolutism and side with the idea of self-consciousness as presented in the Philosophy of Spinoza. This, it turns out, requires a form of “projection” of oneself into another( in the process of forming contact with another) which assimilates the idea of a singular existence into the idea of a solipsistic form of conscious existence similar to that found in Spinoza’s reflections. In the context of such an account we would do well to recall that “projection” for Freud was a vicissitude of consciousness involving the imagination of a paranoidal form of consciousness that defensively protects itself by the falsification of reality.
Ricoeur obviously takes seriously the concept of “class” in History and Philosophy, claiming that the Cartesian form of rationalism emerged as a consequence of some kind of need of the French bourgeoisie. This form of sociological explanation relies upon a deterministic view of social and political reality that would be, by implication, rejected by Kantian ideas of freedom and creativity: ideas that invoke a form of self-consciousness requiring an agency that can uniquely cause itself to do things independently. In this context, Ricoeur acknowledges that reflective philosophical questioning on the many meanings of Being expresses a philosophical intention that is opposed to the kind of deterministic social causation referred to above. Ricoeur also claims that reference to “typologies” merely raise otiose questions. This may well be true insofar as the concept of “class” is concerned, but this point cannot be generalised to all ideas of “types” some of which are well embedded in the conceptual networks of our understanding and judgement. In defence of the concept of “class”, however, it ought to be pointed out that this concept has important implications for the description of a small range of social phenomena. Focussing on singular forms of existence also determines the kind of linear causality that may be appealed to in any explanation of changes in the forms of such existence. This form of material/efficient causality is , according to Aristotle’s hylomorphic account, a very limited form of explanation.
Ricoeur introduces the idea of “false-consciousness” in his account of the way in which written works are embedded in their “situation”. in some mysterious fashion the “work” in transcending its “situation” thereby “dissimulates”. It is not clear why Ricoeur wishes to maintain such a position but there is also reference to “irony” and also reference to Sartre’s aesthetic account of the relation of the artist to his work. The idea of “structural types” is also invoked in connection with Ricoeur’s claim that there are two aspects of historical understanding. He calls these “aspects” “models of the truth” and Pascal is called upon to testify to the “hypothesis” that the singular whole of one humanity is presupposed ante-predicatively by the historian and his understanding of his field of study. On the other hand, Ricoeur argues, man is plural and history must also be about the plurality of men and events. It is this dualism that is implied in different philosophical works and which motivates Ricouer’s ambiguous position which in turn results in the claim that Hegelian Phenomenology suppresses history in favour of the “forms of Spirit” that are nullified by Logic.(P.75)
“Lived History” is, then, on Ricoeur’s account, characterised in terms of “virtual structure” and “virtual event”. It is the interaction of this “thesis” and “antithesis” that then constitutes the synthesis of “The ambiguity of History”, a paradoxical conclusion given the fact that neither Truth in general, nor Historical knowledge in general can be “spiritually ambiguous”. On Ricoeurs account, both the “false consciousness” of Marx and the displaced consciousness of Hegel generate paradoxes which working Historians do not “live” or “experience”. In a chapter entitled “Christianity and the Meaning of History”, Ricoeur claims that a “false problem” confronts the philosopher, namely that concerning the opposition between secular materialistic views of “progress” and the Christian eschatological “mystery” of the world and life(with its implied “hope” for the “salvation of man”).
Ricoeur further argues that, in the realm of the works and tasks of man, and in the realm of knowledge, there are distinct possibilities of accumulation and progression. The history of techné and the history of moral reflection both accumulate and “progress” in their very different respective ways. The History of Socrates, for example, is the history of his decisions and acts as well as the events involving him. The historical account of the life of Socrates, however, is also a dramatic narrative that attributes an abstract value to the events of his life, his acts, and his decisions. Reversals of fortune in both directions are important in life narratives, e.g. the tragic reversal from good to bad fortune as a result of an act of magnitude that unleashes a chain of harmful events which end in impacting ones own life. Christian life-narratives highlight “reversals” of a more positive kind, e.g. the narrative of the reborn Christian who has been “saved” and who feels “safe” even in the face of harmful events threatening to impact ones life catastrophically.. Both of these alternatives differ significantly from the kind of incremental instrumental changes we encounter in the world of techné. Where does knowledge belong in this reflection: in the dramatic sphere of change or the less dramatic slower instrumental incremental sphere of techné? Technical knowledge obviously belongs in the latter sphere. Theoretical and Knowledge is a “form” the Greeks designated by the term epistemé, and this involves the understanding of principles that, once understood in the appropriate way, enable one to see the world in a new light– a dramatic change of historical significance for man. This kind of epistemological “event” obviously also involves a transformation of the personality of man– a rebirth involving seeing the world in a different way. This phenomenon, when it occurs in the moral context of action, transforms man into a different almost “holy” being and this can be, as it was in Kant’s reflections, connected with the Christian eschatological hope for the man who is “saved”. Such a man, it is assumed, can transcend his narcissistic desires and “sublimate” them by developing a desire to be worthy of the good-spirited, flourishing life.
Ricoeur conflates theoretical and practical knowledge(epistemé, diké) with technical knowledge and the form of incremental change associated with techné, and therefore misses an important dimension of mans personality. He speaks in this context of value and admits that it is difficult to show in detail how incremental technical progress could alone fulfil the destiny of man(P.85). He points to Adam’s flawed decision to break the vital bond with divine power, and this does not fit comfortably with the Enlightenment interpretation that Adam might be exercising his freedom to use “knowledge” to determine his future destiny. In the beginning of the Biblical narrative, the “reversal” for Adam gives rise to a connected “reversal” for Cain and Abel, when the former kills the latter, his brother. Ricoeur notes the lack of interest for epistemé in the Bible which chooses instead to focus on a future Dei civitate dei, in which man will dwell in this “perfect city”, loving his neighbours and his enemies– a city in which human relations and humanity(needs of the soul) is far more important than the instruments and equipment we need to meet the needs of the external world and the body which partly constitute our “civilisation”. Civilisations rise and fall, Ricoeur points out, but he is convinced man will endure cyclically, remaining one throughout a series of crises. It is this factor, Ricoeur argues, which enables History to study multiple civilisations. Yet it needs to be pointed out that History is not concerning itself specifically with narrating the dramatic reversals of events over time. History’s concern, rather, is to create a seemly “historical distance” in relation to these events and view them objectively through the lens of knowledge and “principles”. This kind of historical abstraction is overlooked by Ricoeur who refuses to see that the concrete can have an abstract aspect. He prefers instead to relate to those narratives that come as close as possible to “living” the events being reported.
There is, in Historical texts, a preference for the political term “citizen” in contrast to the more social term “class”, probably because the former is more categorical and universal: the term “citizen”, that is, relates to laws that cover all classes whether they are oligarchic or democratic. This more formal term also suffices to discuss the Aristotelian ideal of the “middle class” who follow laws respectfully in the interests of the unity of the city. “Class” is, of course, a more concrete phenomenon, as was claimed by Marx and his followers.
History is an epistemological project of man and therefore an important part of his education–especially from the perspective of the Delphic Oracle who predicted that everything created by man was destined for ruin and destruction. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle responded to this divine prophecy with the creation of the discipline of Philosophy: a discipline that strives to understand life from a timeless perspective, through the lens of a wisdom that uses knowledge in order to avoid the ruin and destruction of humanity. Epistemé is complemented with areté, diké, arche, and phronesis in the historical research process which formulates aporetic questions and provides answers which go well beyond “working hypotheses”. Ricoeur regards the above reflection as otiose because, in his view, it does not acknowledge sufficiently the importance of the singular existence of men and their works.
Ricoeur analyses the Christian faith in terms of the hope for salvation in a context of “mystery”, rather than knowledge. It is “mystery” Ricouer argues, that allows the Christian to transcend the essential ambiguity of life, men and their works. The Christian “lives” the ambiguity of secular history by interpreting and diagnosing it in terms of his faith in the sacred history or the significance of the “mystery” that has revealed itself to him/her. In a sense, therefore, the Christian lives in both of St Augustines cities(Dei civitate dei and Dei civitate terrana)
Ambiguity, Ricoeur argues,(P.94) is the last word for the Existentialist, but probably only the second last word for the Christian. The final word for the Christian is salvation, and it is this that separates the cities of Jerusalem and Athens(for whom wisdom or philosophical knowledge is the last word). Kant united these two cities in his resurrection of the ancient Greek commitments to episteme, arché, diké, areté, and phronesis and also united a possible commitment to the unity of faith and knowledge in the context of freedom and rationality that politically demanded a full understanding of the Delphic prophesy that man “know himself”. This theme was restored with Kantian Critical Philosophy, but for him there was nothing mysterious about the hope for a better world in the future, and that hope could well include the moral messages of Christianity.
The “hope” of Marxists influenced by the dialectical method of Hegel focussed upon techné and the expectations and demands of the proletariat for a richer materialistic future. This would be viewed by Christians and Kantians alike as the logical consequence of the denial of the importance of the spiritual and rational dimensions of mans life. Such a denial was only made possible by the assertion that the phenomena of man, his works, and his life are systematically ambiguous, and attempts to explain and justify these phenomena illusory.
The Translator’s(Kelbley, C., A.,) Introduction to this work notes the role of Gabriel Marcel’s thought in relation to Ricouer’s reflections:
“Gabriel Marcel stated that we live in a world which seems founded on the refusal to reflect. On several occasions he insisted that the fate of Philosophy and civilisation are intimately related, implying that the philosopher does not have the privilege of abstaining from participation in the crises of his epoch. Surely, there is no need to underscore the role of existentialism and of phenomenology in the “persistent unyielding struggle against the spirit of abstraction”(Les Hommes contre l’humain(Paris, La Colombe, 1951)
Both of these movements, phenomenology and existentialism, are motivated by a desire to return to things themselves or existence itself. Such a desire appears to arise from the belief that abstract thought has no signifiant philosophical content and allows anything and everything to be thought in abstraction from what is actually happening in the world. The constraints of the the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason do not appear to suffice for the phenomenologists and existentialists to create the “special meaning” they seek in their reflections upon our “being-in-the-world”: whether it be the world we represent or the world we aim to change via our voluntary acts of will. Kant, in the name of the Enlightenment, felt the need to tear down the medieval metaphysical towers of reflection clouding the philosophical landscape and further urged that we, in our philosophical reasoning return to the Aristotelian notion of the metaphysics of “first principles”.
Hegel, in the course of “turning Kantian Philosophy on its head” rejected the above principles approach in favour of a dialectical method that regarded any principle as just another “thesis” waiting to be countered by an anthesis and thereby become part of a synthesis which as part of an ever growing circle would become a new and equally provisional thesis waiting for rejection and the beginning of another dialectical process. The effect of this Hegelian discussion was to refocus philosophical reflection on “Meanings” and “Interpretations of meanings” as well as the idea of “Spirit”. This latter idea referred to a succession of spiritual ideas which have the effect of expanding the “field of self-consciousness”. Spirit is divided by Hegel into the realms of Objective Spirit, which covers the domains of economic, social, moral, political and historical aspects of being, and Absolute Spirit, which covered the domains of art, philosophy, and religion. This account separates the arenas of the moral from the philosophical and this requires special explanation as does separating the political concern for justice from the “absolute” concern of Philosophy.
We argued in an earlier work : “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and action”( Lambert Academic Press, Mauritius, 2019-2022) that History is intimately related to the principles of truth and knowledge in a way that will not be overturned by a dialectical spirit of teleological meanings forging into the future. This relation to principles acknowledges the past above the future and also involves a moral metaphysical import that will be related to the journey of the ages toward a Kantian cosmopolitan “kingdom of ends” in which both freedom and rationality will play important founding roles. These ideas will, for Kant, be important founding ideas of the political/religious telos of our “Being-in-the-world”: a telos Kant equates with a “hidden plan” of progress. Both Art and Religion, in Hegel’s view merely symbolise the “Absolute”, whereas Philosophy is the final spiritual outcome of what Ricoeur calls the “work of civilisation”. It is of course difficult to fathom how philosophical reflection could be unrelated to the political and moral dimensions of our existence, in the sense of presenting us with the “first principles” of justice and freedom, and also in the sense of how these “principles ” could be unrelated to the “principles” of History, truth, and knowledge. The Aristotelian/Kantian methodology of approaching phenomena from the perspective of what explains/justifies them is rejected by both Hegel and Ricoeur in the name of “unmotivated rationalism”.
The Aristotelian/Kantian conception of the law/principle is an organic conception that applies not just to the phenomena associated with psuche, but also to phenomena such as the transformation of villages into cities. For Hegel this kind of teleological transformation is an “abstract” process that will only reveal its true nature at the end of this process of “actualisation”. In such circumstances when the “end” cannot be used to explain “why” one did what one did, the focus shifts to the means to the end, which literally, on Hegel’s account of the march of spirit, could lead anywhere and everywhere. For Hegel, the only “principles” that can be abstracted from such a theoretical account of agency and action are those that Arendt focussed upon as the means or concern of the “new men” of the modern age, namely “everything was possible”(for a few) and “nothing was possible”(for the masses). It was these “maxims” that enabled those in power to mobilise the masses in favour of the “Obsessions” of those in power with “violent” solutions to problems requiring more abstract and rational/contemplative solutions. The “alienation” of the masses allowed the philosophy of the “will to power” to emerge as the motivating factor for “popular” governments. Knowledge and rationality as characterised by ancient Greek and Kantian thinkers were marginalised in favour “phenomenological description”. In particular, the Kantian metaphysics of morals and its associated political character was reduced to dualistic or materialistic accounts of phenomena requiring action-related explanation or justification rather than event-related explanation or justification. Hegel speaks in terms of world-historical individuals and world-historical events embodying world-spirit, rather than in terms of the action related ends-in-themselves we find in the Kantian idea of the kingdom of ends.
The major theoretical tools of Aristotle and Kant are of course the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason and these contrast starkly with the major theoretical tool of Hegelian dialectical logic which is Negation. For Aristotle, for example, it is not clear how the “organic” transformations from family-life to village-life to polis-life can be meaningfully conceptualised as movements of “negation”. Certainly a city is not a village and a village is not a family but this truth is limited in its meaning because a village is a collection of families and a city is a collection of villages and the relation of the family to the village and the village to the city is both an “organic” and a “practical” relation: a collection of families is a necessary condition of forming a village and a collection of villages is a necessary condition for the forming of a city. The fully formed entities of the village and the city are constituted of both necessary and sufficient conditions that are presented as part of the principle of sufficient reason. On page 156 of the work “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness and Action”, Vol 2, the following claim is made:
“There is no doubt, for example, that, for Aristotle, Normative life is naturally and rationally tied to the successive actualisation of powers and capacities of the “rational animal capable of discourse” and also along this continuum of actualisation there will be biological, social, and political manifestations of animality, discourse and rationality.”
The powers involved are potentialities of “psuche”(defined in terms of the “rational animal capable of discourse”) and have little in common with either the theoretical power of negating a thesis in order to expand ones field of self-consciousness or the “recognition” of ones self as a consequence of the synthesis involved in a dialectical process of negation.
This of course is a position that has little in common with the individual understanding we have of individual objects that is so important for the account that Ricoeur favours. Abstraction in the form of universal reasoning, Ricoeur argues, removes us from this sphere of the understanding of individual existence. The life of an individual is always singular and cannot be captured in the general formulae of rationality and this is why the primary category of investigation is “meaning” and why the context of exploration/discovery always takes precedence over the context of explanation/justification.
Ricoeur poses the question, “How can the events of History be meaningful if one is to maintain an understanding of their singularity and unrepeatability because of the unique position they occupy in the continuum of events that follow one another in a linear sequence in which successive events provide the “meaning” for the events that have occurred previously.” For Ricoeur, there can be no “objective history” without subjectivity, no universality without singularity. Singular existence can occur without being conceptualised but this power presupposes that several or many individual things possess something in common that can be represented on more than one occasion. This power of understanding conceptually, however, is one of the primary powers of thinking that prepares the sensible powers of perception and imagination for the act of representation in concepts that in turn categorise intuitions with a view to synthesising these elements into truth-conditional representations/judgments. Ricoeur criticises this Kantian picture of understanding by claiming that the task of truth is connected to nothing more than an ontological hope which cannot possibly “know”that the end one arrives at is truly explanatory or justificatory. What is further needed, Ricoeur argues, to explain the singularity involved in existential experience, is ” an active participation in the mystery of my body”. This position connects to that presented by Merleau-Ponty, in his work “The Phenomenology of Perception” where it is clear that the body is locked into a perspective or point of view that cannot be transcended in signifying acts. Man, on this view, is a “flawed creature”. Meaning is achieved by a so-called, “creative interpretation” of this “broken unity” of man. In true Hegelian fashion Ricoeur regards the meaning of History as ambiguous, resting on a “feeling” of a hope which cannot be founded upon what he describes as the “violent” synthesis of the truth..
The above reflections do not amount to a critique of civilisation, a theme that appears to have disappeared from a Phenomenological radar system that has been designed to detect “singularities”. The reduction of self-consciousness to a singularity possessing singular powers waiting for the “end” of action to “dawn” belies the Aristotelian-Kantian “abstract” accounts in which a transcendent self-in-general is endowed with abstract rights and responsibilities. We will not turn to narratives for an account of such a transcendental self but rather to the kind of tribunal that we find in contexts of explanation/justification. In such contexts we encounter complex accounts of phenomena relating to individual powers embedded in three media of change(space, time, matter) four causes of change, and four kinds of change, all of which relate to three principles of change which in their turn rely on the logical principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The kind of narrative that informs us of the dialectic of the master and the slave, ending in a moment of “recognition” in a context of conflict, is certainly a phenomenological exercise articulating a life-space concretely. The response of the later Wittgenstein to such a “phenomenological reduction” was to insist that the philosophical challenge was to provide an account that concerns itself with what he called “the possibilities of phenomena” rather than an account that concerns itself with their actuality or existence as brute facts. We can of course in concrete narratives “interpret” the intentions of actions but in so doing we should be careful to note that we are not finding linear causal connections between two concrete events, but rather we are giving a conceptual account of the relation between an intention and an action.
Ricoeurs conception of the self of self-consciousness shares some of the Hegelian animus but it does begin at an existential level and reduces the complex repertoire of mans powers to the effort to exist and the desire to be as manifested in the works of man. Ricoeur regards society as flawed and this fact manifests itself in the exploitation of work by society. In the preface to the first edition of “History and Truth”, Ricouer characterises his position as follows:
“I believe in the efficacy of reflection because I believe that mans greatness lies in the dialectic of work and the spoken word. Saying and doing, signifying and making are intermingled to such an extent that it is impossible to set up a lasting and deep opposition between “theoria” and “praxis”. The word is my kingdom and I am not ashamed of it. To be more precise, I am ashamed of it to the extent that my speaking shares in the guilt of an unjust society which exploits work..I believe in the efficacy of instructive speech: in teaching the history of Philosophy….As a listener to the Christian message, I believe that words may change the heart.”(P.5)
Ricoeur, too, like Hegel, raises the question of the objectivity of History and warns us of the danger of “global interpretation” of History. He also resembles Spinoza in his focus on the understanding of individual singular objects. There is an unmistakeable antipathy toward Reason and what Ricoeur calls its “presumed and pretended unity”(P.10) The conflation between theoria and praxis we encounter in the above quote fails to recognise the ontological distinction (recognised by both Aristotle and Kant) between The Good(in the arena of action) and The True(in the arena of events and their linear causation). The Phenomenological Reduction thereby brackets the world (that we categorically understand and reason about) and limits discourse to being about “things themselves” rather than the doing involved in the action of “making things true” and “making things better.”
One of the key questions posed in the final chapter of Ricoeur’s work is connected to the problem of the difficulty of the conceiving of the concept of forgiveness. In the previous chapter, we pointed to the fact that Arendt and the Aristotelian hylomorphic and Kantian Critical perspectives would have no problem accepting the psychoanalytically-oriented proposal of relating the concept of forgiveness to the concept of trauma, and the tendency of the compulsion to repeat connected with trauma. An international catastrophe such as the holocaust obviously left large numbers of dead in its wake, but it also left witnesses traumatised, and every public recollection of the event, is not always related to the “work of remembering” engaged in by Historians. Trauma, psychoanalytically conceived, is a compulsion to “act out” in response to the anxiety generated in the memory system by the traumatic event.
One public response to an international trauma is the reluctance to recall the event, but this act of forgetting is not always met with understanding by those that have been affected by the trauma, either directly or indirectly(being witnesses). In such circumstances, the desire not to recollect, may well be met with the war-cry–“Never Forget!”. War-cries, however, more often than not, are cries of pain for both relatives of victims and witnesses who view the act of forgetting with suspicion, believing that forgetting will result in a repetition of the causes of the trauma of the past. The concept of “forgiveness” is a complex concept, implying paradoxically, a “duty not to recollect”, and the motivation for this duty is exactly to avoid compulsively repeating the trauma in question. In such circumstances it is important to recognise the difference between the perpetration of a great crime, and the experiencing or witnessing of a great crime. The duty not to recollect cannot of course be directed at the Historian, who always has a duty to engage in the “work of remembering”, which includes the recording of the great crimes of History. The best concrete example of the response of a Historian to an international trauma involving a war-crime against humanity was the historical coverage of the trial of Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hannah Arendt. The implication of this coverage was that we could never “forgive” Eichmann the individual, but nevertheless in her work of remembering and recording of the event of this trial, it remained essential that the record be correct. Her judgment of Eichmann was that he was someone who “could not think” about what he was dong, could not think reflectively about the rights and wrongs of his actions. This abstract “philosophical” characterisation of Eichmann, caused a storm of controversy amongst those who thought that Eichmann was a “monster”. These objectors probably did not consider the weight of this criticism by someone who believed that thinking was essential to being human. Arendt also argued for the death sentence for Eichmann thereby also alienating those who believed that Eichmann could be “forgiven” for his part in a war in which it was dangerous not to obey orders. The conclusion that can be drawn from Arendt’s involvement in this affair is partly that the singular action of a singular individual is not part of the extension of the concept of “forgiveness”, which actually is a maxim/principle or public/national action. The individual stands accused in the court, and all those witnesses who failed to intervene perhaps became traumatised by their failure to act: but the guilt that is felt in this latter case is more moral than legal and it is no less real for being so.
The psychoanalytical problem of being continually confronted by an aggressor from whom there is no escape, is the problem of being then forced to identify with the aggressor and the consequent refusal to recognise the evil of ones own actions. The slave of such an experience inevitably wishes to be the master of other slaves. “Forgiveness” in such circumstances may then merely consist in a refusal to allow this process of identification to take place, which in turn, might include the refusal to hate the aggressor and become traumatised in the process.
Some crimes, Ricoeur correctly suggests are so terrible that it is difficult to even conceive of an appropriate punishment and they may constitute :
” a de facto instance of the unforgivable”(P.473)
The legal presumption of innocent until proven guilty for individuals guilty of such terrible crimes stretches the understanding to breaking point. The Bible of course challenges us to love our enemies, a piece of advice Freud thought was dangerous. Our enemies seem neither to demand this love nor understand it, but the point is that one should live without expecting any return on our investment. Such a capacity, Ricoeur argues, is an extraordinary gift.
The Great trials for the war criminals of the 20th century were, of course important for the victims and their relatives and provided for them, if not closure, at least a cathartic moment of resolution. Hannah Arendt in a later work entitled “The Human Condition”(Chicago, Chicago University Press,1958, 237) relates the concept of forgiveness to the concept of promising even if the latter seems to suggest power and political treaties rather than religious belief and rituals. For Kant, promising has an important ethical function that is conditional upon the Truth in that it brought with it the expectation that the state of affairs promised would be actualised.
Ricouer claims in the context of this discussion that Arendt foresaw that “there is no politics of forgiveness”(P.488) but this judgment is questionable, especially in the light of her response to the Eichmann trial. Arendt’s reflections on the Eichmann case surely implied that the historical work of remembering be transformed into a rational judgment that was reliant on a rational understanding of ethics and the law. But this implication would not have been welcomed by Arendt, who was not by any stretch of the imagination a rationalist, explicitly rejecting Kantian rationalism in a work on Kant’s Political Philosophy.
In a discussion of Agency, Ricoeur draws a distinction between the “Who?” of agency and the “What?” of the action”. This distinction of course marginalises the “Why?” of the action, which is normally revealed in the reason for the action which, in terms of Kantian critical practical philosophy, is the major ontological identifier for the action. The agent is of course in some sense the “cause” of the action but that discussion limits us, insofar as the Kantian account is concerned, to the categories of the understanding of the action, and is consequently more related to the “What?” of action(a question that is posed theoretically rather than practically). Kant’s critical Philosophy, as we know, demands that we turn to practical reasoning for an account of promising and its universal and necessary characteristics. Ricoeur criticises Arendt for situating forgiveness in the framework of acting and its consequences, rather than the theoretical relation between the agent and the action. On such a theoretical account, guilt becomes internalised in the inner world of the agent, and the theoretical possibility of forgiveness then requires the separation of the agent from the act. The concept of power that emerges from such a theoretical discussion then brings with it the further consequence that, if the agent can be disconnected from his action theoretically, then there is also the possibility of not holding him/her responsible for what was done. Yet we clearly saw Arendt, the Historian, holding Eichmann responsible for his actions, and refusing to accept Eichmanns defence, where he attempted to disconnect himself from his responsibility. For Arendt, in this work, the agent, Eichmann was connected to his action by the potentiality for thinking which he failed to exercise.
It almost feels that we are back in the Garden of Eden with our frustrated creator who rejects the exercise of our power of freedom to choose the power of knowledge to organise our futures. If we are flawed, our freedom is part of that flaw, and our creator must bear some responsibility for such a state of affairs, if we are to continue to use the language of the myth. The Kantian interpretation of this myth involves celebrating this act of freedom, and this choice of knowledge, whilst rejecting the accusation of being flawed. For Kant there is no shadow of radical evil darkening the light of our existence. Ricoeur, in fact, surprisingly cites Kant in this discussion only to reject his “vocabulary” because it is too “theoretical”(P.493). Knowledge of the Good, for Kant, implied the unconditional absolute of a “good will”, and evil was thus conditional upon this unconditional. This “vocabulary” however, was “paradoxical” for Ricoeur, simply because the potentiality for rationality involved , for him, an unacceptable metaphysical commitment. Kant would not have accepted any theoretical attempt to detach this good will from the agent, simply because of the practical claim that the good will was an unconditional assumption, and the connection between this will and the action was conceptual/logical. Kant’s rationalism, moreover, embraced the ancient Greek idea of arché or principle as central to the context of explanation/justification that we find in our knowledge of the Good.
Ricoeur discusses the “Garden of Eden” myth using the vocabulary associated with “The Fall”-from innocence, which Kant by implication rejects in his remarks on “Religion within the bounds of mere Reason”, as well as in his remarks on Religion in his three Critiques. Ricoeur attempts to close the gap between the Fall and Judgement Day with the idea of the “grace” of God that is bestowed upon the faithful. This network of ideas makes it difficult to uphold the ideas of Humanism and Freedom espoused in Kantian Philosophy. Kant’s idea of faith lies beyond knowledge and is related to the categorical imperative which regulates the activity of the will in circumstances of responsibility and duty. The ought-system of concepts(regulating both instrumental and categorical forms of action) in the imperative mood(expressing in the latter form of action, a moral necessity), is not reducible to the preferred grammatical category of the optative mood(expressing a subjective wish) touted in Ricouer’s criticism of Kant(P.491).
Faith is, of course, related for to the question “What can we hope for?” Kantian hope, however, is not the same as wishing but rather related to the territory of responsibility and duty expressed by the categorical imperative as part of the answer to the question “What ought we to do?” We hope to be happy but we do what will make us worthy of happiness. Whether we will, in fact , become happy(lead a good spirited flourishing life) is a contingent matter, which can only be hoped for. Hope and faith are related, and faith in this case is not faith in the Freudian God, the father, but rather faith in the divine architect of the universe whose work we can only glimpse through a glass darkly via the theoretical and practical principles which we know. This idea of happiness is, for Kant, the “summum bonom” of knowledge, duty, and faith. For Ricoeur, who, throughout this work has been engaged in the tasks of phenomenology and hermeneutics, memories are “faithfully” related to the past and the language we use to express them(in the optative mood):
“Faithfulness to the past, is not a given, but a wish. Like all wishes it can be disappointed, even betrayed.”(P.494)
What is it that we wish for, then, on Ricoeur’s account? A happy memory is his answer. This of course raises the awkward question about the relation of a happy memory to the truth of History. Presumably a memory produced by the “work of remembering” in relation to the holocaust, is a happy memory, but there is an air of paradox hanging over this conceptualisation of the work of remembering related to the holocaust. This position, however, is qualified by the claim that it is:
“up to the recipients of the historical text to determine for themselves, and on the plane of public discussion, the balance between history and memory.”(P.499)
So, the responsibility for telling the truth about the dead of the past is, to some extent, placed on the reader, and not on the writer of the text, who, after al,l was the agent who had access to the archives. Wishes are figments of the imagination, so it is not surprising that Ricoeur turns to a description of a painting by Klee(Angelus Novus) to illustrate a view of history he finds interesting:
“A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he fixedly is contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of History.. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling up wreckage upon wreckage and hurling it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise: it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”(Benjamin, W., “theses in the Philosophy of History”. Illuminations, Trans. Zohn H., New yORK, schooner Books, 1969, 253-64)
Perusal of the actual painting, however, reveals that the above is a Rorscharchian interpretation, and requires much projection to arrive at the above description. Elisabeth Anscombe in her comments on Wittgensteins Tractatus, and its Picture Theory of meaning, remarked how a stick-man picture of a fencer does not have an unambiguous meaning. The diagram can both depict how one ought not to stand(in a defensive position) and how one ought to stand(in an attacking position). Pictures on such accounts are like Kantian intuitions and can be compounded into many different conceptual representations. The above is, of course, the reflective result of a certain form of anti-rationalism that wishes to emphasise an important role for the imagination in History.
Ricoeur then moves on to an attempted characterisation of the concept of a “happy forgetting”, the paradigm for which is “an amnesty”, which he claims is typical in those historical circumstances such as the founding of a society or community where violence is involved, e.g. the founding violence that occurred at the establishment of Athens. In such circumstances, Ricoeur argues, one cannot “be continually angry with oneself”(P.501) and the only reasonable solution appears to be an amnesty which legitimates forgetting and “sublimates” the anger. This is what Ricoeur calls a “happy forgetting”. He leaves any further evaluation of this “solution” open and claims that both the happy memory and the happy forgetting are best categorised grammatically in the optative mood, which of course is an anti-rationalist consequence of an anti-rationalist perspective.
Is memory to be defined as the struggle against forgetfulness? If this is true then such a claim would take us into the Kantian moral territory defined by the judgement “It is a duty to remember”. The “dispersion” of events discussed in part 8 of this review raises the possibilities of restoration and preservation of these events, thus enabling them to “endure” over time. If such preservation did not occur both individuals and institutional actors would be condemned to an unending cycle of repetition, compelling them to repeat the mistakes of the past, placing such agents in a similar position to the obsessive-compulsive patients that frequent the premises of analysts because of their tendency to, time and again call down upon their heads misfortune after misfortune. Such individuals must be trained to “gather” the dispersed events of their lives in the spirit of areté.
William James in his account of Memory, asked how it is that the aged brain not only “forgets”, but does so systematically, beginning with certain kinds of concrete memory content. James wishes to lift the “cause” of the brain into the centre of the discussion. This tendency is still with us, and we continue to witness attempts to reduce memory to the facilitation of neuronal pathways that have previously been innervated in the course of experience. Much of this kind of discussion, however, removes us from our everyday understanding of memory and how it relates to experience.
Phenomenology, Ricoeur argues, regards the knowledge we have of what is happening in the brain, as irrelevant to the explanation of conscious experience, or the explanation of psychological states and processes in general. Pathological behaviour, can however, often be ascribed to brain dysfunction, and such forms of explanation may well reveal the material and efficient causation involved in the structures of psychological functions such as colour perception. In such pathological conditions, the gradual loss of colour-saturation in ones visual field, reveals that colours are not stored in neural pathways as individual entities. Ricoeur also points out in the context of this discussion that neuroscience as such makes little contribution to the tasks of describing or explaining the phenomena of life(psuche). From a hylomorphic perspective, the knowledge we have of neural networks whose major characteristic is that they are either firing or not, will not be associated with the knowledge we have of the intentionality of memory, namely that it is “about the past”.
We can, Ricoeur insists, be curious about the causal relation of these neural-traces to memory functioning, e.g. especially short-term memory and long-term memory, which appears to be located in different regions of the brain. This receives some support from Freudian early theorising about systems of neurones, which either were modified in the process of facilitation(psi-neurones), or remained unmodified as a result of activity(Phi neurones). This “activity”, for Freud, was regulated by the Energy Regulation Principle(ERP), whose task it was to regulate and conserve the energy necessary for what Freud called “special actions”. The phenomenology of Heidegger, however, regards the neural “trace” as a present-at-hand entity whose explanation does not come from the arenas of ready-to-hand entities or Dasein(Being-there).
Ricoeur cooperated with a neuroscientist, Jean-Pierre Changeaux and attempted to insert the above neural present-at-hand entity into a larger dialectic of presence-absence:
“A trace must therefore be conceived at once as a present effect and as the sign of its absent cause. Now, in the trace, there is no otherness, no absence. Everything is positivity and presence.”(What Makes Us Think?Trans DeVevouse, M., B., Princetown, Princetown University Press, 2000, 150)
The authors continue this reflection by suggesting that the neural trace is related to different forms or principles of organisation. Hylomorphism would, however, agree with the claim that a complete explanation of any phenomenon must include both its material and efficient cause ,and that, therefore, the physical conditions of memory and forgetting have a necessary place in a theoretical account.
Freud once remarked that if we have fully experienced something, we may never really “forget” this experience, i.e. it will always possess the potential for re-occurence in a contemporary conscious experience. On the material cause-level this means that the psi neurones obviously play a large role in forgetting. It appears, on this account, as if the phi neurone system play little or no role in either remembering or forgetting. Ricoeur’s account may place the trace in some kind of organisational structure but it does not appear to characterise this structure as related to the Principles of brain and mental functioning, namely the ERP, PPP, and RP. The epistemological principles involved in the dialectic of presence and absence cannot possibly explain the multi-layered phenomena of remembering and forgetting. The spectre of dualism haunts Ricoeur’s discussion, especially when he discusses the difference between the neural/cortical trace, and what he calls the “psychic” trace. Forgetting, it is admitted, can depend upon cortical damage, if that damage, for example, impacts organisational structure. The two kinds of traces are connected, it is claimed, to different heterogenous kinds of knowledge. This form of dualism was, of course, the target of both Aristotelian hylomorphism and Kantian critical philosophy, which somewhat surprisingly has succumbed to neo-materialist and neo-dualistic arguments that take no account of the arguments that have been presented by either Aristotle or Kant.
Recognition is postulated as some kind of unifying general term linking presence and absence, and the imagination is called upon as the unifier of representations and also as a key element of recognition. Hegel’s account of the master-slave dialectic is not discussed, but obviously lies lurking in the background of this reflection. We recall that the dominating power of the master is tempered, during the course of the relation with the slave, and ends with the master recognising the value of the slave. Whether this results in the slaves freedom is not clear, however, on the account of many of those espousing the will-to-power solution to the problem of human relations. The moral/political question of the legitimacy of the masters power over the slave is also in doubt. The Ancient Greek ideas of diké and areté would question the legitimacy of the power of the master over the slave, as would the Kantian idea of people being free and ends-in-themselves. Indeed Hegel’s master-slave dialectic is probably the precursor to Nietzsche’s reflections on will to power and both are essentially the result of phenomenological investigations.
Ricoeur then appeals to Bergson’s distinction between habit-memory and recollection- memory and the claim is made that the former kind of memory is related to “acting out”: a voluntary non-conscious exercise of the motor system that is connected to recognition only when something does not go in accordance with the plan or the goal of the exercise. This distinction raises the issue of the distinction between conscious remembering, and the preconscious form of memory ,that is operating in any performance of instrumental habitual action. (There is a form of knowledge, namely techné, that is involved in this kind of activity). Ricoeur then discusses Bergson’s claim that the brain is not a “representing organ”, but rather an organ of action.(P.431).This discussion is then connected to recognition, and it is suggested that “recognition” is connected to what he calls a “mixture” of the two types of memory suggested by Bergson.Bergson also proposes an imaginative illustration of an inverted cone in which the base of the cone represents the totality of memories in our memory system, and the point of the cone represents the point of action where the lived body interacts with the world. The memories in the system, in some sense, are enduring entities that stand ready as a potential to be realised in appropriate circumstances.
The dualism of the world as will and the world as representation continues, however, to dog Ricoeurs reflections and many question marks hang in the air over the claims relating to “mixed memories”. Ricoeur’s interesting solution to the problem of the relation of memory to forgetting, is to suggest that Remembering is only possible on the condition of forgetting and not vice versa. He points to a reflection by Heidegger on the topic of forgetting where it was claimed that forgetting is related to repetition. Freud is also invoked:
“We recall Freud’s remark…the patient repeats instead of remembering….forgetting is itself termed a work to the extent that it is the work of a compulsion to repeat, which presents the traumatic event from becoming conscious. Here the first lesson of psychoanalysis is that the trauma remains even though it is inaccessible, unavailable. In its place arise phenomena of substitution, symptoms which mask the return of the repressed under various guises…”(P.445)
This Freudian reflection brings us back into the domain of Aristotelian Hylomorphic and Kantian Critical Philosophy and simultaneously jettisons the pointless reflective oscillations between dualistic and materialistic poles of discourse. The preconscious/unconscious memories in our memory system are now placed in a dynamic psychic context in which the primary expression of energy is via the motor system. According to this model of explanation the world of images is a secondary world, supervening when the motor system for various reasons remains unactivated or deactivated(as in dreaming).
The reason why the work of mourning at the loss of a loved object is so painfu,l is related to the indestructibility of memory. The Reality Principle(RP), however , over time, in the work of mourning, does not destroy our memories, but rather converts traumatic presentations into representations of the past: in this process the images connected with the lost object will be defused of both wishful and anxious affections. The result of this defusion process, is a memory of an experience which becomes more accessible to consciousness, and this, in turn, means that these experiences can then be incorporated in a narrative which gives a realistic account of oneself and ones life. The past is no longer presented in compulsive repetitions which disguise the content of the experience, but is rather represented in a process of remembering which is authentically resolute.
The work of mourning, we have already noted can be a polis- phenomenon, a national response to a national traumatic experience, as was the case with the holocaust, which was just as traumatic for those Germans who were not in favour of either the Nazi party or their wars of choice they began, as it was for the victims of the Nazis. The trauma of the past causes repetitions again and again, until the work of mourning is done, and the less obsessive work of remembering can take its place and genuine memories formed.
Ricoeur recalls the amnesty granted to the Thirty tyrants from Ancient Greece. The aim of the amnesty was reconciliation in the spirit of forgiveness, and to this end the past was not to be recalled: recollection was forbidden, presumably out of respect for all who were traumatised. This spirit of forgiveness is one of the key ideas of Christianity, and perhaps of Religion generally(e.g. Buddhism, Hinduism, etc). The poles of the work of remembering, and the work of forgiveness, appear at first sight to be a humanistic interpretation of the religiously inspired polarity of the works of sin and the work of forgiveness. The Myth of the Garden of Eden contains revelations of the religious view of man and his flawed existence: his hubris in the face of God or Being. The myth, however, would have been better formulated perhaps, if it did not emphasise the attraction of knowledge as the problematic component or sinful milestone on the journey toward Judgement day. It may well be true, as Heidegger suggests, that we have been forgetful of Being qua Being, but this could still be the case, and the Garden of Eden myth could be interpreted, in the light of this interpretation, as instead celebrating the importance of knowledge in achieving the potential of the rational animal capable of discourse. Judgement day, on this view, would be the success or failure of man to create a kingdom of ends here on earth: a kingdom based on the knowledge of the good, the true, and the beautiful.
Instead in the religious form of the above myth, man stands accused of refusing to obey the commands of God, the father, who then paradoxically, becomes angry and frustrated with the hubris of his creation . Had the myth not referred to the fruit of the tree of knowledge(epistemé), but rather to the fruit of the tree of “techné”, the moral of the myth may have been more palatable for followers of Aristotle, Kant, and Heidegger.
There is an ethical dualism in the Myth between the forces of Good and Evil, but not an epistemic dualism: i.e. the mere act of representing the eating of the apple is not as such sanctioned. In the garden, it is the act that is the problem, and not the representation or the desire. The myth, then, is an ethical myth about what it is right or wrong to do. The Knowledge of the Good as presented in Plato and Aristotle integrates areté and epistemé in an unproblematic way, which allows easy application to the political and religious arenas of discourse. For Kant, it is clear that his three fundamental philosophical questions: “What can we know?” “What ought we to do?” and “What can we hope for?”, are also seamlessly integrated with the domains of political and religious reflection. In this unity it is not the relation of representation to action that is the cause for concern, but rather the broader question of the knowledge of the truth. It is, for example, the belief in false idols related to active worship that will be the ruin of the hopes and desires of mankind.
Ricoeur suggests in an essay entitled “The Demythization of Accusation(Conflict of Interpretations, Trans Ihde, D., Evanston, Northern University Press, 1974), that as long as religion is characterised in terms of the accusation of man for being flawed, the idea of evil will remain problematic. Demystifying the idea of evil cannot be done, Ricoeur argues, “by means of the resources of Psychology”(P.348). For Kant, evil is an ethical issue demanding reflection on the will insofar as it is engaged in the project of bringing about the worthiness associated with the kingdom of ends. For Kant, myths and judgement days, and accusations belong in the sphere of the imagination of origins rather than reasoning about ends.
Ricoeur points out, for example, that insofar as judging consciousness is concerned there is a hidden power of resentment(anger, frustration) that is eventually revealed, and such an image tests to the limit, faith in an agency believed to be universally good. This raises the issue of forgiveness in catastrophic scenarios such as the holocaust . The trial of Eichmann, covered by Hannah Arendt, raised this issue globally and demanded a global “working through” or attempted sublimation of the trauma. The consequence of Arendt’s philosophical reflections on Evil, and Eichmanns deeds, was a furious controversy that raged over her claim that the “fault” of Eichmann amounted to an “inability to think”(which of course for her was a major criticism). For many of those who had been traumatised by this mans actions, the imagination had created a non-human monster, and Arendt’s abstract portrayal seemed not just an inaccurate understatement, but deeply offensive. There are, of course, crimes of magnitude which appear to the victims to be impossible to forgive, and the holocaust certainly fell into this category of historical event. Forgiveness, however, from psychoanalytical, hylomorphic, and critical perspectives is directed at the phenomenon of trauma and the compulsion to repeat unless the trauma is sublimated by knowledge of the truth which is not the same as an endless obsessive repetition. Perhaps Arendt’s cool criticism was an attempt to provide such a philosophical-historical account.
Eichmann was sentenced to death and Arendt agreed with this sentence, as would have Kant(and Jesus for that matter). For these Philosophers and prophets, it is simply the case that some crimes are so terrible that the perpetrators ought to have a stone placed around their necks and cast into the depths of the sea. The act. for example, of keeping Eichmann in prison would merely have activated repetitions of the trauma over and over again, it might be argued. This paradoxically is not an argument in favour of the death sentence for a particular category of crime because we all know how inadequate and ultimately irrational some legal processes can be. Knowing this and sentencing innocent humans to death is itself a great crime, and should be avoided. It is important to understand that we rational animals capable of discourse have not yet been able to create institutions that can do divine work.
Ricoeur opens this chapter with a reflection upon the question of Being, and wishes to connect his hermeneutical approach(theory of interpretation), with the Aristotelian claim that Being can be said in any ways. One of the ways, insofar as Ricoeur was concerned, was the way of Nietzsche, who reduced Being to will to power, detaching it from the substantive and principle-regulation aspects of Being. Neglecting these latter aspects, makes the role of knowledge problematic, and marks a shift away from Aristotle’s hylomorphic theory in which the aporetic questions associated with the question of Being qua Being are situated fairly and squarely in the context of explanation/justification which in turn is regulated by principles and laws.
Ricoeur does not flinch, given the controversies circulating around Heidegger, from claiming that Heidegger’s work “Being and Time” was one of the best works of the 20th century. We know that he does not agree completely with the Heideggerian method, but it is otherwise clear that the two philosophers share much more than that which divides them. This is clarified in Part 7 of this review when their similar views on Nietzsche were articulated. It is nevertheless the case that Heidegger’s complex account of “Being-in-the-world”, in the context of the three ontological categories of presence-at-hand, ready-to-hand, and Dasein, is reminiscent of Ancient Greek ontological concerns. The invoking of Care as the essence- specifying characteristic of Dasein, was a Heideggerian strategy that Ricoeur, interestingly chooses to situate in a Kantian context of ends-in-themselves. The second formulation of the Categorical Imperative urges us to act in a way that treats each and every human being as an end-in-themselves, rather than as instrumental means-to-ends. One of the logical implications of this ethical law is the political implication for the polis, which the Greeks thought of as the soul writ large—namely that all citizens of the city must be treated by the state as ends-in-themselves(and reciprocally the state ought to be treated by the citizens as an end in itself). Heidegger might not, however, have agreed with this Kantian interpretation, but linking the ethics of the will with the ontological structure of the world, as Ricoeur suggested, does move Heidegger’s account closer to the rational positions of Aristotle and Kant.
The Heideggerian form of phenomenological existentialism also outlines a framework for adopting a critical stance toward analytical Philosophy and logical positivism, positions which have ambiguous relations to Aristotelian and Kantian rationalism. It is also true to say, that Heidegger’s reflections shrink from the forms of rationalism we find in Aristotle and Kant. Heidegger, in fact, very specifically holds Aristotle responsible for derailing the aporetic investigations into the question of “Being-qua-being”. As is the case with many phenomenological and existentialist accounts, the basic metaphysical investigation into first principles is reoriented into an anthropological investigation. In his famous “Kant-book”, Heidegger accuses Kant of failing to explore the role of the transcendental imagination in his metaphysical investigations into Being. For Heidegger, it is clear that the power of the imagination is a superior power to the power of rationality especially when it comes to exploring the question of Being. To be fair to Heidegger, his characterisation of the imagination, would not be restricted to situating it in the faculty of Sensibility, and charting its relations to the faculty of the understanding, which is the Kantian strategy. Heidegger characterises the power of the imagination as both historical and significantly involved in a work of expectation embedded in what he calls ” a moment of vision”. We are, Heidegger argues, thrown into the world, and this is the beginning of an existence, which is oriented as much toward the future as it is to the repetition of what “has been”:
“Only an entity which, in its being is essentially futural, so that it is free for its death and can let itself be thrown back upon its factical “there” by shattering itself against death–that is to say, only an entity which, as futural, is equiprimordially in the process of having-been, can, by handing down to itself the possibility it has inherited, take over its thrownness and be in the moment of vision for “its time”. Only authentic temporality which is at the same time finite makes possible something like fate, that is to say, authentic historicality.”(Being and Time, P.437)
Being and Time was written in 1926, 6 years after Freud introduced the Death instinct in a work entitled “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”. Ricoeur is regarded as one of the foremost interpreters of Freudian texts, and his interpretation of “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” refers hylomorphically to “the Reality Principle”(RP), which is a function of what Freud called the “secondary process” of mental functioning. The secondary process, on Freud’s account, regulates primary process functions such as pleasure and the pain of anxiety. In the Freudian context the imaginations role is as that part of the primary process that is involved in both wish-fulfillment and anxiety-related experiences. Both the Energy-regulation principle(ERP) whose telos is physiological homeostasis, and the pleasure-pain principle(PPP), whose significance is more “psychological”, are involved in primary process activity. Two “instincts”, Eros and Thanatos, are involved in constituting vicissitudes such as “Sublimation” and “Consciousness”, which in their turn can only be ultimately explained by “principles” in a context of explanation/justification. A complex vicissitude such as Consciousness contains, then, the history of the operation of instincts at both preconscious and unconscious levels, but more importantly such a vicissitude is regulated by all the Freudian principles, i.e. the energy regulation principle, the pleasure pain principle, and the reality principles are all “regulators”. For Kant, Consciousness is a complex operator that stretches over the faculties of Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason. Reason operates in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in a context of explanation/justification. Both historical and political judgements are embedded in different sensible domains, and operate therefore in different conceptual frameworks. For Kant, judgement in general performs the operation of subsuming the sensible particulars under the general concepts of the understanding in theoretical, practical, and aesthetic/technical contexts. Obviously the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason regulate the categorical laws of morality and the instrumental laws of techné. Political judgements rely on both moral laws/principles and instrumental principles(cf. the principle of prudence).
For Freud, moral consciousness is a vicissitude of those instincts that are mobilised by what Freud refers to as “the original helplessness of human beings”, and the path from this original human condition to the moral law runs via the help we receive from other people who help us to eventually help ourselves. What we are encountering in these reflections is the regulation of the primary process by the secondary process, in accordance with the Reality Principle. This understanding of the role of other people, relates crucially to understanding the medium of language, which for Freud was principally the medium for the expression of thought. Thought activity, however, can be split off from reality testing, and to the extent that this occurs, is the extent to which it is the expression of primary mental processes. The major logical characteristics of primary process thought, is its immunity to contradiction(no doubt or degrees of uncertainty), implying the absence of rationality. Hallucinatory thought is obviously an example of this type of primary process activity. The role of the Ego and the Superego are agencies that relate respectively to the external and internal world, and they are relatively “free” agencies operating in a body in which causality is operating in accordance with the ERP and PPP. These agencies are operating on an actualisation schedule in which pleasure centres, for example, begin at certain zones of the body and finally envelop the body as a whole. Parallel to this psycho-sexual development, in accordance with the law of causality, and the presence of primary processes, is a purely psychological development that probably begins at the beginning of the phallic phase, in which the pleasure ego is transformed into the reality ego, and object love begins. Once-cathected, objects become difficult to “abandon” on this path toward reality, which is strewn with “lost” objects” and “mourning processes”. This is clearly the historical aspect of our psychological development in which it is the happiness that has been lost, that is mourned. During this phase, we also witness the formation of the superego begin its journey toward maturity, via forbidden and refused objects. As far as the ego is concerned, phantasy-laden wishes are transposed by a utilitarian instrumental principle which reality-tests all content. In this process the mystery of desire is transformed into an authentic resoluteness that can depose the “false idols” of desire.
In human history it is religion that has played the role of demystifying desire, and deposing illusions. It has sometimes seemed as if the fate of the species is inscribed into the constitution of religious thought. Heidegger, inspired by Socrates, describes very well the religious and philosophical responses to the impossibility of conceiving of the end of the species. Socrates, we know, met his personal fate resolutely and authentically, even if his response was complicated by an unjust accusation and trumped-up charges. Socrates’ fate is obviously linked to the fate of Jesus who, it must be said, did not meet his fate as resolutely as Socrates, despairing toward the end of the process at the thought of being abandoned by his father. Socrates, then, remains the paradigmatic model of stoic resoluteness in the face of our thrown-ness into the world. Freud’s description of this thrownness, was in terms of an “original helplessness”, and it was his mission to discover the psychological problems that could occur as a result of not addressing the problem of our original helplessness adequately. Bronowski in his work “ascent of Man” followed up on this problem with the claim that part of the problem was the “long childhood ” of man.
The enrichment of Freud’s explanatory framework by the concept of narcissism was also an important milestone on the road to articulating the complexity of our inner life, and its unwillingness to “abandon” earlier libidinally cathected objects. The route out from the “wonderland” of sexual fixation upon sexual objects, runs via the vicissitude of Sublimation, essentially a defence mechanism that is a non sexual form of substitute satisfaction, which requires that the ego cathect objects in the external world. This defence mechanisms sensitises the human psuche to the truth: i.e. creates a form of Being-in-the-world in which the truth no longer “wounds” the ego. Sublimation may end in “The Prudence Principle”, which the ego learns to use, not just in relation to the external world, but also in harmony with the Id and the Superego. Here we encounter one of the obstacles to the actualising of “authentic resoluteness” which can be found in the Stoic form of life: in this drama of the agencies, the superego criticises or attacks man for his addiction to pleasure and one possible result is the return to the hubris of a narcissism in which man believes he is “superior” to those around him. The Ego’s task in such circumstances, is to assimilate the superego into itself and its view of enduring the necessities of life, in accordance with an attitude of authentic resoluteness—-a very advanced form of the Reality Principle.
Death, for Freud, was not a purely destructive instinctive but also manifested itself in the maladies of the most difficult-to-treat group of patients, namely the obsessive-compulsives. These patients manifested the symptom of the compulsion to repeat reported in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle”. The instinctive response to high levels of anxiety was to restore an earlier state of things, i.e. retreat to an earlier phase of development in which pleasure was secured from the serendipitous flux of life-activities. One of the key discoveries of Freud that helped him to postulate the idea of the death instinct occurred in relation to the experience of the compulsion of many of his patients to repeat repressed material in therapy sessions. This material emerged not in the form of memories but rather in the form of “reliving the traumas of the past”. This was of course distressing for the patients, as was their seemingly unique capacity to repeat behaviour which again and again called misfortune down upon themselves.
Heidegger too, emphasises the importance of death in his articulation of his primary concept “Being-in-the-world”. Being free for-ones-own-death was the key characterisation of this form of human “being-there”(Dasein). Obsessive-compulsives were, then not able to exercise this freedom, which curiously acknowledged that the aim of life was death. For Freud, the creation of a new framework of concepts enabled him to explain the otherwise puzzling behaviour and symptoms of obsessive-compulsives. In this new framework the libido was replaced by a broader conception of the life instinct(Eros) which aimed at binding men together in larger and larger groups.
Shortly after “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” Freud writes “Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego” and in this work he juxtaposes Eros and Thanatos, not just in a social context but in a wider cultural context. The aggression of authority figures is analysed as part of the analysis of the bonding processes in larger groups such as the church and the army. These bonding processes are of course merely the bonding processes in a family writ large. Identification with the aggressor and the wish to be like the aggressive agent are part of these processes. The narcissism that led to the narcissistic behaviour is also incorporated into the identification-process and this is partly why Freud claims that the superego has connections with both Eros and Thanatos: the latter connection obviously accounts for the weakness of the Ego, that then tends to reproduce trauma not in the mode of memory but rather in the form of reliving it timelessly. In the work on Group Psychology, the otherwise silent death instinct is making itself heard in social-cultural contexts which would later manifest themselves on the world stage in Germany and Austria. The “masses” recovering from national trauma were seemingly hypnotised by a leader intent upon reliving rather than sublimating the trauma in question. The sadism and cruelty of a superego-figure that refused the control of normal values, was a sign of the times, and can be said to have been predicted by Freudian theory. This phenomenon would occur not just in Germany but also in Russia. What we were witnessing in the development of Freudian theory was a psychological explanation of the political phenomena that were taking shape before our eyes. Freud was responding to the challenge of the Delphic Oracle to “Know thyself!” and also providing us with the tools necessary to strengthen our egos with the knowledge required to defeat dictators and tyrants.
The question that ought to be raised here is : “How should such knowledge be incorporated into our historical awareness?” Those International leaders who deal with dictators and tyrants, and possess this knowledge, have strong egos. Stable states need such leaders. The course of the political journey toward a stable state was a practical journey in which it becomes clear that everyone is equal and free to live to face their own death amongst other things. Life is a difficult business, full of misfortune which befalls everyone; it requires character and virtue(areté) if the ideal end of a good spirited flourishing life(eudaimonia) is to be achieved. The life conceived of by the Ancient Greeks was a life free of debilitating trauma and guilt, experiences which weaken the ego to such an extent that lost libidinally cathected objects become masochistically projected upon the ego. The resultant melancholia manifests itself in self-destructive behaviour and hate of various kinds. A strong ego with strong healthy ties to the external world, stoically engages in love and work, which are the building blocks of our civilisations and cultures. It is, as we have claimed, Eros which seeks to unite us into larger and larger cohesive groups but it is primarily through work that we achieve this task: the kind of work that takes place in political and educational contexts.
For Freud, it appears as if it is the love and work involved in civilisation and culture building that takes precedence over the love and work we put into religion, and it is somewhat of a surprise to learn that, according to Freud, these creative efforts bring only discontentment. Freud claims his Psychology is Kantian, but there are significant differences between their respective positions. Kant, claims, for example, that happiness supervenes if one does ones duty and possesses a good will. Freud claims, in contrast, that the sacrifices civilisation expects in the realm of sexuality are too great to bear, and this leaves man with a sense of discontentment. Kant acknowledges mans narcissism and his aggressive tendencies, but believes that Cultural activity of various forms can assist in the process of sublimating both mans narcissism and his aggressive tendencies. The consequence of this process of sublimation is what he refers to as the “summum bonum” of happiness. Socrates demonstrated his good will by doing his duty with respect to his death sentence, in spite of being convicted unjustly. He met his fate stoically believing that death was a “Good”. Aristotle also believed that death was a good but, not being an Athenian, and not having had the benefit of living under Athenain law when he grew up, he refused to accept the unjust accusations and sentence of death that was the consequence of an anti-Macedonian indictment. He was not prepared to allow Athens to ” sin a second time against Philosophy”.
The superego is an agency whose existence is only possible in the context of a civilisation or culture in which there is deliberate intent to curb the aggression that is connected to the death instinct. The solution to the problem is twofold. Firstly there is the ego response of the formulating and obeying of laws in the name of external justice: these laws regulate the behaviour of the inhabitants of the polis. Secondly, there is the more important response of the setting up of an internal agency in the psyche which regulates all activity in the spirit of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Initially the work of installation of such an agency is part of the work of the family but educational institutions and social pressures also assist in the process. Freud claims that the institution of this watchful “garrison” is only the first stage of a process initially guided by the “principle of prudence”. The final stage of this process involves regarding doing what is right as an end-in-itself(not merely a means to happiness) and this is the mark of a strong healthy well integrated ego. Freud does not specifically claim that rationality plays an essential part in this process but the implication is clearly involved in his claim that his Psychology is Kantian.
According to Heidegger, anticipatory resoluteness is not an everyday phenomenon and requires a work of remembering and a work of expectation that is “connected” and not “dispersed” as is the case with the everyday understanding of ones birth and ones death. For the most part, Heidegger argues,(Being and Time, P.439) Dasein understands itself in terms of its circumspective concerns, and “what” it is concerned with in its environment. The “Why?” which relates to the reasons for the totality of connected facts in a life, is not necessarily “Understood” in circumspective concern, and is more a matter for the demands that “Care” introduce. Incorporating what is present-at-hand and what is ready-to-hand into the “moment of vision” that is constitutive of true historical understanding is a part of the prospect of self-knowledge and transforms the entities we encounter in the world into world-historical entities. Wittgenstein, for example, in his lectures on Culture, asked what would happen to a culture in which one no longer recognised the origin of ones dining table. A fundamental interest in the origins and the ends of things falls into the domain of Care and is obviously an important aspect of any serious philosophical view of History. Losing oneself in the “dispersion” that results in not connecting the “whats” with the “whys”, is, of course a, if not the, everyday occurrence. Being born at a particular point in time is one fact, ones death in the future is another, and these facts are “dispersed” and not “connected” in the everyday understanding of the “They”. Time in such a life is not something flowing like a river, but rather a multiplicity of “nows” that are present-at-hand. Even instrumental work, where one uses clocks and calendars, may not be relating to time authentically, and might even be a means of fleeing from ones death–a looking away from the telos of Being-in-the-world.
Ricoeur explicitly criticises the above account because it appears, on his view, firstly, to not sufficiently include phenomenological accounts of the role of the body, or secondly, relate to the being of act and power(P.345). This, Ricoeur argues, is in turn related to the Hegelian concept of Time as presented in his “Logic”. Ricoeur refers to Aristotle’s essence specifying characteristic of memory, namely that “memory is of the past” and he suggests a phenomenological strategic move that “brackets” the future: protention is not involved in the retention process it is claimed. Ricoeur does , however, point out that this account becomes problematic when one needs to consider the Historians relation to the future of the city. One solution he provides is to realise that the men being written about in History, lived before the Historian writes about them, and this fact might be an argument for abstracting from the future or “moment of vision” component, that Heidegger speaks about in terms of “being-toward-death. Given the fact that we are, by definition, dealing with actions and events of magnitude, there is both angst and projection of ends that are rationally conceived. Ricoeur however, rejects the above Heideggerian account, and sides with Adornos judgment that Heidegger uses the “jargon of authenticity” in a very technical theory. Ricoeur suggests that we , instead, reduce the experience of the past to the experience of a lived body(memories, traumatic “reminiscences”) and treat death “abstractly”as a “fact”(P.350). The “factual” approach to time may well result in a vulgar interpretation of the Aristotelian definition of time(the measurement of motion in terms of before and after), namely, that time is a discrete series of “nows” or “moments”. “Motion” of course is purely a physical phenomenon and whilst the motion of an event might be a coherent idea, the motion of an action is not. The conception of a “Moment of vision” is not easily attached to an event, but the action of understanding something or reasoning about something, seems more appropriately connected to this “moment of vision”. “Action” is also more appropriately conceived in terms of the idea of “work” in both the “work of remembering” and the “work of expectation”. It is the latter that is less likely to see death as an “event” and more likely to formulate the idea of death in a “Moment of vision”( or an attitude that Heidegger terms “authentic resoluteness”).We have argued that both the “work of remembering” and the “work of expectation” is involved in the resolute recollection of events we find in the texts of the Historian. It is the synthesis or connectedness of these “moments” that resists the phenomenon of “dispersion”. “Care” is obviously involved in this authentic recollection, which aims at the rational knowledge of the past demanded by the discipline of History in contexts of explanation/justification. Care, for Heidegger is concern for the possibilities of Being he calls Dasein(Being-there) When, in the moment of vision, we consider the possibility of the death of Dasein, the care we encounter in the Being-towards death, is the possibility of Being-a-whole or what Kant would have called an “end-in-itself”. The possibility referred to above implies a triumph over the dispersion of events in time. The response of “fleeing” from dispersion, or ones future death, is an inauthentic irrational response. We know from another work on Kant that Heidegger is not a rationalist, and it is the transcendental imagination that “explains” the activity being referred to above. Ricoeur fixates upon this aspect of Heideggers account and attempts to “reduce” the above possibility to some kind of biological death inscription in the lived body. In answer to the question “How is death inscribed in the body?”, one possibility is via the loss of a loved one. A mourning process obviously leaves its mark upon the body.
“Being and Time”, Ricoeur, maintains, ignores the problems of memory and forgetting(P.364) and he further claims that in the debate between the Philosopher and the Historian, reference ought to be made to the epistemological and dialectical relation of presence and absence. History, Ricoeur argues, is concerned with absence in the form of the dead of other times(P.364). This move, once again, invites the invocation of the notions of representations and mentalities into the arena of discussion connected with memory and forgetting. Death, then, is conceived of as the absent in History, and the past is then represented as the kingdom of the dead—the tomb of the dead. There is also a sense in which History, in the context of this kind of discussion, becomes the “missing present”. The narrative is of the lives of the dead and death becomes the “black sun” of such texts.
The Human sciences, as conceived of by Dilthey, are concerned with the interval between birth and death: an interval in which we encounter forms of life(P.370). Dilthey argues that the Psychology of his time did not have the conceptual resources to describe/explain the fullness of this life(e.g. Ebbinghaus). Heidegger is clearly influenced by the work of Dilthey, but according to Ricoeur, Heidegger does not confront the problem of the role of the Historian in the historical process, but prefers instead to focus upon the theoretical/scientific account of the problem of History(P.375). Heidegger does, however, succeed in opening up a space of “expectation” within the space of the work of remembering, thus enabling the dead people of the past to come to life—-become present in spite of their absence. Here there is clearly a place for the power of the imagination(in relation to memory).
The importance of live testimony is again an issue addressed by Ricoeur in terms of the “crisis of memory”. This issue became very important in relation to holocaust deniers in the 20th century, but it is interesting to note that the Jewish relation to their ancient texts was one of almost complete trust in spite of the absence of “live testimony”. There have been sceptical challenges to this trust, when the Gnostic Gospels were discovered, and as a consequence, doubts have arisen about the completeness of the accounts given in our traditional biblical texts, raising, in turn, questions about the completeness of the “work of remembering” that took place in the process of assembling our Bible. Many philosophers, including Spinoza and Kant recommended that we focus instead upon the work of expectation connected with the moral content of these ancient texts. This amounts to a deliberate choice to concern oneself with authentic resoluteness of the world as will, rather than with the world as representation. This means that the presence-absence dialectic and the fact that the characters such as Moses and Jesus are dead, is largely irrelevant. Whether Moses did all the things attributed to him becomes of peripheral concern, but the work he did in casting aside false idols and focussing upon a journey to the promised land is one of the timeless messages of the Bible, which, of course, is not purely historical. This is not a voice from the tomb but rather a mature voice from the wilderness we all find ourselves a part of. This is the voice of expectation.
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.
The world of action and testimony are the conditions for the production of transcribed documents that find their way into our archives, as part of the “work of remembering”. Ricoeur delineates three phases of this process, culminating in the representative function of the Historical text. The created text is, then, subjected to peer-criticism and comment and must be defended on many levels, including that of the sources reaching back beyond archives, i.e. to the world of action and testimony. The historians representation is the result of the “work of remembering”, that is part of our human being-in-the-world or our human existence, which Ricoeur defines in terms of our effort to exist and desire to be. For Ricoeur, then, this representation is situated in a context of interpretation, but it is not clear whether this context is dialectical, i.e. subject to the conflict of interpretations. There is an attempt to link the term of “representation” to rhetoric and its intent to “persuade” rather than the more obvious strategy of connecting the historical narrative to the evidence of action and testimony.
The historical narrative is constituted by very different principles to those which constitute fictional narratives. The “work of remembering” is not the major task of fictional narratives. The latter form of narrative is rather constituted by a work of imagination, in a context of emotion and feelings of pleasure and pain. Ricoeur, in the context of this discussion refers to the “image of absence” as a common denominator linking the historical to the fictional narrative, at the same time acknowledging the aporetic problem of “entanglement”(P.238), but he does not subscribe to the above “rational” appeal to “faculties” or “powers” of the mind. Hylomorphic accounts would regard such faculties and powers in terms of material/efficient conditions.
Ricoeur discusses the work of Braudel and the Annales School of History and makes the following claim:
“To be sure, no one ignores the fact that before becoming an object of historical knowledge, the event is the object of some narrative.”(P.239)
There are strong arguments for this position, but it can disguise the importance of focussing upon action and testimony that are important components of the events being written about by Historians. Traditionally, action-oriented historical narratives can be associated with “individual-based”, “psychological” “descriptions”. In such descriptions the “work of remembering” focuses upon the singularity of the event, rather than its “conceptualisation” in universal terms. Such a move away from, in particular, the ethical universality of actions and testimony, move the context of discourse from a context of explanation/justification, toward a context of exploration/discovery, where observational knowledge plays a more important role in the discussion of “causation”. The move away from singularity, and towards conceptual universality, is a move that is in line with the political dimension of History: a dimension that is related more to rational ethical concerns, than the more emotional rhetorical concerns connected with fictional narratives. Neither the Aristotelian hylomorphic matrix, nor the Kantian Critical matrix, are referenced in Ricoeur’s discussion. Inserting the fundamentals of action/testimony/event into the above ethically and metaphysically oriented matrices would not, for example necessitate regarding events as singular, unrepeateable and individual entities, but rather conceptualise such entities in practical imperative-related discourse where we attempt to answer the question, “Ought this event to have occurred(whether the event concerned be a peace treaty or a war). By no stretch of the imagination can this form of rational-conceptual history be characterised as “serial-history” (in which the narrative designates a series of “point-like” events). Events, of course, follow upon each other in time, but their relations are more complex, and cannot be captured in a simple matrix of space-time-causation. Narrating, that is, in relation to a field of episodic events, is a very different matter to narrating over a field of forms of life “living” in a complex environment like a “world”, in which action, testimony understanding, judgement, and reason play decisive roles in determining what is happening. Historical narratives are also restricted to a “work of remembering” in contrast to the “working through”(catharsis) that occurs in a fictional “work of imagination”.
Ricoeur points out that we do encounter historical narratives that might seem to be conflicting with each other. The scope of this “field of possibilities” includes clearly false narratives “constructed” by agents, with a specific anti-democratic agendas in powerful institutional positions, as well as narratives that are basically the same, but are “nuanced”, emphasising one aspect of the past at the expense of others. Narratives generally possess a temporal structure with a beginning, a middle, and an end, but it is nevertheless the significant actions/testimony/events which determine how these events are to be conceptualised. Ricoeur refers to what he calls “period-designators” such as “The Renaissance”, and agrees that these cannot be “reduced” to events. This is partly because this designator is a telos of earlier beginnings that relate to the birth of Western Civilisation. This rebirth also refers to the the end of an earlier beginning.
Hylomorphic theory favours regarding the relation between a Principle, and that which it regulates, as the key explanatory/justificatory elements of any deliberation upon the relation of “The Renaissance”, and events such as the intensification of scientific, artistic and political activity. We have previously argued that events “happen” whereas actions seem to belong to a different ontological category of “something that is done for a reason”. One “interpretation” of the concept of “that which happens” is the substantive interpretation that can end in an ontological dualism presented by Sartre in terms of “being-in-itself” and “being-for-itself”. Heidegger’s metaphysical response to such a substantive interpretation (which builds upon an operation of negation) was the formation of the existential principle “Being-in-the-world”, which, if interpreted in terms of Kantian ontology, ranges over both events that happen, events that happen to me, and events or states of affairs that I bring about via my actions. Events that happen when viewed through the perspective of History, or the “work of remembering”, are states of affairs that are best conceptualised in terms of the aim at “facts” or “The Truth”. So, events that happen are remembered not as isolated facts or even as a totality of facts, but rather as states of affairs regulated by maxims, principles, and laws: states of affairs that ought to have happened or ought not to have happened. Clearly the types of maxims, principles and laws take the form of imperatives that are embraced in the spirit of areté(agents doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Ricouer for obvious reasons would not be happy about either the Heideggerian or Greek positions for the following reasons:
“Shall we say it is life, presumed to have the form of a history that confers the force of truth on this narrative? But life is not a history and only wears this form insofar as we confer it upon it. How, then, can we still claim that we found this form in life, our own life, and, by extension those of others, of institutions, groups, societies, nations?…The result is that it is no longer possible to take refuge in the idea of “universal history as lived”(P.242)
We can see how this way of thinking discourages appeals to Kantian ideas of universal history, and its appeal to a free will and a nature that has endowed man with Reason to regulate that will. The teleological aspect of this account is unmistakeable as is its grounding in the powers man both possesses and uses in the course of a life. For Kant, this teleological account aligns perfectly with Aristotle and is expressed well in his 8th Proposition from “ideas of a Universal History”(Kant’s Political Writings, Ed., Reiss, H, Cambridge, CUP, 1970,):
“The history of the human race as a whole can be regarded as the realisation of a hidden plan of nature to bring about an internally–and for this purpose also externally– perfect political constitution as the only possible state with which all natural capacities of mankind can be developed completely.”(P.50)
In the above quote, Kant is clearly arguing for an important connection of the “work of remembering” with bringing about future states of affairs, i.e. with a “work of expectation” in relation to both the telos of human nature and the resultant political kingdom of ends in which citizens are all treated as ends in themselves. This dimension of teleological argument has largely been lost in modern Philosophies of History. This teleological aspect was, of course, clearly represented in Ancient Greek ideas such as areté and eudaimonia(the good spirited flourishing life). For Kant ,”good-spirited” means “ethical” which, in turn, is very technically defined in terms of a good will regulated by universal law and practical reason. This kind of account is clearly not merely a history of events and states of affairs, but rather a history of agents living in a world of actions and testimony structured by expectations of what ought and what ought not to occur. This, to be clear, is not in accordance with the perspective Ricouer is inviting us to consider, namely a perspective which wishes to situate historical texts in a work of remembering confined by narrow epistemological concerns requiring some form of dialectical “interpretation”. Rational “absolutes” are rejected in favour of the power of the imagination that tie threads of narratives together in some kind of emplotment. In one sense, the focus upon the plot of the narrative, requires a focus, not just on events that happen in the sphere of influence of a “character”, but rather in a matrix of actions and testimony performed in a spirit of areté. Events are located in a spatio-temporal framework that must admit of explanations/justifications in terms of cause-effect and must also be subject to a process of investigation in contexts of exploration /discovery in order to determine material/efficient causality. The switch, however, to the context of explanation/justification requires focus upon actions and testimonies of magnitude issuing from characters, institutions, cities, and nations of significance. Practical metaphysics becomes, then, more important than theoretical metaphysics and its tendency to focus upon God and souls. The idea of representation has to be situated in this practical matrix: such a matrix is not defined by the rules of rhetoric but rather by the principles of politics and the laws of ethics.
Ricoeur leads us through the debate that led to narratives being analysed by structuralist theorists, and points to the importance of distinguishing historical from fictional narratives. “Events”, and not actions, become the fundamental unit lying at the core of the metaphysical heart of History. If we succumb to the temptation of paring away the ethical content of historical statements and judgements, we may well find ourselves speechless in the face of events of magnitude such as Auschwitz etc. Such events will then become opaque, and testimony will disappear as part of the effect of consigning to silence judgments relating to these events. This, of course, is not a typically human response to such events which appear to cry out for ethical and legal judgements, not to mention everyday rhetorical outrage at the lack of respect for humanity and human rights. What such reflections reveal is, firstly, that there are two different meanings of the phrase “work of remembering: one in which the historian “makes history” by the structuring of historical texts in contexts of discovery. Secondly, when the text created is then subject to review and criticism this is also a part of the work of remembering that situates itself squarely in contexts of explanation/justification.
Ricoeur takes up the interesting relation that exists between the representation of power and the power of representation. Power can be animated by an image of the absolute which, for example, attached to monarchs who were deemed to embody some form of “divine right”. This, argues, Ricoeur, is reminiscent of the eucharistic imaginative exercise connected to the presence-absence of Christ’s body that is somehow manifested in the ceremonial presence of bread. Ricoeur refers to this as the “eucharistic motif”(P.264). This kind of discourse is embedded in a rhetoric of praise, which is, in turn, a manifestation of the power of the imagination in relation to the representation of power. History is one academic attempt to neutralise the power of the imagination in favour of the more “objective” powers of understanding and reason. The representation of power thus becomes sublimated to the representation of justice, thus signifying a move towards the truth and the knowledge required to, for example, pass laws. In this shift there is a transition from “right obeying might” to the democratic ideal of “might obeying right” which places freedom, equality and human rights at the centre of political discourse. The role of the imagination is then characterised as an “arrogant force”(P.269) that encourages a negative view of categorical reason but perhaps results in the application of the Ancient Greek/Aristotelian idea of the Golden Mean being used in the search for areté.
From the point of view of view of desire and imagination, man can then be represented as dispossessed of power(P.271). Indeed, one act of representation, the portrait, is an aesthetic object which psychically distances itself from action and testimony, and situates itself far from the madding crowd of world-activity in general. History shifts attention from the aesthetic portrait of the individual manifesting power to the narrative of more abstract entities such as the nation-state and areté. The state, the Greeks assumed, ought to be free and self determined. It is a social manifestation of the ethical soul writ large–in contemporary terms what we are confronting here is the democratic soul of a people.
The ethical principle of “Promises ought to be kept” lies at the heart of our practical understanding and reasoning. The fact that “promises are not kept”, and result in a betrayal of our trust, is an event in the imagination, and does not affect the rational idea of what nevertheless ought to have occurred. The Principle “Promises ought to be kept” is, of course, a representation of how things ought to be in a context of explanation/justification, and not an invitation to embark upon an investigation in a context of exploration/discovery. Non-historical narratives describe “what is actually happening” in the hypothetical context of fiction. Such narratives can also be conceptualised “ethically”. The intention of an author might, for example, be to show what happens if promises are not kept. Perhaps historical narratives also have the function of “showing” what happens in circumstances where the “promises” are of magnitude, e.g. important treaties..
Ranke claimed(P.279) that History should not judge, but only “show” events–a kind of “picture theory” of Historical meaning that might be relevant in a context of exploration/discovery, but is only a necessary condition of judgements belonging in contexts of explanation/justification. Ricoeur ends his account by admitting that epistemological accounts of historical events has limitations, and perhaps the wider question to raise here concerns the ontology of historical being which is also a question about time: a question about the nature of the past.
Bloomberg:-Sanctions have not affected either energy or health care stocks as feared. Banks appear to be hit the most. Airlines may also take a hit —-many Russian planes are leased from the outside—Swift system can be circumvented if producers/buyers move over to e mail system–and of course not all banks are covered by the sanctions. Medium term inflation looks to be a problem but experts say that this ought not to cause interest rate hikes because these are designed to curb consumption related inflation whereas the coming inflation is supply related. Ruble tumbled and was frozen by Russian central bank at 8% but looks to have gone down ca 30%+. Jane Foley, a banker claimed that the Ruble market has ben artificially restricted and when the Moscow stock market opens there will be more pressure. The Ruble is worth one quarter of its value since the Crimean War. BP “selling”(who is going to buy) Gasprom shares 20%. One expert last night on Bloomberg called Russian shares “junk” Gas prices up 36% oil 5%. Markets are expected to be very volatile over next weeks. China might bail the Russians out but experts say they might try to “leverage” the situation–if they do not step up their options become severely limited—Russian interest rates up from 9.5 to 20% foreign investors stopped from selling their Russian investments. Moscow stock exchange closed today–Ericsson to suspend all deliveries to Russia. America releases 70 million barrels of oil from its oil reserves. Van der Leyen yesterday claimed that Russian central bank would not be able to access the Russian “war chest” of 600 billion dollars. The head of the central bank confirmed today that there have been no interventions in the financial market today. Pierre Andurand argues that oil prices were on the way up anyway because of “demand destruction”(switching to green energy)
Wednesday 2nd march 7th day of war)
Bloomberg Wednesday: The impact of the crisis looks like it is going to be stagflationary and not inflationary. It looks like one of the largest Russian banks Sberbank is going to technically default on withdrawals. It is refusing to pay back foreign withdrawals but will deposit them into an account in Russia which these foreigners cannot access. For the foreign investors this is of course a default but someone somewhere in international finance will need to make a decision. If this is deemed more than a technical default the bank is finished. Gasproms company that financed Nordpol 2 has been put into bankruptcy: 100 staff fired.The pain threshhold for oil is 120 dollars. Prices are going up because Russia has reduced the price of its oil but noone is buying and turning to other suppliers who are taking advantage of the war and raising their prices. Commodity prices such as wheat are rising and will likely stay high because the price of fertiliser has increased significantly(someone else taking advantage of the war) Many international companies are cutting ties to Russia even though the sanctions have not yet reached this level. UN diplomats walked out of a speech Lavrov was giving to the UN. CNN have addressed the question of how to deal with Putin and have decided on not treating him as a politician but as a corrupt gangster. A businessman Bill Browder who has played a key role in exposing the corruption of Putin has lived under threat of death for many years. His lawyer was arrested and killed in prison. Browder claims that Putin is not a politician but a criminal wearing a political disguise. According to him Putin invaded Ukraine in order to deflect attention from his growing unpopularity. Tom Bergis, a journalist from the Financial Times who has written a book on Kleptocracy, agrees with this assessment. Perhaps the walk out of the diplomats in the UN is an expression of this new attitude. Certainly the refusal to respond to his nuclear threat is a different approach. Many believe that Putins days are numbered. The Moscow stock market is still closed– never been closed for this period since 1998. China used the term “war” for the first time yesterday to describe what is happening in Ukraine–today they are reported to have been concerned about the Ukrainians and are talking to government officials. “Peace” talks today. BBC reporting a missile hitting a nuclear waste storage facility—Ukraine has appealed for help to protect these sites. In a speech by Ukraine rep in UN it was stated that war crimes hearings are going to open March 7-8. We all remember the chemical weapons attacks on Aleppo and civilians being shot as they run out of the city to avoid the chemicals( BBC interview—The weapons were used by Assad) This interviewee pointed out how USA claimed this was a red line in the sand and then did nothing about it. He claimed that this is a seal of approval for Putin to use these weapons. Germany predicts 5% inflation for this year(Bloomberg)–(Swedish rapport SV1–Gasprom’s shares in trading offshore has lost 93% of its value!! Sberbank lost 90% of its value offshore!!)
Bloomberg reports that Shell bought some crude today to try and stabilise the price?? Their problem, now is that refineries are either refusing to refine Russian crude or charging very high prices. Immediately after this report CNN showed a white house reporter saying that specific sanctions on oil are next in line for implementation if nothing changes in Ukraine. SVT reported Russia infringed Swedish air space
BBC(Interview with leader of demonstrators) Protests continue in 50 cities demonstrators arrested almost every day in St Petersberg. Russia is clamping down on news spread—reducing the speed of internet so text can be read but pictures cannot be seen on Youtube, instagram etc. Thousands of people arrested : most are fined 300 dollars some go to detention centres for 30 days and only three more serious criminal charges for extremism.
BBC Vote in UN 35 abstentions 5 against overwhelming condemnation of Russian invasion and condemnation of the threat of nuclear consequences: resolution also demands troop withdrawal
CNN 2000 civilians killed so far(Ukraine estimate):– school nr 17, university, and gas pipeline(close to the railway station where families were waiting to evacuate) hit by missiles today. Kremlin claimed from the beginning and are still claiming today that civilians are not being targeted by their precision munitions.
Bloomberg:- Gasprom and Sberbank have frozen assets in Norwegian trillion dollar wealth fund with 9000 stocks. US:–Stock losses from last days recouped today even tech stocks up–Ford up over 8%—– (J Powell of the Fed promised 25 basis points rise in March instead of 50)
SVT two independent Russian media channels in Russia stopped from broadcasting today
Thursday 3rd March 8th day of war
SVT (Nyhetsmorgon) Irene from Rivne(a Swedish speaker) interviewed : “The whole area was bombed and the ambulance could not come to the scene because they bombed the ambulance!” Rolf–“Civilians are being targeted indiscriminately–this is terrorist bombing”
BBC:- protesters arrested– violence was used by the police in several cities last night. Loudspeakers warning people from congregating in groups are also being used
CNN Video footage of Russian troops looting a safe from a Ukrainian bank. Zelinsky video: “The morale of the Russian troops is low” “Many captured Russians claim they do not know why they are in Ukraine”. Ukrainian civilians lying in front of military vehicles.
Bloomberg: “Australian business executive: “If you are making money from Russia at the moment it is blood money” Neither CNN or Bloomberg are following Lavrovs press conference live. Both channels say that if there is anything noteworthy said this will be reported later.
Bloomberg Interview on the theme of – Putin does not care about sanctions, how are we going to stop someone who is not looking for an “off-ramp”–“We are no longer talking about smart sanctions but something more far reaching. The sanctions are designed to create the domestic conditions necessary to remove Putin. Demonstrations are occurring all over Russia and we have barely got started. You can get arrested in Russia for putting flowers outside the Ukrainian embassy.”
Bloomberg, Tom Keane: “The biggest shock for me was to see the Swiss abandon neutrality”–Anthony Blinken “President Putin has grossly miscalculated”
Euro-dollar negative for 4 straight days–oil price up for 4 straight days.. Deutsche Bank—“significant statistical correlation?”.
Russian “uninvestable” stocks cut from MSCI, FTSE AND RUSSELL indexes
Luxury yacht seized near Marseille–Another oligarchs luxury yacht seized in Hamberg. Toyota Nissan Honda looking to retreat/ review Russian involvement. Macron -Putin telephone call:– Putin claims he has not achieved his goals in the Ukraine yet. Rebuked Macron for trying to “win time” with negotiations. Estonian ship sunk near Odessa–no further info. Russian strikes go into their second week.
Bloomberg: Macron told Putin in a 90 minute phone call that the denazification goal was built on a lie. An aide to Macron is reported to have said “The worst is yet to come”
Ruble deep in “junk zone”(Bloomberg) Germany(Economic minister) says it will not place an embargo on Gas and oil for risk of social discontent. Bloomberg points out that on the micro level no company dares to touch Russian commodities because of the “damage to their reputation”. China buys US corn and Soyabeans!
CNN :- Zelinsky video.”They are ten times the number of us but in terms of their goals they are ten times smaller than us.We are fighting for the freedom of our children. They want to destroy something we want to defend something”( Is this the miscalculation of Putin–an ethical miscalculation?) Indian and Chines casualties when shell hit university yesterday. JP Morgan–Russia may be unable to pay back its debts.
Friday 4th March 9th day of war
STV4 Facebook and social media are now blocked in Russia: previously one could read text but see no pictures because the speed of internet was slowed down
CNN 16000 volunteer fighters on the way to Ukraine(Zelinsky) Nuclear reactors in one of the Southern reactors have shut down because tanks with heat sensors fired upon the complex(the largest nuclear power plant in Europe). The fire has been put out and radiation levels are normal. Russian Tycoon M Khodorsvky spent 10 years in prison because of trumped up charges claims that Putin is unbalanced and believes he will be replaced but it might take a year or two. Putin believes that those who try to talk and negotiate are weak and he will continue to do what he wishes until he is stopped.Another apartment building hit by missiles last night(recorded on video)—possible war crime. Russia have several times claimed that they are not targeting civilian targets and that they are using precision munitions. Several schools have been hit. All the civilian infrastructure targeted is being recorded and will be used in evidence in coming investigations. Australian retired General warned that this would be a deliberate strategy because it was used with “success” in Aleppo. Putin has a timetable related to the pressure upon him at home—the war is not popular with a large segment of the Russian population–the longer the war goes on the larger this segment grows.
Bloomberg Nuclear plant attack and occupation raised tensions in the money market today. Moscow stock exchange still closed and will remain so until the 8th March. First 5million dollar foreign payment on coupons made yesterday. Only two rate rises predicted for US this year.
Euronews March 16th is a Big repayment day for Russian national debt. Cyberattacks by Russia may occur using “affiliate actors” attacking energy, finance, defence, businesses that are part of the sanctions effort.
Bloomberg headline “Ordinary Russians using bitcoin as a lifeline” Belarusian troops are resisting the “illegal” orders from the “illegal president” of Belarus. The leader of the opposition in Belarus claimed many Belarusians who are members of the opposition army are fighting on the side of the Ukrainians. She urged those who are being ordered to Ukraine to defect and join the opposition army in Ukraine. Record discount for Russian oil—no bidders. Dockworkers in UK refused to unload Russian gas tanker which has now left the port. Bloomberg headline: Dock workers around the world refusing to unload even though there are no sanctions on the energy sector yet. Stoltenberg: Georgia and Bosnia at risk if Odessa falls. Tom Keane: we remember the huge number of bodies sent home to Russia from Georgia. Is he going to revisit this experience? Russia predicted decline of GDP to levels of 1998.
TT
dag kl 15:13av Amanda Hällsten
Sverige kan räkna med hjälp från Storbritannien om Sverige skulle utsättas för ryska aggressiva handlingar.
Det lovar den brittiske försvarsministern Ben Wallace.
– En markering från Storbritanniens sida som vi är glada för, säger försvarsminister Peter Hultqvist (S).
Det vore obegripligt om inte Storbritannien hjälpte till om Ryssland i en framtid skulle utsätta Sverige för en aggression, säger den brittiske försvarsministern Ben Wallace under en gemensam pressträff i Köpenhamn tillsammans Danmarks försvarsminister Morten Bødskov och Peter Hultqvist.
Both Sweden and the UK together with 8 other countries are part of the Joint Expeditionary Force formed in 2014. The UK defence minister promised the Swedish defence minister at a meeting in Denmark today military assistance in case of Russian aggression. “It would be inconceivable not to defend Sweden in the face of Russian aggression”(Wallace)
BBC 20,000 Russian artists demanding end to war
Bloomberg Dale Buckner Global Guardian–served in Iraq “Even if Russia takes Kiev it is insurgence that is the problem —it is costly and Russia cant afford it.” Dale runs an organisation with people in Ukraine. Jay Newman says that the Russian national debt is worthless. Foreign coupon bond holders did not receive payment on Mar 2—Interesting! Is this the beginning of the end for many of Russian banks and of course there will be knock on effects for European banks, e.g. Deutsche Bank? Sell off of Chines stocks continues.
Saturday 5th March 10th day of war
DN: convoy heading towards Kiev has been stopped and a bridge essential to the advance has been blown up. The convoy appears to have been attacked. Source UK MOD, CNN
Bloomberg Larry Summers:- Sanctions have a delivered a quick and severe jolt to the Russian economy. The whole world has mobilised against Russia more quickly and with more unity than anyone expected. President Biden needs to make the transition that Rooseveldt from president of the new deal to president that wins the war: Biden that is, needs to transition from being president of the middle class to president of the defender of democracy. A jet flew from St Petersberg to pick up a dozen expelled diplomats(spies?) from Washington. Russia failed to honour a cease fire in a city where the people have been shelled and bombarded: no water no food. This is what they did in Aleppo.
SVT Hans Blix: “The attack on the nuclear reactor is a breach of the Geneva convention”
CNN Reports that Putin has claimed publicly that the imposition of sanctions are a declaration of war. Social media responses to this includes denying that it is a declaration of war and claiming that what Putin is witnessing is a special financial operation designed to save the Russian people from Nazi’s.
Sunday 6th March 11th day of war
BBC China is buying Russian wheat and energy, but the Chinese banks have not as yet linked up with Russian banks BBC World has ceased sending today.
CNN Reliable Sources Journalism is now criminalised in Russia with penalties of 15 years in prison. Many Russian independent journalists claim that “Russian Journalism is now dead”. Broadcasters that carried on broadcasting during Soviet times have shut up shop.
BBC 3500 demonstrators in Moscow St Petersberg and Siberia arrested today according to TASS–arrests are becoming progressively more violent.
Bloomberg: American Express suspend operations
CNN report that 4300 people arrested today for demonstrating TIKTOK suspending operations Children with cancer evacuated to Poland because of the risk of the shelling of hospitals Putin is sending 1000 mercenaries to Ukraine–what for? Column on the road to Kiev is still not moving. US considering oil embargo.
Monday 7th March 12 th day of war
SVT: Shelling from the sea attacking Donetsk communications. Cease fire in several towns to allow humanitarian help after two failed attempts.
CNN: Ukraine official opposes any business dealings with Russia–“Trading with Russia is making “blood-money” 700 Indian students trapped asked to be evacuated.
BBC: fertiliser shortage because 25% of the key constituents come from Russia–Looking for alternative sources but food prices may go up
Sky: Blinken speaking in Vilnius Lithuania. Headlines in English newspapers mothers and children running for their lives as shelling continues in cities where cease fire was agreed
Euronews: Rights groups and Russian authorities confirm that over 10,000 people have been arrested over last few days Russian and Belarusian gymnasts banned from future competitions after Russian gymnast wore the Z symbol supporting the war against Ukraine. The gymnast was receiving the bronze model and stood on the same podium as the Ukrainian who won the gold. Russian defence ministry has warned that those countries providing planes to Ukraine will be considered part of the conflict.
Bloomberg Gold hits 2000 dollars. US coordinating with EU over oil embargo discussions Oil prices up to just below 130 dollars almost 140 dollars in Asian session. Blinken nuclear deal with Iran close. China urges world not to put “fuel on the fire”. UK sanctions 11 oligarchs – R Abrahomivic not on oligarch list– Sanctions list(11 individuals) includes 100 individuals. German factory orders beat expectations(headline) Bitcoin price going down. Oil shock becoming a nightmare for Indian central bank(risk of persistent inflation)(headline) Russia is honouring their bond payment commitments “for now”. Big bond payment due March 16th. Rosneft had a bond due yesterday no payment as yet Gazprom has a 1.3billion dollar bond due today. US may go it alone on oil embargo(headline). Russia decrees that bonds can be paid in rubles!!! China affirms Russia ties and accuses US of building a Pacific Nato(headline)
CNN Kazakstan(Russian ally) allowed an anti War demonstration of over 2000 people
Bloomberg Eurostox 50 Cac 40 enter bear market territory. A lot of shock is focused on equities and not so much effect on the credit market as yet(Giiles Moec AXA chief economist)–so no risk of stagflation yet. GPW Head of political risk claims Russian default on debt is likely. Morgan Stanley and Citi analysts see perfect storm for equities forming(headline). David Herro Harris associates–Italian and French banks have direct exposure to Russian risk but banks have been accumulating capital for over 10 years so this is not like the 07, 08, 09 playbook. EU financials, e.g. Lloyds bank are high quality and attractive investment possibilities. We have zero Russian exposure–we have regarded them as uninvestable for a long time. If you have a Russian debt you are in trouble. This is going to make it very difficult to wage war. The economy is a relatively small economy. Dont look at todays price of oil as “Normal” this is a special situation(Interview) Rupee sinks to record lows(headline). List of companies not doing business with Russia is growing. New package of sanctions by Friday? Von der Leyen suggestion today. Ian Bremmer:- author “Does top down surveillance technology facilitate authoritarianism?” Risk of deglobalisation of the world economy. In the next 12 months the numbers of people who starve is going to increase –two top grain producers at war with each other—the global middle class is unwinding. As a consequence there will be increased inequality. What does the post Putin world look like for Russian—20years or 20 days—-likelihood of removing him is extremely low until it suddenly happens. The average Russian believes what the media are putting out but this can change if people dont get their wages and 10,000 soldiers dead.(Interview). Russian plan to pay debt in Rubles amounts to a default. The cost of insuring Russias debt went up to a record high upon this news. Kiel institute: Russia hurt most by sanctions (-11.8% exports–US -3.4% EU -2.8%). Boris Johnson said in a call to Biden that more needs to be done on sanctions–Russia swaps calculate that there is now a 80% chance of a Russian default on payments. Russia now backing from demands for complete surrender to recognition that Crimea and break out republics belong to Russia. Record voting turn out for elections in S Korea. Oil prices and futures coming down after Russian climb down “Russian special military operation is now being seen as a failure” Lisa Abramoviscz. The sanctions so far announced have had “massive massive” consequences–Jonathan Ferro– “a ton of damage on Putins economy” “is there a forming global moral obligation to refuse to trade with Putins Russia”? Germany is against the push to embargo oil and gas. EU energy needs cannot be secured at the moment. Last time there was a risk of Russian default was 1998. Russia need more dollars to meet payment demands. US meeting with Venezuela to restore their oil.
Damion Sassower Bloomberg Intelligence.Russia and China ” a marriage of convenience” there are seeds of discontent in this relation The Russian bonds are worthless–the Ruble is not really a currency if no one knows what it is worth.
Bloomberg : Russians shelled a neutron generator at a University. Radioactive material safe–no radiation leak Ruble at record lows offshore at news of moral ban on oil Even the small amounts of oil that have been sold have been shunned by refiners. Hanbury’s Hedge fund has marked down Russian assets to “zero or close to zero”
Euronews The hearings of the Genocide accusations against Russia opened today No representatives from Russia were present. The court can call for a stop to hostilities and submit their judgement to the UN security council which as we know will be vetoed. Russia’s problems however are becoming increasingly moral as businesses are unanimous in their judgement that Russia is “uninvestable”
Bloomberg: Russian gold de facto banned from London Market
CNN latest poll Finland :–53% for Nato 28% against 19% uncertain. Finlands Foreign minister wishes for the Ukraine issue to be resolved before any definite decision is made. The matter is under discussion by the political parties. 5000 arrests in 147 cities and 13,000 total number of arrests. Law against describing Russian special military operation as a war–people stopped in streets and phones taken and checked for messages using banned words. Red cross implies that Russians are playing games with the humanitarian corridors leading the Ukrainian delegation to believe they are going westward and then claiming that the corridor heads eastward into Russia–knowing full well no Ukrainians would agree to “sanctuary” in Russia. Macron calls out this “hypocrisy”. Evidence filmed of tanks in working condition abandoned by the Russians– Nick Paton Walsh–when the Russian run out of ideas they criminally deliberately shell the civilian population again and again but that is not working since it is uniting the military defence and making it more determined–Aleppo was bombed for 4 years with continuous shelling–Cedric Leighton–military analyst says we seem to be heading down this route but it is doubtful the West will stand by and watch such a scenario. In such circumstances a no fly zone might be set up. Ukraines EU membership to be discussed in the next few days.
Bloomberg Gary Locke former ambassador to China—-Economic turmoil not good for its business but could benefit from Russian commodities—but the risk is sanctions. Gazprom have paid 1.3 billion dollar debt in dollars.
Sky news Navalny contributed names to Canadas list of sanctioned individuals. General McMaster. If we allow Putin to do what he did in Syria we will see more than a million people killed. The Russian army does not know how to fight_ all it can do is shell and bomb unless they are stopped. Stop talking about giving the Ukrainians planes: give them the planes. Give them rocket systems and drones as well. Shut the oil and gas off and live with the discomfort. Tell Putin if he does not stop we will install a no fly zone and a marine no go zone at sea as well.
Bloomberg Chinese stocks in the US at a 5 year low. United airlines down 15% today. Bitcoin down. Biden to sign an executive order to regulate cryptocurrencies. Coinbase stopped a large number of Russian investors from investing. US Congress has bipartisan support for oil and other tariff embargo:- will pass a bill and present to Biden for signature.
Bloomberg: Many investors are “in cash” waiting for investment opportunities—when will they take the plunge? Stagflation debate continues–is this an artificial environment with inflation caused by supply and not consumption problems? Russia surpasses Iran as the worlds most sanctioned country. EU aims to cut Russia gas dependence by 80% this year.
CNN Pentagon official(Admiral John Kirby)Families were targeted in agreed upon humanitarian corridors: . The 350 million dollars approved by Biden a week ago is already in the Ukraine. 100,000 US troops currently in Europe This adds to the 1.9 million men Europe has.
Tuesday 8th March 13th day of war
Bloomberg Russia threatens to cut off gas via pipeline. This might be a bluff to raise oil and gas prices and generate more income.
Bloomberg: The markets are designed to move money from impatient investors to patient investors. Ruble 20% lower on offshore markets–biggest drop since 1998. China stocks down 2% New York( Lale Akona): ECB will not hike interest rates this year. Russian economy? Economic leverage is quite low the Russian economy is going to spiral.
FT Boris Lvin leaves his board-position from the World Bank in protest against Putins war. He has been in his position for 24 years.
SVT Protests in Vladivostock last night
Bloomberg Norwegian Wealth Fund excluding Li Ning Chines sportswear maker. China has begun buying Russian oil again. “Demand destruction” begins in relation to oil at 150 dollars(Amrita Sen)
Euronews Brussels agree to consider EU membership for Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. ICJ Russia has failed to attend the court action initiated by Ukraine–not for war crimes but for manipulating the accusation of Genocide against Ukraine in order to falsely justify the invasion. If Russia do not produce the evidence they have for Genocide the court can present a judgement to the UN security council to stop the invasion.
BBC Lord Tom King former defence secretary. Putin a former KGB officer in Germany is engaged in a mission of madness. He has some kind of deluded idea that this country founded by the Polish aristocracy is a part of Russia. It was not really a part of the Soviet Union and is not a part of Russia. The war is a Strategic and humanitarian catastrophe–indiscriminate bombing of civilians and even killing people using agreed upon humanitarian corridors. Putin has been in power too long and brooding too much on the trauma of the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Zelinsky in video call today claimed that the Russians mined the roads that were used as corridors and buses were destroyed.
CNN 100% of amassed Russian force now in Ukraine. 27 hour wait to get into Poland.Lviv has taken in 200,000 displaced Ukrainians.Biden–considering supplying Nato partners in area with air defence material. Russia has already fired over 600 missiles in Ukraine. Mayor of Irpin refused demands from Russians to surrender. Artillery strike killing civilians using humanitarian corridors is breaching trust for what Russians say in negotiations.
Bloomberg China considers buying stakes in Russian energy and commodities firms. Two Chinese banks hold emergency meetings over exposure to Russian derivates holdings. Shell will no longer purchase Russian oil after storm of protest. China Sovereign bonds tumble and are no longer number one as investors begin to have doubts. Chinese tycoon who shorted nickel loses billions Russia stalling Iran talks with demands related to war. Eu to issue bonds to assist with energy and defence costs Gold rises to 19 month high
Reuters Xi virtual meeting with Macron and Scholz claims that they should mediate in the “war” and demands “maximum restraint”(“China is pained to see the flames of war in Europe”–statement Chinese Peoples Political Conference in Ukraine). Some commentators claim that this is the “strongest” statement on the war thus far but still refers to sanctions on Russia as “illegal”
ABC news Zelinsky prepared to discuss the status of Crimea and the independent Republics but “I am not interested in discussing surrender.”
CNN Ukrainian aid convoy heading for northern city fired upon by Russians.
Bloomberg. Even if China saves Russia from the effect of the sanctions. e.g. en economic union based on the Chinese currency there is still the moral question of Russias invasion(Jonathan Ferro) Coca Cola and Mcdonalds stay silent. Biden –US will ban Russian oil from as soon as today—without the participation of EU. Oil up from 126 to 128 per barrel 15 minutes after the news. Does oil mean oil (3% exports) or oil products (8%) The industry has been self sanctioning and shunning these products: tankers refusing to carry the oil, refiners refusing to refine, and buyers refusing to buy. Will UK join the US? China securities commission will permit the listing of certain US companies if they do not threaten security concerns. UK bans Russian oil(over months). Germany says it is prepared if Russia cuts gas flows. Sweden PM says Nato application now would destabilise situation. Frans Timmerman European Commission We are going to reduce dependency on Russian Gas by two thirds by the end of next year and cut successively over the following years. Strategy? Investment in renewables which is a fraction of the cost of investing in fossil fuels We must “get cracking” on this. Christopher Eibl Tiberius Group Sanctions are a nightmare insofar as predicting the consequences are concerned( especially insofar as the self sanctioning phenomenon is concerned) China is the solution for Russia but they will get much lower prices for their products. European companies are rushing to install solar panels on their roofs and in the spaces around their premises. Zelinsky:- Prepared to abandon Nato membership.(AFP press release). Russia refuses to return 10 billion dollars worth of Jets.
Skynews Military expert–The Russians have lost at least 10,000 soldiers in 10 days. In Afghanistan over 8 years they lost 15,000 soldiers and public opinion forced a withdrawal. The bodies sent home caused considerable unrest. Putins solution to this problem was to send crematoria with the troops so that the bodies can be burned. This is why when the Ukrainians find bodies they try to put photos up on a web site so the Russian mothers know their sons are dead.
Reuters Poland is prepared to give all its mig 29(28) aircraft to Ukraine!
Bloomberg LME will not reopen until March 11th. Wild fluctuations of the price of nickel left many investors overexposed and it is not clear what is going to happen to those positions. Taylor Riggs–the market is pricing in 5 rate hikes this year!! Russias access to the WTO is being investigated by US Congress.
CNBC Kyle Bass Hayman Capital– China is helping Russia with the working around the sanctions on credit cards with its own payment system–We need to sanction these bad actors. China is at a crossroads oil and commodities are going up in price astronomically Congress will pass 14 million dollars in aid to Ukraine by the end of this week.
BBC the ca 28 mig 29’s will fly to US base in Germany and the US will decide whether and how to get them into theatre. This will still leave Poland with over 60 F16 interceptor fighters .Russian air force does not have the level of training necessary to fly the sophisticated planes that the Ukrainians have claimed they have shot down. This is why so many planes and helicopters have been shot down–English military expert. Economists reckoning a 13%reduction of GDP this year in Russia with the current sanctions(Quest) Can Putin pay his soldiers and police. Yes because he will print money but in the long run this might create hyperinflation–estimated reduction of 13% this year.
Wednesday 9th March 14th day of war
Bloomberg: Russian bombardment of Kiev intensifies. Von Der Leyen–“We do not wish to work with an oil provider who threatens us” Ruble down 7.8% but it is not clear whether Moscow stock exchange is open
BBC– Mig deal –offer of migs to Ukraine and shipping of migs to Germany initially was accepted by US– But Pentagon claims today that the ambiguity of the deal at the moment is “untenable”
Bloomberg Rosalind Mathiesson on the ground in Russia–shortage of certain foods in supermarkets–difficult to use cards:- very little information from West is circulating though many have relatives in Ukraine. No sign of sentiment changing. Moscow Stock exchange not open but ruble is being locally traded , Bloomberg headline “Ruble slumps in local trading” Oil prices down Bloomberg surveillance:–Hope that there is deescalation and a pathway is opening up. Swedish GDP reduction after 4 month increase. Bit coin up 9%. Yelland positive to Bidens cryptocurrency executive order. Norways wealth fund exclusion of Chines stock has made other funds more sceptical about Chinese stocks. Gas price down 18%: Khodorofsky:- There will be regime change in Russia the question is how soon? European leaders gather in Paris will debate Ukraine EU membership. Russian comment today–“we do not intend to topple the government and we do not plan occupation” Poland has pushed the aircraft issue over to nato for a decision. Admiral Stavridis ex-Nato joint command— Give Ukraine the migs fly them to Germany and let the jets be flown to Lviv. Donetsk needs to be defended from the navy. With 2 million refugees and the war criminal mentality of reducing Ukraine to rubble we need to take risks. Nato is merely operating as a mediator between a member and another democracy under attack. Saudi and UAE not responding to the West’s needs because they have moved closer to Russia and share Russias view of market management(Ellen Wald Atlantic Council) Zelensky evacuation from Kiev has begun. Fed to cease QE buying activity. Biden wishes treasury to investigate pros and cons of a US digital dollar. Chinese refineries have been told not to refine for exports. Xi’s outreach to Europe to mediate in conflict is part of a general strategy to try to move closer to Europe.
CNN white house spokesman on Migs We are not going to escalate this conflict. Saudi rejected a US outreach on matter of increasing production. Chernobyl waste(under Russian control) requires cooling has no power–potential leaks estimation 48 hours.
BBC:-China has sent a consignment of aid through the Chinese red cross to Ukraine–less than one million dollars but significant.
CNBC Expert investor defends holding cash in the current environment because he believes China will invade Taiwan before the end of the year.
BBC Mariupol childrens hospital bombed last night . Chernobyl: International Atomic Energy Commission say electricity is not needed to keep the waste material cooled. Russian owned private jet impounded at Farnborough airport UK.
Sky news –Why sanctions why not dialogue? (Interview with …?) Because some time ago the troops in Crimea in vehicles without any identifying marks were not Russian. The next day suddenly they were Russian troops and they were occupying forces. The gathering of troops around Ukraines border were not going to invade but merely training–the next day they were invading. The Russians claim they are not targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure with their precision munitions and yet there are an enormous number of schools and hospitals bombed. They agree humanitarian corridors and then shell the children using them. –Syrian warfare—One cannot trust what the Russians say so the approach has to change to a non talking – action approach which falls short of responding in kind.
Bloomberg: Andy Roberts Kings College London recently returned from Ukraine “There is no doubt that this is a dirty war being waged by a bad actor”. Whatever the Russians say civilians are being targeted. UAE calling on OPEC to increase production!!! 1400 Russian Jews seeking relocation to Israel in order to avoid to avoid Putins isolationist policies. Gold dropping in price. Russia headed for one f biggest inflation shocks in decades. Not all humanitarian pathways agreed upon have been opened–Kelinsky. Deutsche Bank will answer questions tomorrow (investors day) on Russian exposure. Mark Esper former sec of defence:– Is there a possibility of a negotiated settlement? No not with Putin. Negotiations with Putin is merely Theatre. He is wasting everyones time in order to buy time for himself. This is going to continue–he cannot back down now without being perceived as a failure at home. China have complained about a Pacific Nato. At the moment we have an informal quartet of agreements. China is not a good influence in the world: we ought to continue to form a more formal relation if Japan Korea and Australia want to be certain of their security. German is stalling EU efforts to broaden EU’s Swift ban. Sara House Wells Fargo, Senior Economist- Are we at the point of demand destruction for Petrol—Close but not quite there yet because there are savings due to pent up travel.
CNN Blinken: “Absolutely certain Putin will fail”. Brent oil below 111 dollars–(13.2%down worst day in two years) UAE favours boost in production. Why the reluctance from the Opec countries when they have received so much military support in the past? Greed? Politics? Russians denying they hit the childrens hospital in the fact of extensive evidence( film and witnesses) to the contrary.(An obvious case of spontaneous combustion?)
BBC The mig deal initially had the backing of Blinken. Poland got cold feet and wanted to send the planes to Germany and needed the decision to be taken by Nato—-worry about nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad–Uk is considering sending anti-aircraft equipment.
CNN problems with evacuations today. EU is expanding its sanctions–3 Belarusian banks over 100 more oligarchs. Russian businesses preparing to use crypto currencies to circumvent sanctions. Pentagon briefing(John Kirby): We do not agree that the transfer of planes at this time is the best course- high risk -air defence systems would be better. The Ukrainians have planes–additional aircraft would not make very much difference. 3000 US marines will join Norwegian forces for exercises in Arctic conditions 220 aircraft and 50 ships will be part of exercise. 200 military vehicles.The Russians accused the Ukrainians of developing chemical weapons in las. Pentagon–Russian propaganda:– dont pay any attention to this nonsense—one move in the Russian playbook is to accuse the opposing side of something they are planning to do. This is something they quite regularly do. Poles have been doing an amazing job with the refugees–if they request military help with the refugees we will pitch in and help. Is it a war crime to open humanitarian corridor and then bomb it? I will leave the legal decision to others–we dont want to see this happening. No thermobaric weaponry used yet. Patriot missiles have been ordered to Poland. The bombing of the hospital was a horrific outcome whether it was intentional or not. Jake Tapper—film of victims stumbling out of the wreckage—children trapped under the rubble according to Zelinsky—giant crater outside the hospital—massive air strike. Pregnant women on stretchers carried out. Do not know how many people were killed–are there bodies in the rubble? Zelinsky:- “The world is an accomplice to this terror”. The hospital was in the vicinity of a humanitarian corridor. Buses taking civilians trying to get out were stopped by Russians. Will there be another cease fire for tomorrow when the foreign ministers meet? David Ciciline(Foreign affairs committee)— the bombing of the hospital was just another war crime amongst many. Putin must pay a price for this carnage.
BBC UK also exploring the possibility of providing man-portable missile systems What threshold has to be passed before NATO defends Ukraine—Part of the problem is the Russian lack of progress which commentators believe are a real problem for Putin. Ukrainian politician–but their incompetence with respect to the shelling is exactly part of the problem. This is why we have to stop them killing our civilians. I agree that the hand held missile systems may be a good alternative suggestion.
CNN Karmala Harris arrives in Poland
BBC Husbands and sons will not return. For every demonstrator there is between 100 and 1000 that are too afraid. People are leaving Russia. Mothers groups in Russia are being told that if they release any information relating to the “special military operation” they will be criminally prosecuted. It was these groups that put pressure on the government in the Afghan and Tjejenia because of the returning bodybags. Israel apparently refused to allow Zelinsky to address the Knesset. The Israelis are paying a very ambiguous role in this conflict
Thursday 15th dayof war
SVT 146 politicians will have their assets frozen and will not be able to travel. 100,000 children live alone in childrens homes or in boarding schools. Indiscriminate attacks on civilians– children died again last night–Australian aid worker Unicef–one million children have fled–need more medical supplies.
Bloomberg Credit Suisse Russia risk not significant
Sky UK MOD claims there has been a notable decrease of air activity over Ukraine over the last few days.
CNBC Family fled because their house was bombed stopped by Russians waved on and then sprayed with bullets one child shot in the back. Film of mother and child in hospital.
CNN Russia claims that a vaccine research lab is being used by the US to manufacture bioweapons. This has been repeated several times over the past few weeks. Russian overconfidence in propaganda may not be
Aftonbladet The military has been “modernised” over the 20 years Putin has been in power–much of the money has been syphoned off for the oligarchs and used for palaces and yachts(?)
Bloomberg Sweden increases defence spending to 2% of GDP Foreign ministers meet 9.00 am in Turkey today for “peace” talks. ECB makes policy decision today. Otmar Issing President of centre for financial studies:– supply problems in the world economy must be met with fiscal policy. PIMCO wagers that Russia will not default on its debts. China is pushing the Russian propaganda concerning a vaccine lab producing bioweapons Deja vu UAE backtracking on statement yesterday.. This is not the first time OPEC have “played” the West. Foreigners selling Indian stocks at ca one billion dollars per day. Goldman Sachs downgrades EU growth from 3.9 to 2.5 % Is this a call for fiscal stimulus? There is an increase in military spending and more government spending will be needed for refugees. We now estimate inflation figures to be higher. Election of conservative candidate may make S Korean stocks more attractive again . Kurt Volker former ambassador to UN “There can be no business dealings with Putin in charge”Sergei Guriev Russian economics professor Russian decline in GDP could decline from anything between 7-15%. Russians have become addicted to a middle class life with technological gadgets–that is disappearing as we speak. Those Russians who have access to internet do not believe in the war It is difficult to tell amongst those who say they support the war how many are tellng the truth because it is a crime to say you are against the war–so do not believe any of the polls coming out of Russia. You get a telephone call and have no means of checking who is ringing you–most people in that situation either say they dont know or they say they support the war. Putin miscalculated the length of the war and this is why the censorship occurred so late in the process–so a number of people already know the true state of affairs. Abramovic sanctioned by UK–How does this affect the sale of Chelsea FC? Algebris:(Silvia Merler–head of policy)- Russian economy is in plus and will remain viable until that moment energy is sanctioned. There will be recession and inflation will be high but as long as Russia can sell its oil and gas the account will be in plus. Sanctions have hit central bank reserves. Chinas role–if EU sanction energy? Demand curtailment must occur. Possible China purchase but not in large amounts- because of the pipeline structure. Uk MOD claims Russia has admitted to the use of thermobaric weapons.
BBC No progress at peace talks: Lavrov did not have the authority to negotiate humanitarian corridors!! Did not agree with 24 hour cease fire proposal. Rosneft will pay its 2 billion dollar bond.
Bloomberg:- Peace talks Russia still demanding a surrender to the forces of “the special military operation”. Russias response to self-sanctioning company exodus is to nationalise the company seize its assets and appoint its own mangers and board. ECB leaves main refinancing rate at 0%:- leaves deposit facility rate unchanged. Any rate adjustment will be gradual. Faster winding down of asset purchase program. ECB cannot deal with supply chain shock. Still possible that interest rates might be raised in Q3
BBC:- Lavrov called the response to the bombing of the hospital in Mariupol a “pathetic outcry”. He claimed that “nationalist gunmen” occupied the building and were using it for military purposes. The film of the bombing of the hospital has not been shown in Russia because the official position is that it is “fake news” and showing or referring to it is connected to the likelihood of a criminal prosecution. Lavrov also claimed: ” I keep having to explain that we did not invade Ukraine”
Bloomberg ECB sees inflation to be 5.1% –2022 and will stabilise at 2%(Lagarde) Latin American currencies are the best performers this year–this will help them with inflation Bond buying will slow down in May. Euro falls to session lows. Estonian PM says Putin is like a poker player, “all in” and prepared to cause the maximum amount of damage, win or lose. Goldman Sachs to withdraw from Russia–first wall street pull-out. Emily Hill– strong correlation between high oil prices and recession. Putin has made a huge strategic mistake–underestimating the strength of democracies.
Bloomberg CNBC: Janet Yellen claims that China will not be able to mitigate the sanctions on Russia to any great extent Chinese financial institutions are engaging in “risk aversive behaviour with Russian deals –worrying about the breach of sanctions. China tech stocks down 10%–dragging US techs down. Twitter removed tweets from the Russian embassy in London claiming that the images of the bombed Mariupol hospital were “fake”. China stocks in the US tumble 10%
Friday 16th day of war
Bloomberg Russian air attacks targeting airfields in Western Ukraine. Japan joins US and EU in banning chip exports. Chine covid infections spike. Russian bombing of Ukraine intensifies(headline) Slovenian PM–If Russia takes Ukraine he will go one. His goal has been clear from the beginning he wants Ukraines natural resources and he wants a new Soviet Union–but he has miscalculated the EU is very prosperous and strong and he is president of a country whose average wage has stayed at 600 euros for the 20 years he has been in power. The Ukrainians will prevent him from achieving his goal–he will be forced to negotiate and until there is a settlement the sanctions stay in place–the longer they stay in place the more damage is done to his economy. European stocks set for first weekly gain. Gordon Brown former UK PM– calls for the prosecution of Putin for war crimes. Richest Russian oligarch (V Potanin) angry over Russian counter sanctions(Personal Telegram posts). China markets in turmoil.
Al Jazeera: Ukrainian defence ministry say that the number of civilians killed now exceed military personnel. Expert claims that most deaths have been killed by rockets and not airforce. This conflict has revealed that the Russian air force is not very competent. They have spent enormous amounts of moneys but the Ukrainian air defences have prevented air superiority.
Euronews BBC long military convoy outside Kiev has begun to move. Russia announces export bans on over 200 products Twitter aims to bypass censorship restrictions with private alternative. twitter.onion
CNN 2.5 million refugees, more than one million children.
Bloomberg India considering paying in rupees for Russian imports. Conditions for Putins ceasefire not acceptable by anyone(Macron) China–LI–Claimed that Sovereign territory must be respected and wants the warring parties to negotiate ceasefire. In 1998 Russia defaulted on local payments today we are talking about international payments–a much more serious matter. Ukraine made payment of 300 million dollar debt on 1st March. Ukraine continues to raise money for its debts.
BBC Facebook to allow calls for violence against Putin. Odessa preparing for attack Dateline Russian journalist people are panicking because of the sanctions food prices are going up the shelves are emptying people cannot get at their money. British journalist: there is no doubt about my mind that we are witnessing the beginning of the end for Putin—how long that will take is anyones guess. Things are getting dark in Russia. Russia State media heard loud and clear on the air-waves in Washington!!(headline) Deutsche bank reverses its position and pans to wind down operations in Russia. Iran nuclear negotiations stalled.
Aljazeera interview with senior official of centre for civil liberties(Ukrainian organisation): We are collecting forensic evidence of breaches of the Geneva convention and more serious war crimes. There is evidence that the UN also has of cluster bombs and incendiary munitions which have been used on the civilian populations. Intensity of breaches and war crimes increasing every day..(Parts of this interview have been independently confirmed by other media)
BBC Instagram in banned in Russia because of violent posts directed at Putin
Euronews Mayor of Melitopol kidnapped by Russian forces incident captured on film
Saturday 17th day
Euronews Women in film from bombing of hospital who was accused by Russian Twitter accounts of not being pregnant and having faked make up blood on her face has been tracked down by Euronews and has now had her baby and has scabs on her face. Reporting these facts in Russia it was pointed out is now criminal and associated with possible 15 year sentence in prison. The ambassador in the UN claimed the hospital bombing was “fake news”. English footballers playing for Chelsea are now worrying about their futures. Reporter asks them to try for one moment to imagine what it is like living in Kiev. Being “in bed” with a Russian oligarch just has its consequences and it would be a good idea if they “shut up”. In urban warfare a ratio of 5 attackers to 1 defender is needed to win. The Russians have not got the numbers in the larger cities.
Sky Active artillery fire on residential areas again in Kiev last night. As the sun rose gunfire was echoing around the city. Russians again blocked with shelling the humanitarian corridor leading form Mariupol again yesterday. Odessa is being heavily fortified in readiness for coming assault.
CNN Kharkiv nuclear lab hit by missile fire inside is a tank with radioactive material. No leakage.
BBC Kherson has been captured Zelinsky compares Russian shelling of civilians to ISIS
BBC Two FSB heads placed under house arrest. FSB had the responsibility for preparing the ground for the replacement of the Ukrainian government after the invasion of Ukraine. These officials told Putin what he wanted to hear and are now being blamed for the fiasco in Ukraine. Putin is worried about the level of accurate intelligence the West had in relation to the invasion FSB’s recruitment policy is to use relatives of ex agents.
Euronews Estonian PM(born in the Soviet Union): If we are attacked article 5 goes into effect. We are preparing for all possibilities. Estonia claimed in the EU Parliament that Ukraines application must be speeded up. EU has been very quick and united in relation to the sanctions. We know this surprised Putin.We are exploring imposing new sanctions. Gas might be expensive but freedom is priceless. 300,000 Russian speakers but they are not a homogenous group.
Sky news G7 withdrew favoured nation status in relation to Russia–critical imports banned Russia will not be able to access IMF and World Bank financing. Interview with military expert:–Does this look like Afghanistan? Yes. From a strategic perspective Putin has lost this war. Even if he topples the government the people will never give up. They have not got the numbers for urban warfare. Head of FSB removed, generals removed all indicate a furious little man pushed into a corner attacking his own inner circle. We can hope that his inner circle are in the process of turning against him. …Psychiatric hospital hit in Kharkiev
BBC Mykolaiv standing in the way of the Russian advance to Donetsk. Advance stopped and Russians retreated.
CNN Lt Gen Mark Hertling(US) Russian tactics make no military sense but they make sense from the perspective of terrorising the civilian population of Ukraine. Villages are being used as a base for artillery where there are no military targets within the range of the artillery. …EU agreed to affect Russias status(Suspend their membership) in relation to the IMF and the World Bank. Plans also to Push Russia out of the WTO. Macron–more sanctions on the way. Blocking of attempts to circumvent financial sanctions using cryptotechnology. Ban of iron and steel and luxury goods.
Al jazeera Save the Children claim that seven and a half million children are at risk in Ukraine Putin recruiting foreign volunteers to fight “the nazis”(from Syria) Countries in North Africa are going to be seriously affected by grain shortages Wheat prices are at a 14 year high. Jörgen Klopp supports UK sanctions on Abramovic.
Bloomberg lower oil prices may be partly due to “demand destruction” people cutting back.
Bloomberg Wall Street Week Sam Zell: (Equity Group investments) It is complicated to be an investor in war time Bought some gold because fears of weakness of the dollar. Energy investments? Always believed in diversification is important energy diversification is part of my strategy. Biden is naive on domestic oil–making permits to drill almost impossible to obtain. We have shale investments today in spite of administrations negativity. Should one go into cash or game the situation out? Dont game out, go liquid and diversification are the best response to the current uncertainty. Larry Summers(former US Treasury Sec):-Fed needs to begin tightening, needs to admit its mistakes over inflation levels prior to the war. Russia and China are both adversaries. Need infrastructure spending–need to move beyond partisan bickering and ask about the fundamentals of the economic system we must be heavily invested in renewables and sponsor oil pipelines at home. We have adversaries at home extremists trying to tear down our political infrastructure. Sanctions? What are we learning. They are doing enormous damage but we need to think carefully about divestment –the bad guys can buy assets for a song.
CNN Diplomacy? No progress Russians want complete surrender. Until something happens on the battlefield the negotiations are a waste of time. Russia not serious even if we have heard hints from both sides –still too far from common ground. Will financial pressures affect the outcome. They are having an affect. But will the unity behind them continue?On the battlefield the Russians are taking heavy losses but they are grinding slowly forward.(Robert English)
BBC 600 million dollar yacht belonging to Russian oligarch seized in Trieste.Newspapers have suggested that many of these yachts were bought from the process of syphoning off funds meant for “modernising” the Russian military.
BBC Panel debate Is Lithuania the next target. Lithuanian rep: perhaps but we should not be too apprehensive. What we are witnessing is a bumbling barbaric murderous force trying to make progress in the Ukraine. The Russian armed forces are weak in comparison to the NATO professional forces. Are we witnessing WW3? Russia has nuclear weapons BUT Nato are trying to avoid the wider war scenario. Ukrainian rep We need a no fly zone in order to defend nuclear facilities–Nato has to be more active
CNN Putin Macron and Scholz will have contact by phone today—-experts claim that there is no likelihood of a breakthrough given the recent new package of sanctions that have been implemented. Zelinsky calling on EU to do more for Ukraine—fast track membership denied. EU recently doubled their economic package. Military strategy? Col Cedric Leighton risk for use of chemical weapons– International community has to prepare to deal with such an eventuality. Putin wants an escalation and this is his next logical step(Ed Arnold (Economic Security Research Fellow)) What military aid?– small arms replenishment stingers anti-tank and anti-personnel weapons. Too late to train the forces to use the Patriot system.
Aljazeera The US, EU, UK, and Canada have frozen assets belonging to Putin in their territory(?)
Sky Help workers demand that orphanages are recognised as humanitarian centres and excluded from other “civilian targets”. Food water and medicine running out–staff are also concerned about their own families. (Hope and Homes for Children Mark Warrington)
BBC Russian forces are regrouping for an attack—moving to encircle Kiev. Kharkiev is a dystopian wasteland after Russian shelling for two weeks 15 humanitarian corridors theoretically opened up today. Protests in captured Melitopol at abduction of Mayor—Kelinsky— “this is a terrroristic act directed at our democracy–return this official immediately or be regarded as terrorists”. Not clear what is being planned for this city– an old city loved by many Russians— difficult to believe that Putin will shell this city into submission with the civilian cast–numbers of troops?—–only one city has fallen so far—they are the underdogs but have caused considerable losses. Elements of the large column north of Kiev have dispersed…. Wagner mercenaries earn 2000 dollars per month They have been operating in the Ukrainian war. Using new names like “Hawks” because of the association of the Wagner group with violations of human rights in Syria and elsewhere. Syrian fighters are now being recruited–not clear if they are mercenaries or not.
Euronews: 119 billion dollars earnings per annum from Oil and Gas Russian exports Are there ways to get around sanctions—–China—-weak link otherwise the sanctions are ferocious in their impact Bitcoin even if you put it there to take it out you need a bank and that bank is going to ask questions. The effort has been amazingly joined up—what is the intended outcome–social and political unrest—financial impact of this is devastating. Sanctions on the central bank to all extents make Putins war chest inaccessible. China? will it fall into line–US has said there will be retaliatory measures China relies too much on the dollar to risk been excluded—there is no realistic alternative system.(Senior Political advisor on Europe)
CNN Gary Kasparov Chess world champion and Member of the Russian opposition party. On the line of demarcation between what weapons can and what weapons cannot be delivered, GK Biden does not seem to realise that Putin is at war with Nato and will escalate the conflict until war is a de facto reality. GK doubts that the Russian air force will engage in any intensive manner with a no fly zone if one is instituted The migs should have been sent. 2.6 million have fled—UN…. Ex President Poroshenko The Russians have made 4 miscalculations: 1. overestimated their own capacities. 2. underestimated the efficacy of the resistance. 3. underestimated the unity of Ukraine.4. underestimated the unity of the world against them.
Sunday 18th day of the war
CNN Diplomatic efforts hit another wall. Macron, Scholz argued fruitlessly for a ceasefire. Putin intent on achieving his “objectives” Biden approves 200 million dollars aid for Ukraine. Russians calling Ukrainian hotline looking for lost troops. People ringing are apologizing for the war…”our children are being used for canon fodder” Everybody is so scared in Russia” “Everybody is scared to talk”. Airfield and base hit by missiles 35 dead over one hundred injured. Very close to the polish border Polish official (Foreign Minister)–Russians may ave feared that migs would have been flown into this airfield and foreign fighters may be gathering there. How would you review Kelinsky’s leadership? Kelinsky was slow to respond to intelligence about the coming invasion: he should have mobilised 48 hours earlier but since then he has been a transformational figure–he has become the conscience of the world. What about nuclear weapons in Ukraine? What might happen is that a weapon is not dropped but exploded in the air above Kiev to cause a state of paralysis to the advantage of the ground forces. Chemical weapons? these were used in WW1 to very little effect so we should condemn their use but not exaggerate their effect
BBC Russian audiences are being told that the reason there are so few entertainment programs is because everyone wishes to hear the news. A Russian journalist claims this is untrue and could be a key lie that eventually will be exposed and help to undermine the credibility of the authorities. Russian troops have abducted a second mayor. 2100 residents of Mariupol have been killed. Demonstrations in Moscow—752 people arrested over the whole country 350 arrested in Moscow. Zelinsky walked openly down a street in Kiev and visited a hospital. Russian forces moving closer to the capital. Prize -winning Journalist shot to death in his car and one other journalist injured whilst passing through a checkpoint. Journalists are civilians and killing civilians is a war crime but this is not the first time civilians have been shot passing through a Russian checkpoint. Russian forces are now thought to be less than 10 miles away from Kiev. (18.30) Soldier in Kiev going back to fight after losing fingers. Thanks the UK for the military help. Ukraine foreign affairs committee: Hopko : US ought to act as a guarantor of Ukraine’s security because Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons which would have prevented any occupation. President Douda of Poland: Putin could use any kind of weapon right now because he is not winning the war. Are chemical weapons a red line. Such use would be a game changer. What about the migs? Sensitive issue: there is disagreement: Polish public opinion is cautious about this step. Also sending these planes would put Nato in a possible difficult position. Are you confident that Nato would defend you? Yes, of course. Russia has evolved its imperialist ambitions. When anyone speaks to me about Russian communism shivers go down my spine. I was born in that regime and never want to see it again.
Sky news Kelinsky is claiming that negotiations are more constructive than they have been.(not confirmed anywhere else)
Independent newspaper interview with UK Chancellor: Think very carefully about investments in Russia:–the effects of the sanctions are going to be maximal.
CNN Retired Brig General: I have been against any escalation by Nato but now seeing the civilian devastation and the threat of chemical weapons I am wavering –“Hell hath no fury like democracy scorned” Perhaps we should send troops in whilst there is still a Ukrainian military left. A Monastry with people sheltering was targeted. Gary Kasparov—Russians are escalating–this is Russias war against Nato :–this is what Putin has said about this war He believes that Nato has weapons but lacks the political will—giving him the space he needs for escalation. Read history books: appeasement and demonstrating weakness promotes a dictators agenda. This is WW3. The sooner we go in the better. They will put in puppets but there is no support for occupation amongst Russian speaking Ukraines. Will Putin grind this out? Ukraine has a large army Putin is running low on heavy armour and manpower–All Ukraine needs is support–they can win they have both manpower and the spirit. William Cohen ex sec of defence—– Ukraines can hold on (Blumenthal give the Ukrainians the planes) WC:–I am tired of letting the Russians telling us what to do The time has come to stop . The time will come to answer for all this mayhem but let’s begin drawing red lines. The time for China has come to pressure Putin. Pope called on Russia to stop “reducing towns and cities to cemeteries”.
CNN :-ex KGB agent: Putin was a mediocre mid level bureaucrat according to his superiors. He only emerged as a leader because of the poor judgment of Jeltsin and the fact that there were no other candidates available
Euronews Danish troops deployed in Estonia UK RAF Typhoons arrive in Cyprus.
BBC Children have died because of the water shortages(Mariupol)
Monday 19th day of war
Ukraine claim 12,000 dead Russian soldiers. Where are the bodies? The Guardian claims they are being transported to Belarus and will not be shipped back to Russia until the “special military operation” is completed. Morgues are overfull with bodies and blood for the casualties is running short
BBC Missile Attacks are beginning on residential buildings in Kiev. Russian are targeting aid conveys to prevent humanitarian aid from arriving. Expert points out the importance of “thinking carefully” given the fact that Russia possesses 1600 nuclear weapons at his disposal. Another failed attempt to get aid into Mariupol or people out–tanks rolling in to the city. Children dying of thirst.
Bloomberg Panic Selloff(9%) in tech in Chinese markets North Korea may test ICBM this week Chinese lockdown (Shenzhen(17 and a half million people) Changchun lockdown –9 million people)—tech factories closing. Weaker than expected credit data from China. Oil price down?(8.50) US and Chine officials meet in Rome today. China is planning a massive increase in coal production…Russia has asked China for military aid!! The promised cyberattack from Russia has not happened why not. The hackers working for the government are young people who are against the war—(Russian CEO in IT). China stock in US rout reaching dot com crash levels.
Euronews: Ukraine negotiator–moving toward a compromise–Russian negotiator progress has been made which might result in written agreement
BBC cautious optimism over negotiations Russian people are now becoming aware that soldiers are dying in this “special military operation–Russian demands have not changed. Russian media is spreading info that Ukraine is a risk because it is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Reports that Russia have asked China for weapons—Chinese official claims that the US info is “disinformation”. 30 cruise missiles fired at base near Poland yesterday–Poland have protested. Regarded by Nato as an escalation.Russian drone crash in Croatia flew a long way before crashing—probably Russian—crashed in Croatia when it ran out of fuel. There will come a point when Nato escalates in response–(Dr Peter Adams)
Bloomberg Seth Jones(author of work on guerilla warfare):The entire Ukrainian population will engage in guerrilla urban warfare.In Aleppo the Russians could bomb it but did not have to occupy the territory afterward . Russians Lost more soldiers in two weeks than the US lost in 20 years in Afghanistan. Cannot see that Russia are looking for a settled agreement. Russia entirely incapable of putting together an effective ground strategy—no improvement in this area over the 18 days of war. How far can a sniper be ?—could be over 1000 yds away. Military supplies “legitimate targets”–what does it mean? One stray missile in Poland will change the whole equation. One cruise missile or ballistic missile with damaged guidance system could well cause damage in Poland. Are we close to a Nato engagement? We need to begin considering what the war is going to look like. What would direct combat look like? Containment is the problem. It would probably begin with aircraft…this might escalate into ground warfare. Phil Orland– If Putin thinks he is going to walk into the UN and make a speech after all this is over he does not understand much about people or the law…
BBC Women filmed at the bombing of the maternity clinic who Russian media claimed had a fake pillow under her jersey and make up faking blood has now died along with her baby. Donjesk: major incident:–separatist claim that Ukrainian missile killed civilians.
CNN Russian threat to arrest business leaders who defy govt.. Russia denies claim. Russia claims that “Business interests have not been compromised in any way by the special military operation”. President of Russian Nickel export company “This will take Russia back 100 years”. Top Chinese and US officials have met:– waiting for information (14.00).
Sky news Latvian PM Negotiations? Putin will only stop when he is stopped. When he is stopped he will come to the negotiation table and not before. UN Gen Sec: Calls for immediate cease fire and serious negotiations . What about the missile sent by the Ukrainians into Donetsk? Lets be clear: The overwhelming damage to civilian infrastructure and death of civilians has been caused by Russian forces. Russias response was to accuse the UN of being partial (prelude to voluntary withdrawal?)Red Cross calls for urgent solution to problems of water shortage, food shortage and medicine: a few hundred vehicles have at last been allowed to leave the city. It is a race against time for the city.
Euronews MH17 crash:– Australia and Netherlands suing Russia for responsibility for shooting airplane down on basis of evidence from 5 countries. Forensic evidence has been identified as Russian. Russia deny they were involved.Expulsion of Russia from Council of Europe to be discussed. Hope is that they will voluntarily withdraw. 20 Ukrainian civilians killed in Donjesk by missile.
BBC Nine story apartment block targeted on outskirts of civilians killed and many had to be rescued by emergency services. .Civilians are being shot whilst evacuating. People buried in mass graves in Mariupol. Many people died because of lack of medication. Bodies are lying around in the streets.
Bloomberg US Fund managers run away from China stocks. Israeli government websites crash emergency declared. Morgan Stanley: zero growth for China this quarter
Sky International Court of Justice will rule on Wednesday on Ukraines injunction to stop the war immediately.
Tuesday 20th day of war
BBC Protest against the war by a television employee ashamed of distributing what she called “kremlin propaganda” interrupted state television program. Two large explosion in the centre of Kiev UK heavily criticised for its unnecessary bureaucracy in processing refugee applications. EU approved a 4th set of sanctions against Russia(targeting 600 oligarchs–also iron and steel)–new sanctions from the UK(350 oligarchs, ban on vodka fertiliser etc)).UK PM: The West made a terrible mistake over Crimea…
Aljazeera: 500 Aeroflot aircraft banned from flying in international air space (leases expired and planes ought to be handed back) Will the planes be seized by Russian state?
Bloomberg China wants to avoid sanctions over Russia. “China is not a party to the crisis”. Chinese US Talks were constructive. Continued pressure on Chinese tech sector. Russia turned to China for drones the US continue to insist.
Euronews Press sec US: “We are not convinced of Putins sincerity we need to see what is being talked about with our own eyes”(in relation to negotiations) Bread prices rose by 40% in Sudan–protests.
CNN Russia could default on its debt on Wednesday(170 million dollars). Interest rates could then spike and push economy further over the edge.Stock markets still closed Seven hour talks :Cable: China may be open to sending Russia aid. Leaders of Czech, Poland, and Slovenia travelling to Kiev to meet Zelensky. Putin seeking to escalate(Susan Lassiter —chemical weapons——-Russians closing in on Kiev. This is going to be the largest urban war ever seen. Curfew means that some troops are already in. Will Nato stay on the sidelines? 65 strikes in one day in Kharkiev: second largest city.(600 residential buildings destroyed since the beginning of the war–50 schools and hospitals) There is a risk that if China does proceed down the road of assisting Russia there will be a wave of investor self sanctioning of China as may be occurring now in relation to the crashing of China tech stocks which some commentators claim may be the result of and may be responding to China’s ambivalent position. UK PM Putin has been a “pusher” for the European addiction to Russias Hydrocarbon products–this must change quickly. Fox news journalist killed. Looks like the press are being targeted along with civilians.
BBC UK MP We are too risk aversive with respect to arming Ukraine. Longer range weapons than anti tank weapons need to provided.
Bloomberg China will not risk sending weapons to Russia and send its own tech sector into deeper dive. Explanation for oil price going to under 100 dollars= India bought Russian oil at a discount of 30 dollars this brought the price down.
Euronews 2000 cars with civilian survivors left Mariupol in a convoy today . President of Georgia :we shall maintain our ties with the EU.Jens Stoltenberg : In the light of the invasion and the facilitation role of Belarus we now face a new reality and we are going to reset our military posture. 100,000 troops in Europe , hundreds of thousands more on alert Russias ambassador to the EU: Precision shelling is occurring: our troops are being very careful any other news reporting is fake news.
Wednesday 21st day of War
CNN doctors and nurses being held against their will by the Russians in a hospital in Mariupol. Russians captured do not know why they in Ukraine. They are forced to advance–if they go back they are shot for retreating. Hospital have to operate in darkness after sunset to avoid being deliberately targeted.
Sky Emergency Nato meeting today resetting of military posture. Discussing permanent presence of troops in Eastern border countries….Interview with chief propagandists in Russia on the public protest on TV –“She represents a small minority of people—she is a heroine in the west but for us this operation represents a spiritual choice.” “What do you say about people il Ukraine sitting underground and ringing their relatives in Russia and telling them that their apartment blocks are being bombed.” “I do not believe it. The majority of Ukraine is terrorised by a minority of nationalists”
Bloomberg North Korea missile launch failed–may have exploded. Government promised fiscal policy intervention in China –buying stocks, protecting property stocks in particular, cutting interest rates has caused stocks to soar today. Oil prices over 100 dollars again. Boris Johnson to meet UAE and Saudi to discuss oil supply. Recession possibility less than 33%(William Hobbes) Shenzen in China–younger people want to take it easy compared to their parents. Putin claims that Ukraine are not conducting talks seriously ahead of talks today. Saudi claims it is considering accepting Chinese currency in payment for their oil China denies advance knowledge of the war. Chinese policy makers assured business community that there will be future stability in stock market. Brain drain Russia—thousands of people continue to flee Russia…. PM’s of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Slovenia visited Kelensky in Kiev. Poland’s PM suggests an armed peace-keeping force in Ukraine: either Nato or UN.
CNN Three Russian helicopters and a number of vehicles destroyed at Kherson airport(the town is in the possession of the Russians) Polish PM :give Ukraine EU membership. Negotiators working in sub groups to formulate some form of written document–continuation today. Biden will announce more military aid after Zelensky’s address to the Senate. Zelensky is expected to request no fly zone and/or planes/drones. Sec Blinken: This was was never about Ukraines Nato relation. At the time of the invasion it was clear that Ukraine did not meet the conditions necessary for immediate membership. What this is about is simply the fact that Putin wishes to deny the independent existence of the Ukrainian nation. White House reporter–Natasha: Zelensky will definitely drop the aim to become a member of Nato if no significant help comes from that quarter.
Bloomberg: On the accusation that Ukraine is developing biological ” weapons”. All countries do biological research for the purposes of disease prevention(e.g. the Chinese laboratories that were suspected as being the source of covid). When the Ukraine distanced itself from the Soviet the US helped them to convert their military biological labs to normal disease prevention labs. Will Putin use biological chemical weapons? This is an irrational war in which human life is clearly not respected not even the life of the Russian soldiers–so who knows whether these kinds of weapons will appear in the theatre. Negotiation rumour:- Ukraine prepared to adopt an Austrian-Sweden neutrality deal. Tom Keane’s comment–the art of war-negotiation is “always give the idiot a way out”. 15 point peace plan being drawn up in negotiations demanding that Ukraine do not join any military alliances and retain an army to defend itself.
CNN Blinken Investigation into whether journalists are being intentionally targeted. Interview with with Radio free Europe: Russia has a long history of targeting and imprisoning journalists..They will do anything to stop the truth coming out about the regime–journalists are the opposition and their preferred approach to opposition politicians is to poison and imprison them. Many Russians use our service and our audience numbers have not gone down –there is a Russian audience that want the truth. Mariupol theatre bombed with hundreds of civilians sheltering. Lavrov claims that neutrality proposal is interesting. Russia is transporting more troops from all parts of Eastern Russia. Kelensky speech request no fly zone and planes or more sophisticated air defence systems. Likened what is happening to Ukraine every day what happened 9/11. Biden responds with massive 800 billion dollar package 9000 anti armour weapons, 20 million rounds of ammunition more sophisticated air defence systems, armed drones and the promise of economic help to the end of the war –claiming that it is going to be a long affair. Biden referred to Putin as a war criminal and called the activities systematically targeting civilians as “depraved”. Looks as if bond payment was made –paid with by gold reserves—not clear that this is legitimate–experts will determine whether this is a default or not. If it is it will be the first time in over 100 years that Russia has defaulted on Sovereign debt. If it is in default they will be black balled for decades in the financial markets.
Euronews Russia ordered by ICJ to cease hostilities and withdraw troops.
CNN J Powell raised interest rats and the market responded positively. Fed will unwind mortgage assets first in QT
BBC One of the most prominent ballerinas has left Russia in protest against the war and joined a Dutch ballet company
Thursday 22nd day of war
NBC Interview with Zelensky “Do you understand that the West wish to avoid WW3? How do we know that this WW3 has not already started?
CNBC Hundreds of French troops to Estonia
CNN people leaving Russia by air ,car and even on foot with a suitcase. Elina Ribakova Putin recently commented that the Soviet Union achieved great success. Many were leaving before the war–the war made up the minds of most of those that were considering leaving. 10 people lining up for bread killed in a missile attack –Kelensky more than a 100 children have been killed–any talk of red lines is meaningless for me: where will the line be drawn– 1000 children? Russia claims that Ukrainian radicals caused the blast. UK MOD claim that Russian offensive is not moving forward but Russian are still experienced heavy losses.
BBC Russian war ships shelling from black sea Theatre had the Russian word for children written in large letters on two sides of the building that is easily visible from the air. 5 people injured in shelling of a convoy trying to leave Mariupol.
Euronews Speech by Zelensky to German Parliament. Russia are using your money for the war on us. A new wall separates Germany from Ukraine:- every business deal is a new stone in that wall. Why are countries across the Atlantic more sympathetic to our cause? What do we have to do to join Nato?
Bloomberg Chinas covid outbreak seems to be slowing Stephanie Baker interview with Putin: Sanctions will not sway Putin and sanctions on the oligarchs will not affect the war effort. He controls the oligarchs not vice versa. Taking away the yachts of the oligarchs may make us feel good but has no effect on Putin. Could these oligarchs be holding his money. seizing Putins assets will not bother him because he has the entire Russian budget under his control. US set to revoke Russias trade status which will result in high tariffs on goods J Powell says the US economy looks strong.
BBC German Industry minister has made a deal for Norwegian Gas and is heading of to Qatar for another deal. Quote from Putins speech:–Russians in the West live like “slaves” to luxury. Russia denies denes recruiting conscripts —the ages of the 9 “soldiers” exchanged for the Mayor was between 19-20 years old.
SVT Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov was on a flight to Peking for a meeting–his plane had to turn around and return to Russia.—- Biden meets with Xi tomorrow.
CNN the country that made the greatest contribution to denuclearisation was denied access to the security that it was promised(Victor Yuschenko -ex president of Ukraine poisoned –2004-5 and almost died when we was running against Putins-backed candidate– The Putin I used to know is not there anymore–he is gone Was your poisoning organised by Putin? –All the parties involved are in Russia —this is a criminal case and they are not available for questioning—Putin is a fatal problem for Russia–he has started 7 wars. I am confident he will soon be a part of the past. Russia suffers from same disease that Putin does. Yuschenko started the process of applying to Nato–When I saw Merkels refusal I thought the decision was made in Moscow.. I might have been mistaken about joining Nato……
Friday 23rd day of War
CNN Lviv building by airport hit by missile. Xi to talk by phone with Biden today.
SVT Russian assets in “fonder” almost worthless
Bloomberg Moscow stock exchange to open today? Chaos on LME again yesterday. Deadline for bids for Chelsea FC is today.The Uk just want Abramovic gone. Oil price jumps to 106 dollars–pessimism over peace talks. Russian demands which contain references to denazification–Putin wishes face to face with Zelensky.
BBC Lavrov state tv interview—in English!. The US wants Europe to look like a US “saloon” and is calling all the shots in cutting off Russia from the West. Sanctions make us stronger and when the door opens again to the West —when the West “come to their senses” we will look closely at all proposals of cooperation RT ceased broadcasting in the UK after their licence to broadcast was withdrawn.
CNN Morale of Russian soldiers low because of lack of training of conscripts and greater than expected losses. Vehicles abandoned in fields.—-but military leadership still believe they can take the whole of Ukraine. The missile strike on Lviv 6 missiles fired two intercepted. Important for Ukrainians to take out missile sites. Gen Mark Kimmet Russians lost 20,000 men in one day in ww2, so a few thousand in this war is nothing for them. The view of the matter of course looks different to those that are fighting on the ground.
Bloomberg Swiss banks hold 200 billion dollars of Russian money. Sanctioned Venezuela bonds are worth 10% of original value—becoming more attractive on prospect of partial lifting of sanctions. US believes China is tacitly supporting Russia hence the telephone call today. Putin blames the Ukrainians for lack of progress in peace talks in conversation with Scholz.
BBC Putin holds rally inviting tens of thousands of state employees to celebrate the heroes of the “special Military operation”. The media sending was abruptly interrupted but it is not clear whether this was a technical problem or an intentional act.
FT claim that in relation to the Putin rally that state employees were bussed to the venue with a promise of 500 rubles plus dinner compensation.
CNN Ukrainians claim that they have pushed back the Russians from Kiev to the south west and east of the city(unverified) Several case of intercepted missile damage on apartment buildings…. Does the administration support regime change in Russia? That is not for us to determine–that is a question for the Russian people. Biden warned Xi of the consequences of supporting Russia–“this conflict is in no-ones interest”–one hour 50 minute conversation. Xi Claimed that the US must shoulder some of the responsibility to find a peaceful solution. Lines will stay open. US warned China that cooperation which results in prolonging the war will be costly for those involved. Some hackers have infiltrated Russian media sites and provided info concerning the number of soldiers killed. Worries continue to persist that China is going to support Russia in different ways.
Sky news Rescuers digging with bare hands to pull survivors out from theatre wreckage. Temperatures near freezing. One man pulled out this evening. 130 survivors so far. Russians continue shelling . Residential areas flattened in Mariupol. What supplies have you got? –no water, food or medicine. All aid has been blocked. 3000 people dead. Mariepol completely surrounded.
Bloomberg Defensive insurance positions commodities, banking ,energy Tech rebound—a little more risky—Bonds? always a place but not heavy: investment yield curve is going to steepen. Will the fed bail the bond out as it has done in the past?
Saturday 24th day
CNN Some people say they were forced by their bosses to attend the Putin rally in the stadium Over a hundred dead from Ukraine military as a result of a missile strike on an army base…. Mariupol Theatre: information sparse:– 130 people rescued–could have been 1200-1300 people–not clear whether people are trapped underground or how many are dead.
BBC Priest fined for anti-war sermon. Ukraine claims it is conducting counter-offensive operations and pushing the Russians back. Gordon Brown, John Major and 138 prominent lawyers, judges etc have called for the setting up of a tribunal to try Putin for war crimes. War crime investigations are continuing in Syria where a similar pattern of hospital, school, and residential “indiscriminate” bombing reduced Aleppo to Rubble. A condition for bringing the charge though is that the war be over and the defendant be in custody. No one can be tried in absentia. Documentation of possible war crimes has been proceeding almost as soon as the war began. Modern technology assures that evidence collected of a digital nature(which includes satellite imagery from both cvil and military satellites) can be transmitted to safe locations and steps are being taken to insure that forensic evidence(e.g missile fragments) is transported to “safe” locations away from the war-zone. Independent Witnesses such as aid workers and the press, have already provided documented(filmed) evidence of strikes on hospitals and schools and interviewed witnesses who have been bombed.
Bloomberg Syria’s Assad visits UAE… Marina Litvenenko is British citizen now but fears to return to Russia because this citizenship is not recognised if one previously was Russian. Her husband Alexander Litvenenko was an ex KGB agent who defected to the West but was poisoned and died.Business as usual in the markets last week–rates stabilised—people on the side lines with cash came back into the market—appears to be some detaching of China from Russia. Rich Reider of Blackrock— an extraordinary week! Larry Summers:..Fed using 2020 framework and has not done enough to preserve its reputation if inflation continues to be high—wage inflation is getting close to 7%. What do we need to get inflation rates)They assume 2.4 % long term inflation—this whole calculation assumes we will get the inflation down to 2%–we are almost certainly a 6% inflation country so we have to raise interest rates to between 4-5%–We cannot count on the transitory inflation view. Brazil bans telegram for its “fake news”. Belgium to extend life of nuclear reactors for another decade.
Euronews. Syrian: anti Assad, anti-Russian demonstrations in Syria…… The Russian cosmonauts arriving in the International space station arrived in Ukrainian colours. Poland PM calls for tougher sanctions on Russia. Chinese official says Nato is a cold war “vestige”..
BBC 100 Russian owned planes grounded in US including Abramovic’s luxury jet
CNN Congressman Adam Smith:–Putins campaign is deliberately and criminally directed against civilians. The campaign in the beginning was poorly organised and has stalled….the Syrian pattern. China is in a bind: China and Russia have a common goal–bring down the West but they also want to make friends in Africa etc so if China is seen to be backing this brutal war their friends may back off. Poroshenko asks Biden to visit Kiev. Biden to travel to Brussels next week to attend European Council and G7 leaders. Boris Johnson:–Putin is in total panic at the moment because he is fearing a domestic uprising. Wolf Blitzer—Will mothers of dead soldiers affect Putin? They affected the authorities in the Tchechen and Afghan wars when losses were far lower per day than they are in Ukraine.
BBC Hypersonic missiles used in Ukraine on underground storage areas yesterday can be launched at long range—Southern Russia–no chance of defending against them. 11 million people in Russia have relatives in Ukraine. Beijing has continued to buy Russian oil and gas. Theresa Fallon: China are trying to sit on the fence but this is becoming more difficult. Do not support sanctions and repeating Russian propaganda indicates their likely final decision.
Sunday 25th day of the war
BBC UK defence intelligence report: Russia have failed to take control of the air. ….The Russians have failed to achieve their objectives on the ground but still have considerable reserve artillery strength. The international war tribunal called for by Gordon Brown and John Major will not prosecute for war crimes but rater for a war of aggression which is illegal in both the constitutions of Ukraine and Russia–other countries can join the effort and if so it will have international reach. Mariupol citizens being forced to travel to Russia. Russians have refused to allow Humanitarian corridors leading into the Ukraine and bomb or shoot those civilians attempting to fell to Ukraine.
CNN WHO concerned about medical facilities being destroyed in the war. Japanese high level political exchange between Japan and india: Japan claimed that the war on Ukraine is destabilising the whole international order”: India has not condemned the war, avoided commenting and merely claimed that the situation presents “new challenges”….Putin indicates he is not ready to meet Zelinsky. ……….Michael Bociurkiw from Atlantic Council how long will the West stand by and watch civilians slaughtered every day before saying enough is enough. People looking forward to post war Ukraine—Aaron David Miller. Reports of Russians self mutilating to escape the war…. Chinese vice foreign minister—“Sanctions on Russia outrageous”–” will have disastrous consequences for the world” Squad 303 provides a hackers platform that encourages sms messages to Russians giving them correct info about the war one activist claims to have sent 6000 messages thus far.. Movement of civilian population from Mariupol is a war crime–not clear whether this is a decision by a local commander or something we might see more of. Linda Thomas Greenfield US ambassador to UN Jake Tapper: In the conversation with XI Biden was told “he who ties the bell t the tiger has to remove it” in response to peace talks requests. Biden made very clear the costs for China of cooperating with Russia –aiding and assisting sanctions avoidance.Anne Applebaum Atlantic: believes that Ukraine can win this war. ….Reporter cannot understand why the west are so passive and confused over what to do about the mounting number of war crimes. Tiktok spreading Russian disinformation about the war. Estonian PM: Putins wider intention with this attack is to create a massive wave of migration to Europe so that the right wing movements he has been nurturing both there and in the US will divide the countries and make them powerless to combat the Russian threat. We must continue to see who the real enemy of Europe is. We in Estonia will be increasing our military spending to 2.5 % but there has to be more cooperation with the surrounding countries because even these amounts are not sufficient for the complex technologically advanced kind of air -defences we need. Gen Petraeus Russians have 100,000 in theatre and the Ukrainians have double that if we include those who have taken up arms to defend their homes. Urban warfare of street to street building to building fighting is occurring in Mariupol. Odessa is the prize but this attack is on hold. Five Russian Generals killed is this common–very senior generals have been killed the Ukrainians have jammed Russian communications forcing the Generals to to leave their vehicles to give orders( The troops need to be told what to do) —the Ukrainians snipers are very good and are picking them off—-4 generals have been confirmed by US intelligence the fifth confirmation is probably coming today—one Us general killed throughout the entire Afghan war.
Sky–Russians bombed an art school where 400 residents were sheltering.(Mariupol City council) still waiting for information on casualties.
BBC Lord Browne did you anticipate this crisis–Yes when I was dealing with Putin they needed us to modernise their industry–was it a mistake to rely on Russia—- Churchill —“the only recipe for security is diversity” we over relied on Russia–Russian gas has been flowing into the west since the early 90’s and not the energy is being used as sword against the west. It is difficult to take oil out of the equation but can be done but gas is more difficult because it comes through a pipeline. Ten million people displaced from homes. Thousands of Ukrainians taken across the border against their will to Russia–some placed in camps. Russians living in Mariupol claim that Putins actions have converted them into Ukrainians. Ukraine Prosecutor: 112 children killed so far. Glen Grant British Army Lt Colonel: Russians have been fought to a standstill in many places–run out of fuel–pushed back in many places—old missiles are being used–sometimes they explode sometimes they do not. Soviet culture all the soldiers are frightened Generals are second rate—making bad decisions and training is second rate conscripts do not want to fight..Putin has pulled troops from Armenia and Georgia until they enter the stalemate will continue and it is not clear what difference they will make—If the Ukrainians could be given air defence weapons Putin would be in trouble. Anonymous hacked into Russian media and showed a 12 minute video with facts about the war. Zelensky quotes Golda Meier to the Israeli Knesset: “We want to live–our neighbours want us dead. We remain” Russian troops opened fire on elderly nursing home with 56 elderly in residence died.
Euronews: Albania considering NATO base. Zelensky announces a ban on 11 political parties thought to be connected to Russia. Boris J The west should never again normalise relations with Putin. Zelensky criticised Israel for not providing any military support— “you cannot remain neutral between good and evil”
Aljazeera Turkish PM says both sides are getting closer together on critical issues. Kharkiev reduced to rubble by Russian bombing
Sky: Mariupol: survivors cannot be extracted from theatre or art school rubble. Kherson: taken by Russians–Video–Ukrainians are confronting armed troops every day–not behaving like they are occupied..
SVT IT Army of Ukraine: Hackers have closed over 150 Russian web sites. 13 Nato war vessels pass Stockholm.
Monday 25th day of war
BBC PM of Kosova criticises Lavrovs comment relating to the bombing and invasion of Serbia. 19 countries witnessed the mass murder , mass rape and deportation of civilian populations by the Serbs and agreed to the bombing and the invasion. Russia is the aggressor here and has no right to invoke an international action in support of what he is doing. As to the accusation of airplanes being provided to Ukraine from Kosova the PM claimed these accusations are false but everyone must help Ukraine to the full limit of their capacity within the guidelines set out by the international community. We ought to push politicians do more on the sanctions front including oil and gas.
Bloomberg: Moscow–progress on talks yielding less than we want. Latvias defence minister:– We must stand by Ukraine –Latvia are over 90% on Russian gas. Fast track for Ukraine in EU. No doubt that if Ukraine have not already won this war they are going to . They have nowhere to go and must fight and we must stand by them. Europe are going to have to pay for the reconstruction of the country so there is no reason to deny EU membership. We must increase the pressure on Putin and stand up against this war of aggression. A quarter of the population of Ukraine have been displaced. EU is considering a Russian oil embargo when they meet this week.
Euronews military asking citizens to bury the bodies of Russian bodies. Russians were shipping their bodies to Belarus. This seems to have changed.
Sky more residential bombings again last night–even holiday homes on the beach front are being flattened by naval bombardment.
CNN Biden on telephone call with UK ,Italy, France, Germany in preparation for meeting in Brussels Moscow stock exchange opened today with trade only in Rubles “US Russia relation on the verge of rupture”. Shopping centre flattened in a residential area. Russian response–a rocket was hidden in the centre. Consensus amongst most of EU’s Foreign ministers that War crimes are being committed on an almost daily basis. Christine Amanpour: Elderly Survivors of Mariupol report that civilians are systematically murdered everyday and that this did not happen with the German fascists. One elderly survivor claimed that theRussians are too afraid to fight the Ukrainian army and are going after “softer” targets. We do not even now yet how many people died or ate buried under the rubble in the theatre and the art school. Mariupol strategically important for the Russians to create a corridor along the border. Putin is counting on surrender and suffering incredible losses whilst he is waiting. Russian army had logistics and communication problems in Georgia and they do not seemed to have learned anything since then. Plan B for the Russians in Syria when roughly the same problems occurred ,was chemical weapons. A Humanitarian no fly zone requires agreement from both sides. If there is a genocide we cannot just sit and watch there will be forced engagement. If we lose in Ukraine he will go for Georgia and Moldovia and then challenge NATO. He must be stopped in Ukraine and we should not be over fearful of a nuclear war. Disappointed in UN 141 countries have condemned Russia–Nato should call on the UN to do something perhaps peace keeping forces. Evelyn…. Obama administration foreign affairs advisor. Curfew for 36 hours starting this evening in Kiev.
Aljazeera Assad visits the UAE and Arab political scientist is interviewed and claims that they know that the US is upset about this but not half as upset as the Arab world were when Obama failed to respond to the systematic annihilation of the Syrians and the chemical attack that was supposed to have crossed a red line. Assad is not going anywhere and we have millions of Syrian refugees that have to be repatriated back to Syria. Russia is a major part of Opec which is not a political organisation but an economic organisation. Fredrico –Human Rights Watch: ICC is investigating war crimes and 6 countries have so far signed up in support.
Euronews extra 500 million euros for lethal arms aid to Ukraine. Talk about a rapid response military unit.—5000 troops
CNN Minister turned soldier—“democracies always win in the end” Russians have been pushed back in Kiev. Supplies are still getting into Kiev:– most routes to the east are open most routes to the south are open. Biden warns of an imminent cyberattack on the US.
BBC:– Small arms fire and heavy machine fire heard just before sundown. Street fighting close to the centre? Do not know—Russian saboteurs? Is this the reason for the curfew. Last time the curfew was connected with a counteroffensive. Biden phone call: readout—brutal attacks on Ukraine–negotiations for cease fire– discussed meeting in Brussels. Can the West go further on the sanctions front? more sanctions on the oligarchs different kinds of energy sanctions are being discussed. US press secretary claimed there would be some real deliverables from the Brussels trip.
Tuesday 26th day of the war
CNN Over 2000 children removed from the Donetsk region by the Russians and no one knows where they are–Ukrainian MP. Diplomacy is not a possible alternative in the light of such events. 96 year old holocaust survivor killed in Bombing of Kharviev. Navalny found guilty of fraud prosecution seeking 13 years of prison in a maximum security prison making it impossible to contact him.
BBC Hardtalk Putins Russia has woken democracy up from its slumbers. No longer struggle between left and right but between dictatorships and liberal democracies. Populist leaders who expressed support for Putin have been forced to retreat and have been weakened. We liberal democrats have become too complacent. Germans movement toward Russia was the weak point of our European alliance.
CNN Markariv(NW of Kiev) retaken by Ukrainian forces making it more difficult for Russian forces to surround Kiev.
Bloomberg Diesel shortage next energy shock as supply dwindles from Russia. Reduction of 2-2and a half million barrels per day less. Bit coin looks as if it is being used to circumvent sanctions. Anna Wong: the bottom end of the wage market are doing ok at current levels of inflation but a significant increase would make life problematic for them given the fact that a large proportion of their wages go to energy and commodities.
Euronews Biden warns about cyberattacks on businesses and utilities. Man playing balalaika whilst air raid signals sound.. Euronews banned from Russia. Bidens trip to Brussels regarded as the most important trip of his presidency. Biden will visit Poland
BBC WHO accuse Russians of targeting more than 60 health care institutions UN Gen Sec “Its time to end this war”. This war is morally unacceptable. Zelensky speech to Italian Parliament–Ukrainian MP we are all in for the victory. Do you have a say in decisions. Martial law The President runs the country but there are laws dealing with civilian laws and these are up to Parliament to decide. Usmanov: Russian oligarch ditched all his expensive mansions before the sanctions became effective—-shifted off to a trust that has connections to Usmanov. Ukraine accuses Russia of blocking humanitarian help for Kherson. Almost 1000 buildings in Kharkiev destroyed. Brussels meeting is partly to determine what Chinas relation to Russia.. Probably no sanctions for China? How will te EU respond if China helps Russia. Pireaus the biggest Greek port owned by China. Joke It has been said that Russia has the second best army in the world—we have found out that they are the second best army in Ukraine. Sanctions are not foolproof. It looks as if they have hidden billions of dollars to store foreign currency assets in off share accounts—China might be helping them in this.
Wednesday 28th day of war
SVT reports that Russian troops have captured 15 aid workers around Mariupol. Warnings for the use of chemical/biological weapons. The claim that all their weapons were destroyed are repeated again but the same claim was made when Novachock was used to poison Navalya.
Bloomberg–We will not know what shape Russian banks are in until the stock market opens. The awkwardness of the moral question is what is pushing major western actors out of Russia. 100,000 remain trapped in Mariupol Trader King clams that oil will hit 150 dollars per barrel later this year.
Euronews The EU meetings purpose is not just to announce new sanctions but to decide what to do about countries that violate sanctions.
CNN Josh Rogin Political analyst Putin has been a war criminal for years we are seeing exactly the same behaviour over and over again Syria, Georgia etc . Perhaps there is now the will to do something about it but it requires a lot of evidence gathering under expert legal supervision. Stoltenberg: Chemical weapon-use will be unacceptable and have far reaching consequences. China is assisting the Russian war effort through helping to spread lies about the full scale invasion. They should join the rest of the world and condemn the invasion of an independent country in accordance with the values of the UN. Putin miscalculated insofar as the unity of the US and EU. European Council. The world must not allow Putin to win this war. Amanpour: Plan B is in operation: namely acquiring gas and oil from other sources. This is the turning point for renewables. One suggestion that is being discussed is that one pay for the oil by putting the money into a special account so Putin cannot benefit. Interview with help worker from “Dynamo”: humanitarian corridors are death traps and requires extraordinary “rescue work”. This is like a natural disaster : There are areas that look like Haiti after the earthquake–but I have never been ina war where the civilians have been most at risk. It is this targeting that allows “Dynamo” to engage in daring rescue attempts to for example rescue the babies. Dynamo has engaged in “ops” every day and we need money. Hit the donate button.Tass: Chubais —long standing Russian govt insider quits.Leak to news agencies including Russian news .He is against the war and has left Russia(one of “the gnats that Putin is going to spit out?”) Many of the figures surrounding Putin have had their assets frozen.
CNN Tim Ash Bluebay No energy sanctions but nobody wants to do business with Russia whether it is to do with products on the sanctions list or not. Moscow stock market may open partially tomorrow—Russia have a couple of hundred billion not frozen by sanctions but we are probably looking at a default around mid April. If that happens no one from the West will want to do any form of business with Russia for a decade. We have to take this opportunity to concentrate on renewables. In the short term it is going to be expensive but that is the cost of freedom. Biden admin formally accusing members of Russian forces of war crimes on the basis of public evidence and intelligence evidence—(Blinken)… Irpin 80% recaptured by Ukrainians. Are the Russians merely regrouping? Meeting between a Russian general and US embassy personnel in moscow–Gen Ilyen was angry and flushed when the special military op was mentioned and claimed it was tragic and he was depressed about it–walking out with shaking hands. Do morale depletion problems reach up the chain to the top? Wolf Blitzer reports that Nato now claim that as many as 15,000 Russians have died in the war(30-40,000 taken out of battle because of death and casualties. Many Russian companies are decimated). Biden lands in Brussels 2200 CET—4 new divisions created for deployment on Nato’s eastern front–Biden to slap sanctions on hundreds of members of Russian parliament. Marc Warner Chairman of Intelligence Committee: Ensure the rapid flow of military material to Ukraine. Russia refuse to rule out the use of nuclear weapons. His threats puts everybody in uncharted territory. When the coffins and body bags and injured begin coming home and the pow’s dont come home, we will see what happens. This figure of 30,000-40,000 falling into these categories is a figure beyond everyones expectations but is close to the truth.
BBC Christopher Steel Intelligence expert(MI6) Russians do not have the means to achieve their objective in Ukraine. We need to understand the mind set of Putin .What are your contacts in Russia telling you–Many were surprised at the aggression. FSB humiliated publicly—In an authoritarion dictatorial system info des not flow freely–the idea that there was a shadow government waiting in the Ukraine to take over was probably known in intelligence services. Where does this end—in failure for Putin He went for the biggest all in options many did not foresee this simply because they simply dont have the means. This will end in agreement and Putin will eventually be removed. How do you deal wit P when he has his finger on the nuclear button. We cannot carry on doing what we are doing today with the risk of more extreme behaviour increasing every day. The documents submitted by Russia to Nato to sign was not just about Ukraine but about Nato pulling back and USA getting out. We are not going to fight Russia in Ukraine is just what Putin wants to hear. CS—I dont take the nuclear threat seriously… Putin is more of a poker player than a chess player. We must use sanctions and our ability to communicate with people about our values. His forces are poorly organised and are poorly motivated. What if Belarus join?
Thursday 29th day of war
Bloomberg Stock ex opening foreign share holders not allowed to sell–only 33 stocks allowed to trade central support of equities–up 8% immediately at opening and declining to +5.5% by 10.30(Sberbank now only 3.5% plus). Aeroflot stocks down…..N Korea launches first ICBM. Nabiullina–head of central bank— wanted to resign –Putin denied the request…. Apparently Russia is demanding payment in rubles for its gas. The contract is dollars/euros. Will Germany break sanctions and pay in Rubles.If not the gas is shut off and according to Scholz hundreds of thousands of jobs will be lost in Germany. Health care sector under pressure—–semiconductor stocks up… UK announces sanctions agains Alfa Bank JSC in Russia amongst 65 other targets……Need to redesign economic liberalism—need to perhaps sacrifice national security and make trade deals in Asia—John Micklewaite Bloomberg editor…. Germany lowering tax on energy and giving 300 euro subsidy to households. Severstal steel —first Russian firm—failed to pay coupon on its debt after 5 day grace period—-steel not covered by US sanctions but one of the individual owners is on a EU sanctions list.—is this a default? Ramaphosa(South Africas President) defends its “neutrality” stance on war—has failed to condemn war and is in talks with Putin. Major trading partner= China. Chinese envoy claims that the limits of the relation between China and Russia runs via the UN and respect for International law. Citigroup say that interest rates at end of year could be as high as 3%(market prediction 1.75-2%) Maerk shipping claims it will not touch cargoes of Russian oil. 6 billion dollars of Russian assets found in Switzerland. Finland impounds 21 yachts whilst investigating their ownership.
CNN Berdyansk—-Large Russian landing ship destroyed by Ukrainians…..secondary explosions. Ukrainian army have ca 10,000 Russian troops surrounded just East of Kiev. They are cut off from their supplies because key routes were flooded by opening a dam. Lt Gen Mark Hertling. Ship explosion will significantly affect logistics. Michael Bociurkiw Atlantic Council Senior Fellow in Kieve—The tsunami of “help” from the West is experenced as a ripple here in Kiev, they feel they are largely on their own and that their women and children have to die in a proxy war for the West. The Territorial army go to the front in t-shirts and baseball caps to fight in this proxy war for Democracy. Zelensky has asked for 1% of Natos resources to help. Z asked for panes and tanks. Russia had used phosphorous weapons that have killed women and children(Zelinsky) –contravention of international law—unverified claim. one in two Ukrainian children have been displaced since Russia invaded.–independent claim. UK BJ Uk has sanctioned over 1000 individuals and entities and will add 65 more to this today including the banking sector. EU will announce a fifth sanction package tomorrow. Joe Biden US will take 100,000 refugees from Ukraine. US sanctioning 300 individuals from the Russian Duma and defence contract companies.
SVT Zelinsky speech to Swedish parliament spoke about how Russia openly discuss an invasion of Gotland on state television.
Friday 30th day of the war
Bloomberg–Partial opening of stock market today foreigners cannot sell their assets only 33 stocks and central support–Market up a few percent just after opening. Gas deal US and EU. Biden wants Russia expelled from G20.Diesel shortage in Europe. Transatlantic data transfer pact between US and EU(Von Der Leyen)
BBC Civilians abducted to Russia. Ukrainian. Priest shot at Russian checkpoint–war-crimes.Non confirmed witness report 300 people dead in Mariupol Theatre.Un Human Rights: in areas controlled by Russian forces forced 21 disappearances of local government officials have been documented , 15 journalists- aid workers have also “disappeared”: People who are more vocal in their opposition to the invasion are targeted. Population are terrorised by these disappearances. Ukraine needs 1000 missiles per day to protect itself. Russian troops in defensive positions around Kiev. OK MP Putin has been militarily defeated but Putin is living in his own “bubble” which needs to be burst by someone. Another Russian General is killed(7th). Mariupol–“none is going to surrender”
Euronews Georgian economy is affected by Russian sanctions–banks not affected.
Bloomberg: A Russian source says Donbas is the focus of the war.
BBC Dateline: Russian Journalist State media first began by saying that the military op was to eliminate nazis and in the course of this operation labs were discovered that were developing chemical biological weapons that will be spread by birds and bats and will affect the reproductive systems of women making them sterile.Putin must dominate in order to explain himself to himself and no one knows where this will lead. He falsely believes that the West is weak.Putin cannot use a nuclear weapon in China because Xi has given a guarantee to Ukraine in 2013 that this would not happen.
CNN European Council calls upon Russia to cease with war crimes immediately.Xi in pone call to Boris Johnson claimed that he will lay a constructive role in the peace process in Ukraine. Biden to the 82nd airborne: “You are the finest fighting force in the world”. “Putin is using the profits from his energy sales to drive his war machine”. Qatar will not divert natural gas from Europe out of “solidarity” . Russia is running low on cruise missiles.The massive attacks on hospital has seriously compromised health care in Ukraine–over 60 facilities have been deliberately targeted according to WHO. Freezing of central bank assets extremely efficient–Lagarde. Asking for payment in rubles is a result of the paralysis of the central bank by sanctions. Further sanctions from Switzerland on Russia. Australia sanctions Belarusian president. Japan imposed further sanctions on Russia. Ukrainian nautical engineer man tries to sink Ceo of arms company’s´ yacht “Lady Anastasia”–went back to Ukraine to fight. Lady Anastasia is provisionally seized by Spain. “The war we are seeing is a diversionary war to draw attention from the bleeding dry of wealth of Russia by the oligarchs”. Highly placed Russian general now claims that the major goal of this war was to liberate the Donbas region.
Saturday 31st day of the war
CNN Interview with escapees from Mariupol were ordered by Russian troops to delete all images of the destruction in the city–warned that if checkpoints found any images they would be “dealt with”. Interview with wife of man in Hospital :-Russians in villages move into peoples houses threaten them, steal their money one soldier got drunk and blasted a mans leg off with a shotgun. Two other soldiers who were against the war helped the women get her husband to a Ukrainian hospital.
BBC Survivor from Mariupol walked for 4 days to reach safety. I was outside when the shell hit. Tried to make my way inside to my dogs –could not get inside–hope they died instantly.
CNN Poland–Warsaw–Bidens speech on autocracy versus democracy and the long road we have travelled and the long road left to travel–references to the Polish Pope John Paul and Lech Walensa, Soviet aggression and the fall of the wall–addressed Russian people wishing the removal of Putin.. 200,000 Russians left the country. Kierkegaard on faith and hope was mentioned. Shortly before speech Russians launched cruise missile which hit fuel depot in Lviv 6 people injured.
Sunday 32nd day of war
Continued Discussion of Bidens speech Zylensky indicates preparedness to give up Donbas area after referendum. 3.8 million refugees left Ukraine
Monday 33rd day of war
CNN and Wall street Journal:—Confirmed symptoms of possible chemical “contamination” or poisoning of Abrahomovic(temporary loss of sight) and two Ukrainian peace negotiators at March 3-4 negotiations in Turkey. All three parties believe they were poisoned.
BBC investigative term have uncovered a pattern of co-presence at the same places at the same times of the opposition politician that was shot outside the Kremlin(Boris Nemtsov) and a known FSB agent believed to be responsible for other attempted assassinations. Irpin retaken by the Ukrainians—“flattened—a waste land”. Russian forces pushed back in the East as well. Ukrainians holding Russia at bay in the South. In Odessa pubs and restaurants are reopening. Along the black sea coast Russian hardware lies in ruins. Face to face talks scheduled to take place in Turkey this week.
Wednesday 35th day of war
BBC Authorities have verified 3000 cases of civilian deaths due to indiscriminate shelling and missile strikes. Strikes on civilian facilities such as hospitals and schools and theatres have also been documented. This evidence is being collected with a view to presenting the evidence for war crime prosecutions. Chinese Russian meeting –China praised Russia from preventing a humanitarian catastrophe. Lavrov a new democratic order is emerging which will be led by Russia and China. Chine expressed desire to take its relation to a “higher level” Chatham House expert: Russia has certainly infringed the UN sovereign right commitment which China in the past has claimed to respect—-but since Ukraine is not of interest for China what is going on appears acceptable to them. Taiwan is also obviously on China’s mind. There is repositioning of the forces around Kiev but no movement away as promised two days ago.
Thursday 36th day of war
Bloomberg Biden claims that Putin has put advisers under house arrest. Troops seen leaving Chernobyl. Putin signed declaration claiming that unfriendly nations must pay for gas in rubles or the gas will be turned off April 1. Biden releasing one million barrels of oil per day for the next 6 months from storage system.
Sunday 38th day of War
Bucha mass graves discovered–mayor and family found shot and hidden in the woods after reports of having been kidnapped by the Russians–Russian initial response–1. The Russians were not there—2. the bodies are actors
Monday 39th day of the war
CNN Zelinsky visits Bucha and calls for international investigation. Biden calls for war crimes investigations and expulsion of Russia from UN’s Human Rights council. Russian response today–the bodies are real and the Russians have been in the area but the Ukrainians did this to their own people after the troops left Russian bond of 2 billion dollars due for payment today
BBC What are the chances of indicting Putin? Look at Serbia–What looked like an impossibility suddenly became possible. Three of the major criminals were indicted and tried. What has to happen is regime change. But Serbia became so weary of answering the international charges they eventually handed the people indicted over.
Tuesday 40th day of war
Sky Dr Michael Clark The West has seized over 300 billion dollars of Putins war chest in assets outside Russia. Action has been taken to prevent his realising his gold assets. Thinks that if the war does not go much better Putin will leave office in 2-3 years . E.g. if he is forced to settle for only the Crimea. This could be used for war reparations after a war crimes trial. ECB probably will not increase interest rates as quickly as the USA because of the influence of the War on Ukraine
Bloomberg Health Care stocks number 3 on winners list today
Wednesday 41st day of war
Bloomberg Lindsay Newman S & P Global: A total embargo on both oil and gas could be a game changer and result in Russia defaulting on loan debts Breugel: The moral case for a total embargo is overwhelming–we cannot continue importing for the sake of economic security when people are dying. We anticipate a recession if there is an embargo with a reduction of 3-5% f our GDP. This is not exactly a collapse of the economy but it will be painful. Russia trying to pay bonds in ruble at an artificial price created by the fact that the price of the ruble is determined in an artificial environment in which one cannot purchase other currencies with the ruble. 15-20% GDP contraction predicted for this year for Russia. A commission in England will determine the status of a technical default relating to 41 billion dollars missed earlier in March. If this is deemed a full default then money from the insurers must change hands and the flood gates will open insofar as the value of the ruble is concerned.
Tuesday 48th day of the war
Russian Railways bond default has caused the countries credit rating to sink from C to D(Default) which means that Russia will not be able to borrow money in the International Finance system for perhaps a decade or longer if there are more defaults as tere inevitably will be.
Thursday 50th day of the war
BBC Flagship of Black sea “Moscow” has been severely damaged and the crew evacuated. Russians say ammunition spontaneously combusted Ukrainians asy two missiles hit the vessel. The Uk recently sent missile systems capable of sinking oats to Ukraine.
BBC Hardtalk with Kremiln Economic adviser to Medvev up to 2012: Sergej Guriev who has written a book entitled “Spin dictatorships and Fear Dictatorships” SG argues that the war will continues until the West turn off the oil and gas which is providing the money to pay for the salaries of the army and the police. If this source of income was stopped neither the police nor the army could be paid. Inflation in Russia was increasing by 2% per week the first few weeks of the war and is now increasing at 1% per week —if the war continues for any length of time there will come a time when even the revenue from oil and gas will not suffice to keep pace with inflation. Putin is not popular in Russia– prior to the last election and also prior to the beginning of the war his rating was 30% but miraculously this percentage increased to 50 % in the election which also mysteriously gave Putin 70% of the seats in the Duma. Putin really thought his war would be a blitzkrieg and he finds himself in a difficult position now and is forced to use fear and terror as well as spin to control the dialogue and the tension in the country. This war was started because of Putins low popularity. Interviewer: But the sanctions are not having the desired effect yet again because the Ruble is back to pre war levels. Is Putin not winning the economic war? SG:–No these sanctions are different to the earlier ones because Russia has experienced integration into the world economic system and the isolation that will result will take Russia back 30 years in time. Almost every complex product involves a number of countries to produce. Russia will not be able to produce cars or planes . The only reason the ruble is strong is because Russia is importing nothing because of existing capital controls. It cannot exchange for dollars or euros–this strength is artificial. Sanctions are biting but it is possible that the West will decide at some point soon to include energy in the sanctions.
Friday 51st day of war
Michael Holmes BBC predicted GDP shrinkage between 8-15% Vladimir Milov: Opposition Russian part–fled to Lithuania last year for fear of his life. Sugar which people use to make vodka is in short supply but there is more to come and the worst is yet to come–we have not seen what we are seeing now for 30 years—we will see real shortages in April to June–living standards will seriously deteriorate 2020 the average Russian 11% less to spend than the previous year: 2 million jobs under threat in the near future a few weeks or several months and 2 million jobs may be an understatement–small businesses are on the verge of destruction. The situation is worse than the 90’s because of the coming isolation.Andrei Illianov—The Ukraine is more important to Putin than his own poor people and living standards. This war will double the number of poor people against a background of Putin’s promise in 2020 of cutting the number of people in half. An oil and gas embargo would mean that the war would have to be stopped in two months.
Saturday 52nd day of war
BBC Dateline–Putin baptised as a boy–the Hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church claim the war on Ukraine to be Holy war. Priests blessed the bombs used in Syria. The “Moscow” has what Tass called a piece of the “true” cross embedded in the gold cross on board—now at the bottom of the sea. Pope may visit Kirill–Pope Francis went to the Russian embassy to voice his opposition to what is going on in the war.
Aristotle’s view of explanation and understanding is provided in his hylomorphic theory of change in which he refers to 3 media of change(space, time, matter), 4 kinds of change(Substantial, Qualitative, Quantitative, and Locomotion), 3 principles of change, 4 causes (accounts) and three different branches of science to consult for both the understanding of scientific phenomena and their explanation(Practical sciences, theoretical sciences, and productive sciences). Kant largely embraces the above matrix, and elaborates upon it by providing us with a number of categories of understanding/judgment, which can be found in the different branches of science. Kant condenses a cloud of metaphysical speculation on the nature of the soul into the “drops” or faculties of Sensibility, Understanding, and Reason, and much effort is expended in characterising the relation between the a priori intuitions of space and time(Sensibility), the Categories of the Understanding, and the Principles of Reason. Kant’s major task in his mature work, as we know, was to disperse the clouds of Metaphysics that had formed as a result of the triumph of Platonism over Aristotelianism in the writings of scholars. Aristotle’s works, we also know, as a result were translated into Latin very late (1200’s), and when they were, the translation itself was problematic, according to Heidegger. Certain key words of the Greek language did not retain their philosophical meaning, e.g. aletheia, psuche, physis, and eudaimonia. The “new meanings” of these words then helped to form the storm clouds of scholastic metaphysics that Kant felt the need to disperse in his Three Critiques. Other key terms such as areté, arché, diké, and phronimos were also problematically translated, because their “explanatory/justificatory” meanings were distorted. Areté, for example, is trans-categorical term extending over the domain of character(virtue) and action(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Kant’s strategy was to decentre prevailing theoretical considerations about the nature of God, in favour of practical considerations relating to freedom and the will. For Kant, it was clear that the world of willed phenomena was constitutive of the domain of History:
“Whatever conception of the freedom of the will one may form in terms of metaphysics, the will’s manifestations in the world of phenomena, i.e, human actions, are determined in accordance with natural laws, as is every other natural event. History is concerned with giving an account of these phenomena, no matter how deeply concealed their causes may be, and it allows us to hope that, if it examines the free exercise of the human will on a large scale, it will be able to discover a regular progression among freely willed actions. In the same way we may hope that what strikes us in the actions of individuals as confused and fortuitous may be recognised in the history of the entire species as a steadily advancing but slow development of mans original capacities.”(Kant’s Political Writings, Trans. Nisbet, H., B., Cambridge, CUP, 1970, P.41)
Kant is not generally recognised to be a major political/historical philosopher, but the above quote, taken from an essay entitled “Idea for a Universal History”, together with another essay from the same collection, entitled “Perpetual Peace”, are major contributions to both Political Philosophy and the Philosophy of History. The idea of the United Nations was floated in the former essay, but the complex idea of Human Rights incorporating ideas of freedom and legal equality needed, in addition to the above reflections, the kind of extended ethical argumentation one finds in “Metaphysics of Morals”. All the above works, including the second Critique and the Groundwork, were clearly recommending that man emancipate himself from his self-incurred immaturity via the founding activity of reconstituting political institutions on rational grounds and principles. A spirit of criticism was directed at authoritarian dogma. This spirit also avoided descending in a sceptical spiral that would deny the importance of ideas of reasons and practical a priori principles. Such a spirit required that man impose these practical a priori principles upon himself, e.g. as expressed by the various formulations of the categorical imperative. This, in turn, suggests that both politics and law require ethical argumentation and reference to necessary and sufficient conditions that are discussed in both of these practical sciences. Necessary and sufficient conditions are, of course, important in contexts of explanation/understanding/justification.
The idea of freedom, according to Hans Reiss’s “Introduction” to “Kant’s Political Writings”, requires of a government that they refrain from regulating the speech and thought of individual citizens, as well as refrain from regulating individual rights to acquire things in the external world. In the latter case everyone must respect both the freedom and right to possessions of other individuals. These factors stand or fall together. In totalitarian regimes, freedom of speech is severely limited and corruption is rife in both the economic and legal systems. Politically connected Elites dogmatically control many of the institutions in the above systems. Reiss:
“But mans inner life must not be subject to coercion. Because we cannot know for certain anything about another persons inner life, it ought not to be the task of political action or legislation to change or in any way to condition another persons thought…all individuals have this right of acquiring possessions. It is the expression of their freedom.”(P.22)
Kant clearly sees the realm of freedom to be that which it is the task of human rights to regulate. His vision is not dissimilar to the Ancient Greek view that one ought to lead ones life in accordance with principles connected to areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time), diké(justice) and phronesis. The categorical imperative incorporates aspects of these ideas of reason, especially the practically oriented second formulation which demands that we so act as to treat other people as ends-in-themselves. Kant elaborates upon the Greek position by forming the technical concept of The Will: a concept that is definitely a consequence of reflection upon the different formulations of the categorical imperative which all prioritise acting in accordance with ones duty over acting in accordance with sensibly-based personal appetites and desires. Citizens, on Kant’s view, are active agents, acting collectively, with a general universal will. The outcome of a long period of activity, will, on Kant’s view result in the establishment of a Cosmopolitan kingdom of ends composed of Cosmopolitan citizens respecting each others freedom. To be clear, what is being discussed here is not a Hegelian “final solution” of a spiritual end that disregards Kantian categories in favour of a dialectical march of opposites to some kind of absolute terminus.
Reiss points to the role of Teleology in Kant’s view of History:
“When Kant talks of plans of nature in history he does not mean that there is an actual legislator or mind called nature which has consciously made a plan to be carried out in history, but merely that if we wish to understand history as (according to him) we have to, we must resort to an Idea such as that nature has a purpose in history. This idea cannot be proved or disproved by a scientific enquiry, but without it, we cannot understand history at all”.(P.36)
This is part of the Kantian account of explanation/understanding. Two important implications of this account are:
A rational idea is a condition of the possibility for understanding history, and
This rational idea is an idea in the mind of man that cannot be demonstrated or “proved”.
The “mind” referred to above, however, is not a mind constituted of personal individual memories and private events. Rather, we are here dealing with a form of consciousness, possessing active power emanating from different regions of consciousness(sensibility, understanding/judgement, and reason).
Ricouer’s view of explanation/understanding in History is convoluted, but it is clear, that he is sceptical of certain aspects of both the hylomorphic and critical accounts. He begins his investigation, not with the material condition of testimony that is incorporated into documentation, nor with the historical text that is the telos of the historical “work of remembering” engaged in by historians. Of course, there is a sense in which documentation “explains” testimony because the latter is a necessary condition of the former. If, however, one is concerned with characterising the whole historical process in , for example, hylomorphic terms, then the form, principle, or telos of the “work of remembering” that is involved in testimony suggests that this latter is an important element in determining the final “form” of the historical text.
Ricoeur, has, in other works(Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning,Fort Worth, Texan Christian University Press, 1976), pointed out that writing “explodes” the dialogical situation in which speech acts are directed at specific audiences present at these acts. Writing, Ricoeur insists, may be addressed to an audience that has yet to be born. Nevertheless, the implication of such “distanciation” is that there is a responsibility placed upon the author to anticipate the responses of “any audience” by incorporating in his text a response to their responses. This can be characterised as a “work of expectation” that ought to complement any “work of remembering”, which might be incorporated in the text. The historical text differentiates itself from other kinds of text by the fact that it is meant to be about long spans of time, and must also be valid for long periods of time. The problem with conceptualising long periods of time is that of deciding which categories to use for this task. Historians have tended to favour using the category of “fact” rather than “action” because statistical techniques are more relevant to the former. This approach also opens up the realm of probability theory in possible “explanations” of the phenomena one is dealing with. Bayes´s theorem, that the probability of an event is related to the information about that event, construes this information in terms of facts rather than actions, and thus excludes the use of practical reasoning in favour of a mathematical form of mathematical reasoning. Involved in this decision we can detect a scepticism with reference to the “work of expectation”, relating to anticipating actions that occur in contexts of exploration/discovery. Such work focuses upon the “unknown consequences” of action, rather than the constitutive logical characterisation of action, where the consequences of action are logically or conceptually related to the reasons that are given for that action in contexts of explanation/justification.
History is concerned with action in a context of a long temporal span and therefore with long term consequences. Its task must include explaining in general terms why the action has occurred, and this in turn requires a focus on both cause and consequence in relation to the category of actuality rather than the category of hypothetical possibility (which classifies the action as a Y rather than an X). In this work the logical identity of the action must be established before there can be investigations into its causality and consequences. Attempts at establishing “what” has been done occurs in an inductive context of exploration/discovery.
The Historian does not consult the documents in an archive in order to identify actions of magnitude and significance. Rather the concern ought to be for providing the evidence for already identified actions and the “Why”(the reasons for and the causes of the action). The action recorded is rarely an ongoing event like swimming. We are rather dealing with past actions whose consequences have largely occurred, e.g. expressed in the following terms in the above non-historical example,”The swimmer swam to the nearby island”. Here the logical identity of the action is not at issue, but is rather “named” or “rigidly designated” in the above expression which is an answer to the question “Why was the swimmer swimming?” This is consistent with the Kantian quote above in which reference is made to the idea of “purpose” or telos in History insofar as this relates to actions/events of magnitude/significance and the free exercise of the human will.
Ricoeur claims that G. E. R. Lloyd´s work “Demystifying Mentalities”( New York, CUP,1990) attempts to replace the expression “the plurality of mentalities” with another expression, namely, “styles of enquiry”. This latter expression has more of a descriptive intent than the former and belongs not in contexts of explanation/justification but rather in contexts of exploration/discovery.
Freud’s relation to History is also discussed, and this is particularly interesting and relevant, given the clear relationship there is between the activities that occur in the dialogical relation of the analyst/analysand in the psychoanalytical situation, and the equally clear relationship there is to the more structured institutional relation of judge to legal tribunal. Both proceedings involve a “work of remembering” at the level firstly, of the individual, and secondly, at an institutional level where documents are created, archived, and accessed. Involved in such activity, especially insofar as early historical documents were concerned, is a phenomenon Freud wished to categorise as “collective repression”. Freud suggests this pathological phenomenon might have occurred in relation to the records concerning the assassination of Moses. The biblical “story”, merely has Moses dying before entry into the Promised Land, and this may be a half truth necessitated by a wish fulfilment related to an admired father figure.
Ricoeur refers to Norbert Elias and his work “The Civilising process”(Trans Jephcott, E., Malden, Mass, Blackwell, 2000) as a text of importance insofar as the history of the term “representation” is concerned. There is, it is claimed, an interesting point of differentiation between a feudal state, e.g. the “Ancien regime”, and the civilising process going on in the liberation from such “feudal forces” which, as we know result in States monopolising the financing of of a society(taxation), as well as the right to coerce in the name of the law. Elias focuses upon the relation of interdependence that exists between the political organisation of a society, and its changing sensibilities and behaviour patterns. In this discussion there is no reference to the Aristotelian political vision of the political task of the creation of a large middle class, situated between the Platonic “democrats”(disgruntled sons of oligarchs) and the “feudal” oligarchs. Such a middle class will be formed, Aristotle argues, by the principle of the Golden Mean, which navigates a course (through the realm of behaviour patterns and sensibilities) between bipolar extremes. The Golden Mean is the virtue-forming principle, and part of this process of course involves widespread public education which in both its content and its form will be related to the forming of both intellectual and moral virtues. This, for Aristotle is part of his “civilising process”, or actualisation process, that is working toward the telos of installing the power of rationality(intellectual and moral) in mankind. Elias does not reason in the above hylomorphic terms, but instead refers to the more “modern” expressions of “psychic economy” and “historical psychology”(P.208), connecting these to a process he calls “rationalisation”. Rationalisation, it is argued is a process that regulates both emotions and social settings. This, Ricoeur claims, is”more than what the history of ideas calls reason”(P.208) Ricoeur maintains that this process is involved in the forming of “habits”, and the implication is clearly that this process is not “rational” in the sense Aristotle used the term but is rather “non-rational”. For Aristotle the process of the Golden Mean was essentially a “rational” process implying the operation of consciousness. Aristotle’s account of non-rational habit formation is involved in the conscious operation of reason after non-rational habits such as cowardice in the face of the enemy are formed. There is some form of conscious evaluation of this irrational habit and a new type of response to the enemy is formed: e.g. rushing unintelligently into battle. This habit is equally irrational and is a far cry from the demands of areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Conscious evaluation then uses the principle of the Golden mean and navigates a course somewhere in between the extremes. In the future these “bad habits” will perhaps still be present in the memory system and might require the operation of consciousness to select the new “rational” habit. The installation of the “virtuous” habit is certainly neither irrational nor rational, but rather the epitome of what Aristotle calls “rational”. It is not “rationalising” . In talking about his civilising process Elias has the following to say:
“But it is by no means impossible that we can make out of it(civilisation) something more “reasonable”, something that functions in terms of needs and purposes”(P.367, Civilising Process)
Reference to “purpose” in the above is interesting, because it demands a recognition of action, and a relation to the formal and final “causes” that help to form a teleological explanation/justification. Now it is the case that History and its work of remembering requires a truth orientation to objects in the past. The Historian may, of course, in their final reflections on their material, in the course of the preparations for the production of a historical text, refer to the “civilising process”, or what Aristotle would call the “actualisation process”. The language of the Historian becomes more teleological and in accordance with the practical rational principles (noncontradiction and sufficient reason) at all levels of reflection.
Ricoeur, as part of his hermeneutical approach which he once described in terms of being the “long road” to the understanding of Being that Heidegger he argued approached directly, wishes to focus upon a “rationalising process” rather than the rational outcome of the process. As part of one of his themes “The Conflict of Interpretations” Ricoeur quotes Pascal:
“Diversity….a town or a landscape from afar off is a town or a landscape but as one approaches it becomes houses, trees, tiles, leaves, grass, ants legs, and so on ad infinitum.”(Pascal, Pénsés(Trans Krailshaimer, A., J., Baltimore, Penguin, 1966, 48,65).
A Historian, it is argued chooses the scale of reflection to be used, e.g. economical, geographical, institutional, or social, on the ground of “mentalities” associated with these alternatives. This in turn makes possible and interplay between these levels as well as a dialectical discussion. Here we are not talking about seeing the same thing under different aspects, but rather, “different things”(P.211). Such attention to detail permits a change of priorities and allows the Historian to focus upon events relating to “the subordinate class”. This focus upgrades these events to events of magnitude/significance that suffice therefore to be plucked from the archives, and manifested in historical texts, e.g. the burning of a miller at the stake. In this refocussing, the life and worldview of the subordinate class becomes an issue of importance. Ricoeur believes that focussing upon the events of “village life” is “beginning at the bottom”.
Ricoeur arrives at the conclusion that this concept of “mentality” is too vague to perform the historical work of remembering. He suggests that we, instead focus upon the concept of “representation”, enriched by the phenomenological reflections of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty(P.217). The idea of “collective representation” emerges, and focus shifts from worldviews to social bonding. Unfortunately, in this discussion, the notion of “justification” is relativised, and the perspective of “scale” is used. The criteria of workable justifications, it is argued, differs from city to city. In this process of reflection, the normative element of justification, expressed in terms of ought premises and conclusions, is reduced to factual premises that form the basis for a “successful agreement”, which is then imitatively repeated via rationalising habit-formations. This “pattern” of behaviour is not in any sense categorical, but rather part of a dialectical process that leads to a “non-rational” result. In the context of this discussion Ricoeur prefers to refer to what he calls “the category of uncertainty”(P.226) which he then attempts to attach to the categorical idea of “trustworthiness”. Reference is also made to “the rules of the social game” and its “strategic logic”(P.226)
Representation is then unsurprisingly placed in a dialectical context in relation to the “political field”(P.227) and given “many meanings”. The discussion rotates back to the “faithfulness” of memory which preceded “the truth of history”(P.229). This essentially epistemological focus on “the moment of representation” thus neutralises both Aristotelian and Kantian rationalism which prioritises the world of will over the world of representation in practical contexts. The theoretical “form” of the village is not merely subsumed theoretically under the “form” of the city but is practical “matter” “formed” by the practical rational principle of the law-governed city.
St Augustine’s reflections on Time are both interesting and problematic, from many different perspectives. He claims that we know what time is until we are asked the question “What is Time?”, whereupon we struggle to come up with an answer to this admittedly aporetic question. St Augustine claims that we have difficulty explaining what time is. It is not clear whether he intends to include the answer Aristotle gave to this question when he claims that our answers to this question are inadequate. Aristotle, as we know, provided us with the following definition of time: “The measurement of motion in terms of before and after”. St Augustine does not engage with this definition directly, so it is difficult to know what his position is. He did point out that Aristotle both thought that time is different from motion but related to it. The relation that Aristotle was thinking of was probably related to the category of “Quantity”. Apparently “The Categories” is the only work St Augustine mentions and this leaves us wondering about his view of the metaphysical aspects of Aristotle’s definition.
St Augustine argues that in order for us to measure or quantify change or motion, that change or motion must be something extended in space, and also in some sense present to us. He appears, however, not to adopt the implication of Aristotle’s definition that what is changing or moving must be something external to one. He appears to phenomenologically “bracket” this “externality, and instead describes this extension as an extension in the mind, implying that the presence is a presentness to the mind. St Augustine then argues that the past can only be made present to the mind via the power of memory whereas the future is made present to the mind via the power of expectation. One observation one can make about these reflections, is that there is no attempt at a definition of Time, but only an attempt to describe what is happening to the mind. Some commentators have taken St Augustine to be engaged in the phenomenological venture of describing the functions of Consciousness. It ought to be pointed out, however, that this idea of the present, is first and foremost a theological idea, that is related to the “eternal presence” of God for whom there can therefore be no past and future dimensions of time.Furthermore St Augustine does not aspire to producing an argument for the certainty of the existence of the human being, but rather characterises the consciousness of oneself in terms of doubt. We know it was doubt that set in motion the attempt to put the question, “What is time?” The Aristotelian response to this question, however, was not to describe what is happening in the mind but rather to say what time ontologically must be by referring to the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason in an argument. For Aristotle, furthermore, there must be something enduring and real in any change from something to its contrary. This something has two aspects, an external and an internal aspect. The internal aspect of this change is the subject that is of interest for the Delphic oracle and the prophecy “Know thyself!” , but the external aspect of this self is best given in Aristotle’s essence-specifying definition of the human self, namely, “rational animal capable of discourse”. Knowing what this self is, is of course, the most difficult of aporetic questions. “Enduring”, for Aristotle, does not mean eternally present but it does guarantee some form of finite existence which is related to the Greek notion of “psuche”. Human life in the Augustinian system differentiated itself from animal life in virtue of the fact that God breathed life into the human form. This divine breath sufficed to place us higher up on the chain of creation than animals, for St Augustine. Whereas for Aristotle, the fact that we were beings for whom our being was in question(cf Heidegger) sufficed for us to occupy one of the highest places on a chain of Being. Confronted by our own awe and wonder at the brute existence of the world, we sought not merely to describe and narrate but to explain, justify, and acquire knowledge as a result of our attempts to answer aporetic questions.
Having been created by the breath of God , for Augustine, sufficed for our doubt to be converted into hope for salvation in the conversion process that transformed us into citizens of the city of God rather than earthly citizens of de civitate terrana(Babylon).
Augustine, according to Wittgenstein, was mistaken in his characterisation of Language. Augustine resorts to description rather than explanation/justification and describes the way in which language learners learn to name objects, thereby suggesting that the naming function was the key element of language. Kant, on the other hand, puts the key moment of the learning of language, at that moment in time when the child ceases to refer to itself in the third person (e.g. Karl) and begins to use the word “I”. This moment for Kant is the dawn of thinking over a community of impulsive feelings. For Aristotle, perhaps the key moment is not just thinking but rather thinking something about something(what Heidegger called the veritative or truth-making synthesis). Naming carries no indication of time on the Aristotelian theory, and therefore must lack the complexity of a fully-fledged language. Augustine relates language to memory in his example of someone discoursing, and being aware of what has just been said, what is being said now, and what is shortly going to be said. This is, once again, a descriptive account of what the self is conscious of at any moment of any discourse, but what it fails to take account of, is the very important aspect of the reason why the speaker is saying what they are saying, e.g. perhaps because they believe in freedom of speech or justice on grounds they could defend if required to. It is clear on the Aristotelian and Kantian accounts of memory, that whilst there is a work of remembering operating here, there is also an implied work of reason preventing contradictions and preventing insufficient reasons from dominating the discourse. Obviously the tense-structure of language would also be a relevant aspect to describe if that was my purpose, and if I am in my discourse talking about the past, i.e. making historical judgments, then this would be an example of thinking about the past on Aristotles account. We can see in such complex circumstances how inadequate the Augustinian naming function of language is.
Aristotle, in his work “De Interpretatione”, maintained, as we have previously suggested that it is only with the verb that time is indicated in language–whether it be past, present, or future. The subject is that which is firstly indicated and this can be represented either by names or descriptions. Attaching a verb to the subject when we attempt to say something about this subject(in relation to this subject) is both indicative of time and truth on the condition we are dealing with a reporting use of language as is the case with historical statements. The Categories of Judgment(Quantity, Quality, Relation), Kant has argued, are even related to Aesthetic Judgments such as “This rose is beautiful”, even though these judgments are “subjective” and grounded upon the feelings of life and pleasure. It is this categorical structure that enables us to speak with a so-called “universal voice” in this matter, demanding a certain form of sensibility in relation to the rose. In these kinds of claim, the powers of understanding and the imagination are connected to the power of judgment. There is ,therefore, on both Aristotelian and Kantian accounts, no reason to believe that so-called “structures” have any priority over the categories involved in historical judgments, which are obviously objective statements about the past.
Aristotle focuses upon the past in his account of “recollection”. Augustine, on the other hand, focuses on the present in reflections upon time and its relation to memory. Aristotle shows no sigs of intellectual paralysis in the face of the question “What is time?”, because his reasoning is in accordance with the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. Furthermore, Aristotle embraces a metaphysical theory of change in which it is clear that the “past” in some sense “causes”(explains) the recollection, together with the intention or will to recall something. If this “something” is of importance to a community or a polis, it is extremely likely that the testimony of the relevant actors who witness events of great magnitude will be documented, and that this documentation will be preserved and stored in archives as part of the “work of remembering” or “recollection”-process. This archive would then, in the future, be placed at the disposal of historians. Fortunately for us these historians do not suffer from Augustinian doubts about Time. They not only know what time is, but they would explain it in much the same way in which Aristotle did.
Ricoeur raises the question of whether the writing of history is a remedy or poison. If like Theuth you do not equate recollection with “the work of remembering”, but rather with being “reminded” of something, then writing is clearly a poison rather than a remedy because this something that one is reminded of, may not be real. This may well have been a fair question to raise in relation to the writing down of myths, but when it came to the more disciplined work of remembering that occurs where reference is made to the testimony that is contained in archives, there surely cannot be any serious doubt about the fact that historians are writing about something real. Here we should also recall that we are not dealing here with a solipsistic historian sitting in his lonely study writing, with doubts about the truth of what he is communicating, but rather a community of historians, critically reviewing each other, writing knowingly about events that are real. In such a community the work of each is reviewed and criticised by all others(in terms of the truth-value of the judgments).
In a chapter entitled “The Documentary Phase” Ricoeur makes a very interesting claim that prior to the work that is archived lies another work , a work of testimony, done by living witnesses to the events of magnitude and significance so important to the existence and maintenance of the polis. Ricoeur’s reflections do not follow this particular path, but given the fact that historical events have both good and bad legal and political consequences, it is our assertion that the best “tribunal” for the evaluation of such consequences would be one in which practical reasoning is used. The kind of political reasoning we are referring to would be that of the “great-souled” statesman, the phronimos. The reasoning we would expect in legal tribunals, on the other hand, centres around a thesis about someones possible guilt, being confronted with an antithesis about possible innocence. In the course of such proceedings both physical evidence and testimony play a decisive role. The demand of the testimony is that it be true on pain of being subject to severe sanctions for contempt for the process. One can claim that the essence of such legal testimony is historical, in that it claims that an event or series of events significant for the outcome of the case , either did or did not occur. The transcendental presupposition behind the truth of this testimony is ” I was there!”(P.148).
Historians, engaging in discussing the truth content of a peers work, are interested in passing judgment upon that work in accordance with multiple criteria which include evaluating the truth-value of the judgments contained in a context of explanation/justification typical of all sciences concerned with the advancement of knowledge. Important in this process, of course, is the place or site of the action or event. In this context, Ricoeur points to Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological reflection upon the lived body in order to make sense of “my-place” in relation to the action or event. “Places of habitation” in a city(P.150) are also important elements of historical accounts as is the “geography of the city”. Ricouer refers favourably to to a view expressed by Braudel in his work “The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean world in the Age of Philip II” (trans. Reynolds, S., New York, Harper and Row(two vols)1972-3):
“Any civilisation is at bottom space worked by men and history.”
Ekonomos or Economics will be an important aspect in this civilisation-building work. Historical time will of course transcend lived-time in political contexts. Historical time will also refer to the time of the foundation of the civilisation being written about. Such dating, of course, presupposes a calendar-system that in its turn bears some relation to cosmic time( the movement or change of position of heavenly bodies(rotational or orbital)) This lived-time, historical-time and cosmic-time framework, helps to inscribe events in a continuum. The lived-time of witnesses is positioned in this framework and helps to create the content we find in our archives. The finitude of a human life stands out against this potentially infinite continuum as a “brief” instant of time, a brief candle that seemingly burns and extinguishes in an instant. The Being-toward-death so important in Heidegger’s “Being and Time” pales in comparison to temporal and spatial magnitude of historical events and action that affect the future and perhaps the fate of everyone, whether they have been born yet or not. Now whilst death finds a limited place in the historical archives as does love in the register of marriages, these finite aspects of lived-time are left to the poets and writers who hope to survive in our libraries after their death.
Ricoeur takes up the notions of cyclical time as represented in the days, weeks, months and years of the calendar, and the notion of linear time represented by the non-calendar time of centuries and millennia (P.156). Cosmic history of course transcends calendars and clocks, and even the presence of witnesses. In the light of such long time-periods which the Greeks felt might stretch back into infinity along an infinite continuum, we can understand that the longer the period of human history extends, the more it will tend to transcend even the fundamental element of event/action and become more concerned with longer speculative units, e.g. Hegelian chronosophies of progress versus philosophies of regression.
Ricoeur poses the fundamental question as to whether a history without direction, or continuity, is possible and he refers to Pomian’s suggestion that “structure” replace “periods” as an organising form(P.157). Such a suggestion would have the consequence of collecting periods into larger units such as “ages” which, Ricoeur argues, can cause problems if there are rival categorisations of these “ages”. What is clear is that “Structuralism”, as a linguistic theory, does not engage directly with either Aristotelian or Kantian categories, perhaps because these latter do not have a linguistic origin but rather are existential and logical/conceptual. The “naming” of “ages” or “periods”, is of course a complex matter, but a clue to an Aristotelian or Kantian view of a historical classificatory system that preserves intuitions of both direction and continuity is given in the naming of firstly, the era of Ancient Greece as a “Golden Age” and secondly the naming of that intense period that followed the “Dark ages” as “The Renaissance”(Rebirth of the Golden Age) These two “periods” are thus related to each other(continuity) and provide direction. Structuralism, as we know, in other contexts was a speculative theory that resulted in a reduction of historical phenomena to category-neutral events, which could then be inserted in an algebraic/logical combinatory matrix(P.160). Ricoeur, to his credit, raises some doubts about this methodological approach, and points to his own theory of action as an example of a critical response to structuralism.
Testimony is viewed by Ricoeur as an action/event. He raises doubt about this fundamental aspect of the historical process by referring to an experiment in which subjects were asked to reconstruct or reconstitute a film sequence they had witnessed. The results, it was concluded, raised serious questions about the trustworthiness of Testimony. Ricoeur raises the issue of whether these laboratory conditions were a fair reflection of the normal circumstances in which testimony is given, with some justification. If we take as our paradigm of testimony, what occurs in a legal tribunal, we can see that in such circumstances the focus is not solely on what happened, but also on its relation to the law: at the end of this process a judgment will be made as to whether a law had been broken or not. The focus of the experiment on “the what” without any involvement of “the why” may have been a confounding variable in the above experiment.
Historical writings, on the view of Kant, ought to concern themselves both with the truth and the direction and continuity of History. This involves concern with deeds of magnitude evaluated, firstly, by the practical idea of freedom, and secondly, the several formulations of the categorical imperative. Also important in this discussion is the way in which the historical plot “unfolds” in the historical narrative. Ricouer, however, leaves a question hanging in the air over the issue of the integrity of the “archives”: the question namely as to whether they are the remedy to a malady, or a poison. The myth of Phaedrus is invoked in relation to the claim that documents in an archive are “orphaned”, and need support from their authors who, as a matter of fact, may even be dead. In many cases, of course, the authors represented institutions of the polis and, in such circumstances, living confirmation of ones archived testimony is replaced by trust in these institutions, as judged of course by the historians working with the documents emanating from these institutions.
It is, theoretically possible that there occur an event/action of significant magnitude and all the witnesses may be killed, thus preventing the production of any documentation. Nevertheless the death of all the witnesses would raise questions by the communities they were part of, and probably launch investigations into the causes of these deaths.
Ricoeur takes up the issue of fraudulent documents placed in archives, but these documents, when compared with other documentation in the same archives as well as other archives, often violate the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason and stand out like flashing warning signs. Documents have been falsified in various places at various times in History, and have been discovered by either comparison with other documents or the testimony of living witnesses. For many, these unlikely possibilities suffice for them to classify History as a “Conjectural Science”(P.174). We have ourselves witnessed the testimony of living witnesses to the holocaust, and such testimony “tests” the veracity of the archived information all over the world. No one believes that a holocaust survivor with a number tatooed on their arm which is sequential to other numbers tatooed on other survivors arms, is un untrustworthy source of information. Questioning whether they have a photographic memory of the terrible events that occurred in the camps(as the above scientific experiment suggests) is not a rational response to their suffering. Were they to appear at a trial, as they did at the trial of Eichmann, their testimony would suffice to be archived as “truth”, given the judgment that was handed down against Eichmann. Paradoxically Eichmanns defence at this trial was covered by Arendt in her book on Eichmann in Jerusalem, and she noted after reading all the trial material that the defendant was not capable of “thinking”, as she put the matter. This angered many Jews and confused many academics who perhaps did not appreciate the subtlety of Arendt’s criticism. She pointed out that, when questioned, Eichmann often mechanically and robotically repeated clichés from a very limited verbal repertoire, giving the impression that he was delivering memorised phrases and responses. She also pointed to the judgment of many commentators, that Eichmann appeared ludicrously ridiculous” on the stand. We discussed the phenomenon of memorisation previously, and pointed out the fundamental difference between this phenomenon, and the “work of remembering” that is required by a process of questioning in a trial where ones life may be at stake. Memorisation, Ricoeur noted earlier, belongs in a matrix of authority relations, so it was not at all surprising to witness Eichmanns defence, which claimed that, in signing the orders for the transport of 1.5 million Jews, he was merely folllowing orders, which he found no reason to question.
In an interesting epistemological discussion of the relation of a fact to an event, Ricoeur claimed the following:
“A fact is not an event, itself given to the conscious life of a witness, but the contents of a statement meant to represent it.”(P.178-9)
So, what is true of a fact may not be true of an event. Wittgenstein’s attempted “final solution” to all the problems of Philosophy in his work “Tractatus” insisted that:
1.1 The World is the totality of facts. Not of things.
Wittgenstein then further insisted that so-called atomic facts are related to atomic states of affairs. This suggested that everyday facts were complexes and could be divided up in much the same way as objects could, e.g. a broom, composed of the “parts” of a brush and a handle. Events such as swimming are presumably, at least theoretically, divisible into an agent and an action, but facts are categorically different on Ricoeur’s account: being “contents” of representational statements, i.e. they have a propositional character. He continues outlining the distinction:
“..it is as the ultimate referent that the event figures in historical discourse. And it is to preserve this status of the reference of historical discourse that I distinguish the fact as “something said”, the “what” of historical discourse from the events as “what one talks about”, the “subject of…” that makes up historical discourse.”(P.179)
The above accords with the idea that the fact is predicated by “That….”, e.g. in a context of saying/believing/knowing, something about something. The ultimate meaning of a historical event may well be “something that happens”, but that in turn must also in some sense be related to actions in which actors/cities/nations/civilisations are attempting to “make something of themselves”, in accordance with arché, diké, epistemé, areté and phronesis. Ricoeur does not venture down this path of reflection, in spite of his earlier proclamation concerning the importance of action theory. An event is clearly, logically, not something that is “done” , but seemingly, rather, falls into the category of “what happens”, or “what takes place”, e.g. a pubic event. In Law, a fact is the truth about an event. This characterisation would conform to Aristotelian theory and the view that the role of the fact is to say something about something.
In Wittgenstein’s early work, the Tractatus, we are told that the world is all that is the case and one interpretation of this leaves us with the OED definition of a fact as “a thing that is the case”. Reports in archives mostly contain facts and not just information that has to be “interpreted”. This implies that much of the work of the historian involves explaining and justifying the facts in documents , rather than “Interpreting information”.
Ricoeur interestingly raises the possibility of a conflict of interpretations of events, especially if living witnesses who were “present” at an event, contradict accounts of the event given in the archives. Such an occurrence is certainly a possibility, but an unlikely possibility, when we are dealing with events of magnitude that have many consequences for many people over long periods of time, e.g. the holocaust. Ricoeur, curiously, refers to this as a crisis of testimony: a crisis of belief and trustworthiness. For Ricoeur, testimony may be flawed and he hopes that situating representation in a context of explanation will save its “reputation”. The fact of the matter, however, is that the so called “reputation” of testimony is constituted by its occurrence in a context of explanation/justification, and it is exactly this feature that guarantees its validity.
Moving from the question of what the work of remembering is, to the question “Whose memory?” and to the answer “mine”, obviously is going to result in a solipsistic end to an otherwise interesting explorative journey. Ricoeur points to Charles Taylor’s expression, “a school of inwardness”, in the context of this discussion, and Augustine is evoked as one of the sources of this school of thinking, which Ricoeur claims reaches its apex with Husserl’s Phenomenology. We have argued in our 4 volume work, “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness and Action”, that the analytical school of Philosophy as characterised by the Logical Atomism of both Russell and the early Wittgenstein, also represented ” a school of inwardness”, which fortunately was significantly questioned by the later work of Wittgenstein. This aspect of the school can also be traced back to John Locke. Wittgenstein’s criticism of of his own earlier solipsism was reminiscent of Heidegger’s criticism of Husserl’s phenomenological positions.
The task Ricoeur sets himself is, to restore the concept and power of memory in the architectonic of Reality, in such a fashion that it no longer became connected with solipsism and the resultant objective-subjective debate. Ricoeur points out that St Augustine rejects the Aristotelian explanations of the origin of time and the basis of cosmic changes, and he also highlights the dilemma involved in the dualistic problem of reconciling the time of the soul with the time of the world in the account Augustine provides us with. Ricoeur does not refer to the role of Descartes in the journey of thought from Augustine to Husserl, but it is clear that the dualistic reflections we encounter in Descartes’ Meditations and Reflections provided an excellent sceptical environment for the school of inwardness. Ricoeur does, however, discuss Descartes’ notion of “substance” and what he believes is the consequent triumph of a grammatical based form of certainty over sceptical doubt. In the context of this discussion Ricoeur surprisingly connects two claims:
That Husserl is one of the philosophers of consciousness par excellence, and
That it is Locke, rather than Decartes that is behind the idea of linking the ideas of self and consciousness.
Locke’s epistemological twist of the dualistic threads of two kinds of substance serves as a basis for identifying consciousness with memory. Locke also, paradoxically claims that one of the prime motivators of man is not the pleasure-pain “principle” but rather the raw “feelings” of pleasure and pain. These feelings are, of course, important elements of consciousness but, as we have pointed out in previous works, feelings are not ontologically the right kind of entity to become constitutive elements of the categorically-directed process of thinking. Thought is necessarily about reality and directed at Truth and the validating activities of explanation/justification in tribunals of reason.
Memory is of course intentional and about the past and it is, on hylomorphic theory, the material our higher faculties use to generate both experience and also the basic terms of the sciences in contexts of exploration/discovery. Memory is also intimately related to Language and the meaning of the terms we use in our judgements and propositions. In both of these cases, however, we are dealing with general(collective?) or universal memory and not the kind of memory(e-g. particular memories) Locke was referring to, when he was discussing and attempting to define the identity of an individual person. Kant had Locke and Hume in mind as well as Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz when he engaged with the task of synthesising the respective positions of empiricism and rationalism. Kant, pointedly, in his remarks on Education, maintained that training the memory in isolation from other cognitive faculties such as judgement and reason was a meaningless exercise, and should not be one of the major goals of education. Kant, too, would have agreed with the argumentation that memory and the introspective stream of consciousness were necessary foundations for the “school of inwardness”.
Locke was a follower of the more empirically biased science of Boyle, the atomist, who concerned himself with mathematically calculating formulae for the phenomenon of the expansion of gases, rather than the Newtonian project of formulating the natural and “philosophical” laws of thermodynamics and motion. The “atoms” of Locke’s system are the “objects” of experience and the simple ideas, together with the “feelings of pleasure and pain which all obey so called “laws” of association. These laws, which included physical relational characteristics, were part of Locke’s general explanation of thought. These “mechanistic” laws would be later used by the behaviourists to “associate” stimuli and responses. Involved in this “school” of Psychology was, to begin with, an outright denial of the existence of consciousness and subsequently a denial of its relevance as a means of explaining experiential phenomena. Behaviourism, it is important to note, was a reaction to the “school of inwardness” founded by the thought of Augustine, Descartes, Locke, and, later by Hume, Russell, and the early Wittgenstein. The methodological “Golden Mean” Principle, that had earlier been used by Aristotle to avoid dualisms in all its forms was systematically involved in the “modern” movements between schools of inwardness and outwardness, was ignored.
“Modernism” has been characterised in many different ways throughout the ages but in this context perhaps the most relevant characterisation is that by the American Philosopher Stanley Cavell who claimed that the essential characteristic of the “modern” was its questionable relation to its own history. Descartes, Hobbes, etc , we know, made it an important part of their philosophical mission to deny the methods and theories of Aristotle without, it has to be said, demonstrating any systematic understanding of the thought of Aristotle.
Augustine, of course, is interestingly included as an important influence upon the development of these “modern” movements and he too, like Descartes, was a dualist in many different respects. We can, indeed clearly recognise the presence of Augustine in the early theory of meaning presented in Wittgensteins Tractatus. This is also confirmed by Wittgenstein himself in his later work “Philosophical Investigations”, in which he specifically admitted to being held hostage by a picture of the functioning of language which he attributed to Augustine.The importance of Wittgenstein’s later work in the context of this debate, is that it was very concerned to redraw the boundaries between the “inner” and the “outer”. In doing this he also played an important part in creating the logical space for the reemergence of Kantian critical theory, and Aristotelian Hylomorphic theory. In his later work he completely abandoned logical atomism in favour of a view of language rooted in the Greek concept of psuche(form of life).
Locke, unlike Hume, was convinced that morality was an objective matter, whose validity could be rationally demonstrated, and this undoubtedly influenced Kant who, we know, elevated practical reasoning to Platonic and Aristotelian heights. All three thinkers were significant political theorists. Locke is also considered a significant political theorist. His social contract, however, is grounded upon an idea the other three theorists would not share, namely that the social contract ought to create the conditions necessary for citizens to engage in “the pursuit of happiness”. This pursuit, for Locke, was related to what he termed “commodious living” and the regulation of our rights in relation to owning property: ideas which later Marxists found so odious. The Greeks regarded the art(techné) of earning money ,as a secondary concern for areté, because it ought to be restricted to the domain of the household and its local instrumental imperatives. Aristotle’s conception of the primary categorical imperatives, on the other hand, associated with areté, involved prioritising epistemé and ethical and political values in their relation to eudaimonia(the good-spirited flourishing life)
According to Ricoeur, Locke “invented” consciousness. We are not sure exactly what Ricoeur means by this remark, but it needs to be pointed out that Locke’s “consciousness” is an integral part of a network of atomistic and reductionistic assumptions. If we bear this fact in mind, there are aspects to Locke’s thought which, it can be argued, reflect hylomorphic concerns, e.g. that something(e.g. a self) is what endures over a process of change, e.g. Socrates becomes musical or tanned. Locke prefers the terminology of “person” and thereby evokes the Latin idea of “persona”, which, as we know makes reference to a mask whose actual function it is to conceal ones identity: thus making identity the key issue in the attempt to specify, via a definition, the essence of being human. This is an epistemological shift that attempts to avoid the metaphysical implications of the aporetic question “What is a human being?”Locke thus manages to convert important characteristics of being human into something “hidden”, e.g. in ones memories. The image of a private inner theatre staging the events of a stream of consciousness which involve memories which I “possess” thus is an important supporting image for the school of inwardness. In such a context the important task of delineating the scope and limits of consciousness as a mental power or principle becomes marginalised.
Ricoeur quotes Locke in an attempt to complement the account which equates memory with consciousness:
“concern for happiness is the unavoidable concomitant of consciousness”(Locke, J., Second Treatise of Government, Chicago, Henry Reginery, 1955, 26)
It might be the case that there is a tighter relation than “concomitance” between the pursuit of happiness and consciousness, especially if we construe “happiness”, not as a feeling in a stream of consciousness occurring on a private stage, but instead take happiness to be eudaimonia (the pursuit of a good spirited flourishing life). In this excursion into the outer realms of the technical world of the instrumental imperative, it is also clear that we need , if we wish to engage with the problem of power and the abuse of power in the activity of war, to move away from talk of consciousness and toward talk of persons. It should also, however be reiterated that in such a context the idea of the identity of the self is also problematic, i.e. Napoleon being Napoleon in virtue of the fact that he possesses Napoleon’s memories, says very little about the character of Napoleon or the ethical significance of his use/abuse of power ,which resulted in a trail of devastation across Europe. Here it would seem we need rather to raise the issue of his character in a context of a tribunal of practical reasoning.
Ricoeur then compares Husserl and Augustine in relation to the attempted transfiguration of consciousness into the prejudicial “realm ” of intersubjectivity. For Husserl, the consciousness of time is, of course, “internal”. The phenomenological reduction was used to “bracket” “world-time” which Husserl argues, common sense mistakenly sees as something “external”. Experienced time is thus conceived of as independent of that time Newton conceived of as “absolute” and “flowing”, externally in relation to us, (as manifested by the cosmic events of the movements of the heavenly bodies). If such an absolute objective idea of time is inconceivable, its polar opposite, the idea of an “absolute subjectivity”(P.111) makes perfect sense for Ricoeur in phenomenloogical accounts of consciousness which once again raise the problems of negation, absence, etc. We are also faced once again with the problem of explaining the presence and importance of other persons who, on the view of the school of inwardness, may “possess” a completely unique “stream of consciousness” “flowing” across the “Internal” theatre of their minds. Wittgenstein’s “solution” to the problem of moving from his earlier postulated solipsistic “I” to a more communal “We” was to move closer to critical and hylomorphic approaches to these problems.
In conclusion, phenomenological theories do not seem to possess the necessary resources to describe and explain the relation of the “Who?” question to the “What?” question. Truth is obviously the major issue in the latter case. This is not to deny that there is a “Who” involved in thinking something about something, as well as the “that” or “what” component of the thought. The “person” obviously does not “possess” these thoughts in the same way in which he might be said to possess his memories. It is clear, however, that in the context of this discussion the major question is not “Who is maintaining this claim?” but rather “Why is this claim being made?”
You must be logged in to post a comment.