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Ricoeur makes an explicit commitment to Action in this chapter, although it is unclear whether the idea of insufficiency or incompleteness will be jettisoned in the dialectic of the past and the future that is synthesised in this presence of action. He claims:
“Even the idea of tradition– which already includes a genuine tension between the perspective of the past and that of the present and thereby increases temporal distance at the same time that it crosses it—does not give rise to thought….unless it is by way of the intentionality of a history to be made that refers back to it.”(P.207)
This claim that the idea of tradition does not give rise to thought, unless it is via the intentionality of history, is indeed a puzzling one. Surely historical thought is sufficiently related to the past in virtue an unproblematic relation of the past to the present manifested in the powers of memory, understanding and reason? If the principle of sufficient reason is applicable in this case, then historical judgements relating to tradition must give rise to forms of thought that remember, understand and reason.
Of course, if one, like Hegel, questions the sufficiency of human memory, understanding and reason, then the historical relation between the present and the past will be ruptured, and answers to questions relating to sufficient reasons for historical judgments and historical deeds will, indeed become problematic. For Ricoeur, however, it is evident that the application of the categories of understanding and the principles of reason contribute to unnecessary abstraction about the past. This position can be supported by Ricoeur’s view of “symbolic” language which, because of its structure of “double meaning”, requires a complex process of “interpretation” before we can be clear about this use of language. Ricoeur’s claim in the context of this discussion, is that it is “symbols” that give rise to thought. Texts which contain “symbols” i.e. can only be sufficiently understood if a hermeneutical “method” is used to “reveal” the latent meaning of the symbols. Rather than appeal to memory, Ricoeur focuses upon insufficiency and “forgetfulness” in relation to the interplay of significations, and he claims that we need also to understand the interplay between our expectations of the future and our interpretations of the past(P.208), whilst simultaneously rejecting the tendency to think in abstractions about the past. Ricoeur then makes a phenomenological/hermeneutic attempt to combat the above form of forgetfulness via a discussion of Reinhart Kosellecks distinction between the “categories” of a “space of experience” and a “horizon of expectation”. The “category” of the past all but disappears in this discussion which largely concentrates upon dialectic reasoning relating to the present and the future. Ricoeur raises the question:
“why speak of a space of experience rather than the persistence of the past in the present…?”(P.208)
He fails, however, to provide us with an answer that maintains the integrity either of tradition or our historical knowledge relating to tradition. Ricouer elaborates upon the above position by maintaining:
“Whether it be a question of private experience or of experience transmitted by prior generations or current institutions, it is always a question of something foreign being overcome.”(P.208)
Even the above conception of “expectation” is insufficient or incomplete because:
“expectation cannot be derived from experience”(P.208)
Aristotle, Kant and the later Wittgenstein would find the above idea of insufficiency or incompleteness in relation to judgements about the past or the future, incomprehensible. Wittgenstein, for example, in his “Philosophical Investigations” discusses the important scientific idea of “the uniformity of nature” and has the following reflections to contribute:
“472. The character of the belief in the uniformity of nature can perhaps be seen most clearly in the case in which we fear what we expect. Nothing could induce me to put my hand into a flame—although after all it is only in the past that I have burnt myself.
473.The belief that the fire will burn me is of the same kind as the fear that it will burn me.
474.I shall get burnt if I put my hand in the fire:that is certainty. That is to say : here we see the meaning of certainty(What it amounts to not the meaning of the word “certainty”)”
Wittgesteins account focuses upon the central idea of action, juxtaposed to an idea of “meaning” not confined to the realm of language. In the above, he finds no need for any kind of phenomenological/hermeneutic investigation into the thought involved in the belief “that the fire will burn me”. Present in the background of his reflections is an acknowledgement of the importance of the categories of understanding and the principles of reason(noncontradiction, sufficient reason). Past previous experience and our statements about the past are, he argues, sufficient “grounds” for the expectation that the fire will burn me, and the category of causality is assumed in such an argument. Skepticism about the temporal “categories” of the past and the future, would also be anathema to all forms of hylomorphic and critical investigation, as would skepticism about the integrity of tradition.
The problem of whether we can defend a position claiming that civilisation is “progressing”, is, of course, a different and more complex matter, requiring the disentangling of many “threads” of evidence and argument for and against the thesis. Such evidence would have to include arguments for the truth of idealistic judgements, and perhaps also evidence for the Aristotelian claim that good prevails over evil over a longer period of time(millennia). The idea of tradition, when considered in a context of explanation/justification is also, then, something that needs evaluation over such long time periods: “centuries” may be the currency of historians, but such a limited time period is not the currency of Philosophers(cf. the Kantian claim that the kingdom of ends lies one hundred thousand years in the future). The philosophical idea of “the uniformity of tradition” will not relate merely to events such as believing we will be burned by the fire if we insert our hand, but also extend to the certainty we attach to the practical ideals of justice, freedom, and democracy. The journey toward a Greek telos of eudaimonia(good spirited flourishing life), or the journey toward the kingdom of ends does, admittedly, in some sense suggest the idea of “insufficiency” insofar as the past and the present are concerned, especially when compared with an ideal future. In fact it is this form of insufficiency that justifies the conviction we have in the imperative ought form of judgement, e.g. “We ought to keep promises”, which in turn explains partly our commitment to “ought forms of argumentation”, that are part of our justification of a particular action of keeping a promise. Systematically, doing what one ought to do, on both Aristotelian and Kantian accounts, will have good consequences for ones life, and there is no objection to anthropomorphising the polis and saying something similar for the “actions” of government(passing and implementing laws etc).Kant, in the context of this discussion, referred in Socratic fashion to the combination of the good-in-itself with good consequences as the “summum bonum”(the highest good).
The “progress” of science is for many, the measure of the progress of our civilisation, but (modern)science is not what used to be, (namely, the bearer of epistemé), given its current obsession with techné(technology). For more traditional philosophers, e.g. Wittgenstein, Culture and Science are different routes to the future. Wittgenstein claims in Culture and Value:
“(We are involved here with the Kantian solution to the problem of Philosophy)”( Blackwell, Oxford, 1998, trans Winch P, P.13e)
Wittgenstein’s approach, however, differs from that of Kant, in that he turns to the task of clarifying the use of our language for his solutions to the problems of Philosophy. He notes the absence of concern with tragedy in our Contemporary Cultures, and relates this fact to the expression “Nothing happens!” In the context of this discussion, he also notes the similarity of the form of philosophical investigations with the form of aesthetic investigations(P29e). The Bible, for Wittgenstein, is a work in which the spirit of value is expressed, not in terms of epistemological concerns with the truth, but rather in terms of the Will, i.e in terms of a form of life in which we “live” an interpretation of the value of life and the world(P.73e). Freud, a fellow Viennese Kantian, is very much on Wittgenstein’s mind, in this work “Culture and Value”. Both “philosophers” express a sense of discontentment with modern life in our modern civilisations that it is difficult to lightly dismiss. Wittgenstein. like Freud, believes in the important role of Instinct in our cultural life and he argues that even our philosophical scruples have their roots in instinct(P.83e). The difference between these thinkers, however, is that in contrast to Wittgenstein, Freud is not a religious-believer. Wittgenstein, indeed, proclaimed on one occasion that he views the world religiously, and he sometimes even speculates positively on the relation of Christianity and Truth(89e). The discontent with civilisation we encounter in Wittgenstein’s reflections, however, may be deeper than that which we encounter in Freud but we should not underestimate the claim by both men to be influenced by Kant. There is nothing, that is, to prevent us from viewing both thinkers as elaborating upon the thought of both Aristotle and Kant. Wittgenstein certainly created a “logical space” for the reemergence of hylomorphic and critical philosophy, There is no room for the dialectical logic of Hegel or Nietzsche in this traditional landscape from the past.
Ricoeur speaks of a “new time” in the context of evaluating the arguments for “progress” in the development of our civilisations, but he is uncertain about the realisation of any “better future”, preferring to fixate upon the crises of the past and the present:
“What happens is always something other than we expected.” P.213
He connects this thought to the following claim:
“it is no longer certain that freedom, in the sense of an establishment of a civil society and a state of law, is the only hope, or major expectation of a great part of humanity.”(P.213)
This looks initially like an empirical observation related to the number of discontents one experiences in everyday life, and perhaps disguises the extent to which these discontents, appearances notwithstanding, may yet believe that a “better future” is possible. Ricoeur suggests that the “dream” of a “reconciled humanity” may be a “purely utopian expectation” and fears that the consequences of such a state of affairs is humanity despairing of all action(P.215). In spite of these anti-Kantian speculations, Ricoeur returns to the Kantian vision of:
“a universal civil society administered in accord with right”(P.216)
and hastens to point out that “at present” this has not been achieved, and further suggests that we turn to the past and the role of tradition for an explanation of such a sad state of affairs. Ricoeur also discusses Gadamer’s claim that the connection between history and knowledge must be discarded in attempts to interpret the significance of history. Such a move, of course, casts doubt upon any understanding of history based on knowledge. It also casts doubt upon the tribunal of reason that works on the “principle of sufficient reason”. Having earlier dismissed the role of correct memory in the understanding of History, there then appears to be little alternative but to deny any form of universality to the dialectical results of hermeneutic/phenomenological investigations. Ricoeur wishes to define the present solely in terms of acting and suffering, and he invokes Merleau-Ponty’s(MP) argument against the Cartesian “I think therefore I am”. MP, we know wishes to maintain that the lived body lives in a present in which “I can” becomes a more important power than that of thought. Ricoeur also introduces Danto’s analytical/empirical view of action/agency, and Austin’s view of speech-acts into the discussion, in order to justify his focus on the present temporal dimension, and he also attempts to tie “initiatives” such as making a promise to the lived through present and the past . With this form of account, we are indeed back to that point where Augustine defined the past as that which is no longer present and the future– as that present which is yet to come. The image of the present then becomes:
“thick with the immanence of the near future and the record of a just-passed past”(P.233)
Now whilst it is undoubtedly true that events actualise in the present, it is unclear whether we can claim that the present itself is actualised, simply because it is merely a potential “now”. However “thick” this present is conceived to be, it would actually be better to conceive of it in terms of a point-instant, even if this too might mathematically schematise our relation to this dimension of time unnecessarily. Ricoeur then admits that the individual act of promising, if it is to make any sense, must be preceded by a rule or law to the effect of “Promises ought to be kept”. This move is, however confounded by his conceiving of the individual act and the collective law as “in opposition”. The latter he claims is a social contract which occurs in:
“the cosmo-political dimension of the public space”(P.235)
Nietzsche is also invoked and praised for breaking with the traditional treatment of the problem of knowledge in his reflections upon Time. Nietzsche suggests in this context that we develop the capacity to “live unhistorically” and “forget” our “perverse relation to the past”(P.236). History, he argues, is more a matter of life or death than an abstract problem of knowledge, and he suggests that the tribunals of knowledge “close off the life of humanity”(P.237) Ricoeur also embraces the Nietzschean view of justice which maintains that when justice is regarded as the “Last Judgement” that condemns and punishes, it is occurring independently of the “power of judgement”. It is, Ricoeur adds, only when judgement is made from the viewpoint of the “highest strength of the present” that we are able to “refigure time” and become a master of our time rather than a slave to it. Ricoeur argues further that:
“the historical present is , in each era, the final term of a completed history which itself completes and ends history.”(.231)
Given the manifest contempt modern man has for the so called “achievements of the present, this is indeed a curious position to defend, although it is admitted at the end of the chapter that it is necessary to use an iconoclastic approach to tradition and history if one is to engage in the task of “refiguring time”. Memory is marginalised along with the categories of the understanding and the principles of reason in favour of a mysterious form of “forgetfulness” and its role in “refiguring time”.