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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.