Ricoeur the Context Is Liberation. In This

Ricoeur The context is liberation. In this short essay, the author will evaluate Ricoeur's hermeneutical method. They will go on to describe Ricoeur's method, critique its strengths and weakness and then raise questions that need to be answered for clarification. Paul Ricoeur saw layers in meaning in his hermeneutical philosophy where we examine ourselves in depth and detail. In other words, he is trying to get at the underlying reasons for human meaning. This is especially helpful in biblical hermeutics where the text is not clear.

He is best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation. He can not be fit into any one school, but below are some ideas that recur throughout his work. Ricoeur developed a philosophical and theoretical style that has been described as "tensive." He brought together many heterogeneous discourses and concepts to form a composite discourse in which new meanings are created. He was able to accomplish this without diminishing the specificity and difference of his constitutive terms.

His work on the metaphor and the human experience of time are the best examples of this method. Ricoeur discusses the elemental nature of mental life in the terms of the tension between our neurobiological mind's conceptions and our phenomenological concepts. Similarly, in his essay "Explanation and Understanding" he discusses the facets of human behavior in terms of the tension between the concepts of material causation and the language of motives and actions.

The tensive style that he developed is in keeping with what he regarded as the basic, ontological tensions that are inherent in the peculiar being that makes up human existence. This is expressed namely in the ambiguity of our belonging to both the natural world as well as the world of action (through the agencies of freedom of will). According to this, Ricoeur insisted that the art of philosophy find a way to express and contain those dual tensions.

In this way, his work ranges across a series of diverse schools of philosophical thought. In this way, he brought together the insights and analysis from both Anglo-American and European philosophical traditions, as well as from various literary studies, including political science and history. Ricouer examines the tensions that are played out in our basic ability to take on different perspectives on ourselves and then to formulate diverse approaches and methods in the way of understanding ourselves.

The different theoretical frameworks he employed in philosophy and the sciences are not simply the result of ignorance or power. They result from the tensions that run through the very structure of every human being. These are tensions that Ricoeur described as being similar to fault lines. His entire body of work was an attempt to identify and then map out the intersections of these numerous lines that comprise our various understandings of the human world.

He called these fault lines because they are lines that have the ability to intersect in different ways in all of the different aspects of our human lives, giving lives different meanings. However, as the points of intersection of discourses, these meanings can also come apart. Ricoeur argued that the stability that we enjoy with respect to the meanings of our lives is a tentative type of stability. This is subject to the influences of the material world around us and includes the powers and afflictions of one's own body.

It also includes the actions of other institutions and people as well as and own emotional and cognitive states. There is a fundamental nature of to these tensions. Ricoeur argues that this is ultimately based upon poetics as exemplified in narrative, rather than in philosophy that only provides the baseline structures and synthetic strategies by which the understanding and a coherent sense of life and self is possible at all. Ricoeur was essentially operating from within a reader oriented end of the spectrum.

However, he was uncomfortable with the very intrinsic subjectivity that was associated with such the science and art of hermeneutics and sought to walk the fine line between what he called objectivity grounded in some way in the text. However, he at the same time sought to remain "open" to what it is that the text may have to.