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63 ∂ A Love as Strong as Death Ricoeur’s Reading of the Song of Songs MARK GEDNEY The struggle against claims of absolute com-prehension and totalizing theory was one of the hallmarks of the work of Paul Ricoeur. One of these areas of struggle was his longstanding attempt to keep philosophical analysis and religious investigation independent of one another. Over the last decade or so of his life, however, as he integrated the concept of the command of love—following an interpretation of the Song of Songs by Franz Rosenzweig— into his philosophical discussion of self-identity and justice, he came to reject such an absolute ‘‘conceptual asceticism.’’1 This move was not a simple accommodation , but rather it represented a recognition of certain aporias that arise in any attempt to maintain absolute philosophical purity. In terms of the opposition between love and justice, Ricoeur argued: ‘‘Rather than confusing them or setting up a pure and simple dichotomy between love and justice, I think a third, difficult way has to be explored, one in which the tension between the two distinct and sometimes opposed claims may be maintained and may even be the occasion for the invention of responsible forms of behavior .’’2 The necessity of such a third way came increasingly to the fore in Ricoeur’s account of what it meant to be just to oneself, to the other, and to the collective history of ourselves. In particular, Ricoeur saw this problematic in light of the question of forgiveness. Echoing Derrida’s discussions about the impossibility of forgiveness, Ricoeur developed an account of love and justice that recognized the aporias of forgiveness while resisting the absolute claim that forgiveness is impossible.3 We shall begin with Ricoeur’s account of love in his essay on the Song of Songs before concluding with a brief look at how he used these insights to develop a particular reading of the relationship(s) between love, justice, gift, and gratitude. Mark Gedney 64 If one of the hallmarks of Ricoeur’s work was the rejection of the possibility of human beings’ comprehending themselves, God, or the cosmos as a complete system, this rejection in no way implied that any relation between God and self is impossible.4 On the contrary, Ricoeur defended a relationship between God and the singular human person made possible by the command to love, specifically as articulated in the dual command to love God and neighbor, a possibility that we find given special attention in his reading of the Song of Songs. Ricoeur begins his discussion of the Song of Songs by pointing out how this text resists in a special way any absolute theoretical reinscription or reduction,5 insofar as identifiable authorities and social structures are dismissed , manipulated, and reinterpreted for the sake of the singular love of the two lovers. The brothers, the mother, the daughters of Jerusalem, Solomon, and even the typical religious paradigms and customs of the day are all there in the story, but these realities are noted precisely so as to be put aside; their traditional value challenged (even if not absolutely).6 It is precisely this power to resist our urge to systematize or neutralize the particularity of the lovers’ relationship that makes this text so important,7 and it is precisely this power that allows Ricoeur to relate the poem to the inaugural story of God’s love in Genesis. For Ricoeur, we need to see how God’s love, which is ultimately as strong as death, is introduced ‘‘in the beginning,’’ before it is taken up as the love that brings about redemption. Ricoeur brings Genesis 2:23 and the Song of Songs together in order to highlight three features about creation and love: (1) the central and positive character of a form of eros that must be seen as a fundamental dynamic of human being; (2) the innocent joy of this eros that prefigures and underlies the drama of sin and redemption; and finally (3) the fact that this powerful poem of joyful human love cannot be understood apart from the love of God found implicitly and explicitly in the very notion of creation. We shall examine these points in order. First of all, it is in Genesis that the value of individuals as individuals and a new conception of temporality are established. Adam named the animals according to their type, but in this catalogue something was missing. It cannot be simply gender...

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