Paul Ricoeur between Theology and Philosophy: Detour and Return

Introduction

I n tr o d ucti o n Theology in North America is in a peculiar situation. Despite the large Christian population, academic theologians make no ripples in the public discourse. Not since Reinhold Niebuhr in the middle of the twentieth century has any theologian commanded serious attention from the general public. In the academy, theology is dwindling in importance and prestige as the institutions of secular modernity look askance upon explicitly Christian discourse. Departments of theology have been overtaken by or merged with departments of religious studies, and many who consider themselves theologians work in such departments. Although modernity can rightly be said to have crumbled under the postmodern critique, there is a great deal of inertia that would need to be overcome before the institutional bias against an overtly Christian discipline in the academy is removed. It is not clear that we are even heading in that direction, despite John Milbank’s optimistic assessment of “a new theological mood at the outset of the twenty-first century.”1 The general response by theologians has gone in two directions. The first, which I call the “ostrich” approach, is to simply abandon the academy altogether and start an alternative set of institutions that are so dominated by “theology” that its position within those institutions cannot be questioned. The second, which I call the “long defeat” approach, is to maintain a foothold in a hostile academic environment by gradually ceding ground until theol- 2 | Paul Ricoeur between Theology and Philosophy ogy itself becomes so disfigured that it is no longer recognizable. The key to any solution to the problems created by both approaches is to understand what each approach is trying to protect, so that the positive features of the approach are not lost. The ostriches are desperately trying to protect the integrity of theology, while the fighters of the long defeat are trying to protect its relevance. Both approaches are noble, but are doomed to failure if the integrity and relevance of theology are considered as separate matters. A potential solution to this problem is found in the hermeneutic philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. This book is an engagement of the dominant pattern in his work, detour and return, with a view to its implications for the practice of a theology that maintains both its integrity and its relevance. By his own account, it is the central motif of his philosophy: “Detour/return is the rhythm of my philosophical respiration.”2 The pattern is so pervasive that it shaped the trajectory of his entire career: a philosophy of the will that detours through analyses of sign, symbol, metaphor, and narrative, returning to a richer account of personal identity in his hermeneutics of the self.3 Although there are numerous occurrences of this pattern operative throughout Ricoeur’s work, they can be organized into two general types: the critical arc and the narrative arc. The critical arc takes place at the level of understanding texts, with the notion of “text” being construed as broadly as possible. It traces the dialectic between the understanding of a text and the explanation of a text in terms of its structure. The arc begins with a simple or naïve understanding, detours through a moment of critical distanciation, returning to a deeper involvement in the text that is to be understood. This pattern, which has been referred to as a “hermeneutic dialectic,”4 a “critical hermeneutics,”5 or “diacritical hermeneutics,”6 manifests itself in numerous variations, many of which will figure in what follows.7 Among these are detours from a hermeneutics of tradition through a critique of ideologies to a critical hermeneutics, from conviction through critique to deeper conviction, and from ethical aims through moral norms to practical wisdom. The consequence of the critical arc, as Andrzej Wiercinski has eloquently put it, is an “unstable equilibrium” between suspicion and sympathy.8 The dialectical tension of the critical arc is between contextual participation and universalizing doubt. The narrative arc traces the dialectic between living action and a poetic narrative. It is predicated on the conviction that text and action are closely interrelated: action can be considered in terms of text,9 and text can be explored in terms of action.10 This interrelation is particularly prominent in the case of history and fiction, where each borrows from the other in their production. The arc begins with a moment of prefiguration, in which ac- Introduction...