A Passion for the Possible: Thinking with Paul Ricoeur

Notes

Notes Introduction: How Much More Than the Possible? Brian Treanor and Henry Isaac Venema 1. Paul Ricoeur, ‘‘Emmanuel Mounier: A Personalist Philosopher,’’ in Truth and History, trans. Charles A. Kelbley, 2d. ed. (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 133. On a similar theme, see Paul Ricoeur, Living Up to Death, trans. David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 59–61. 2. David Pellauer, ‘‘Remembering Paul Ricoeur,’’ Philosophy Today 51, SPEP Supplement 2007, 9. This article is reprinted in this volume under the same title. 3. At last count, 3,051 items were listed on the Ricoeur bibliographic database at the library of St. Paul’s University, in Ottawa, Canada, but the database doesn’t include anything published after 2002. See also the archive Fonds Ricoeur, www.fondsricoeur.fr. 4. Cf. Paul Ricoeur, ‘‘Intellectual Autobiography,’’ in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, ed. Lewis Edwin Hahn (Chicago: Open Court, 1995), 3–53. See also Paul Ricoeur, Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay, trans. Kathleen Blamey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 5. Charles E. Reagan, Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 1. 6. Paul Ricoeur, ‘‘Freedom in the Light of Hope,’’ in The Conflict of Interpretations , ed. Don Ihde (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 407–10. Also see ‘‘Love and Justice,’’ in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, trans. David Pellauer, ed. Mark I. Wallace (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 324–29. 197 7. Richard Kearney, ‘‘Capable Man, Capable God,’’ in this volume, 58. 8. Kearney, ‘‘Capable Man, Capable God,’’ in this volume, 57. 9. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 493. 10. See Paul Ricoeur, ‘‘Religious Belief: The Difficult Path of the Religious,’’ in this volume, 35. 11. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967), 151–57. 12. Paul Ricoeur, ‘‘Religion and Symbolic Violence,’’ in Contagion 6 (spring 1999): 8. 13. In ‘‘Christianity and the Meaning of History,’’ an essay dating from 1951, Ricoeur tells us that meaning, both personal and historical, can be expressed in religious terms, and in this case Christian terms. While it is true that Ricoeur’s religious thought has evolved over the course of his life, such that he would express his ideas differently by the late 1990s (see Critique and Conviction), this 1951 essay is particularly revealing of how Ricoeur has understood the relation between meaning and Christian faith: Meaning: there is a unity of meaning; it is the fundamental source of the courage to live in history. Mystery: but this meaning is hidden; no one can say it, rely upon it, or draw an assurance from it which would be a counterassurance against the dangers of history. One must risk it on signs. . . . What authorizes the Christian to speak of meaning when he takes shelter in mystery? What authorizes him to transcend this schema of ambiguity in which history may turn for the worse or for the better, in which rising and falling civilizations may weave their way into the fabric of progress? Does all of this have a total meaning? For the Christian, faith in the Lordship of God dominates his entire vision of history. If God is the Lord of individual lives he is also Lord of history: God directs this uncertain, noble, and guilty history toward Himself . To be more precise, I think that this Lordship constitutes a ‘‘meaning’’ and not a supreme farce, a prodigious caprice, or a last ‘‘absurdity,’’ because the great events that I recognize as Revelation have a certain pattern, constitute a global form, and are not given as pure discontinuity. Revelation has a kind of bearing which is not an absurdity for us, for we may discern in it a certain pedagogical plan in going from the Old Testament to the New Testament. The great Christian events—death and resurrection— constitute an order open to what St. Paul calls ‘‘the understanding of faith. ‘‘Christianity and the Meaning of History,’’ in History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley, 2d. ed. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 93. 14. Ricoeur, ‘‘Religious Belief,’’ 29. 15. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 485. 16. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 457. For further analysis and development of Ricoeur’s understanding of forgiveness, see Gaëlle Fiasse, ‘‘The 198 Notes Golden Rule and Forgiveness,’’ and Henry Isaac Venema, ‘‘The Source...