Ricœur across the Disciplines (review)

This volume seeks not merely to survey but to 'interpret, apply, extend and assess' Ricœur's work across disciplines (p. 1), with chapters from many of the best-known Ricœur scholars. The twelve disciplines in question comprise those about which Ricœur wrote at length — philosophy, biblical hermeneutics, theology, history, law, political theory, and psychoanalysis — and those on which, although he did not engage with them to the same extent, it is argued that his thought can have a productive bearing — rhetorical theory, women's studies, African studies, education, and musicology. Some of the contributors cover ground worked over in other publications (for example, Richard Kearney on Ricœur and 'anatheism'), while others offer substantially new readings of Ricœur (notably Maria del Guadalupe and Scott Davidson on Ricœur and African American studies) or readings that will be new to most readers (Ricœur and musicology). The coverage is not intended to be exhaustive, but an essay on the sciences in general or Ricœur's collaboration with neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux in particular would have added one important interdisciplinary trajectory absent from the volume's focus. The editor's Introduction raises the crucial question of the possibility of respectful, non-reductive dialogue across disciplines, putting forward Ricœur's account of translation as a model for interdisciplinary study in general. However, the paradigm of translation seems to be taken to limit the scope of interdisciplinarity to the bipolarity of a 'home discipline' and a 'foreign one' (p. 5), a bipolar construal of interdisciplinarity that shapes the approach of the book as a whole. Davidson states two aims for the volume in his Introduction: first, to provide an 'initial starting point for further discussion of Ricœur's influence across the disciplines' (p. 10); and second, given the relative narrowness of most academic specialties today, to explore ways to communicate across the 'plurality of disciplines, methodologies, and frameworks' (p. 4). The volume achieves the first aim very well, but the second goal is only partially attained. The structure of the book (one essay per discipline, with no synthesis or right of reply), works against the desire to communicate across disciplines in more than a bipolar way. This is, however, a minor and perhaps inevitable shortcoming in a volume otherwise of great value in the task of arguing for the enduring significance of Ricœur for ongoing work in a wide variety of disciplines. For those already familiar with Ricœur's work, this volume will provide a series of provocations that take the reader further into the still substantially unexplored reach of this multidisciplinary oeuvre. For those little acquainted with Ricœur, this book does a good job of providing a sympathetic introduction to the man and his work and serves well as a base camp from which to explore further. Throughout, the volume reminds us of the danger in dismissing as straightforward naivety Ricœur's long detours of interdisciplinary thought and his avoidance of 'vague, modish, ideological, or sensational declarations' (p. 14).