Ricœur, Hermeneutics and Globalization (review)

This short book reworks and blends five previously published essays to argue that Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutic philosophy, abetted by that of Gianni Vattimo, can help us to make sense of globalization. Globalization is what the author sees as defining the world as it moves beyond industrialization to a more knowledge-based economy. There is one particular danger that needs to be confronted: the possibility that operative logic of this new global economy, with its vaunted emphases on flexibility and the ability to work in groups, may simply reduce everyone to tools whose lives are defined solely by their role in the workplace; those who do not conform to these requirements will simply be left out. Ricœur’s hermeneutics, with its emphasis on the question of ‘who’ it is that understands and has to act in this new world, is seen as offering a means to move beyond this narrow and potentially dehumanizing focus. Bengt Uggla makes his case by first briefly characterizing Ricœur’s philosophy and his place in the hermeneutic movement along with Ricœur’s contributions to this way of thinking. Uggla then shows how this hermeneutic way of thinking can readily be extended to globalization, something Ricœur himself did not directly address. To make his argument more concrete, Uggla then applies his more general claim to two specific topics within this larger, overall picture: the idea of lifelong learning as a desideratum in our rapidly globalizing world, and the question of national identity as it relates to who it is that interprets and understands. The first point he sees as calling for a new narrative identity, one that will require reflexivity to navigate successfully the shoals of adaptation and innovation. As regards hermeneutical theory, this will require going beyond the existing emphasis on its role in the social sciences ‘to cope with the anthropological deficit of the contemporary discourse on lifelong learning’ (p. 80). As an illustration of the latter point, he invokes the historical ties between Finland and Sweden, their breakup as a result of the Russo-Swedish war in 1809, and the consequences as illustrated by the different kinds of national holiday now celebrated in each country. What this says about contemporary memory politics is shown to have significant implications both for the idea of world citizenship and for cosmopolitanism in a postmodern and post-structuralist world. In a word, the world has changed and hermeneutical theory has to change along with it if it is to help us make sense of this new historical time and this new sense of inhabiting space when ‘nowhere is always now and here’ (the title of Uggla’s concluding chapter).