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Finitud y culpabilidad
«Finitud y culpabilidad» aborda la culpa y la experiencia del mal humano, cuyo carácter absurdo y opaco para la descripción esencial obliga a liberar la indagación del paréntesis propio del análisis fenomenológico. Pero, más allá de la simple descripción empírica de la voluntad, dicha indagación progresa hacia lo que Paul Ricoeur llama una «mítica concreta» de la voluntad mala. A través de la lectura de los mitos de caída, de caos, exilio y obcecación divina, la investigación conduce al reconocimiento de un lenguaje más el lenguaje de la confesión. Éste «no habla de la mancilla, del pecado, de la culpabilidad en términos directos y propios, sino en términos indirectos y figurados». Se trata de un lenguaje simbólico que requiere una nueva hermenéutica, una «simbólica del mal». La simbólica del mal prepara así el terreno para reintroducir la mítica dentro del discurso filosófico, que había sido interrumpido con el mito. Pues se trata, para el autor, no de pensar «tras» el símbolo, sino «a partir de él». La recuperación de esta simbólica del mal para la reflexión filosófica apunta, finalmente, a una visión ética del mundo, para la que el hombre y su libertad constituyen el espacio de manifestación del mal.
- GenresPhilosophyPsychology
494 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1950
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About the author
Paul Ricœur
310 books456 followersPaul Ricoeur (1913–2005) is widely recognized as one of the most distinguished philosophers of the twentieth century. In the course of his long career he wrote on a broad range of issues. His books include a multi-volume project on the philosophy of the will: Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (1950, Eng. tr. 1966), Fallible Man (1960, Eng. tr. 1967), and The Symbolism of Evil (1960, Eng. tr. 1970); a major study of Freud: Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (1965, Eng. tr. 1970); The Rule of Metaphor (1975, Eng. tr. 1977); Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (1976); the three-volume Time and Narrative (1983-85, Eng. tr. 1984–88); Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (1986); the published version of his Gifford lectures: Oneself as Another (1990, Eng. tr. 1992); Memory, History, Forgetting (2000, Eng. tr. 2004); and The Course of Recognition (2004, Eng. tr. 2005). In addition to his books, Ricoeur published more than 500 essays, many of which appear in collections in English: History and Truth (1955, Eng. tr. 1965); Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology (1967); The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics (1969, Eng. tr. 1974); Political and Social Essays (1974); Essays on Biblical Interpretation (1980); Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (1981); From Text to Action (1986, Eng. tr. 1991); Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination (1995); The Just (1995, Eng. tr. 2000); On Translation (2004, Eng. tr. 2004); and Reflections on the Just (2001, Eng. tr. 2007).
The major theme that unites his writings is that of a philosophical anthropology. This anthropology, which Ricoeur came to call an anthropology of the “capable human being,” aims to give an account of the fundamental capabilities and vulnerabilities that human beings display in the activities that make up their lives. Though the accent is always on the possibility of understanding the self as an agent responsible for its actions, Ricoeur consistently rejects any claim that the self is immediately transparent to itself or fully master of itself. Self-knowledge only comes through our relation to the world and our life with and among others in that world.
In the course of developing his anthropology, Ricoeur made a major methodological shift. His writings prior to 1960 were in the tradition of existential phenomenology. But during the 1960s Ricoeur concluded that properly to study human reality he had to combine phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation. For this hermeneutic phenomenology, whatever is intelligible is accessible to us in and through language and all deployments of language call for interpretation. Accordingly, “there is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols, and texts; in the final analysis self-understanding coincides with the interpretation given to these mediating terms” (Oneself as Another, 15, translation corrected). This hermeneutic or linguistic turn did not require him to disavow the basic results of his earlier investigations. It did, however, lead him not only to revisit them but also to see more clearly their implications.
The major theme that unites his writings is that of a philosophical anthropology. This anthropology, which Ricoeur came to call an anthropology of the “capable human being,” aims to give an account of the fundamental capabilities and vulnerabilities that human beings display in the activities that make up their lives. Though the accent is always on the possibility of understanding the self as an agent responsible for its actions, Ricoeur consistently rejects any claim that the self is immediately transparent to itself or fully master of itself. Self-knowledge only comes through our relation to the world and our life with and among others in that world.
In the course of developing his anthropology, Ricoeur made a major methodological shift. His writings prior to 1960 were in the tradition of existential phenomenology. But during the 1960s Ricoeur concluded that properly to study human reality he had to combine phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation. For this hermeneutic phenomenology, whatever is intelligible is accessible to us in and through language and all deployments of language call for interpretation. Accordingly, “there is no self-understanding that is not mediated by signs, symbols, and texts; in the final analysis self-understanding coincides with the interpretation given to these mediating terms” (Oneself as Another, 15, translation corrected). This hermeneutic or linguistic turn did not require him to disavow the basic results of his earlier investigations. It did, however, lead him not only to revisit them but also to see more clearly their implications.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 15, 2015
This early work was Ricoeur's most concerted effort at straightforward phenomenology. After this, a shift from reflection to interpretation, from trying to know the subject directly to the long detour of symbols.
As I read it, this book is an attempt to make sense of nature from the perspective of freedom. Against the tendency to see them as locked in a zero-sum rivalry (a tendency perhaps best exemplified by Sartre), Ricoeur emphasizes the subtle interplay of the two. I especially enjoyed the discussion of pleasure and need, and the chapter titled "The Way of Consent."
*
M. Ricoeur, I believe, was a devout Christian, but direct references to his faith are extremely rare throughout his oeuvre. There are, however, these tantalizingly oblique suggestions that keep popping up. From Freedom and Nature:
"It is not accidental that unity of inspiration animates the great medieval cosmologies - it is a unique desire which starts with God and returns to God through all degrees of nature. This unity, lost as knowledge, must be discovered in some other way in the 'poetics' of the will." - pp. 425
Ricoeur is not trying to turn back the Enlightenment. He recognizes the achievements of science and the specialization of knowledge. When his faith appears it seems to take the form of eschatology - it suggests a limit towards which thought may tend but never surpass, not in this world anyway, not in these times.
As I read it, this book is an attempt to make sense of nature from the perspective of freedom. Against the tendency to see them as locked in a zero-sum rivalry (a tendency perhaps best exemplified by Sartre), Ricoeur emphasizes the subtle interplay of the two. I especially enjoyed the discussion of pleasure and need, and the chapter titled "The Way of Consent."
*
M. Ricoeur, I believe, was a devout Christian, but direct references to his faith are extremely rare throughout his oeuvre. There are, however, these tantalizingly oblique suggestions that keep popping up. From Freedom and Nature:
"It is not accidental that unity of inspiration animates the great medieval cosmologies - it is a unique desire which starts with God and returns to God through all degrees of nature. This unity, lost as knowledge, must be discovered in some other way in the 'poetics' of the will." - pp. 425
Ricoeur is not trying to turn back the Enlightenment. He recognizes the achievements of science and the specialization of knowledge. When his faith appears it seems to take the form of eschatology - it suggests a limit towards which thought may tend but never surpass, not in this world anyway, not in these times.
June 8, 2021
Dense, mais plein de concepts directement utilisables en analyse littéraire. Indispensable.
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November 12, 2025I've read bits and pieces of this over the years, and found it the best book on the will -- and on wonder -- but I finally finished it. I loved the Rilkean and Orphic, along with Stoic, ending.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews