Sé come un altro

by Paul Ricœur

La serie di studi che viene qui presentata ruota intorno alla questione dell'ipseità, ai diversi momenti (linguistici, personali, narrativi, etici ecc.) dell'identità.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Psychology, Theory, France, Academic, Sociology

494 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

Paul 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.

Reviews

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished this book on a 34 hour (round trip) bus ride to and from Sarajevo, and it lives up to Rilke's claim,
'You must change your life!'

While very difficult at times, this book provides a further work of genius after rule of metaphor's (correctly translated living metaphor) analysis of 'metaphorical truth' and time and narrative's fundamentally life-changing analysis of story-telling, promising, and time. This book takes the question of selfhood as it's central quest. The final chapter provides a concrete but meaningful conclusion: besides the meaning of attestation and conviction, the ontology of the self is passive (read helpless) in front of the otherness of the flesh (i.e. the body), the absolute otherness of other people, and Conscience (in German, Gewissen . All I can say in a short review like this is that this work is life changing!

[C · Rating 1 out of 5]

What!?
Maybe Ricoeur's self, should have considered himself as the other/reader, and been more clear.

[Renxiang Liu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an ambitious synthetic work whose span is hard to define. Two philosophical projects run parallel to each other: first, a subtle account of the human person, in which action, imputation and attestation take central roles; second, an attempt to interpret the human person, no longer with the self-positing model of ego (cogito, substance), but in a new notion of the self constituted primarily from otherness. The book thus runs through topics like language, action, personal identity and ethics, the last comprising three stages: the ethical aim, the moral norm, and judgment in situation when faced with conflict.

It seems to me that all the discussion in this book serves more or less what is usually called Ricoeur's "little ethics". For example, although his notion of narrative identity deserves independent attention, in this book its role is to help bridge the gap between the descriptive and the normative levels of ethical discourse, between the "is" and the "ought". The narrative is important in that it sets up "standards of excellence", which constitute the prototype of any moral norm.

For Ricoeur, the ethical aim (teleological) is prior to the moral norm (deontological) - without the former motivating, the latter at best amounts to empty obligations.

Inspired by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics , Ricoeur defines the ethical aim as "living well with others in just institutions". It thus has three components irreducible to one another: the self, the other, and the institutions. Ricoeur emphasizes here the role the other plays in anyone's living a good life, while at the same time refrains from reducing (like Levinas) institutional intersubjectivity (concerning faceless, general others) to interpersonal relations.

The triad repeats itself when Ricoeur proceeds to the moral norm, which is necessitated by the existence of violence. Dialoguing with Kant's deontology, which is characterized by a formalism which rids itself of any inclination for the sake of universality, Ricoeur shows that even Kant has to reintroduce the teleological concepts through backdoors such as respect for the rules and good will. By the same token, he deconstructs Kant's fundamental notion of autonomy, showing that autonomy itself is not autonomous, i.e. self-positing, but rather dependent on others.

Following rules has its limits, especially when different empty rules, applied to a particular situation, contradict with each other. This is attested in tragedies such as Antigone . Here the only solutions is to return to the ethical aims which have motivated the norms in the first place and make judgments in particular situations. Hermeneutics, as that which regulated the application of general rules, is at work here.

The dialectic between self and the other is finally brought to an ontological level. Criticizing Husserl in his Cartesian Meditations, Ricoeur argues that the appropriation of otherness by the self is only possible when the self is capable of recognizing itself as one among others. Criticizing Levinas, he shows that the call of the other can function only through an appropriating self, albeit an open one. These together make the title of the book.

It is impossible to evaluate Ricoeur's book without going with him through all the stages; his style is close to Hegel, though arguably less speculative. It is the process, rather than the conclusion, that counts here; as Ricoeur himself admits, his philosophy is one of incompletion. The only reservation I have about this book is about the structural role of all those detours, most significantly through analytic philosophy of language, action and personal identity. It is unclear to me whether they are necessary components of Ricoeur's investigation, or simply superfluous discussion out of some presumed but questionable respect.

[Ahmed · Rating 4 out of 5]

اصعب كتاب قريته لحد الان
مع ذلك يستحق القراءة … يحتاج تركيز ومعرفة بكم موضوع قبل قراءته
طبعا ما گدرت استوعب كلشي بي بس انا راضي باللي وصلتله
كتاب يخليك تفكر هواي وتركز هواي
يستاهل الوكت اللي صرفته عليه

[Milo Galiano · Rating 5 out of 5]

La tesis nuclear de Ricoeur en este libro es: dejemos atrás el yo egoico [moi] para reforzar el yo propio [je], que no es otra cosa que el "sí mismo" comprendido como cualquier otro; es decir, todos somos sí mismos que se interrelacionan sin una jerarquía marcada en nuestra composición.

En clave aristotélica, freudiana y heideggeriana, ha esculpido una serie de estudios que brillan, incluso por individual, hablando, por ejemplo, de las instituciones justas, de lo que denomina una "pequeña ética" o de las relaciones fraternales en la amistad.

Una joya donde las haya, aunque para enterarme bien de esto tendría que leerlo como 2 o 3 veces más. Como cada capítulo son estudios, teniendo la visión panorámica desde ahora sí que me acercaré mejor (espero).

[Isidora Todorović · Rating 5 out of 5]

htela sam da se ubijem

[Zachary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Who am I? What am I? How should we understand selfhood? These are all questions Paul Ricoeur seeks to answer in Oneself as Another, which is in many ways a sequel to Time and Narrative. In his exploration of selfhood, Ricoeur places his account between the foundational subject of Descartes upon which reflexive philosophy can establish justified true beliefs and the illusory subject of Nietzsche, for whom such a foundational project is impossible since the Cartesian cogito is a fiction. For Ricoeur, what he calls “attestation” will establish the veracity, albeit not the indubitable certainty, of the self. “Attestation defines the sort of certainty that hermeneutics may claim,” he explains, “not only with respect to the epistemic exaltation of the cogito in Descartes, but also with respect to its humiliation in Nietzsche and his successors. Attestation may appear to require less than one and more than the other” (21). More specifically, Ricoeur defines attestation as “the assurance of being oneself acting and suffering,” which “remains the ultimate recourse against all suspicion” (22). To reach this attestation which preserves the question “who” despite various attempts in philosophy to subsume this question into the questions “what” or “why” when it comes to human action, Ricoeur proceeds in three main steps: a “detour of reflection by way of analysis” that examines both speech and action; “the dialectic of selfhood and sameness” which explores two ways to conceive identity; and, lastly, “the dialectic of selfhood and otherness” which discloses the ethical import of what it means to be a self (16). In each of these steps, Ricoeur remains acutely attuned to how his philosophical interlocutors understand what an action entails, why an action is performed, and most importantly for him, who performs an action.

The first set of studies in Oneself as Another explores the concept of the person and speech acts in analytic philosophy of language. Ricoeur is dissatisfied with what he calls the “semantic approach” to the concept of the person, which he claims does not adequately account for the first-person reflexive nature of selfhood insofar as its concept of a person “is a single referent possessing two series of predicates: physical predicates and mental predicates” (33). Consequently, Ricoeur turns away from semantics to what he calls “pragmatics, that is, to a theory of language as it is used in specific contexts of interlocution” (40). The key idea in pragmatics is that in the context of interlocution, a speaker in the first person addresses herself to a listener in the second person; an utterance thereby implies both an “I” that speaks and a “you” to whom the “I” addresses itself. In pragmatics, the idea of selfhood starts to materialize, albeit still not to a sufficient extent, since the “I” can refer to any number of actual selves and hence does not specify what it is like for me, specifically, to be a self. In a classic hermeneutic move reminiscent of the syntheses in Time and Narrative, Ricoeur concludes that these two paths in the philosophy of language—the semantic and pragmatic approaches—intersect and mutually borrow from one another in order to make sense.

The next set of studies explores the philosophy of action where a similar dialectic plays itself out. Analytic philosophy of action is extremely complex and Ricoeur’s brief summary of positions held by G. E. M. Anscombe and Donald Davidson is equally intricate. The main upshot of the first of these studies, however, is that both Anscombe and Davidson subsume the question “who” into the questions “what” and “why” in their respective analyses of action. Ricoeur therefore turns to Aristotle, who claims that an action depends on an agent in the sense that she “owns” her action—more precisely, for Aristotle, an agent is the “principle” of her actions, where the idea of “principle” is inextricably wedded to selfhood. We can therefore ascribe actions to selves who perform those actions, and this is different from the mere attribution of predicates to subjects. Ascription, however, raises a series of aporias, which lead Ricoeur beyond the philosophy of language. To dive deeper into selfhood, Ricoeur turns to the question of identity.

In the next two studies, Ricoeur expands upon the idea of narrative identity as first set forth in Time and Narrative. First, Ricoeur claims that narrative identity mediates between description and prescription in his account; narrative here will therefore have an innate normative dimension. Second, Ricoeur makes a critical distinction between idem and ipse identity: idem identity refers to “what” the self consists of—it refers to identity qua sameness—whereas ipse identity refers to “who” the self is—it refers to identity qua selfhood. Numerical and qualitative identity, insofar as they both refer to sameness, are versions of idem identity. Moreover, they are both concerned with permanence in time: time threatens idem identity, but this threat is dissipated by the idea of a substratum that persists in time despite other alterations and modifications. Ipse identity, on the other hand, is not concerned with some principle of permanence in time: to have a self over time does not necessitate the persistence of some self-identical substratum. Ricoeur claims that narrative identity mediates between selfhood freed from sameness (pure ipse) and selfhood as maintained by sameness (“where idem and ipse tend to coincide”) (119). To this end, Ricoeur introduces two poles of ipse identity that reflect “two models of permanence in time” (124). On the one hand, character is the site where ipse and idem overlap: “character assures at once numerical identity, qualitative identity, uninterrupted continuity across change, and, finally, permanence in time which defines sameness.” It is the “what” of the “who” (122). On the other hand, “keeping one’s word” is the site of pure ipse: “keeping one’s word expresses a self-constancy which cannot be inscribed, as character was, within the dimension of something in general but solely within the dimension of the ‘who’” (123). Ultimately, Ricoeur insists that “narrative identity makes the two ends of the chain link up with one another: the permanence in time of character and that of self-constancy” (166).

The sixth study leads to the ethical focus of the next trio of books known as Ricoeur’s “little ethics.” Ricoeur revisits the core concept of discordant concordance explained in Time and Narrative to show how emplotment operates at the level of character and so renders comprehensible the identity of characters. “Characters,” Ricoeur asserts, “are themselves plots,” and this is due to “a dialectic internal to the character which is the exact corollary of the dialectic of concordance and discordance developed by the emplotment of action” (143, 147). In other words, just as characters find themselves in plots that unite discordant actions, motives, objectives, and events into one temporal and harmonic whole, characters themselves emplot the discordant aspects of their lives into a coherent, concordant narrative. On the side of discordance, unforeseen events, unintended consequences, and various other external forces threaten a coherent narrative identity; on the side of concordance, there remains, despite and in view of such disruptions, the history of the character’s life which, in conjunction with her own self-interpretation of that history, constitutes her self-same narrative identity over time. Ricoeur concludes that “the person, understood as a character in a story, is not an entity distinct from his or her ‘experiences’ [as the substantialist, idem theory of selfhood would have it]. Quite the opposite: the person shares the condition of dynamic identity peculiar to the story recounted” (147). Narrative, then, constructs the identity of the character—and by extension personal identity—just as it constructs the story itself.

Ricoeur identifies a series of discordant features that threaten the stability of narrative identity. First and foremost, we are not the sole authors of our lives: while I may tell one story (or some set of stories) about myself, others may tell different stories about me. For this reason, I am, at best, coauthor of my narrative identity (160). Second, our lives are always incomplete and therefore lack the kind of closure typical to historical or fictional narrative. Whereas these narratives end, my life is, until my death, never over, and thus my story is susceptible to an open-ended future of endless variability. Third, there is no one story that exhausts the totality of each of our lives; we can always narrate different or even opposed plots about who we are. Finally, we are characters in others’ life narratives and our roles in their stories each constitute a narrative of their own (recall how Ricoeur understands characters as themselves plots). Each of these discordant features of narrative identity underscores how “narrative thus becomes the name of a problem at least as much as it is that of a solution” to the aporia of personal identity, as Ricoeur earlier observed in Time and Narrative (249). With respect to each source of discordance, we are faced with the task of concordance (i.e. emplotment), which, in turn, requires self-interpretation in relation to the preunderstood narrative structure of our lives.

In the next two studies, Ricoeur embarks on his ethical project, whose thesis is threefold: first, to establish the “primacy” of ethics over morality (where “ethics” denotes “the aim of an accomplished life” and “morality” denotes “the articulation of this aim in norms characterized at once by the claim to universality and by an effect of constraint”); second, to demonstrate the need for morality to articulate the ethical aim in the form of universal rules that act as a constraint on action; and third, to insist on the appropriateness of “recourse by the norm to the aim whenever the norm leads to impasses in practice” (170). On this model, morality has its limits, even if its role in relation to ethics is essential. Three ancillary claims accompany this threefold thesis in specific relation to selfhood. First, Ricoeur asserts that “self-esteem is more fundamental than self-respect”; second, that “self-respect is the aspect under which self-esteem appears in the domain of norms”; and third, that “the aporias of duty create situations in which self-esteem appears not only as the source but as the recourse for respect,” when no clear norm can determine how one should exercise respect (171). Here, too, we see the primacy of ethics (self-esteem) over morality (self-respect).

Finally, what Ricoeur calls the “ethical intention” structures much of his discussion in the “little ethics,” where “ethical intention” refers to our individual efforts to aim at the good life, with and for others, in just institutions. The upshot of these two studies, each of which offers a deep dive into Aristotle (ethics) and Kant (morality), is that while ethics encompasses (i.e. is prior to and surpasses the limits of) morality, it must nevertheless pass the “test” of morality.

In the ninth study, Ricoeur explores what he calls the moment of conviction, when practical wisdom helps disclose an appropriate ethical response to conflicts that arise when one tries to apply “the moral norm” (i.e. the categorical imperative) to concrete, practical action. How one should respond to a conflict in moral duties, however, is often far from clear, and the fact of such conflicts introduces a tragic dimension to human action. But why should moral conflicts be inevitable, and how does practical wisdom help us respond appropriately to them, even when faced with a tragic decision? To answer the first question, Ricoeur calls attention to the diversity of social goods. He draws on Michael Walzer’s notion of “spheres of justice” to explain how distributive rules with respect to some good differ based on the nature of the good itself and culturally determined assessments of how that good should be allocated. To address these conflicts, Ricoeur emphasizes the importance of political discussion and deliberation about the “order of priority among the competing demands of these spheres of justice” (257). Later, he will expand on the normative import of public discussion in his analysis of Habermas’s communication ethics.

Another source of inevitable moral conflict stems from a certain tension between the first and second formulations of Kant’s categorical imperative. “The possibility of conflict arises . . . as soon as the otherness of persons, inherent in the very idea of human plurality, proves to be . . . incompatible with the universality of the rules that underlie the idea of humanity,” Ricoeur writes. “Respect then tends to split up into respect for the law and respect for persons.” Ricoeur’s proposed solution to moral conflict of this sort is much clearer than in the case of diverse social goods. If the first formulation of the categorical imperative with respect to universalizability prohibits that one make an exception to a universal moral rule for oneself, the need to respect persons in the name of solicitude (held by the second formulation of the categorical imperative) sometimes demands another sort of exception, this time for the sake of others. “The exception here takes on a different countenance, or rather it becomes a countenance, a face, inasmuch as the genuine otherness of persons make each one an exception,” Ricoeur explains (265). In the end, “practical wisdom consists in inventing conduct that will best satisfy the exception required by solicitude, by betraying the rule to the smallest extent possible” (269). Consequently, while the ethical aim has returned to the fore to replace the moral norm, the solicitude that demands an exception to the universal rule for the other is not the “naïve” solicitude of ethics simpliciter but a “critical” solicitude that has passed the test of the moral norm and the imperative to respect persons. “This critical solicitude,” Ricoeur writes, “is the form that practical wisdom takes in the region of interpersonal relations” (273).

Ricoeur subsequently undertakes what he calls a revision of Kantian formalism. The upshot of this revision carves out a place for a dialectic between the universal requirements of morality and the contextual demands of solicitude: rather than an emphasis on radical autonomy, this revised version stresses a kind of dependent autonomy; rather than a restrictive criterion of universalization that assumes systematic coherence, it broadens the test of universalization to incorporate precedential norms and situational deliberation so as to construct coherence; and rather than individual reflection on the moral law within, it calls for collective deliberation structured by discursive norms of the kind delineated by Habermas’s communication ethics.

With these ideas in view, Ricoeur concludes the ninth study with an explanation of how his “little ethics” bears upon the problem of selfhood. Here, ascription takes on an ethical valence in the form of imputability. “Imputability,” Ricoeur explains, “is the ascription of action to its agent, under the condition of ethical and moral predicates which characterize the action as good, just, conforming to duty, done out of duty, and, finally, as being the wisest in the case of conflictual situations” (292). Ultimately, an action is imputable to the self “capable of passing through the entire course of ethico-moral determinations of action, a course at the end of which self-esteem becomes conviction” (292). When an action is imputed to a self, that self becomes a responsible self, one anchored in a self-constancy that transcends its future, present, and past. “Holding oneself responsible is . . . accepting to be held to be the same today as the one who acted yesterday and who will act tomorrow” (295).

In the final study, Ricoeur turns to the ontological question of what kind of self this responsible self is—i.e. how to characterize its mode of being. Ricoeur’s most notable contribution in this discussion concerns the determination of selfhood by way of its dialectic with otherness. Here, Ricoeur outlines three kinds of otherness constitutive of selfhood: otherness with respect to my flesh, otherness with respect to another person, and otherness with respect to the call of conscience. Importantly, at the second level of otherness, Ricoeur contests the Levinasian view that the encounter with the Other constitutes the responsible self in an asymmetric relation of subordination and subjection. Ricoeur objects to the dichotomy Levinas draws between the interiority of the solipsistic self prior to the encounter with the Other and the radical exteriority of the Other in relation to this self constituted in responsible relation. On his view, the encounter with the Other cannot constitute the self prior to its capacity to exercise freedom, as Levinas would have it, since the self’s ability to receive and respond to the summons of the Other presupposes a self already there, one with the freedom to respond responsibly in solicitude. In the end, Ricoeur synthesizes the Husserlian and Levinasian positions: whereas, for Husserl, the self constitutes the Other (the alter ego) by way of analogical transference, for Levinas, the Other constitutes the self by way of substitution (where “substitution” denotes responsibility prior to the formation of an “I” to which the self can lay claim). “From this confrontation between Husserl and Levinas results the suggestion that there is no contradiction in holding the movement from the Same toward the Other and that from the Other toward the Same to be dialectically complementary,” Ricoeur insists. “The assignment of responsibility, in the second dimension [i.e. in Levinas], refers to the power of self-designation, transferred, in accordance with the first dimension [i.e. in Husserl], to every third person assumed to be capable of saying ‘I’” (340-41). In other words, I self-designate myself as responsible to and for others, just as others are equally responsible, each of whom likewise calls herself “I.”

[J.I. · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the theologian Ricoeur’s work presents both a tough challenge and an indispensable source of inspiration. On the first assertion one can say, that Ricoeur’s work belongs to the most astute thinking that philosophy has to offer resulting in more aporias than this thinker would want his theological readers to embrace, while on the second assertion one can only be grateful for the rich, nuanced, balanced thought, that, while not theological in content, can be fruitfully employed as the framework for a theology that is both biblical (in the sense of being faithful to the Scriptures as revelation) and worldly (in the sense of being adequate and relevant for the world in which we live). To be sure, Ricoeur disavows any theological discourse for the simple reason that in this book (as in most of his work) he speaks as philosopher and not as a theologian. Yet, rather than preventing him from being relevant for theology, this allows his thought to provide building blocks for theology after having passed through the critical engagement with contemporary as well as classical philosophy and after it has provided a clean analysis and conceptualization of the reality we as human beings indwell. Especially for one having left the more modernistically oriented philosophical underpinnings of evangelicalism as found in Scottish Realism, analytic philosophy, and apologetics, such as I have done, Ricoeur forms, together with thinkers like Lévinas, Charles Taylor and others, a new point of orientation for fruitful theology that is faithful to the core concerns of evangelicalism but without the attendant problems of modernistic epistemology.

That such is the case with Ricoeur becomes immediately clear in his ‘Oneself as Another’ when he willfully introduces and embraces dialectics and aporias left and right. Ricoeur’s work ends with bewilderment: “With this aporia of the Other, philosophical discourse comes to an end.”*1* This brings us to the book under examination in this essay. We shall summarize its content, not obligatorily but as a conscious effort to rehearse, capture and do justice to this important and foundational work. As in the previous essay we will then proceed to take issue with different aspects of Ricoeur’s work. This will in part be an exercise in humility as the writer of this paper feels hopelessly inadequate to be a dialogue partner of Ricoeur, but it shall be done nonetheless. In this essay, as in the previous one, lines will be drawn between Ricoeur’s thought and that of Bonhoeffer. This will be done by way of Ricoeur’s critique on Lévinas’ conception of the Other, which is quite similar to Bonhoeffer’s and by way of Heidegger's ideas on conscience.

In ‘Oneself as Another’ Paul Ricoeur writes on the self. Most of his book is devoted to an phenomenal and hermeneutical approach, while in the last chapter Ricoeur presents a speculative attempt at an ontology of the self. This ontology is of course rooted in the foregoing epistemologically oriented investigation and carries the aporia of the other as another than oneself to its logical open-ended conclusion. Acknowledgment of the other as the indispensable dialectical component to oneself, that yet remains mysteriously and notoriously difficult to identify, is the grand culmination of this great book. It seems as though Ricoeur attempts to provide a philosophical basis for a retrieval of ethics and morality that can be constitutive for the self instead of these being merely superfluous epiphenomenal predicates as is so prevalent in a climate in which the human being is often only seen as a complex conglomerate of molecules. He uses language philosophy, action philosophy, and hermeneutics to lay the groundworks in order then to utilize Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, Kant’s categorical imperative, Hegel’s notion Sittlichkeit, Levinas’ Call of the Other, and Heidegger’s ideas on Dasein’s authentic existence to arrive at his goal of the ethical constitution of the self through the self’s dialectical other.

The title ‘Oneself as Another’ refers to the “convergence of three philosophical intensions (1): (a) the primacy of self-reflection, (b) the dialectic of selfhood and sameness, (c) the dialectic of self and other than self. The first dialectic is where any notion of self has to start. The second of these three dialectics derives it’s conceptualization from the french même which can refer to both I myself (moi-même) or the same (le même). The self is both uniquely different from all others and at the same time remains (relatively) constant through time in terms of continuation of its own identity while also being the same in terms of being a person similar to other persons. The human self needs both these characteristics. The third dialectic explores the idea that there is selfhood only in the sense that one is “oneself inasmuch as being another” (3). Ricoeur’s method is hermeneutical. That is to say, there is, broadly speaking, a phenomenological approach that 'observes' human observing (different philosophical positions concerning the self) and human speaking (how human beings talk about the self and interact with one another). This process of closely paying attention forms the key to the self which is then formulated in carefully balanced propositions that inch closer and closer to a dialectical conception of the ethically responsible self and its other. That this method seeks balance—without in any way eschewing the radicality of the claim of the other upon the self—is clear from Ricoeur’s claim that this hermeneutics is “placed at an equal distance from the apology of the cogito and from its overthrow,” respectively the cartesian assertion of the autonomous self (5-11) and the radical deconstruction of it by the likes of Nietzsche (12-14).

The path that Ricoeur walks to avert succumbing to either radical understanding of the self takes him through 10 studies of which only the last one, as we already noted, is ontological in nature. This fact alone underlines the caution with which Ricoeur approaches his subject matter. In the first two studies Ricoeur asks: Who is speaking? He looks at semantics, pragmatism, and analytic philosophy. This philosophical route with its strong orientation to linguistics explores the first dialectic above, that of self-reflection. Studies and 3 and 4 utilize a philosophy of action to answer the question: Who is acting? Here a strong connection is noticed between actions and words: self-articulation is an action performed through words. These studies are joined by 5 and 6 that wonder Who is recounting about the self? Here too language philosophy plays an important role when the concepts of speech act theory and narrative identity are used to explore the second dialectic of selfhood and sameness ( indicated by the latin ipse and idem). The following three studies, 7, 8, and 9, introduce the moral and ethical dimensions by means of relating these notions to the action of action theory and narrative identity. Thus the third dialectic of same and other is brought to fruition. Together these dialectics will show that “(t)he autonomy of the self will appear then to be tightly bound up with solicitude for one’s neighbor and with justice for each individual” (18). The self that will emerge after this three-step rhythm of describing (analytical dimension), narrating (hermeneutical dimension), and prescribing (moral dimension) at the end of the book will have nothing of the “indecomposable simplicity of the cogito” (19), but will rather be bolstered by the notion of attestation (a knowing and asserting based on trust, not the hard knowledge of science). Attestation has an affinity with conscience, of which is German translation Gewissen denotes a certain knowledge.

*1*Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey, (University of Chicago Press, 1995), 355.

[Jeanne Martin · Rating 3 out of 5]

D'une lecture longue et difficile (j'ai mis un an à lire ses 410 pages), ce livre aborde des thèmes qui m'intéressent profondément, mais où l'on plonge vite dans des abimes de perplexité.
Il m'a semblé -comme à chaque fois que je me frotte à un philosophe actuel- que je souffrais de mon manque de culture de base en philosophie. Il faudrait avoir lu Aristote et Platon, Kant et Hegel. Pour ne rien dire de Heidegger, Husserl...
Bref, une bonne partie du propos ne pouvait que m'échapper, mais les quelques concepts et raisonnements que j'ai réussi à assimiler m'ont à la fois intéressée et marquée, et j'en retire une envie de continuer à lire des ouvrages sur ces thèmes, du même auteur ou d'autres.
En particulier, j'ai été frappée par les fréquents recoupements des analyses de l'identité personnelle qu'on trouve dans cet ouvrage avec les théories psychologiques (et plus précisément la PNL) que j'ai lues et que je me suis appliquées avec profit cette année : l'estime de soi, la nature de la frontière entre moi et les autres, la sollicitude pour les autres mais aussi pour soi-même...
Entre ça et les lectures plus anciennes d'Irvin Yalom, je suis tentée de conclure que la pratique psychologique à des fins thérapeutiques s'appuie beaucoup sur la philosophie ET que la psychologie est bien dans une certaine mesure un domaine de la philosophie.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

In a semester full of theories of selfhood, this book stood out as perhaps the most hopeful and certainly the most useful for anyone whose interests include disability studies. Ricouer's careful tracing of constructs of self from the grammatical to the ethical is exhaustive, and his assertion that selfhood is really comprised of an ipse self and and idem self bridged by internal personal narrative--but each adequate for the recognition of selfhood--allows a new argument against the use of the disabled person as the reductive or clearly "othered" in philosophy.

[Musaadalhamidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

الكتاب اسمه "الذات عينها كآخر" والمؤلف هو واحد من كبار فلاسفة القرن العشرين وهو فرنسي بول ريكور، وكان صديقا لإدوارد سعيد ولكثير من الكتاب والباحثين العرب الذين تتلمذوا على يديه وكنت واحدا منهم. بعد أن جاوز السبعين كتب هذا المؤلف وكان يريد أن يكون عبارة عن تلخيص وتكريس لكل فلسفته. ماذا نرى في هذا الكتاب؟ أول شيء، وهذا مهم في كل مؤلفاته، هو أنه يرى أن الفلسفة قد هوجمت من داخلها، يعني هذا أعظم ما في الفلسفة أنها تستطيع أن تصمد حتى أمام احتجاج أبنائها الذين هاجموا الفلسفة من داخلها، ويسميهم ريكور فلاسفة الريبة أو الشبهة، هم على رأسهم ماركس وبعد ذلك نيتشه في نهاية القرن التاسع وبعدين فرويد وكل الفرويديين، يعني هؤلاء كانوا قبل كل شيء يشكون فيما قاله ديكارت، ديكارت يعده الكثيرون مؤسس الحداثة في القرن السابع عشر، وهو الشهير بجملة يعرفها كل الناس تقريبا وهي "أنا أفكر إذا أنا موجود" يعني هذه كانت تريد أن تقول إن هناك نقطة يقينية صحيحة نستطيع أن ننطلق منها. مع فلاسفة الريبة هؤلاء هذه النقطة ذهبت لأن هؤلاء الفلاسفة شككوا أن الأنا لا تستطيع أن تعرف الحقيقة المطلقة وأن الإنسان أعجز من أن يصل إلى كل الحقيقة المطلقة، هذه الناحية الأولى. الناحية الثانية هي أنه في فرنسا في الستينات، يعني في الفترة التي كان فيها ريكور أستاذا في السوربون، سيطرت البنيوية الفرنسية، البنوية الفرنسية طبعا معروفة جدا، وأصبحت معروفة والآن بالعالم العربي ترجمت الكتب الأساسية لديريدا، لفوكو، لألتوسير، فهذه البنيوية كانت تقول إن الأنا غير موجودة وإن الأنا.. وكانت تريد قبل كل شيء تغييب الفاعل. هذا الكتاب إذاً هو نوع من رد على كل هؤلاء، على فلاسفة الريبة وعلى البنيوية الفرنسية بشكل خاص، ويريد أن يقول بأنه ليس صحيحا أن الفاعل يغيّب، الفاعل قد يكون هناك تحفظات حوله ولكنه لا يغيب بشكل كامل. فلذلك هذا الكتاب هو كتاب حول الإنسان القادر، الإنسان القادر الذي لا يمكن أن نغيبه. وهو أيضا كتاب لفتح حوار مع بقية الحضارات لأنه يقول أيضا بأنه في النهاية الذات عينها كآخر ماذا يعني؟ أنني أنا مهما بلغت من العلم ومهما بلغت حضارة من التقدم ومن العلم لا تستطيع أن تقول بأنها حتى هي موجودة إن لم يكن الآخر هو جزء منها. يعني الذات عينها كآخر، الكاف هنا للتشبيه في البداية ولكنها في النهاية لا تعود للتشبيه، تصبح بالضبط الذات هي الآخر وليس هناك من آخر بدون هذا الذات. وهذا ما جذبني لترجمة هذا الكتاب. وهذا الإنسان القادر يعني شدد على العمل، يعني قال اعملوا، قبل كل شيء العمل، الإنسان يجب أن ننظر إليه وهو يعمل. وهنا يتعارض أيضا مع واحد من أكبر فلاسفة القرن العشرين الألماني هايديغر. هايديغر شدد على الهم والانهمام [كلمة أجنبية]، فريكور يشدد ليس على الهم بل على العمل. حين نأخذ الإنسان كعمل ماذا نرى؟ نرى أنه أولا قادر على أن يتكلم. فإذاً الفصول الأولى هي عن هذا الإنسان الذي يقيم الحوار مع الآخر ثم بعد ذلك هذا الإنسان نفسه يروي قصة حياته، يعني من أهم الموضوعات في هذا الكتاب هي الهوية، الهوية السردية، وكان ديكارت قد كتب حول ذلك ثلاثة مجلدات سبقت هذا المؤلف حول الزمان والسرد. فإذاً هنا أنا حين أتكلم أيضا أفتح الحوار مع الآخر وأشعر وأؤكد بوجود أنا رغم وجود تحفظات حولها، ثم بعد ذلك هناك الإنسان يشعر بأنه ارتكب عملا معينا وأنه يتحمل تبعة هذا العمل، فإذاً هذا الإنسان القادر على أن يتكلم، القادر على أن يروي قصة حياته، فإذاً هناك قصة حياة وهامة على صعيد الفرد، يعني الفرد لا يستطيع أن يجد هويته إذا لم يستطع أن يتشكل داخل ما يرويه، وهذا الصحيح على صعيد الفرد هو أيضا صحيح على صعيد الجماعات وعلى صعيد أيضا الأمم. فإذاً هناك أخيرا هذا البعد، بعد الكلام عن رواية قصتي، هناك أيضا البعد الأخير الذي تكلمنا عنه وهو تحمل المسؤولية وهنا إذاً يقود مباشرة إلى جزء آخر في الكتاب وهو جزء هام، هذا الجزء هو الأخلاق، بما أني أنا أتحمل المسؤولية فإذا هناك جزء آخر يتعلق بالأخلاق. وقد كرس له بول ريكور ثلاثة فصول من عشرة في هذا الكتاب، ونستطيع أن نقول إن هذا الكتاب يحوي الفلسفة الأخلاقية عند ريكور.

[Tony Schnyder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ricouer’s work contains ten studies of how the we experience our own body, others and our conscience. The final study refers to Heidegger, Nietzsche, Levinas, Freud and others and includes a discussion of whether it makes sense to refer to conscience as good or bad. He also considers whether conscience might be similar to the voice of the self’s ancestors.

Earlier studies refer to works by Aristotle and Kant. It might help if you have read the Ancient Greek tragedy as there is a discussion of that. I thought the book contained some useful ideas about living well with others.

[Olivia Steri · Rating 1 out of 5]

One of the most bad written books I have ever read.
The problem with this book is that it is too ambitious: it wants to cover so many topics that everithing just starts to fall apart. Ricoeur is completely unable to write, his prose is simply atrocious.
What a shame, because most of the topics could have been of interest… if only didn’t Ricoeur write it.

[Jean-Marc Perin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book's chapters on the role of narrative in the construction of self and just institutions are concise and can readily be exploited in the context of social science research (as I did during my graduate studies). If your focus is on conducting biographical research that accounts for a mutually constructed social world, then this book is probably for you =)

[Pedro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Obstructive. Sometimes rewarding. Monotonous most of the time. Too much work.

[Jack Hayne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing, dense, didn’t understand, emplotment, identity, little ethics.

[Christina Stind]

Anbefalet af Svend Brinkmann: Stå fast

[Igor Capelari · Rating 1 out of 5]

Eu queria muito que esse fosse um bom livro, mas é uma bagunça mal escrita e superficial.

[Gerardo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excusez-moi pour mes fautes : je suis en train d’apprendre le Français et ce livre a été une façon de faire de l’exercice. Le commentaire en français sera après le commentaire en italien.


ITALIANO: Testo per specialisti. Per quanto molto attento ad affrontare ogni passaggio della riflessione, richiede una lettura paziente e sapiente. Se non si hanno nozioni di storia della filosofia, il testo è difficilmente affrontabile.

La particolarità di Ricoeur è di muoversi all'interno sia della filosofia continentale che quella analitica. Mescola filosofia esistenzialista a ragionamenti che traggono le proprie basi dalla linguistica o filosofia del linguaggio.

La riflessione parte dalla distinzione tra idem e ipse: il primo si riferisce a qualcosa che persiste nel tempo, uguale a sé stesso. Il secondo, invece, indica qualcosa che è sempre la stessa cosa, nonostante i cambiamenti.

L'identità viene rappresentata dal mantenimento di questo Sé, nonostante i mutamenti che ogni vita subisce. Il Sé, quindi, diventa il soggetto al quale legare le varie azioni compiute. Il Sé diventa l'elemento di invarianza all'interno di una sequenza di azioni che mutano. In più, all'interno di queste mutazioni, si può ritagliare una sequenza fatta e finita: la presenza del Sé permette a questa sequenza di acquisire un 'senso', poiché essa è governata da un 'fine' scelto da una 'volontà'. E la volontà dipende dal Sé. Quindi, il Sè permette di dare un senso alle azioni, ma allo stesso tempo acquisisce senso agendo. Infatti, per Ricoeur una minore azione indica anche una minore 'essenza'.

Quindi, il Sé è colui che compie l'azione. Questo legame comporta la responsabilità. Responsabilità e prendere su di Sé questo legame tra il Sé e la propria azione. In più, la responsabilità muta in promessa quando si decide di risultare coerenti nella propria progettualità di vita. Coerenza significa restare fedeli alla propria essenza, agire in maniera tale da rispettare ciò che si è detto, già compiuto. Ma una promessa non è qualcosa che si fa da soli, ma si fa a qualcun altro. E qui che nel cammino del Sé si incontra l'Altro: esso è colui che ci osserva. L'altro è introiettato nel Sé: questo agisce sapendo che c'è l'Altro a guardarlo e giudicarlo. E a Lui che promette di essere sé stesso, di mantenere la propria essenza coerente nel tempo.

L'eticità, quindi, viene prima della morale: prima devo accorgermi di essere un Sé, di poter agire, poi posso pensare che questa azione possa essere giudicata da un Altro. L'altro, però, è uguale a me: condivide con me l'appartenenza al mondo della carne, quindi quello che vale per me vale anche per lui. Eppure, in questa uguaglianza si annida la consapevolezza della diseguaglianza: nonostante siamo tutti fatti di carne, non tutti abbiamo le stesse risorse. Questo provoca la pietà, la quale muove il nostro senso morale: agire per ripristinare l'uguaglianza, affinché quello che è capitato all'Altro non debba capitare anche a me. Da ciò la costituzione della società e del diritto, che cerca di mettere a freno a questa disuguaglianza che esiste nonostante siamo fatti tutti della stessa carne.

Alla fine, c'è un capitolo sull'ontologia del Sé: questo rapporto con l'Altro non è un momento successivo, bensì un elemento costituente del Sé. Siamo fatti affinché il Sé stesso sia percepito come un Altro (da ciò il titolo del testo). Infatti, comprendendo che siamo un Sé, possiamo estendere questa condizione agli altri simili a noi. La consapevolezza delle mie debolezze, mi fa conoscere quelle altrui: da ciò nasce la morale e l'azione positiva. Se ho consapevolezza del mio Sé posso stimarmi, ma se mi stipo posso volere anche del rispetto, il quale è la forma sociale dell'amor proprio. Ma questo rispetto lo si può ottenere solo se si rispetta la stima che l'Altro ha per Sé.

Illuminante studio su che cosa significa essere persone, senza risultare patetico o fumoso. Poco soddisfacente, però, per chi cerca lettura più emotivamente coinvolgenti: qua siamo nella riflessione, nel mondo del pensiero.

FRANÇAIS: Ce texte est très difficile, parce qu'il faut connaitre l'histoire de la philosophie. Il cite Aristote, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas et autres auteurs de la philosophie américaine.

Il s'agit d'une réflexion sur le Soi: si j'analyse les caractéristiques du Soi, je peux penser l'Autre, parce qu' il est comme moi. Pourquoi il est comme moi? Parce que je peux juger sa faiblesse e sa puissance, car je reconnais ma faiblesse e ma puissance dans la vie de l'Autre. Mais, si je suis comme un autre, alors je peux penser à une action que me permet de respecter les autres. Pour ça, il est possible de construire une morale.

Le Soi est un Autre, alors l'essence même du Soi est l'Autre. Etre responsable de propres actions est la voie pour le bien vivre, aussi come il faut agir en sachant que l'Autre nous regarde. Il nous juge: le respect vers nous dépend de lui.

[Susanna Galati · Rating 5 out of 5]

Testo sintesi di tutto il pensiero del grande Ricœur, un'opera immensa, ricca di riferimenti a molteplici autori e autrici e correnti filosofiche diverse. L'indagine fenomenologica ermeneutica sul sé e sull'identità, in breve: il tentativo di salvare il soggetto dalla dissoluzione contro cui questi va in contro, a partire dai grandi maestri del sospetto, come li chiama proprio Ricœur stesso, Marx, Nietzsche e Freud. Una soggettività che non può che ricevere una prova di esistenza dalle mere e deboli attestazione e testimonianza, due elementi cardine dell'ontologia ricœuriana. Si possono accorpare i primi studi in quanto sondano il campo della filosofia analitica, certamente utilizzando teorie filosofiche diverse, da quella dei particolari di base di Strawson a quella degli atti linguistici (atti di discorso, per Ricœur) di Searle, per arrivare alla teoria dell'azione e, con un salto dall'azione all'agente, giungere al rapporto ethos-praxis-telos aristotelico e all'aporia kantiana sulla causalità nel mondo. Gli studi 5 e 6, di cui il secondo è quello che ho preferito fra tutti, sono l'elemento di collegamento, di sintesi, se vogliamo, tra la prima parte del libro, dedicata alla descrizione dell'azione, più che dell'agente, e la seconda parte, studi 7, 8 e 9, incentrata sul rapporto dialettico che Ricœur sviluppa tra etica, intesa come intima convizione, (versante aristotelico) e morale, come giustizia legale (versante kantiano/rawlsiano). Ciò che lega l'identità come idem del soggetto all'identità ipse, la parte riflessiva del soggetto, è l'identità narrativa, dunque la presa di coscienza legata alla temporalità in cui il sé è inevitabilmente immerso e, grazie alla quale, muta, ma può anche mantenere sé stesso, dunque attestarsi come esistente, in virtù della promessa che fa all'altro. Qui l'altro non è il diverso da me, ma un elemento ontologicamente fondante del sé ed è tramite questa meta-categoria dell'alterità, con riferimento ai sommi generi platonici del Medesimo e dell'Altro, insieme con la ripresa in chiave contemporanea della metafisica aristotelica, dunque del concetto di sostanza nella sua accezione di sinolo atto/potenza, che Ricœur costruisce la sua ontologia del sé. Da sottolineare è il titolo dell'ultimo studio: "Verso quale ontologia?". Il punto interrogativo finale è il segno emblematico della difficoltà, meglio, credo io e crede anche l'autore, dell'impossibilità di arrivare a una verità definitiva su ciò che il soggetto sia, su ciò che a fondamento dello stesso giace. Un testo polifonico, da affrontare con pazienza, un poco alla volta e con solide basi filosofiche. Lo stile dell'autore, a mio avviso, è uno degli zoccoli più duri contro cui sbattare il muso. Certamente, durante la lettura, si troveranno piacevoli alcuni studi, piuttosto che altri, anche per pura inclinazione personale verso una corrente filosofica, piuttosto che un'altra. A conclusione della lettura dell'ultimo studio si tirano le fila del discorso e ci si accorge che, nonostante lo spaesamento che si provi nell'affrontare davvero molti autori e temi diversi, esiste un filo rosso che lega tutto. Proprio un circolo ermeneutico, la via lunga dell'ermeneutica, è ciò che Ricœur percorre per provare a salvare quel soggetto tanto mutilato, quanto necessario e fondativo della riflessione filosofia occidentale, dalle origini.
È un testo che può darci tanto in un'epoca in cui il tema dell'identità, o meglio, delle identità, è centrale e imprescindibile. Un mondo globalizzato e fortemente multietnico, in cui le pretese occidentali di università della morale devono fare i conti con la pretesa di universalità del resto del mondo. Un invito ad essere democratici, a dialogare con l'altro con giustizia e rispetto, per una convivenza che sia pacifica, solidale, giusta. In poche parole, umana, nel senso più squisitamente moreniano del termine: che si compia un nuovo umanesimo!

[Marc · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Soi-même comme un autre" is not the worst of Ricoeur's works. It even deserves three stars, as I learned a few things in it. Of course, Ricoeur has always been unable to write _books_, being devoted to terse conceptual surveys of notions, so as to sort which part of a notion suits his specific commitments. His writings are therefore most of the time utterly boring: no elevation of thought and no pristine clear structure. Conclusions are of little interest as they do not reveal anything new - in the reverse order of a bergsonian progression, in a way.

Therefore will Ricoeur be of some interest if one is to look for a specific piece of conceptual information an a given topic. And "Oneself as Another" gave me some, at the time I was interested in the formalization of engagement (though I should re-read it, to check...). His successive studies are set in clearer conceptual main frame and his partial conclusion sometimes clarify such or such position. But it is of course nowhere near from Lévinas, Husserl, even less Heidegger on its topic, as Ricoeur is simply a good, though lengthy, justifier of his own system of rather commonplace opinions (as far as I understand him).

[Joseph Sverker]

The difficulty when finishing a book like this is to know exactly what one has read and what I got out from it. It is not an easy read, but it is, on the other hand, not the most difficult written by a French philosopher either. Ricoeur's distinction between idem and ipse has been used by many and is very useful. I think that will be something I will use as well. In the last chapter I think I understand what is meant by the title as well. In that distinction between sameness and selfhood one in a way becomes another when you as the "consistent" body thinks about yourself as self. So in that way you become your own "other". There is also room for "other" "others" as well that define who you are. But to show that you constitue yourself and in what way was quite insightful by Ricoeur.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read roughly half of this text for a class on Phenomenology, reading Merleau-Ponty's "Phenomenology of Perception" - I did not understand damn near any of it. In the words of a co-worker, it's "clear as mud." However, given the way my professor presented it, it is quite an incredible text. So I wasn't quite sure what to rate it. If anything I am rating my professor's presentation. So, I shall return to this text and hope to understand it in greater depth.

[Don · Rating 5 out of 5]

the title makes me smile...a very slow read, 15 pages an hour is a good pace.

[Geórgia Alves · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ah! O tempo. O descolamento do eu do espelho. A narrativa do si-mesmo como outro e uma forma, embora hermética, também por isso coesa e completa de uma visão do bordado das horas. E narrativa moderna.