Book Description
Why do major historical events such as the Holocaust occupy the forefront of the collective consciousness, while profound moments such as the Armenian genocide, the McCarthy era, and France's role in North Africa stand distantly behind? Is it possible that history "overly remembers" some events at the expense of others? A landmark work in philosophy, Paul Ricoeur's Memory, History, Forgetting examines this reciprocal relationship between remembering and forgetting, showing how it affects both the perception of historical experience and the production of historical narrative.
Memory, History, Forgetting, like its title, is divided into three major sections. Ricoeur first takes a phenomenological approach to memory and mnemonical devices. The underlying question here is how a memory of present can be of something absent, the past. The second section addresses recent work by historians by reopening the question of the nature and truth of historical knowledge. Ricoeur explores whether historians, who can write a history of memory, can truly break with all dependence on memory, including memories that resist representation. The third and final section is a profound meditation on the necessity of forgetting as a condition for the possibility of remembering, and whether there can be something like happy forgetting in parallel to happy memory. Throughout the book there are careful and close readings of the texts of Aristotle and Plato, of Descartes and Kant, and of Halbwachs and Pierre Nora.
A momentous achievement in the career of one of the most significant philosophers of our age, Memory, History, Forgetting provides the crucial link between Ricoeur's Time and Narrative and Oneself as Another and his recent reflections on ethics and the problems of responsibility and representation.
“His success in revealing the internal relations between recalling and forgetting, and how this dynamic becomes problematic in light of events once present but now past, will inspire academic dialogue and response but also holds great appeal to educated general readers in search of both method for and insight from considering the ethical ramifications of modern events. . . . It is indeed a master work, not only in Ricoeur’s own vita but also in contemporary European philosophy.”—Library Journal
“Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear.”— New York Times Book Review
Customer Reviews:
Best book on history so far this century.......2007-07-17
This, the last book written by the great French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, is an amazing achievement. Readers be warned: this is no easy romp through historiography or memory studies. It is a deeply philosophical meditation on the meaning of history and historicism as an act of remembering, an act of inscribing time, a way of participating in Being, and a way of negotiating competing claims for justice and acts of witnessing. Typical of Ricoeur's argumentation, the book sets out competing definitions (representation vs. recollection, explanation vs. understanding, phantasm and eikon, mneme vs. anamnesis, habit vs. memory, evocation vs. search, retention or primary memory vs. reproduction or secondary memory, reflexivity vs. worldliness, etc.). It does not resolve these oppositions, but painstakingly shows the aporias centralized in the opposition of terms and posits a tentative ethical response. Ricoeur is too smart to posit easy solutions to some of the most profound questions of human existence--mainly, what is history and how can it provide any foundations for knowledge and ethical action in the world? The erudition of this text is massive; Ricoeur references hundreds of theorists and philosophers from Plato to Foucault, from ontology to cognitive science. Predictably for those of us who have grown to respect the humanity of Ricoeur's position, the writing is never arrogant, never one-sided, always on the side of humane negotiation, life, human flourishing. In contrast to politicized polemics of academic historicist theory, this book recognizes, articulates, and teaches one about the almost overwhelming complexity of history as an idea, as a form of memory, and as evidence for witnessing and justice. In contrast to easy but hip pronouncements about the end of history, history as just another form of fiction, and history as "always political"--all implying that history is a tainted vehicle of ideological coercion that we can somehow do without--Ricoeur asks what else we *have* to connect our recollections of meaningful events to any kind of social action and collective sense of being.
If you want an education in some of the major positions in historiography, this book will give it to you, but it is no survey. It is a philosophical work, one that attempts to convey both the difficulty of the question and the necessary tenuousness of any real, ethical solution. Graduate students should be made to read this book if only to teach them what intellectual thought should look like--thought that works its way slowly and carefully through ideas instead of zooming through sources in order to construct a macrocosmic but sexy "new idea."
The incredible care with which analysis is conducted in each of this book's sections makes it impossible to summarize it meaningfully. Ricoeur wants to connect memory, history, and social remembrance in such a way that they avoid the easy, and often dangerous, sidetracks of commemoration or historicism as mere explanation. He wants a humanized history based in lived memory that can be used to create common ground between people as well as viable evidence in the negotiation of justice claims. Whether he gets this is debatable, but the attempt is honorable.
Narrative and Inner Experience (In Spanish).......2006-03-24
La preocupación de Ricoeur por la metáfora como aspecto significante del lenguaje se traslada, en la ultima etapa de su pensamiento a la narración del tiempo y, en especial, del tiempo histórico. Ricoeur estudia la realidad/ memoria del pasado histórico en la historiografía bajo tres signos: Lo Mismo, Lo Otro y Lo Análogo. Al primer signo: el de lo Mismo, le podemos corresponder el símbolo totalizante. Totalizante porque invade todas las esferas del discurso, mientras que la metáfora es un símbolo revisado críticamente porque es autoconsciente del poder puramente poético de su naturaleza, manteniendo y manteniéndose así autónomo de otras esferas del discurso. En el signo de lo Mismo, el pasado es idéntico con el presente; el presente es una reefectuación de la tradición, idea defendida tanto por Collingwood (citado por Ricoeur) como por Gadamer. Así, como el símbolo es la unión trascendente de lo material con lo ideal (su índice de identidad); así el pasado se une con el presente en el reenactment producida por la imaginación del historiador. Esta imaginación simbólica del historiador supuestamente resucita los contenidos del pasado en el presente. Esta idea, presente en Collingwood, pero que proviene de la filosofía hegeliana de la historia subordina el pasado al presente, pero al mismo tiempo el presente es el sitio de actualidad del pasado: "Se podría decir, en forma de paradoja, que una huella se hace huella del pasado solo en el momento en que su carácter de pasado es abolido por el acto intemporal de repensar el acontecimiento en su interior pensado." (Ricoeur, 1990, III, 845)
Lo opuesto a esto es la separación absoluta del pasado respecto al presente y que la construcción de la historia ocurre en el presente de acuerdo a intereses históricos específicos. Es lo que llama Ricoeur "una ontología negativa de la historia" presente en autores como Veyne, Le Goff o Furet, pero también en Foucault, Adorno y Benjamin. Este es el espacio característico de la alegoría: el pasado es otro del presente. La presencia del presente no es plena, sino que es siempre otra, debido a que su pasado es incognoscible, solo manifestable por la tradición que es una tradición del presente. El pasado es una alegoría del presente, construida en el presente, y nunca sabremos como realmente fue: "Es en este sentido como la diferencia-desviación concurre hacia una ontología negativa del pasado. Para una filosofía de la historia fiel a la idea de diferencia-desviación, el pasado es lo que falta, una ausencia pertinente." (Ricoeur, 1990, III, 853).
Contra una homogeneidad radical propia del historicismo que culmina en el presente como actualización y superación simbólica del pasado, y contra la heterogeneidad de una historia fragmentada; Ricoeur propone una aproximación al pasado mediante la metáfora capaz de reconocer la diferencia y especifidad fundamental que éste posee respecto al presente, pero también capaz de extraer contenidos significativos de dicho pasado para efectuarlos en el presente. La cuestión es conjugar el símbolo (lo mismo) y la alegoría (lo otro) mediante el signo de la semejanza. Esto es reconocer la diferencia fundamental del pasado, pero encontrar semejanzas de éste en el presente: "En la caza del haber-sido, la analogía no actúa aisladamente, sino en unión con la identidad y la alteridad: pero es tal realmente por el hecho de que es el ausente de todas nuestras construcciones. Lo análogo, precisamente, lleva en sí la fuerza de la reefectuación y de la distanciación, en la medida en que ser-como es ser y no ser." (loc. cit.). De esta manera, lo simbólico del tiempo histórico se renueva en las semejanzas por la cual el pasado se manifiesta en el presente de una manera no igual, pero semejante a como fue para restablecer la continuidad histórica y, por tanto, la memoria.
Book Description
Paul Ricoeur has been hailed as one of the most important thinkers of the century. Oneself as Another, the clearest account of his "philosophical ethics," substantiates this position and lays the groundwork for a metaphysics of morals.
Focusing on the concept of personal identity, Ricoeur develops a hermeneutics of the self that charts its epistemological path and ontological status.
Customer Reviews:
Great book.......2007-07-23
I am not in a position to evaluate this book. However, I think this book shows a nice attempt to theorize (?) the philosophy of the self or the first person beyond Cartesian cogito and metaphysical semantics, inviting readers to pay attention to pragmatics of the self. This book is a solid synthesis of many accomplishments in pragmatics, action theories, discursive psychology, and Russian dialogism. For that reason, it is hard to find author's original points. I would recommend to read/compare with Rom Harre's Singular Self.
Subjecthood?? Subject positions?? Self-subjection??.......2003-06-25
As I understand it, the goal of Ricoeur's studies is to formulate a notion of the subject that is not susceptible to the same objections and aporia as Descartes's cogito. To accomplish this, he analyzes discursive situations and comes to the conclusion that the subject is first and foremost a being, i.e., a body in space, and that the subject understands herself first and foremost as such. Grammar reveals this self-objectivation (to borrow a term from Habermas) in that the reflexive "I" is a grammatical substitution for a corresponding third-person deictic term: "I" is the "she" of the speaking subject to the "he/him" is the "you" of the interlocutor as told from the perspective of the speaking subject, who occupies the same spatiotemporal point as the subject's particular body.
Ricoeur's findings appear rather plausible, but I cannot help but think that his findings imply sort of transcendental, or perhaps I should say, para- or transsubjective, awareness on the part of the subject that is inarticulable (neologism?) yet essential to her awareness as a body within a discursive situation. In other words, by virtue of the fact that the subject grammatically isolates herself differentially vis-à-vis her interlocutor in a discursive situation seems to me to imply that the subject's self-awareness is not as spatiotemporally limited as the body that it inhabits, or, more accurately with which it is coextensive (consubstantial?). I therefore remain uncertain on how prioritizing the corporeal subject before the thinking subject avoids the aporia of Cartesian subjectivity.
Book Description
In the first two volumes of this work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing, fiction, and theories of literature. This final volume, a comprehensive reexamination and synthesis of the ideas developed in volumes 1 and 2, stands as Ricoeur's most complete and satisfying presentation of his own philosophy.
Ricoeur's aim here is to explicate as fully as possible the hypothesis that has governed his inquiry, namely, that the effort of thinking at work in every narrative configuration is completed in a refiguration of temporal experience. To this end, he sets himself the central task of determing how far a poetics of narrative can be said to resolve the "aporias"—the doubtful or problematic elements—of time. Chief among these aporias are the conflicts between the phenomenological sense of time (that experienced or lived by the individual) and the cosmological sense (that described by history and physics) on the one hand and the oneness or unitary nature of time on the other. In conclusion, Ricoeur reflects upon the inscrutability of time itself and attempts to discern the limits of his own examination of narrative discourse.
"As in his previous works, Ricoeur labors as an imcomparable mediator of often estranged philosophical approaches, always in a manner that compromises neither rigor nor creativity."—Mark Kline Taylor, Christian Century
"In the midst of two opposing contemporary options—either to flee into ever more precious readings . . . or to retreat into ever more safe readings . . . —Ricoeur's work offers an alternative option that is critical, wide-ranging, and conducive to new applications."—Mary Gerhart, Journal of Religion
Customer Reviews:
A Great Book trapped in Romanticism (In Spanish).......2005-04-30
La estructura del símbolo es la condición de posibilidad del círculo hermenéutico: para comprender un símbolo, por tanto interpretarlo, se necesita creer en él. Pero no es una fe, que Ricoeur llama "precrítica", sino que la creencia viene fundamentada en la comprensión racional: "Si bien es cierto que no podemos revivir las grandes simbólicas de lo sagrado en su auténtica fe original, en cambio, podemos, como hombres modernos, aspirar a una nueva ingenuidad en la crítica y por la crítica. En una palabra, la interpretación es la que nos puede abrir de nuevo las puertas de la comprensión; de esta manera vuelve a soldarse por medio de la hermenéutica la donación del sentido, característica del símbolo, con la iniciativa inteligible y racional, propia de la labor crítica-interpretativa." Contra el triángulo epistemológico, el círculo hermenéutico. A diferencia del concepto definitivo de la epistemología, de su dead-end conceptual; el símbolo inagotable de la hermenéutica está en movimiento perpetuo. La comprensión racional de la hermenéutica filosófica desmitologiza; sin embargo, lo simbólico es el sello de autenticidad de cualquier filosofía de tal manera que ésta se ve atrapada en el círculo mágico del símbolo, porque como expondré después en las conclusiones, la hermenéutica vendría a ser una racionalización crítica de lo mágico, pero lo mágico y mítico es algo que estará estructurado anteriormente al discurso, de manera tal que éste se constituirá en un destino inevitable para la hermenéutica. La hermenéutica, precisamente por su ansia de significación, pagará por ese deseo el verse atrapada en la armazón mágica de lo simbólico. Sin embargo, ante esto Ricoeur nos dice: "En efecto, el mundo de los símbolos no es un reino tranquilo, pacífico y bien avenido; todo símbolo tiende a destruir a los demás, lo mismo que todo símbolo abandonado a sí mismo tiende a condensarse, consolidarse, hasta cuajar en idolatría." Pero ¿qué significa pensar a partir de los símbolos y no ya dentro de ellos, tal como la plantea Ricoeur después? Pensar dentro de los símbolos significaría transformar la filosofía en un pensamiento mágico, prerracional. Por eso el discurso filosófico es autónomo tanto frente al discurso mágico como el discurso poético, como planteará respecto en La Metáfora Viva. Sin embargo, pensar a partir de los símbolos significa `traducirlos' al discurso filosófico, desvelar los contenidos filosóficos inherentes a las narraciones míticas, pero nunca plantear una crítica a la estructura de ellos: "Todos los símbolos de la culpabilidad y todos los mitos cuentan la situación del ser del hombre en el ser del mundo. Entonces la tarea del pensador consiste en elaborar, partiendo de los símbolos, conceptos existenciales, es decir, no solo ya estructuras de la reflexión sino estructuras de la existencia en cuanto que la existencia es el ser del hombre." De esta manera, tanto la filosofía de la existencia como la hermenéutica tendría en el símbolo un punto de partida absoluto
Book Description
In volume 1 of this three-volume work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing. Now, in volume 2, he examines these relations in fiction and theories of literature.
Ricoeur treats the question of just how far the Aristotelian concept of "plot" in narrative fiction can be expanded and whether there is a point at which narrative fiction as a literary form not only blurs at the edges but ceases to exist at all. Though some semiotic theorists have proposed all fiction can be reduced to an atemporal structure, Ricoeur argues that fiction depends on the reader's understanding of narrative traditions, which do evolve but necessarily include a temporal dimension. He looks at how time is actually expressed in narrative fiction, particularly through use of tenses, point of view, and voice. He applies this approach to three books that are, in a sense, tales about time: Virgina Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway; Thomas Mann's Magic Mountain; and Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past.
"Ricoeur writes the best kind of philosophy—critical, economical, and clear."—Eugen Weber, New York Times Book Review
"A major work of literary theory and criticism under the aegis of philosophical hermenutics. I believe that . . . it will come to have an impact greater than that of Gadamer's Truth and Method—a work it both supplements and transcends in its contribution to our understanding of the meaning of texts and their relationship to the world."—Robert Detweiler, Religion and Literature
"One cannot fail to be impressed by Ricoeur's encyclopedic knowledge of the subject under consideration. . . . To students of rhetoric, the importance of Time and Narrative . . . is all too evident to require extensive elaboration."—Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, Quarterly Journal of Speech
Average customer rating:
|
The Conflict of Interpretations (SPEP)
Paul Ricoeur , and
Editions De Seuil
Manufacturer: Northwestern University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
 Epistemology
| Philosophy
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Philosophy
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Modern
| Philosophy
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
Phenomenology
| Movements
| Philosophy
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0810105292 |
Customer Reviews:
A light in the darkness.......2000-09-30
Paul Ricoeur's conflict of interpretation represents the (I think successful) attempt to provide a way to get out of the deconstruction of the self operated by Freud and the Psychanalysis.
It also gives a great theory about the simbolic use of the language.
The text might results sometimes difficult to an unprepared reader.
Book Description
This is a collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur which presents a comprehensive view of his philosophical hermeneutics, its relation to the views of his predecessors in the tradition and its consequences for the social sciences. The volume has three parts. The studies in the first part examine the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and the outstanding issues it has to confront. In Part II, Ricoeur’s own current, constructive position is developed. A concept of the text is formulated as the implications of the theory are pursued into the domains of sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Many of the essays appear here in English for the first time; the editor’s introduction brings out their background in Ricoeur’s thought and the continuity of his concerns. The volume will be of great importance for those interested in hermeneutics and Ricoeur’s contribution to it, and will demonstrate how much his approach offers to a number of disciplines.
Average customer rating:
|
Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (The Terry Lectures Series)
Paul Ricoeur
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
General
| Criticism & Theory
| History & Criticism
| Literature & Fiction
| Subjects
| Books
Philosophy
| Nonfiction
| Subjects
| Books
| Aesthetics
| Analytic Philosophy
| Ancient
| Consciousness & Thought
| Criticism
| Eastern
| Epistemology
| Ethics & Morality
| Free Will & Determinism
| General
| Good & Evil
| Greek & Roman
| History & Surveys
| History, 17th & 18th Century
| Islamic
| Logic & Language
| Medieval Thought
| Metaphysics
| Methodology
| Modern
| Modern Renaissance
| Movements
| Ontology
| Philosophy of Religion
| Political
| Reference
| Religious
| Science
| Social Philosophy
| Theism
General
| Psychology & Counseling
| Health, Mind & Body
| Subjects
| Books
Psychoanalysis
| Psychology & Counseling
| Health, Mind & Body
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Religion & Spirituality
| Subjects
| Books
Behavioral Psychology
| Behavioral Sciences
| Science
| Subjects
| Books
Behavioral Psychology
| Behavioral Sciences
| Professional Science
| Professional & Technical
| Subjects
| Books
All Titles
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Literature & Fiction
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Nonfiction
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Professional
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Religion & Spirituality
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Science
| Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007
| Stores
| Books
Similar Items:
-
The Symbolism of Evil
-
The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language (Routledge Classics)
-
The Conflict of Interpretations (SPEP)
-
Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination
-
Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning
ASIN: 0300021895 |
Book Description
Time and Narrative builds on Paul Ricoeur's earlier analysis, in The Rule of Metaphor, of semantic innovation at the level of the sentence. Ricoeur here examines the creation of meaning at the textual level, with narrative rather than metaphor as the ruling concern.
Ricoeur finds a "healthy circle" between time and narrative: time is humanized to the extent that it portrays temporal experience. Ricoeur proposes a theoretical model of this circle using Augustine's theory of time and Aristotle's theory of plot and, further, develops an original thesis of the mimetic function of narrative. He concludes with a comprehensive survey and critique of modern discussions of historical knowledge, understanding, and writing from Aron and Mandelbaum in the late 1930s to the work of the Annales school and that of Anglophone philosophers of history of the 1960s and 1970s.
"This work, in my view, puts the whole problem of narrative, not to mention philosophy of history, on a new and higher plane of discussion."—Hayden White, History and Theory
"Superb. . . . A fine point of entrance into the work of one of the eminent thinkers of the present intellectual age."—Joseph R. Gusfield, Contemporary Sociology
Customer Reviews:
Brilliant.......2005-06-14
Ricoeur, who died in 2005, had an obscure type of fame, but one that will grow exponentially as his ideas are understood more and more. This mind-blowing volume takes Augustine's and Aristotle's views on time and synthesizes them into a position on how narrative works. Great stuff.
Book Description
Paul Ricoeur is described in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy as "one of the leading French philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century." This little book collects his thoughts on the subject of translation, and is vintage Ricoeur. He uses the topic to reflect on some of the perennial problems posed by translation, including the transmission of early Greek philosophy to the Renaissance, interpretations of the Bible amongst diverse religious traditions (no small issue at the moment), and the way translations of the same text reflect important cultural dynamics at work across different periods, leading to quite different meanings springing from the same book. There are also discussions of some contemporary figures, such as Umberto Eco, and the whole underscored by Ricoeur's point that there is a paradox at the hear of translation: impossible in theory but effective in practice.
Books:
- Mr. Popper's Penguins
- My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley
- Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind-Brain
- Neuroscience
- Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life: Create Your Life, Your Relationships, and Your World in Harmony with Your Values (Nonviolent Communication Guides)
- Painting People: Figure Painting Today
- Phenomenology of Spirit (Galaxy Books)
- Phenomenology of Spirit (Galaxy Books)
- Phenomenology of Spirit (Galaxy Books)
- Philosophers Stone P
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- The California Landlord's Law Book: Evictions
- History: Fiction or Science
- Adolph Menzel, 1815-1905: Master Drawings from East Berlin
- Aztec
- Dangerous Attraction
- Mr. Untouchable: My Crimes and Punishments
- Freshwater Mussels of Texas
- Think Naked: Childlike Brilliance in the Rough Adult World
- Attracting & Rewarding Outstanding Employees
- Dirk Pitt Revealed
Time and Narrative, Volume 1 (Time & Narrative)
On Collective Memory (Heritage of Sociology Series)
Time and Narrative, Volume 3 (Time & Narrative)
Time and Narrative, Volume 2 (Time & Narrative)
How Societies Remember (Themes in the Social Sciences)
