Carlos G. Tee (鄭永康)摘要

March, 2010

On Ricoeur's Understanding

In his “Existence and Hermeneutics,” Paul Ricoeur explains his efforts to “graft” the hermeneutic problem to the phenomenological method.

        Ricoeur traces his idea of connecting interpretation with comprehension through textual exegesis of signs to Aristotle's Peri hermeneias, or De Interpretatione (4). For him, therefore, the path that leads interpretation to comprehension involves textual exegesis that seeks out meaning through language (4).

Differing from Wilhelm Dilthey who emphasizes the role of psychology (in the form of originl intention) in understanding, Ricoeur identifies reflection as one of the keys to interpretation. The other is ontology. However, he agrees with Dilthey that “understanding is thus no longer a mode of knowledge but a mode of being, the mode of that being which exists through understanding” (7). Yet, there are also some similarities in Ricoeur's discourse on reflection with Dilthey's emphasis on psychology (original intention).

In contrast, Ricoeur finds Martin Heidegger's ontology of understanding rather insufficient for explaining the hermeneutic problem, which he called the short route because it drops any discussion of the method, and jumps right away to the level of ontology, and through which understanding is attained “no longer as a mode of knowledge, but rather as a mode of being” (6). He faults Heidegger in two ways, saying that with Heidegger's approach, “the problems that initiated our investigation not only remain unresolved but are lost from sight” (10). Instead, these problems are intended not to be resolved but to be dissolved in Heidegger's fundamental hermeneutics (10). Ricoeur also critiques Heidegger of wanting to make us subordinate historical knowledge to ontological understanding (10). Ricoeur's solution to this is by examining understanding on the level of language. This semantic investigation done through reflection is in that way brought to the level of ontology (6).

Ricoeur explains the role of reflection by saying that it acts as an “intermediary” as understanding proceeds from semantic examination to the existential (ontological) level. For him, reflection plays a corrective role in figuring out equivocalness arising from surplus of meaning and from confusion of meanings (19).

On language itself, Ricoeur explains that symbolisms find their expression in language (13) but he acknowledges the inadequacy of language, saying that it must therefore rely on reflection and ontology.

Despite his critique of Heidegger's ontology of understanding, Ricoeur cannot but go back and explain his view on the role of ontology in hermeneutics using Heideggerian terms (19).

Work Cited

Ricoeur, Paul. “Existence and Hermeneutics. ” The Conflict of Interpretations. Ed. Don Ihde. Trans. Kathleen MCLaughlin. Evanston: Northerwestern UP, 1974. 3-24.