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Transcript of Ricoeur o Razumijevanju- Radnja
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Explanation andUnderstanding:
The Hermeneutic ArcPaul Ricurs Theory of Interpretation
Geir Amdal
Cand. Philol. Thesis
May 2001
UNIVERSITY OF OSLO
Department of Philosophy
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Acknowledgements
This thesis is submitted to the Department of Philosophy at the Universityof Oslo in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Cantidatusphilologiae (cand. philol.).
I would first and foremost like to thank professor Bjrn Ramberg, mysupervisor, who through his friendly guidance and support, expert knowledgeand willingness to go above and beyond the call of duty to help me improvemy thesis, has been a major contributing factor to its completion.
Thanks are also due to Annette Nordheim, for her encouragement, proof-reading and support. I have chosen to write this thesis in English, primarily asa challenge to myself, and much of the credit for that having been a successful
decision is due to Annette.I would also like to thank the Student Association at the Department of
Informatics for being allowed to use their office to write the thesis at all hours,and to my family and friends for putting up with me through rough days andstress-ridden nights.
Finally, I wish to express my indebtedness and gratitude to my parents,Astrid and Guttorm, for having always supported me and for encouragingme to choose for myself which path to follow. They have thus given me thepossibility to get where I am today through providing me with a foundationupon which it was possible to build my academic work.
Geir AmdalMay, 2001
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Contents
Acknowledgements iii
Contents v
1 Introduction 1
The Hermeneutic Arc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Openness of Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Expanding the Hermeneutic Circle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
A Philosophy of Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3The Methodology of Reciprocal Reinforcement . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Interpreting Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5Strategic Deliberations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2 The Model of the Text 7Language-system and Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Semiology and Semantics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11DistanciationWhen Discourse Becomes Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Semantic Autonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Loss of Reference Through Emancipation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Method of Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19Structuralist Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Phenomenological Understanding Appropriation . . . . . . . 23From Circle To Arc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
Epi-reading and Graphi-reading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24A Room For Objectivity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3 The Tensional Conception of Metaphor 27
Ricurs Theories of Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Metaphor and Semantic Innovation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29Metaphor and Explanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30Polysemy and Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Detouring through Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32Consequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
The Traditional Conception of Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Productive Tension . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36Making Sense: Linguistic Impertinence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Metaphor and Discourse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
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vi Contents
Metaphor and Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41Split Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42The Ontology of Metaphor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4 The Validity of Interpretations 47The Hermeneutic Dialectic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Against the Intentional Fallacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50Interpretative Construal as Guessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Validation of Guesses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51Making SenseThe Function of Explanation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Monotative and Multitative Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54Construal as Constriction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57From Sense to Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
The Role of Literary Criticism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5 Reference and Meaning 63
Reversing the Arc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63Metaphoric Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64Split Reference . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66The World of the Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Appropriation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69The Disciplines of Meaning . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70Understanding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71Redefining Subjectivity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Configuration and Refiguration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73The Twofold Function of the Sign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
6 Conclusion 77Restructuring the Hermeneutic Arc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Ramifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79The Challenge of Ricurs Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
A Formal Thesis Curriculum 83
Texts by Ricur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83Secondary Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Bibliography 88
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Chapter1
Introduction
The Hermeneutic Arc
Ricurs theory of interpretation seeks a dialectical integration of Diltheys
dichotomy of erklren and verstehen, while at the same time clearing groundfor an objective methodology of interpretation without displacing the texts
authenticitya consolidation of sorts, of the Gadamerian split between dis-
tanciation and belonging. He envisions a model of the text freed with respects
to its author, yet still able to reach beyond pure textuality and retain its relation
to a world.
Ricur sets off by distinguishing the fundamentally different interpretive
paradigms for text and spoken discourse. The former differs from the latter in
being, through the act of inscription, detached from the original circumstances
which produced it. The intentions of the author are distant, the addressee is
general rather than specific and ostensive references are rendered void.
Openness of Interpretation
A key idea in Ricurs view is that once the discourse has become an artefact,
and is released from the subjective intentions of the author, multiple acceptable
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2 Introduction
interpretations become possible. Thus meaning is no longer construed just
according to the author or agents world-view, but according to its significance
in the readers world-view. The text is transformed from a mere meaning-
carrying vessel to an autonomous party actively contributing to the result of
the interpretative effort.
Expanding the Hermeneutic Circle
Ricurs hermeneutic arc combines two distinct hermeneutics: one that
moves from existential understanding to explanation and another that moves
from explanation to existential understanding. In the first hermeneutic, sub-
jective guessing is objectively validated. Here, understanding corresponds to a
process of hypothesis formation, based on analogy, metaphor and other mech-
anisms for divination. Hypothesis formation must not only propose senses for
terms and readings for texts, but also assign importance to parts and invoke
hierarchical classificatory procedures.
The wide range of hypothesis formation means that possible interpreta-tions may be reached along many paths. Following Hirsch (cf. Hirsch, 1967),
explanation becomes a process of validating informed guesses. Validation pro-
ceeds through rational argument and debate, based on a model of judicial
procedures in legal reasoning. It is therefore distinguished from verification,
which relies on logical proof. As Hirsch notes, this model may lead into a di-
lemma of self-confirmability when non-validatable hypotheses are proposed.
Ricur escapes this dilemma by incorporating Poppers (Popper, 1992) notion
of falsifiability into his methods for validation, which he applies to the internal
coherence of an interpretation and the relative plausibility of competing inter-
pretations.
In the second hermeneutic, which moves from explanation to understand-
ing, Ricur distinguishes two stances regarding the referential function of the
text: a subjective approach and a structuralist alternative. The subjective ap-
proach incrementally constructs the world that lies behind the text but must
rely on the world-view of the interpreter for its pre-understanding. Although
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A Philosophy of Integration 3
the constructed world-view may gradually approximate the authors as more
text is interpreted, the interpreters subjectivity cannot be fully overcome. In
contrast, Ricur sees the structuralist approach as suspending reference to the
world behind the text and focusing on a behavioral inventory of the intercon-
nections of parts within the text.
The structural interpretation brings out both a surface and a depth inter-
pretation. The depth semantics is not determined by what what the author
intended to communicate, but by what the text is aboutthe non-ostensive
reference of the text. Understanding requires an affinity between the reader
and this aboutness of the text, that is, the kind of world opened up by the depth
semantics of the text. Instead of imposing any fixed interpretation, the depth
semantics channels thought in a certain direction. By suspending meaning
and focusing on the formal algebra of the genres reflected in the text at vari-
ous levels, the structural method gives rise to objectivity while capturing the
subjectivity of both the author and the reader.
Ricurs transmutation of the hermeneutic circle to a hermeneutic arc can
be seen as a bootstrapping1
process, grounded in a hermeneutic phenomen-
ology. The greatest contribution being the incorporation of an internal ref-
erential model of the text constructed by the interpreter through a structural
analysisa model exhibiting a sufficient set of objective or intersubjectively
comparable criteria and elements to ground a methodology of interpretation.
A Philosophy of Integration
The philosophy of Paul Ricur is known as one of reconciliation. As a thinker,
he is always open to new insights. When his ideas are challenged, he does
not attempt to defend them from the assault, so as to keep them intact. On the
contrary, he usually does his utmost to assimilate the objection in his continued
1Bootstrapping is a concept more commonly used in Computer Science, where it refers toa self-initiating process. In this context, however, what is intended is the process of initiatinghermeneutic movement between interpreter and text. For there to be grounds for an interplay
between a literary work and its readers, it must already be constituted as work. Yet thisconstitution is something the text cannot bring about on its own, but is itself necessarily aproduct of an act of interpretation. The hermeneutic movement must in other words bringitself into being, lifting itself by its own bootstraps.
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4 Introduction
deliberations. This applies not only to contemporary philosophers, but indeed
also to the thinkers of the past, whose philosophies continue to represent
valuable corrections and contributions to the development of Ricurs own
philosophy.
Ricur has been called a philosophical arbitrator, as he tends to try to in-
corporate arguments from both sides in an ongoing philosophical debate. As
a result, he often ends up in a mediary position, like he did in the Gadamer-
Habermas debate. This mediating position has earned him the title of bridge-
builder between traditions, yet I shall attempt to demonstrate that such a label
can give the false impression that Ricur tries to close a gap across a method-
ological distance by presenting a common vocabulary or model. Rather, he
is an integrating philosopher, focusing on assimilating the competing models
to the degree they deserve it. In other words, the distance is not bridged, but
abolished, as the models are integrated and assimilated, often through a meth-
odological grafting of the one onto the other, or through the subordination of
the one under the other in a dynamic tension, where both models contribute
effectively to the other while operating on different levels.
His philosophy takes on a synthetic quality, not by being a collage of
other philosophies, but rather through unifying them as far as possible, and
contributing arguments which are non-exclusive.
At the bottom of this endeavour lies, naturally, Ricurs fundamentally
hermeneutical point of origin, his search for meaning. A fundamental belief in
the possibility of always locating meaning in the expressions of man leads him
to never reject an opponents arguments until after having considered them
thoroughly and having adopted and integrated into his own analysis those
that merited it.
The Methodology of Reciprocal Reinforcement
As Hallvard H. Ystad points out in the afterword of Eksistens og hermeneutikk
(Ricur, 1999), topics treated with the thoroughness employed in Ricurs
works make great demands to stringency. And despite the terminological
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Interpreting Interpretation 5
and conceptual precision and exactness necessary to maintain a logical con-
sequence and methodical rigour, Ystad remarks on the noticeable compactness
of his articles. A quality derived, he claims, from a tendency to seek reciprocal
aspects in the terms he employs in his different fields of study.
Whether or not Ricur actively seeks terms especially to obtain the effects
of methodological reinforcement through reciprocal concepts is not as vital as
the fact that his philosophy has a remarkable tendency of constantly grow-
ing or constructing itself through such structures. This reciprocal methodo-
logy has the somewhat problematic consequence that the different parts of his
philosophy collaborate in constructing his methodological and philosophical
foundation. It is thus no straightforward undertaking to analyze or systematic-
ally structure his individual argumentsthey are always a necessary element
in a greater whole, dependent on other arguments or models for completion
and argumentative strength.
In what follows, an effort has therefore been made to prioritize thorough-
ness of study rather than immediate structure where necessary, so as to make
the final resulting image more complete and accurate.
Interpreting Interpretation
The main goal of this document is to deliver a problem-oriented presentation
of the interpretation theory of Paul Ricur, performed as a contextual explor-
ation of the elements and aspects it involves. Furthermore, it is hoped that
enough light is shed on the constituent elements and models that the patterns
or structures I perceive as both methodologically vital to and reciprocally rein-
forcing in Ricurs conception of textual interpretation, are able to emerge as
reiterations of a single common theme in three different spheres: the semiotic
sphere of langue, the semantic sphere of discourse, and the hermeneutic sphere
of the literary work.
Using the thematic exposition as a backdrop, this will enable a structuring
overview, (hopefully) shedding some new light on the interconnected dynam-
ics of Ricurs hermeneutic theory.
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6 Introduction
I also wish to determine whether Ricur is successful in making room for
an objective methodology or science of literary criticism; not by displacing the
Gadamerian notion of the hermeneutic circle, but by further developing the
model and integrating elements of structuralist methodology into phenomen-
ological hermeneutics.
Strategic Deliberations
The investigation starts where it must; with the object of interpretation. In
chapter 2, while examining Ricurs model of the text, I will necessarily
recourse to the structuralist concept of language, in order to develop a model
of discourse. In the exploration of the symptoms of textual inscription in the
transformation of discourse to text, Ricurs central model of distanciation is
presented and subjected to discussion.
On the basis of a model of the text, a brief overview of the dialectic of the
Hermeneutic Arc is attempted, before we are forced again to backtrack and
study the tensional conception of metaphor in chapter 3.
Armed with the terminology of Ricurs theory of metaphor, we are
prepared to embark on the study of interpretation proper, and chapter 4
is dedicated to the function of explanationthe structural analysis Ricur
wishes to graft on phenomenological hermeneutics. The hermeneutical issue
of existential understanding is the theme of chapter 5, before I attempt to grasp
the structure of the theory rather than its thematic content in chapter 6, as
promised.
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Chapter2
The Model of the Text
To the extent that hermeneutics is text-oriented interpretation, and
inasmuch as texts are, among other things, instances of written
language, no interpretation theory is possible that does not come
to grips with the problem of writing.
(Ricur, 1976, p. 25)
Language-system and Discourse
A modern grasp of the phenomenon of language derives from the distinction,
introduced in the works of de Saussure, between langue and parole. The former
is the system of signs, rules and virtual meanings that constitutes language, the
latter is language as it is actually spoken. A structural approach to language
implies the choice for the langue. All questions concerning the meaning of
speech as it is bound to a specific subject and situation are bracketed. The focus
of attention is the common vocabulary that is used in all concrete performances
of language.
In order to describe this vocabulary, the structural model of language prefers
a synchronic approach of language to a diachronic one. It focuses on the state
of the system at a given moment. Systems are more intelligible than changes
(Ricur, 1976, p. 6). Within the system the relationships between the distinct
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8 The Model of the Text
terms or signs are brought to light. Every sign only has a meaning in so far
as it is opposed to other signs. Finallyand this is for Ricur the postulate
that summarizes and commands all the others (Ricur, 1974a, pp. 250-1)
the structural model isolates the langue as a closed universe of signs. Language
constitutes a world of its own without any outside reference, a self-sufficient
system of inner relations (Ricur, 1976, p. 6).
This last postulatethat of the closure (clture) of the object of analysis
constitutes for Ricur both the strength of the structural approach and its
weakness. The undeniable strength is that the restriction to a finished, com-
plete object brings out the aspect of organization without which there would
be no meaningful language at all. This methodological reduction makes a sci-
entific exploration of objective structures possible. However, such a structural
description remains abstract. With the parole all those aspects which accord-
ing to ordinary experience primarily characterize language are left outi.e.
that it is spoken by someone about something to someone. The more linguist-
ics are purified and reduced to a science of language, explains Ricur the
more it expels from its field everything concerning the relationship of languageto anything else but itself.
In fact the reduction of language to its structural aspects implies a twofold
forgetting of structures which are prior to language itself. In the first place
it leaves aside the question of man who expresses himself through language.
What can be understood by means of a structural model is an anonymous
system of signs and codes. Furthermore, limitation to the clture des signes
implies that being is forgotten. The fact that language refers to any non-
linguistic reality is lost from sight.
It is these forgotten elements, so intimately connected with the presuppos-
itions of structuralism, that cause Ricurs vigorous opposition to all efforts
to found some structuralist philosophy on the postulates of the structural method
(cf. Ricur, 1974a, pp. 27-61, especially p. 51). Such philosophiesas they
have been advocated by such different thinkers as Lvi-Strauss, Foucault and
Lacan, among otherstend to hypostatize the codes, the networks of signs.
Language is not seen as a medium by means of which man expresses himself,
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Language-system and Discourse 9
gives meaning to his world, and transfers a message. It is, rather, suggested
that the anonymous structures of his language govern mans consciousness
of the world and of himself. Thus the individual capacity for thinking and
being creative tends to be denied in favour of the power of codes. To under-
stand man is to understand the structures that constitute his language, the
networks of myths and texts that constitute his culture, the social structures
that constitute his society. Structuralist philosophy tends to be an absolute
formalism (Ricur, 1974a, p. 52). Therefore, Ricur is eager to disconnect
structural method from structuralist ideology. Boundaries should be drawn up
within which the structural model retains its value as a scientific instrument
with claims to objectivity, but beyond which it falls into error.
In regard to language the structural model is valid, since a structure of
merely interdependent signs or terms can be isolated. But, ultimately, are
not the relations between man and language, language and the world, of more
importance that relationships within the language-structure? Is not language
primarily the way through which man communicates, expresses emotions,
gives meaning to his world? That is why Ricur opposes a second approach tothe structural one. The model of the immanence of the langue is complemented
by a model of the transcendence of speech: the transcendence of what is
designated (or more precisely, what is referred to), and the transcendence
of the speaking subjects. In this way, he enters the field of what may be called
aphenomenolgy of language. The presuppositions are those of phenomenology:
language expresses the meaning of the world and of being; the subject is the
bearer of this meaning. Man is the one who, by means of language, brings
meaning to his world.
It is essential that the phenomenology of language is complementarynot
alternative. The phenomenological-hermeneutic approach in which meaning
is the central category, has to be based on a pre-hermeneutical, linguistic one,
or be cut off from an essential relation with modern science. Phenomenology
must, claims Ricur, be structuralat least in its primary stages. It is
through and by means of a linguistics of language that a phenomenology of
speech is possible today (Ricur, 1974a, p. 251).
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10 The Model of the Text
De Saussures idea was that only the langue is a proper object for science:
parole must be bracketed so as to demarcate a field for objective inquiry.
Ricur exchanges this distinction for another, that of semiology and semantics
(cf. Ricur, 1974a, p. 93), (Ricur, 1994, pp. 66-76) and (Ricur, 1976, pp. 6-8).
Semiology and Semantics
Semiology is the structural-linguistic science which looks at closed sets of
signs. The presupposition of semantics is that there is also a scientific approachto discourse, language as it is spoken. Semiology tries to make sense of the
differences between the signs in the system, whereas semantics investigates
what happens when the words come together in a sentence and thus generate
a meaning. The first articulates the sign at the level of potential systems
available for the performance of discourse, the second is cotemporaneous
with the accomplishment of the discourse (Ricur, 1974a, p. 252). These
semiologic and semantic levels of language cannot be understood properly
if not in function of each other. Understanding the anonymous patterns
of signs and rules only makes sense in view of their actual functioning in
spoken language. Outside the semantic function in which they are actualized,
semiological systems lose all intelligibility (Ricur, 1974a, p. 253). Reversely,
the meaning of discourse cannot be analysed apart from an understanding of
the potential of meaning that is contained by the signs in the system.
Attention is now focused on the moment of transition between the two
levels of structure and speech. This moment is that of speaking, orwith
an expression that Ricur borrows from Emile Benvnistethe instance of
discourse, linstance de discours (cf. Ricur, 1976, 1994) or occurence of
discourse (Ricur, 1974a, p. 254). In a series of illuminating oppositions
Ricur shows how the potentiality of the system is actualized so that language
emerges on a new level, that of a genuine and unique meaning (Ricur, 1974a,
pp. 86-88), (Ricur, 1994, pp. 70-75) and (Ricur, 1976, pp. 9-12).
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Discourse 11
Discourse
Discourse is the event in which language takes on a temporal aspect. From
the point of view of semiotics this is a weakness: the sentences of discourse
arise and vanish, but the system remains. However, Ricur advocates the
ontological priority of discourse (Ricur, 1976, p. 9). The langue is merely
potential and a-temporal; its elements only become actual through discourse.
This opposition of system and event has important consequences. Whereas
the system is a finite and fixed set of phonetic and lexical signs, discourse is
in the order of creation and innovation. It offers the possibility of conbining
words so that new constellations of meaning emerge. It is an infinite use of
finite means (von Humboldt, cited in Ricur, 1974b, p. 97), (Ricur, 1994, p.
63). Whereas the system is a matter of constraint and rules, discourse is choice,
freedom.
The acts, events and choices of discourse imply another, decisive, trait: dis-
course has a subject (cf. Ricur, 1974a, p. 88). In the anonymous system the
question who is speaking? is senseless. Language (langue) has no subject,
objects Ricur, while discourse refers back from itself to its own speaker
thanks to a complex interplay of indicators such as personal pronouns. Dis-
course is auto-referential. What is within the system an empty signI
becomes a living word within discourse. By saying it the subject appropri-
ates language. I make it my language and I anchor discourse in the here and
now of my situation. (cf. Ricur, 1974a, pp. 254-6), (Ricur, 1976, p. 13) and
(Ricur, 1994, p. 75).
Discourse refers away from itself. It is always about something. It refers to a
world which it pretends to describe, to express, to represent (Ricur, quoted
in van Leeuwen, 1981). Words turn from the pseudoworld of the system to the
actual world. This is what Ricur calls reference in its strict sense: the claim
of expressing a view on the world, of affirming something about reality.
The triad of transcending movements of discourse is completed by the
element of allocution. The I of discourse (self-reference) speaks about the
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12 The Model of the Text
world (reference) to a hearer. The subjectivity of the act of speech is from
the beginning the intersubjectivity of allocution (Ricur, 1974a, p. 88).
The terminology of J. L. Austin is useful in grasping this structure. Each
illocutionary act (act of discourse by which some wish, command, question
etc. is expressed) is an interlocutionary act, to which a reaction (obedience,
answer, etc.) is expected. Thus dialogue is the basic form of discourse. Even
soliloquysolitary discourseis dialogue with oneself (Ricur, 1976, p. 15).
On all these traits the openness of language as discourse is evident. As
event, choice, innovation discourse is an open and, in principle, unlimited
process of creation of meaning. Its triple reference makes it open towards the
speaker, a hearer and the world (I, you, it).
On the level of discourse language leaps, as Ricur says, across two
thresholds (Ricur, 1974a, p. 84). In the first place, the words arise from their
phantomatic state of being dead signs and attain a living meaning: discourse
says something, it has a sense (the threshold of sense). Secondly, it says
something about something, it has a reference (the threshold of reference).
Herein lies precisely the mystery of language; discourse does not only havean ideal sense, a meaningful content, it also has a real reference. It is capable
of representing reality with the help of words. This concept of discourse as the
event of meaning, of sense and reference, is the nucleus of Ricurs further
investigations. These go in the direction of both a theory of the written text
and its interpretation, and a theory of the word: its polysemic, metaphorical
and symbolic qualities. Finally, also the core issue to this inquirythe specific
problems of interpreting poetic and symbolic texts.
The sentence is, as has been said, the characteristic unit of discourse. It
is the sentence which has a speaking subject; it is the sentence which has a
reference; it is the sentence which is addressed to the other. Inquiry thus goes
toward the level of unities larger than the sentence, texts, and to that of unities
smaller than the sentence, words. When reading the following paragraphs,
dealing with the theories of text and word, it should be kept in mind that
interpretation always has to do with the interplay of these distinct levels. The
meaning of a word cannot be understood apart from the sentence in which it
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DistanciationWhen Discourse Becomes Text 13
is used, as this sentence has to be understood in the context of the text. The
text cannot be explained except by envisaging the interplay of its parts and the
specific strategies by which words are used in it.
DistanciationWhen Discourse Becomes Text
Writing is the full manifestation of discourse.
(Ricur, 1976, pp. 25-6)
Ricur conceives of written language as the first place or locality for
hermeneutics (Ricur, 1995d, p. 44). Hermeneutics finds a starting point in
the problems posed by the text. What is a text? What happens when discourse
becomes fixed by writing? What precisely is it we intend to understand when
reading a text? How does interpretation proceed and how are the moments
of analysis and appropriation of meaning, explanation and understanding
related?
Two elements of Ricurs theory of the text will be reviewed.
1. It aims at overcoming the romantic, psychologizing prejudice that dom-
inated hermeneutics since Schleiermacher and Dilthey, and which re-
duced true understanding to an understanding of the intentions of the
author, the life behind the text. For Ricur, to understand is to grasp
the world opened up in front of the text. In this respect his hermeneutic is
in line with Heidegger, who related understanding to projects (Entwrfe)
of In-der-Welt-sein, with Bultmann, who sees hermeneutics as governed
by what is at issue in the text itself (its message), and with Gadamer, who
relates understanding to the Sache on which the text pronounces.
2. Ricur develops a concept of the text as an autonomous work, which
makes it possible to include a critical moment of explanation in the pro-
cess of interpretation. He thus tries to overcome not only Diltheys ro-
mantic hermeneutics that sharply opposed Verstehen as the method of
the Geisteswissenschaften to Erklren as the method of natural sciences,
but he also aims at correcting the three philosophers just mentioned.
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14 The Model of the Text
Heideggers ontologization of understanding leaves no room for a crit-
ical theory concerning interpretation. Bultmanns hermeneutics centers
interpretation too exclusively on existential decisions, assigning too little
importance to the texts objectivity. Gadamers hermeneutics disregards
the textuality of the text by regarding writing only as an alienation that
should be overcome in a new act of dialogue.
It should be noted that Ricur contends that to understand any discourse
(be it spoken or written) is to understand the event of discourse as such. In
hearing another person speak, what we try to understand is not the speech-
event but the meaningthe issue of his speech. We want to grasp what is
said and what it refers to (Gadamers die Sache). The axiom of Ricurs
interpretation theory is therefore that if all discourse is actualized as an event,
all discourse is understood as meaning (Ricur, 1976, p. 12) and (Ricur,
1994, p. 70). Understanding aims at the content of discourse. The event is
surpressed in and surpassed by the meaning.
This applies specifically to written discourse. It only accomplished a trait
which is virtual in all discourse: the distanciation of meaning and event
(Ricur, 1975, p. 67). Is it not the intention of writing that the meaning should
survive the vanishing event of discourse? What is inscribed is not the event as
event, but what is said. That the event is surpassed by a meaning thus applies
all the more to the text. From the moment of its inscription it starts, so to speak,
a career of its own. It becomes autonomous, leaving behind the moment of its
creation.
What happens in writing is the full manifestation of something
that is in a virtual state, something nascent and inchoate, in living
speech, namely the detachment of meaning from the event.
(Ricur, 1976, p. 25)
Semantic Autonomy
In his essay What is a Text? Ricur gives a more precise description of
this birth of a text as an autonomous work. The text is not a graphic
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DistanciationWhen Discourse Becomes Text 15
reproduction of what was first pronounced orally. Writing is not secondary
to the parole. Instead of describing it as the petrification or suppression of
living speech, Ricur presents the text as a direct inscription of what could
have been said orally. Writing is as original as the spoken word. In this way
Ricur breaks away from a long tradition in which the written word is seen
as only a derivative of living speech. A recent example of this view is
found in Ingardens study on the literary work of art (Ingarden, 1968, p.
13), which speaks of die reine Sprachlautigkeit that suffers eine gewisse
Verunreinigung when fixed by writing, although the tradition can be traced
back to Plato and Rousseau (cf. Ricur, 1976, pp. 38-40). (It is also one
of the main suppositions of the romanic view on literature that speech is
languages primary and defining form, whereas writing is secondary and
derived.) Writing here becomes a merely physical vehicle and even a deceiving
disguise of the living word. Its indispensable function is neglected. Against
this Ricur states that writing is not reproduction, and even less reduction, but
a direct inscription of [an] intention, even if, historically and psychologically,
writing began with the graphic transcription of the signs of speech (Ricur,1995e, pp. 147).
With the help of his concept of textual autonomy, Ricur wants to illu-
minate the specific claim of truth of the text. The autonomous character of the
text is explained by what happens to the referential characteristics of discourse
when, instead of being spoken, it is written down in the instance de discours.
Language refers to a speaker, a hearer, and the world. What happens to these
references in writing?
Loss of Reference Through Emancipation
In a dialogue understanding the intention of discourse coincides with under-
standing the intention of its speaker. Several non-linguistic aspects (gestures
and facial expressions), facilitate understanding. The speaker can be ques-
tioned about his intentions. In written language these direct indications of the
writers intentions are absent. There is no longer a direct relation between
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16 The Model of the Text
the said of the text and the psychology of its author. The reader has to do with
what the text expresses and this may transcend the authors view to a consider-
able degree. Therefore, the author is not the best interpreter of his own works,
neither does the queary about original intentions offer the right cue for inter-
pretation. To read a book is to consider its author as already dead (Ricur,
1995e, p. 137). In fact, as Beerling remarks, most texts would not lose their
value if they were anonymous. Authorship is accidental, be it essentially ac-
cidental: it is essential that someone wrote this text; it is accidental who did so
(Beerling, 1972, p. 209). Ricurs view should be distinguished from a struc-
turalist one which denies authorship stating that texts are interwoven in and
produced by the network of meanings and texts of a culture. Ricur main-
tains that the text is a discourse produced by an author. But to envisage its
autonomy is to bracket authorship.1
As the text is emancipated from its author, so it is liberated from the re-
striction of a particular audience (cf. Schleiermachers ursprngliche Leser).
Speech is directed to a specific you. A text is addressed potentially to
whomever knows how to read (Ricur, 1976, p. 31). Texts offer their meaningto an indefinite number of readers and, therefore, of interpretations (ibid.).
They become a part of the collective memory of mankind. Their importance
is determined not so much by the response of the first readers, as by the de-
gree to which they are capable of evoking new interpretations. Important texts
produce a tradition. An essential part of their meaning lies in what Gadamer
calls a Wirkungsgeschichte (Gadamer, 1990, pp. 285ff). To interpret is not
to erase this history (in an effort to transport oneself into the position of its
first readers), but to promote it. (Gadamer states the first two elements of the
autonomy of the text in the same way (Gadamer, 1990, pp. 369-70).)
So hermeneutics begins where dialogue ends (Ricur, 1976, p. 32).
Interpretation is not the repetition of some original encounter of writer and
readers, but a new event: a confrontation with what the text says. About what,
then, is written discourse?
1The question may be raised if biographical data concerning the author are in all cases asirrelevant for the interpretation of texts as Ricur suggests. At least as regards clues for possibleconstructions in explanation.
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DistanciationWhen Discourse Becomes Text 17
The question of reference, in the strict sense, leads to the heart of Ricurs
theory. All discourse refers to something. But again written discourse differs
widely from oral discourse. The latter is performed within a situation common
to the members of the dialogue. Its references are toward a reality that is
present to speaker and hearer and they rely on the possibility of pointing to
this commonly perceived reality. The text does not refer to a situation that is
present here and now to both reader and writer (Ricur, 1995e, pp. 138-9).2
In this regard the text is worldless. But precisely this abolition of a direct
reference to the given world frees the text to project a world of its own. As
the meaning of the text is beyond the authors intention and beyond what the
reader of any specific time grasps, so its reference is beyond what the ordinary
world offers. The text brings about a distantiation of the real from itself
(Ricur, 1995a, p. 142). In reading it, man is invited to explore dimensions
of reality beyond the limitations of his situation. So interpretation should not
seeek for intentions behind the text but explain the sort of being-in-the-world
unfolded in front of it. The text opens up a horizon.
It should be stressed how crucial the role thus assigned by Ricur isto writing. It is thanks to writing that man and only man has a world
and not just a situation (Ricur, 1976, p. 36). In Ricurs concept speech
remains anchored in the narrow spatio-temporal network determined by what
in Fallible Man was called mans perspectivity. That discourse also has the
more existential function of exploring the truth of being and the possibilities
of existence, is pre-eminently revealed in that type of discourse which steps
aside from the perspectivities of this performer, this audience, and from the
narrowness of this situation. It is precisely this remoteness which constitutes
a text . By reading texts man escapes from his situatedness in the here and
now. The Umwelt of what is available and visible expands into a Welt formed
by values, expectations and imaginations. So Ricur comes to call world
2Ricur seems to use a rather narrow notion of situation here. Is it true that in a dialoguethe participants have one situation? Can situation be defined only referring to the externalworld? Are the members of a dialogue not often speaking from different situations, cultural
backgrounds, interests etc.?In relation to this the question arises whether or not certain texts are determined by a specificcultural situation to such an extent that the work of interpretation cannot abstain completelyfrom projecting this world behind the text.
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18 The Model of the Text
the ensemble of references opened by all texts that I have read, understood
and loved (Ricur, 1976, p. 37). To have a world is to live within a horizon
constituted by the signs, works, texts of mankind.
Obviously, in this concept of world Ricurs hermeneutics remains true
to major themes of phenomenology. The idea of the world as the horizon of life
indissoluble from human significations, is a variation on the Husserlian theme
of the Lebenswelt. The definition of understanding as grasping possibilities of
being-in-the-world comes close to Heidegger. Did not Sein und Zeit reveal that
the most fundamental function of Verstehen, far from being the comprehension
of other persons, is the understanding of ones relation to the world? Dasein
is an In-der-Welt-sein, and man always lives out of a primordial understanding
of this In-der-Welt-sein, an understanding which he tries to elucidate through
interpretation (Heidegger, 1993, 31).3 When Ricur states that the world of
the text is the offer made by the text to the reader of new possibilities of being-
in-the-world, he joins up with this Heideggerian theme.
On the other hand, it is crucial for Ricur that he relates this idea of the
world to the concept of the text. This enables him to introduce a critical,
methodical moment into the work of interpretation, a moment that is missing
in Heidegger and his followers Bultmann and Gadamer. When Heidegger
conceives of das Dasein als Verstehen (Heidegger, 1993, 31-32), i.e. as
the mode of being that exists through understanding being, he introduces
a reversal of the hermeneutical problematic. From being epistemological,
understanding becomes an ontological category. Every act of explanation of the
world (Auslegung) is preceded by pre-understanding (Vorverstndnis) of our
being-in-the-world. But how can interpretation account for such an awareness
that always precedes? How can it criticize, modify or renew it? [H]ow can
a question of critique in general be accounted for within the framework of a
fundamental hermeneutics?4 (Ricur, 1995d, p. 59)
3Ricur points to the parallels with Husserl and Heidegger in The Hermeneutical Function ofDistanciation, p. 140 (see also Ricur, 1976, p. 37).
4
[W]ith Heidegger [...] any return from ontology to the eistemological question about thestatus of the human sciences is impossible. Existence and Hermeneutics (in Ricur, 1974a)contains Ricurs fundamental criticism of the short route along which Heidegger relatedunderstanding and being (Ricur, 1974a, pp. 6-8).
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Method of Interpretation 19
Bultmann elaborated Heideggers idea of Vorverstndnis in a model for
reading biblical texts from existential presuppositions. The statement of the
text is interpreted in terms of self-understanding. Again a critical moment
seems to be missing. Is the world which the text opens only centered on
my subjectivity, my personal authenticity? Does not the text interrupt my
prejudiced reading and open up broader dimensions than these personal ones?
(Preface to Bultmann in Ricur, 1974a, esp. 394ff)
Vorverstndnis, prejudice, circularity of understanding are, again, themes
in Gadamer. The basis of understanding is a Zugehrigkeit to traditions
(Gadamer, 1990, pp. 279ff, 434ff): all understanding is determined by the
historicity of man which, in turn, is determined by traditions. The texts which
we try to comprehend are part of these same traditions. In fact, the tradition
is effectuated by the text through its Wirkungsgeschichte. So man already
belongs to the text which he wants to understand. There is, in Gadamers
view, nothing scandalous about this. On the contrary, this belonging makes it
possible to overcome the alienating gap between us and the text. Man can start
his search for what lies behind the text from a certain expectation concerningthe answer which the text may give to him. Again Ricur questions whether
a methodical moment can be introduced into the work of interpretation which
breaks through the circularity of understanding and Zugehrigkeit. Can we
reach a distance from the texts of our tradition so that it is more probable that
our prejudices may be corrected, our questions exceeded? (Ricur, 1995d, pp.
60ff)
Ricur seeks to overcome the aporias of these one-sided ontological or
existential conceptions by re-formulating interpretation as a dialectic of the
two attitudes which Dilthey so strictly opposed: explanation and understanding.
The interplay of both can be demonstrated most clearly on the autonomous text.
Method of Interpretation
The autonomy of the text and its world are key concepts in Ricurs
theory. Autonomy implies that a text should not be understood from anything
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20 The Model of the Text
lying behind it, reconstructed psychologically (i.e. the authors intention) or
sociologically (e.g. the original context of reception), but from what itself
expresses. The idea that texts can not be understood from what their words
say but must be interpreted from something behind them is, as Japp says, based
on a mistrust of literature itself (Japp, 1977, p. 94).
Thus the conception of the text as an authorless and worldless entity
invites a first reading which approaches it as a system existing in itself,
that can be explained. On the other hand, its autonomy gives the text a
capacity of projecting a world of its own. In a second reading, the reader is
invited to follow the reference towards a project of being-in-the-world and to
understand this project as a possibility for him. One of Ricurs contributions
to hermeneutics is that it is the same function of autonomization which closes the
text as an object that can be explained and which opens it towards a specific
world that calls for hermeneutic understanding (cf. Ricur, 1975, p. 73).
These two characteristicsthe texts occlusion and ouvertureremind
one of the functions which Heidegger in Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes attrib-
utes to a work of art: das Verschliessen on the one hand and das Welt-Erffnen,
die Aufstellung einer Welt on the other (cf. Heidegger, 1994)(Holzwege). How-
ever, Heideggers analysis does not use the idea of das Dinghafte, das Insich-
stehen of the work as a starting point for introducing a method of explanation.
This is precisely what Ricur wants to do.
Structuralist Analysis
The suppression of the direct relation of the text to an author, a world, a time
of creation, makes it possible to analyse it as a closed universe of words and
functions, in the same way in which the langue is analysed as a closed universe
of signs. Indeed, the text is discourse and with regard to the langue it has
a position which is analogous to that of speech. That is to say, it cannot be
conceived as only a structural composition like the language system. On the
other hand, it is something essentially different from spoken discourse. The
text is the type of discourse which can be analysed in a similar way as the
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Structuralist Analysis 21
langue. It can be taken as a self-sufficient system of oppositions, combinations,
codes. The unities of higher order than the sentence, are organized in a
way similar to that of the small unities of language, that is, the unities of an
order lower than the sentence, those precisely which belong to the domain of
linguistics (Ricur, 1995e, pp. 140,142) (Ricur, 1975, p. 52) (Ricur, 1976,
pp. 82-3).
It is beyond the scope of the current chapter to present in any detail the
models of structural analysis Ricur proposes to fill this function. In fact, he
does not attempt to develop any new model. What he is attempting is to prove
that texts can be explained with the help of models which are borrowed from
a science, linguistics belonging to the [...] field of human sciences (Ricur,
1995e, p. 144) and that, therefore, explanation is not, as Dilthey thought, an
effort which is alien to the specific object of these sciences. Explanation and
understanding can dispute with each other on the same ground (Ricur,
1995e, p. 44). Within one process of interpretation explanation of structures
may be connected to hermeneutical understanding. The former can correct or
adjust the historicizing, psychologizing, and existential prejudices which oftencharacterize the latter.
Considering the present state of linguistic science, Ricur seems to find
it superfluous to give further proof of the fact that structural analysis can be
extended to the level of texts. Evidence for this lies, he claims, especially in
Lvi-Strauss, Propp, Barths and Greimas. Lvi-Strauss applies the structural
model to myths. He describes the different paquets de relations between
the units which constitute the myth, ordering these paquets in categories
such as kinship, economics, etc. A matrix of contradictions, oppositions
and relations is thus produced which brings to light the underlying codes
of the myth and their inner logic. Propp analysed the structure of folk-tales
with the help of an index of 31 narrative functions (absence, prehibitions,
violation etc.) and 7 elementary roles (villain, helper, hero etc.). The plot of
the narrative is explained from the sequences of functions, the interaction of
roles. Barths developed this model further by classifying the units of the
narration at three levels, those of functions (meeting, promising, eceiving
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22 The Model of the Text
etc), actions (connected to their actors), and of narration itself (considered
as an act of communication). From Greimas Ricur takes the important
notion of the depth-structure which analysis brings to light. There is not
only a level of actions and of thematic roles or functions (the narrations
surfacestructure); from beneath the dramatic, narrative surface, an a-chronic,
anonymous structure can be unearthed which is at work in the depth of the
text.
What is mainly of interest here is Ricurs proposal to incorporate this sort
of structural explanation in the hermeneutic endeavour. Through it, he hopes to
be able to produce an objectivity he finds missing in traditional hermeneutics.
This objectivity is vital if one seeks to make the message of the text reachable
from without the hermeneutic circle confining it to the existential needs of
the reader or his prejudiced questionsan objectivity necessary for literary
criticism to be justifiable at all.
When Ricur speaks of the text as a work (Ricur, 1995a, p. 136-40), this
implies, on the one hand, that it can be taken as a finite object; it is dinghaft
and can be explained with the help of objective procedures. On the other hand,
it is precisely in this way that a process of meaning that is at work in the text may
come to light. The text works, it produces certain meanings. Its codes are
the vehicles of a certain message.5 To say this is to suggest that the structural
reading which holds to the purely immanent character of the text should be
transcended by a second reading which tries to understand its message.
Fiercely opposed to the fallacy of the absolute text6, according to which
it has no outward relation at all, and to the structuralist ideology (Ricur,
1995e, pp. 148,150), which takes texts only as syntactic arrangements of
5Ricur emphasizes this point in discussions on Lvi-Strauss structuralism. When Lvi-Strauss holds that myths are logical models which suggest certain solutions for the contradic-tions of life, this implies that they have a meaningful intention. They give conjectures concerningelementary enigmas. Structural analysis postpones the question of meaning by focusing on theinner logic of myth, but it cannot eliminate it. Such an elimination would be the reduction of thetheory of myth to a necrology of the meaningless discourses of mankind (Ricur, 1995e, p.147).
6Barths writes: A narrative does not show anything, it does not imitate (. . . ) what happens
in narratives is from the referential standpoint actually NOTHING. What happens is languagealone, the adventure of language (cited in Ricur, 1975, p. 51). Cf. (Ricur, 1976, p. 30),where Ricur contrarily comments: Discourse cannot fail to be about something. (. . . ) I amdenying the ideology of absolute texts.
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Structuralist Analysis 23
opposed terms, Ricur returns to his presupposition: the text is discourse. Its
autonomy cannot abolish the dimension of discourse (Ricur, 1975, p. 67).
That is to say, it is impossible to cancel out the fact that the text is made by
someone and intended to convey a message about something to someone. This
message calls for understanding by the one who, here and now, reads the text.
Phenomenological Understanding Appropriation
The ultimate aim of hermeneutics remains the understanding of what the text
means to me. One has to make ones own what was previsously foreign
(Ricur, 1976, p. 91). Thus Ricur eventually takes up a hermeneutical
concept which has been stamped by the romantic tradition: appropriation,
Aneignung (Ricur, 1976, pp. 91-4). However, this concept is understood in
a new way. What I make my own is not something that lies behind the
text, but the world toward which it opens up. In the act of understanding the
horizon of the text and the horizon of my self-understanding merge into each
otherGadamers Horizontverschmelzung. This appropriation is not just ataking hold of the text by the reader. The text and its project of a world
take hold of the reader as well. The apropriation is a dsappropriation
of the reader: he is distanciated from himself. Appropriation [. . . ] implies a
moment of dispossession from the egoistic and narcissistic ego (Ricur, 1976,
pp. 94). The text breaks through the categories of mans self-understanding
and his understanding of the world. In this way the world of the reader and
his self-understanding may be enlarged.
From Circle To Arc
Thus interpretation proceeds in the model of a hermeneutic arc, instead of being
contained within a hermeneutic circle. One pillar of this arc is the discourse
of the text, its act of projecting a world; this act of the text can be elucidated
by explanation. The other pillar is that of the act of understanding, the aim of
interpretation proper.
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24 The Model of the Text
In short, through texts the reader understands himself within a world of
immanence and hope, of matters of fact and new possibilities, of good and
evil, and texts may offer him ever new perspectives of possible ways of being-
in-the-world.
Epi-reading and Graphi-reading
Attempting to account for the ethical function of literature and literary cri-
ticism, Robert Eaglestone revitalises Denis Donoghues distinction between
epi-reading and graphi-reading, reflecting the intrinsic or extrinsic study of
literature. Epi-reading is predicated on the desire to hear (. . . ) the absent
person (Eaglestone, 1997, p. 3). The epi-reader moves swiftly from print
and language to speech and voice and the present person (ibid.). Under this
paradigm, reading functions as a translation from words to acts. Epi-reading
transposes the written words on the page into a somehow corresponding situ-
ation of persons, voices, characters, conflicts, conciliations (ibid.). Language
is rendered transparent, a window through which the world of actors, actions
and events is seen, and the function of literature is reduced to that of a view-
port into a world behind it.
Graphi-reading has the opposite orientation, prioritizing language, text
and reading over a nostalgia for the human and seeks to engage with texts
in their virtuality (Eaglestone, 1997, p. 4). The graphi-reader reads the words
and refuses to pass beyond, or create a world behind, them. All deconstructive
criticism is graphi-reading, claim Eaglestone and Donoghue, and go on to
place Derrida, de Man, Barthes and Mallarm among those who experience
the eclipse of voice by text.
Their placing of Ricur as an epi-reader seems based on his insistence
upon the primacy of textual referenceits aboutness. Portraying him as
having a view of texts as a window through which a world is made accessible,
however, is clearly mistaken.
Even though Donoghue does not develop the distinction on the basis of
any strict definitions, but rather on the basis of heuristic analyses, is seems
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A Room For Objectivity? 25
possible that the attribution both he and Eaglestone make is incorrect. It is
quite possible, in fact, that Ricurs theory intergrates both models of reading,
and provides a synthesis of both of them.
A Room For Objectivity?
A set of questions arise. In the first place: is this true of all kinds of texts or is
Ricur aiming at a specific type of texts? Certainly the latter is the case. His
thesis that the text is a disclosure of a world is not as equally valid for various
kinds of trivial texts7 as it is for what may be called the great texts of the past.
A natural science text does not open up new dimensions of the world in the
same way as poetic discourse does either. It is in this last type of discourse that
Ricurs interest lies, taking poetic in a broad sense, as applying to all those
types of literary discourse which in their referential function differ from the
descriptive function of ordinary, everyday language and in particular scientific
discourse.
Secondly: As becomes clear through the model of Ricurs theory of in-
terpretation as a hermeneutic arc, the object of interpretationthe text itself
has a parallel role to that of the langue in Ricurs theory of language. It
represents a potential for understanding, a repository of meaning, which can
be actualized, unlocked, through a structuring act of explanation.
Ricur sharpens this image further. The same processes are in effect in
overcoming the polysemic nature of language in communication as in the act
of making sense of a text (the function of the structural explanation). To what
extent does this guarantee a space for objective criteria and methods in textual
interpretation, and thus for the field of literary criticism as a whole?
A final question: it has been said above that the theory of the text only
represents a starting point for Ricurs hermeneutics. It is in connection
with the problem of the text that more general questions about the function
of language can be brought to light. What is it that gives discourse this capacity
7Though these can be argued as opening up visions of the world as well, albeit rathersuperficial, conventional ones.
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26 The Model of the Text
of creation, of opening new dimensions of meaning? How can the creative
function of language be understood?
These questions lead to the need to envisage another level of discourse,
not of texts but of the words and their capacity of evoking different meanings
and creating new meaning. In going into Ricurs theory of the metaphorical
function of language we will have to go back to a point that was reached before
we entered into the theory of the text, namely where the signs of the language
system come to life in actual discourse.
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Chapter3
The Tensional Conception of
Metaphor
Having removed any privileged venues of interpretation of texts through the
distancing effects of inscription, and shown that no text, language or discourseis reducable to any closed linguistic system, Ricur needs both a methodology
and a theoretical bridgehead to bootstrap his hermeneutic arc into existence.
In the essay Metaphor and the Central Problem of Hermeneutics, Ricur
(1995c) claims to link up the problems raised in hermeneutics by the inter-
pretation of texts and the problems raised in rhetoric, semantics, stylisticsor
whatever the discipline concerned may beby metaphor. Finding a common
ground for the theory of the text and the theory of metaphor in the dynamics
of discourse, he seeks to find the key to unlocking the problematic of interpret-
ation of autonomic texts in semantic innovation, a term deeply entwined in his
theory of metaphor.
Due to textual distanciation and autonomy, the referential potential of the
text is realized in a way parallel to the function of the metaphor. Thus to be able
to account for meaning in discourse from the perspective of epistemology and
not linguistics or philosophy of language, it is natural to choose the relation
between text and metaphor as a starting point. At this point, however, the
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28 The Tensional Conception of Metaphor
problematic of metaphoric truth is supplanted in favour of a study of the
function of metaphor and everyday language.
Ricur presents metaphor as the touchstone of the cognitive value of liter-
ary works in Interpretation Theory (Ricur, 1976, p. 45): If we can incorporate
the surplus of meaning of metaphors into the domain of semantics, he muses,
then we will be able to give the theory of verbal signification its greatest pos-
sible extension. In The Symbolism of Evil (Ricur, 1967) and Freud and Philo-
sophy (Ricur, 1970), he directly defines hermeneutics through the symbol, an
object he found both as broad and as precise as possible. He defines the sym-
bol in turn through its semantic structure of having a double meaning. In later
works, Interpretation Theory in particular, he distances himself from his earlier
path, choosing instead a less direct route that takes linguistics into account. If
the theory of metaphor can serve as a preparatory analysis leading up to the
theory of the symbol, however, the theory of the symbol will in return allow
an expansion of the theory of signification by including non-verbal double-
meaning as well as metaphoric or poetic content.
Our working hypothesis thus invites us to proceed from metaphorto text at the level of sense and the explanation of sense, then
from text to metaphor at the level of the reference of a work to a
world and to a self, that is, at the level of interpretation proper.
(Ricur, 1995c, p. 171)
Ricurs Theories of Metaphor
Ricurs semantics of discourse reserves a privileged place for metaphors and
symbols, whose complex structures shed light on the richness and creativity
of language. According to the traditional view, metaphor is regarded as a
type of trope, that is, as a rhetorical device whereby a figurative word is
substituted for a literal one on the basis of an apparent resemblance. However,
Ricur maintains that this account is incapable of explaining the process by
which a novel metaphor is produced; and he claims that this difficulty can
be overcome only if one accepts the view that the primary metaphorical unit
is not the word but the sentence. Metaphor presupposes the establishment
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Ricurs Theories of Metaphor 29
of a tension between two terms in the sentence through a violation of the
linguistic code. The metaphorical utterance then appears as a reduction of
this tension by means of a creative semantic innovation or reconfiguration,
within the sentence as a whole. In thereby resolving a paradigmatic tension
by means of a syntagmatic innovation, the metaphorical process situates itself
at the point of articulation between system and discourse. As Ricur explains,
metaphorical meaning is an effect of the entire statement, but it is
focused on one word, which can be called the metaphorical word.
This is why one must say that metaphor is a semantic innovation
that belongs at once to the predicative order (new pertinence) and
the lexical order (paradigmatic deviation). (Ricur, 1994, pp. 156-7)
Metaphor and Semantic Innovation
In situating itself at this point of articulation, the metaphorical process draws
upon the phenomenon of regulated polysemy. However, the former cannot be
reduced to the latter, for metaphor is the very process by which the polysemy
of words is expanded and transformed. This transformative capacity is attrib-
utable to the referential dimension of the metaphorical statement, that is, to
its power to redescribe reality. In the last analysis, the function of metaphor
is to shatter and increase our sense of reality by shattering and increasing our
language.
Ricur wishes to distance his own theory from the substitution theory
of metaphor, which claims that the metaphor is a condensation of meaning
which is paraphraseable without necessarily using more words and sentences.
In drafting his position on metaphor, Ricur savagely criticises the other
theoreticians of metaphor. In their treatment of metaphor, he claims, they do
not make room for any dynamic of metaphor. Through an indifferent use of
dead metaphors in their expositions, they fail at the outset of their attempts to
account for the unique characteristics of metaphor. Ricur writes:
These aspects are features of the explanatory process which could
not appear so long as trivial examples of metaphor were con-
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30 The Tensional Conception of Metaphor
sidered, such as man is a wolf, a fox, a lion (...) With these ex-
amples, we elude the major difficulty, that of identifying a meaning
which is new.
(Ricur, 1995c, pp. 171-2)
According to Ricurs theory of metaphor, it represents an abuse of lan-
guage. It is an anomalyan unatoned incompatibility in the expressionand
does not come into its right qua metaphor until the interpreter from this incon-
sistent proposition of a literal reading draws a meaningful utterance in a rein-
terpretation through a displacement of the linguistic norm, granting the meta-
phor new semantic explanation in the moment of interpretation. The central
point being that the attribute of the metaphor which makes it unique is that
it is new, emergent, and obtained from nowhere. At least not from language
itself.
To say that a metaphor is not drawn from anywhere is to recognise
it for what it is: namely, a momentary creation of language, a se-
mantic innovation which does not yet have a status in the language
as something already established, whether as a designation or as a
connotation.
(Ricur, 1995c, p. 174)
Metaphor and Explanation
The explanatory function for metaphors consists not in a substitution of the
metaphorical expression, but in a construction. The decisive moment of
explanation arises when the interpreter has constructed a web of connections
in and through the context constituting it as actual and unique. The semantic
event takes place in the crossing between the semantic fields the interpreter
has drawn upon in his structural efforts. Through this construction, being the
means through which the words together make sense, the metaphorical twist
becomes an event and at the same time a meaninga meaningful event and
emergent meaning in language.
This constructive element is the fundamental feature of explanation which
makes metaphor paradigmatic for the explanation of a literary work. We con-
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Polysemy and Metaphor 31
struct the meaning of a text in a way similar to the one that grants meaning to
the terms of a metaphorical expression through creating a network of possib-
ilities based on guesswork and assumptions, until a revealing breakthrough
allows the different pieces, which in the meantime have seemed incompatible,
to fall into place.
The presupposition of construction in understanding textual meaning de-
rives mainly from the written form. In the asymmetrical relationship between
text and interpreter, one of the parties has to speak for them both. Thus con-
struction is necessary to bring the text to languagelend it a voice. The text
represents an autonomous space of meaning which is no longer kept alive
through the authorial intention, and, bereft of this necessary support, the text
in its autonomy delivers itself mute to the readers lonely interpretation.
Polysemy and Metaphor
This connection between metaphor and discourse requires a spe-
cial justification, precisely because the definition of metaphor as a
transposition affecting names or words seems to place it in a cat-
egory of entities smaller than the sentence. But the semantics of
the word demonstrates very clearly that words acquire an actual
meaning only in a sentence and that lexical entitiesthe words of
the dictionaryhave merely potential meanings in virtue of their
potential uses in typical contexts. In this respect, the theory of poly-
semy is a good preparation for the theory of metaphor.
(Ricur, 1995b, p. 169)
In studying the metaphor, we are led to the need to envisage another level
of discourse; not of texts, but of words, and their capacity of evoking different
meanings and especially creating new meaning. In further pursuing Ricurs
theory of the metaphorical function of language we will have to backtrack to
a point reached before the entry into the theory of the textwhere the signs of
the language system come to life in actual discourse.
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32 The Tensional Conception of Metaphor
Detouring through Language
The title of one of Ricurs essays gives a concise resum of its contents:
Structure, Word, Event (Ricur, 1974b). The essay points to the word as
the place in language where the exchange between structure and event is
constantly produced. The word is at the intersection of language and
speech, of synchrony and diachrony, of system and process. Ricur is clearly
inspired by Benvnistes linguistic that attributes to the word an intermediary
functional position that arises from a duplicity in its nature. Within the
language1 there are only empty signs,2 but within the sentence these become
real words. Words are signs in speech position (Ricur, 1974b, p. 92).
Ricur places the word as the point of articulation between semiology and
semantics, in every speech event. This means that the word is at the same
time much less and much more than the sentence. It is less because of the fact
that only in the sentence does the word comes to life. From another point of
view the word is more than the sentence. The latter is a transitory event, but
the word is a part of the lasting order of language. The word survives the
sentenceit returns to the system after it has been used (Ricur, 1974b,
pp. 92-3). This fact is of eminent importance. One of the characteristics of
the instance of discourse (Ricur, 1974b, p. 92) is clearly that it is an order
of innovation. Even the simplest sentence is new in sofar as it brings words
together in a new order and is spoken in a unique situation by this speaker to
this listener. As a consequence, every speech act adds to the word, so that it
returns from discourse to system heavy with a new use-valueas minute as
this may be (Ricur, 1974b, pp. 92-93). Thus signs have an accumulative
intention. Returning to the system, these instanciations of the words give
language a history.
Whenever they are used, words aquire new meanings or nuances of mean-
ing without losing their old ones. This tendency towards expansion is the ori-
1langue2
In the structural system of language Ricur adopts and modifies, symbols and tokens areonly defined internally through difference in value. The chain of definition recurs indefinatelywithin language, but need never in the original structuralist conception break outside oflanguage to find meaning.
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Polysemy and Metaphor 33
gin of one of the most crucial phenomena of language: polysemy.3 It is from
polysemy that such central problems arise as metaphor and symbol on the one
hand, and ambiguity and misunderstanding on the other.
All our words are polysemic. Their accumulative character means that they
receive a differentiated meaning from previous use and are still made capable
of acquiring more meaning from future use. Thus a dimension of history is
brought into the synchrony of the system. It is primarily within the system
that words have more than one possible meaning, but they have acquired this
potential in speech, and there they will gather more meaning. To understand
language is therefore to understand it under two aspects, as structure and
process, system and innovation. This dual character prevents it from becoming
pathological. On the one hand, the process of innovation and the polysemy
that results from it safeguard the system. Without polysemy the need to express
every possible nuance would require an infinite number of signs. A language
witout polysemy would violate the principle of economy (Ricur, 1994, p.
115). On the other hand it is the system which guards the word from becoming
overloaded. Without the disciplining function of the system the process of
accumulation of meaning would cause a surcharge of meaning, rendering the
words meaningless. Certain words, because they signify too many things,
cease to signify anything (Ricur, 1974b, p. 69). The system has a regulative
function. It fixes a certain core meaning by preserving the distinctions between
the signs. Words have a certain literal meaning, a specific value within the
system which advocates a way of using them.
The word itself is consequently a tensive entity. It is governed by a
system that wants to restrict it to a limited range of possible meanings, and
it is involved in a process of innovation and transgression of its possibilities.
Based on this understanding of the universal character of words Ricur tries
to comprehend the more specific phenomenons, metaphor and symbol. Both
are cases of polysemy. An attempt to understand them from the criteria of
the normal functioning of words prevents an over-hasty rejection of them as
3The capacity of a word (or other discursive token) to have more than one meaning. Self-evident as it might seem in retrospect, this insight has profound implications.
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34 The Tensional Conception of Metaphor
abnormalities of speech. The metaphorical process is the most purely linguistic
of the two and has to be considered first.
Within the system signs have multiple possible meanings. In discourse
a part of this potential is realized. Here analogous dimensions of word-
meanings reinforce each other, and other meanings are repressed. The context
of the sentence and the context of speech exclude them. The word receives
from the context the determination that reduces its imprecision (Ricur, 1994,
p. 130).4 This process of sifting out unwanted meanings is normally sufficient
to make communication possible. Most of the inappropriate meanings of
words in a given context do not even cross our mind. But the rest of the
semantic possibilities are not canceled; they float around the words as not
completely eliminated possibilities (Ricur, 1974b, p. 71). Ordinary speech
does not completely suppress ambiguity.
Consequences
Ricur sketches two possible reactions to this situation. It gives rise to the
striving for a completely unambiguous language. This is the ideal of all
technical languages. In each sentence all the possible meanings of its words
should be erased minus one. The poetic strategy is exactly the opposite to this.
The equivocity of discourse is not considered as blameworthy confusion, but
rather as a possibility of surcrot de sens, a surplus of meaning. Ambiguity is
not combated but utilized. Of this creative use of polysemy (Ricur, 1974b,
p. 105), the metaphor is the most important example.
What is a metaphor? In short, there are sentences in which the clash
between the normal meanings of the words is so vigorous that these sen-
tences remain absurd as long as one holds to the accepted meaning of their
words. The only way of rescueing such a sentence is to retain all the accept-
ations allowed plus one (Ricur, 1994, p. 131).5 The old connotations of the
4It is precisely this reduction in polysemy that is the function and aim of hermeneuticexplanation in Ricurs theory.
5In the case of metaphor, none of the alread codified acceptations is suitable; it is necessary,therefore, to retain all the acceptations allowed plus one.
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The Traditional Conception of Metaphor 35
words should be retained but from the tension between them originates a novel
dimension of meaning. Thus a hitherto unknown relation of meaning and a
new dimension of truth are discovered.
Two points in this characterization require more attention: First of all,
metaphor is not a specific to the word but to the sentence; secondly, Ricurs
theory of metaphor insists that the metaphor opens up new dimensions of
truth.
In the first of the eight studies that make up The Rule of Metaphor (Ricur,
1994), Ricur sketches two lines of thought that are to be found in the works
of Aristotle. Firstly, Aristotles choice of the word as the locus of metaphor is
the seed of the rhetorical tradition Ricur opposes, that regards metaphor as a
mere ornament of language. On the other hand, Aristotle developed a theory
of poetics as a way of redescribing the reality of man by means of mythical
mimesis, and gave a place to metaphor in this mythic-poetical discourse. It
is from this model of poetic function the new concept of metaphorical truth
germinates.
The Rule of Metaphor may be read as, in the first place, an effort to overcome
the word-focused conception of metaphor in the rhetorical tradition, and,
secondly, as an elaboration of the aristotelian idea of a poetic redescription
of reality. In the terms of the two points formulated above, the linguistic part
of Aristotles theory which tied metaphor to the word is rejected, whereas the
idea of a poetical reference to new dimensions of truth is expanded.
The first decisive step in Ricurs theory moves from the rhetorical tradi-
tion to an understanding of metaphor within a semantics of discourse. It is the
step from a substitution theory of metaphor to an interaction theory or theory
of tension.
The Traditional Conception of Metaphor
Inspired by Aristotle a long rhetorical tradition focused on the word as the
place where metaphor occurs. According to Aristotles definition, metaphor is
the transposition of one world for another (epiphora). Thing A is referred to
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36 The Tensional Conception of Metaphor
with the unexpected word B instead of with its proper name A. As everything
has its proper name (A is called A1), and every word has its literal meaning
(A1 belongs to A, B1 to B), the word B1 is used improperlyfiguratively. The
metaphor is thus primarily a case of denomination, of substituting a figuratively
used word for a literally used one. The raison of this substitution is resemb-
lance: there is something in B1 that has affinity to something in A. In fact,
instead of B1 the proper name for this something might as well have been
used. As a consequence the rhetorical theory holds that a metaphor is under-
stood as soon as man has found the proper t