Paul Ricoeur's Moral Anthropology: Singularity, Responsibility, and Justice 9781498545211, 9781498545204, 1498545211

Table of contents :
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
IPSEITY
Language and the Concept of Responsibility
Feelings and the Causes of Moral Nature
Lived Existence and the Motives of Moral Life
Understanding Moral Life as a Self
ALTERITY
Moral Communities and Others
Sense and the Metaphysical Relation with the Other
Desire and Responsibility for the Other
Desire as the Welcoming of the Other than Self
EVIL, JUSTICE, AND NARRATIVITY
Violence and the Ambiguity of Justice
Narratives and Moral Critique
Historical Narrative, Fiction, and Utopia as Ways of Critique
Analysis and Interpretation
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

Citation preview

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Paul Ricœur’s Moral Anthropology

Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricœur Series Editors: Greg S. Johnson, Pacific Lutheran University/Oxford University (ELAC), and Dan R. Stiver, Hardin-Simmons University Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricœur, a series in conjunction with the Society for Ricœur Studies, aims to generate research on Ricœur, about whom interest is rapidly growing both nationally (United States and Canada) and internationally. Broadly construed, the series has three interrelated themes. First, we develop the historical connections to and in Ricœur’s thought. Second, we extend Ricœur’s dialogue with contemporary thinkers representing a variety of disciplines. Third, we utilize Ricœur to address future prospects in philosophy and other fields that respond to emerging issues of importance. The series approaches these themes from the belief that Ricœur’s thought is not just suited to theoretical exchanges, but can and does matter for how we actually engage in the many dimensions that constitute lived existence.

Titles in the Series Paul Ricœur’s Moral Anthropology: Singularity, Responsibility, and Justice, by Geoffrey Dierckxsens Ricœur’s Personalist Republicanism: On Personhood and Citizenship, by Dries Deweer Paul Ricœur’s Hermeneutics and the Discourse of Mark 13: Appropriating the Apocalyptic, by Peter C. de Vries Ricœur, Culture, and Recognition: A Hermeneutic of Cultural Subjectivity, by Timo Helenius Feminist Explorations of Paul Ricœur’s Philosophy, Edited by Annemie Halsema and Fernanda Henriques Paul Ricœur in the Age of Hermeneutical Reason: Poetics, Praxis, and Critique, Edited by Roger W. H. Savage In Response to the Religious Other: Ricœur and the Fragility of Interreligious Encounters, By Marianne Moyaert Imagination and Postmodernity, By Patrick L. Bourgeois Interdisciplinary Interpretation: Paul Ricœur and the Hermeneutics of Theology and Science, By Kenneth A. Reynhout Paul Ricœur and the Task of Political Philosophy, Edited by Greg S. Johnson and Dan R. Stiver

Paul Ricœur’s Moral Anthropology Singularity, Responsibility, and Justice

Geoffrey Dierckxsens

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2018 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Dierckxsens, Geoffrey, author. Title: Paul Ricœur’s moral anthropology : singularity, responsibility, and justice / Geoffrey Dierckxsens. Description: Lanham : Lexington, 2017. | Series: Studies in the thought of Paul Ricœur | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017038637 (print) | LCCN 2017040218 (ebook) | ISBN 9781498545211 (Electronic) | ISBN 9781498545204 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Ricœur, Paul. | Ethics. | Responsibility. Classification: LCC B2430.R554 (ebook) | LCC B2430.R554 D54 2017 (print) | DDC 170.92—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017038637 ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Preface: Hermeneutical Phenomenology: Exploring the Limits of Moral Nature

vii

Acknowledgmentsxv PART 1: IPSEITY

1

1 Language and the Concept of Responsibility 2

3

Feelings and the Causes of Moral Nature

27

3 Lived Existence and the Motives of Moral Life

55

Conclusion: Understanding Moral Life as a Self

87

PART 2: ALTERITY

91

4 Moral Communities and Others

95

5 Sense and the Metaphysical Relation with the Other

125

6 Desire and Responsibility for the Other

143

Conclusion: Desire as the Welcoming of the Other than Self

181

PART 3: EVIL AND NARRATIVITY

185

7 Violence and the Ambiguity of Justice

189

8 The Narrative and the Possibility of Moral Critique

209

Conclusion: Historical Narrative, Fiction and Utopia as Ways of Critique v

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Epilogue: Analysis and Interpretation: A Hermeneutical Dialogue with Analytical Philosophy

235

Bibliography241 Index247 About the Author

249

Preface Hermeneutical Phenomenology: Exploring the Limits of Moral Nature

This book examines Paul Ricœur’s moral anthropology. By moral anthropology I understand the philosophical and hermeneutical approach to the ontological conditions of the moral existence of human beings. By hermeneutics I mean the theory of the interpretation of concrete lived existence in relation to narratives. Ricœur’s philosophy is without doubt anthropological through and through, and, in that sense, understanding this philosophy as an anthropology is of course not novel in itself. In fact, scholars agree that the broad anthropological question “what does it mean to be human?” is the central theme in his writings, and that the problem of human action in particular is the core of Ricœur’s thought.1 Moreover, examining the moral aspects of Ricœur’s philosophy by itself and comparing these aspects to current developments in morals—as many have done—is not new either.2 Yet, despite the growing interest in the moral dimensions of Ricœur’s philosophy, especially regarding the important fields of care ethics and feminist theory, few works so far examined the significance of Ricœur’s hermeneutical approach to anthropology in light of contemporary moral theories in analytical philosophy. This book’s goal is to fill this lacuna and to argue that Ricœur’s moral anthropology is particularly timely, especially in light of the most recent developments in analytical moral philosophy. The significance of Ricœur’s moral anthropology becomes clear, so is the hypothesis of this book, in view of the debate on moral responsibility and on justice in analytical philosophy. Theories that take position in this debate find inspiration both in philosophical moral psychology (i.e., the analysis of our moral nature) and in philosophical moral anthropology (i.e., the study of moral cultures), and explain responsibility and justice in relation to sociocultural norms and feelings that find their roots in human nature.3 These theories make explicit use of empirical data, as well as biological and neuroscientific vii

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knowledge in order to define responsibility. This orientation toward ­reduction in moral invites to reflect on Ricœur’s moral anthropology, which aims for a more cohesive, metaphysical-ontological account of human action and responsibility. Whereas theories in analytical philosophy tend to naturalize our understanding of morals, Ricœur, on the contrary, defends a hermeneutical approach to understanding what it means to be human and to be capable of responsibility and justice by living a concrete existence. Ricœur nevertheless does not altogether discard empirical knowledge and cognitive science. Instead, he aims to bring together the explanation of empirical data and human nature on the one hand and the understanding of the motivations of human actions on the other hand. He writes in From Text to Action: “Human action is as it is precisely because it belongs both to the domain of causation and to that of motivation, hence to explanation and to understanding.”4 Yet rather than explaining in the first place the natural processes that lie at the basis of our morality, he offers a unifying understanding of the human capacities that constitute ethical and moral life, which starts from the hermeneutical interpretation of narratives and lived existence.5 One question is then how significant such an interpretation is today for understanding the ideas of responsibility and justice. Should we conclude that interpretations about narratives and lived existence are superfluous elements for understanding responsibility and justice, which are simply expressions of human nature? Examining Ricœur’s moral philosophy is thus particularly urgent, I think, in light of these recent developments in analytical philosophy. Ricœur’s philosophy is particularly suitable for confronting the challenges of moral theory in contemporary analytical philosophy. In fact, as is well known, his thought has close affinity with analytical philosophy. He himself frequently discusses analytical philosophy, particularly Anglo-American early analytical philosophy of language.6 Further, currently there is a growing interest among Ricœur scholars about the relation between Ricœur’s work and analytical philosophy. This relation was the topic of the Ricœur centenary in Paris in 2013. A special issue of Ricœur Studies, which appeared in the wake of that conference, deals with the same topic.7 Next to theories of early analytical philosophy of language, he also refers in his writings to analytical theories of morality and justice.8 Yet relatively few works in the secondary literature explicitly investigate the relation between his thoughts on moral responsibility and justice on the one hand and theories of these topics in the field of analytical philosophy on the other hand.9 This book aims to offer a thorough and critical investigation of this relation. The case I will aim to make in the following pages is that the concept of singularity, which lies at the heart of Ricœur’s moral anthropology, highlights the importance of hermeneutical phenomenology for understanding responsibility and justice in light of analytical moral theories. Singularity is without

Preface

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doubt an important concept in contemporary European philosophy in general, and in Ricœur’s hermeneutics in particular. Certainly, one might object that he does not thematize this concept as a major topic in his philosophy. Indeed, he does not explicitly devote one of his major writings to this concept as he does, for example, for the concept of the metaphor. The idea of singularity is nevertheless clearly a positive lead in his writings. Not only does Ricœur often use the term “singularity,”10 but, more importantly, he also emphasizes the significance of the idea of the singularity of the lived existence of each person for understanding human action. In his hermeneutics of the self in Oneself as Another, Ricœur discusses this concept perhaps most explicitly, by examining the questions of speech, action, narrative, and responsibility at the backdrop of his idea of ipse-identity, which designates the singularity of the self’s existence in relation to others.11 Only in being a self and in living through a singular existence with others, as Ricœur suggests, do we come to understand and learn how to act concretely as (moral) human beings. Consequently, through singular lived existence we come to learn about responsibility and justice, which are part of human action. This idea—that responsibility and justice result from a process of understanding embedded in singular lived existence—makes that responsibility and justice should not simply be understood as a system of sociocultural patterns or as a composition of natural feelings. As I will aim to clarify, Ricœur’s idea of singularity thus shows how hermeneutics, being the interpretation of lived existence in light of narratives, is significant regarding current theories of responsibility and justice that understand responsibility and justice in terms of such a ­pattern or composition. I will argue throughout the different parts of this book that Ricœur distinguishes three complementary ways of understanding singularity in his moral anthropology: in relation to ipseity (part 1), to alterity (part 2), and to narrativity (part 3). Each part (and thus each meaning of “singularity” in Ricœur’s moral anthropology) demonstrates the significance of hermeneutics for the ideas of responsibility and justice in another sense. A further goal of this book is to discuss in each chapter a key concept of Ricœur’s moral anthropology and moral anthropology in general: language (chapter 1), moral feelings (chapter 2), lived existence (chapter 3), others (chapter 4), sense (chapter 5), desire (chapter 6), justice (chapter 7), and the narrative (chapter 8). At the same time, this book aims to demonstrate at the end of each part that understanding responsibility and justice in relation to natural feelings, as analytical moral theories do, also implies revisiting certain aspects of Ricœur’s moral anthropology. In the remainder of this preface I will indicate more exactly how he understands singularity in its various meanings, and how I intend to relate these meanings to the contemporary debate on responsibility and justice in analytical philosophy.

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Part 1 examines the significance of the idea of ipseity for understanding responsibility and justice. This idea highlights the first meaning of singularity in Ricœur’s moral anthropology. It is first of all in the sense of selfhood, as the singularity of each individual self (ipse-identity), that Ricœur understands singularity in his moral anthropology. Only in being selves do we engage in moral life “with and for others in just institutions.”12 In order to demonstrate this, I will draw foremost on Oneself as Another, in which the idea of ipseity is central. I will argue that three of Ricœur’s concepts in this book, self-esteem, solicitude, and practical wisdom, particularly demonstrate that responsibility and justice imply being a self, capable of understanding ethical feelings. In living through singular encounters with others during the course of one’s own singular existence, one comes to understand responsibility and justice: in the confrontation with the suffering of others, one realizes the need for justice. In this sense, Ricœur demonstrates, as part 1 aims to show, that the idea of singularity is significant for moral anthropology. Yet understanding responsibility and justice in the context of contemporary analytical moral theories also implies, as I will argue next in part 1, revisiting Ricœur’s idea of moral norms, at least in the sense of universal formal imperatives, as he understands these norms in chapter 8 of Oneself as Another.13 I will discuss several analytical moral theories that argue that responsibility and justice relate to moral standards, values, and feelings within particular cultural communities and are thus not universal: different cultures have different norms that define what is considered to be responsible and just.14 Certainly, for Ricœur as well, moral norms relate to concrete communal values or mores.15 Moreover, according to him moral norms are not absolute, allow for exceptions in concrete situations, and should be applied with practical wisdom.16 However, if moral norms relate to particular moral communities, then we should question, so I will argue in part 1, the idea that there are universal moral principles for action (i.e., imperatives that are universally applicable, despite cultural differences). Part 1 thus stresses the significance of the idea of singularity in yet a different sense, as the singularity of a culture and its moral makeup. However, instead of resorting to a radical relativism, part 1 shows that Ricœur’s idea of singularity as ipseity allows defining a common source of morality as an alternative to the universal. Rather than finding a common source of morality in universal moral norms, the idea of singularity allows finding such a source in the self’s capacity for critical judgment, that is, for understanding ethical and moral feelings and norms (Ricœur’s idea of practical wisdom). In the context of their singular lived existences within particular communities, selves find shared—albeit not n­ ecessarily universal—sensibilities on the basis of their common moral nature, through the use of language and narratives and through practical wisdom.

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In the second and the third part, I discuss respectively two other ways of finding a common source for morality: in the notion of alterity and in terms of narrativity. In part 2, I will aim to demonstrate that responsibility and justice should be understood in light of the idea of singularity insofar as they relate to otherness or alterity. Therefore, I will compare Ricœur’s idea of otherness with that of Levinas’. The reason I turn to Levinas’ understanding of otherness is because, for Ricœur, the relation with the singularity of the other is essentially part of the self’s ethical and moral life, and he finds inspiration in Levinas’ idea of the other for defining this relation. Moral life is essentially a life with others, that is, with feelings and norms that refer to others, so Ricœur shows in line with Levinas (chapter 4). However, there is a central issue of dispute between Ricœur Levinas and on how alterity should be understood in relation to moral anthropology. Levinas’ main point is that the other should not be thematized as an ontological essence, be it an anthropological, psychological, or biological essence, since this implies a reduction of the otherness of the other to this essence. One goal of the second part is therefore also to examine whether and to what extent Levinas’ idea of responsibility for the other is compatible with and contributes to understanding responsibility on the basis of moral anthropology. I will then question whether Ricœur’s understanding of otherness sufficiently describes the relation between responsibility, justice, and the singularity of the other. I argue with Levinas that moral and just interactions with others imply the welcoming of others, even those others that are quite different from the self or should not simply be understood in terms of an anthropology of the capable self (e.g., others that are not part of the same moral community). In this regard, I will argue in favor of Levinas’ idea that sensibility (chapter 5) and desire (chapter 7) for “the other than self” are conditions for moral life and justice. They allow being responsive to the other, regardless of and with vigilance toward the differences between moral communities, standards, and values. In part 3, I will aim to demonstrate the extent to which Ricœur’s ideas of justice (chapter 7) and the narrative (chapter 8) allow defining common sources for moral anthropology. I will argue that Ricœur demonstrates what I call the “ambiguity of justice.” On the one hand, justice is, as I argue, a necessary remedy against violence and a means of maintaining peace. Yet, on the other hand, evil occurs within institutions of justice themselves and moral systems insofar as these institutions and systems exercise power over others and minorities. For example, practices of holding responsible relate to violence in that those practices are expressions of violent “moral” feelings like blame and vengeance. I will argue that responsibility and justice should

xii Preface

therefore be understood, not only as the agent’s or the self’s responsibility, but also as a communal responsibility. I argue further that not only rules of justice are a necessary feature of moral life, but that Ricœur shows how narratives function as ways of critique that allow critically evaluating those rules. First of all, Ricœur’s idea of obligated memory in Time and Narrative 3 and in Memory, History, Forgetting demonstrates how we use fiction and historical narratives to recall the past and, in so doing, can testify to the victims of intuitional violence. Secondly, Ricœur’s idea of utopia in The Lectures on Ideology and Utopia demonstrates how others and minorities that are the victims of violence as the result of the ideologies of institutions can use utopian narratives to criticize and revise the existing institutional values, norms, and standards. In that regard, the narrative bears a trace of the singularity of the other in that it recounts the singular existences of past others and anticipates the existences of future others. Although recounting about others implies thematization of the other, as Levinas also contends, this thematization is not a complete reduction of the singularity of the other. Ricœur’s idea of the narrative in that sense demonstrates that the idea of the singularity of the other is significant for understanding (communal) responsibility (in relation to moral feelings). This idea allows finding in the narrative a common source for approaching moral anthropology, that is, for critical judgment of moral standards, norms, and feelings, with a sensibility for past and future others. In conclusion of this preface, I would like to add a few words about the choice of the title of this book: Paul Ricœur’s Moral Anthropology. As the title indicates, this book is in the first place a study or a companion to Ricœur’s moral anthropology. It aims to be a guide for readers who are interested in Ricœur’s thoughts on morals, and it intends to bring together the different aspects of Ricœur’s moral anthropology (language, feelings, lived existence, others, sense, desire, justice, and the narrative). Secondly, this book offers a critical study. It is intended to be a critique in that it deploys an argument that runs through the chapters. It offers an argument against moral relativism by aiming to show with Ricœur that we should not reduce morality to natural or cultural processes, but that we should understand human’s capability to engage in moral life and in justice systems ontologically, on the basis of the idea of singularity. Moreover, this book offers a critique by arguing that we should revisit certain moral concepts: certain in Ricœur’s work (like his idea of universal moral norms), and certain in contemporary analytical philosophy (like the idea of cultural moral relativism). In short, it is by placing Ricœur’s ideas on moral life within the context of the contemporary scene of moral theory that this book aims to contribute to The Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricœur.

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NOTES 1. See, for example, Richard Kearney (ed.), Paul Ricœur: The Hermeneutics of Action (London: SAGE, 1996); Johann Michel, Paul Ricœur: une philosophie de l’agir humain (Paris: Cerf, 2006); Todd S. Mei and David Lewin (eds.), From Ricœur to Action. The Socio-Political Significance of Ricœur’s Thinking (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2012). 2. Nathalie Maillard, for example, questions the significance of Ricœur’s moral philosophy in light of recent theories in care ethics. See, Nathalie Maillard, La vulnérabilité. Une nouvelle catégorie morale? (Genève: Labor et Fides, 2011). For a different comparison between Ricœur’s moral philosophy and care ethics, see Cyndie Sautereau, “Répondre à la vulnérabilité. Paul Ricœur et les éthiques du care en dialogue,” Journal for French and Francophone Philosophy/ Revue de la philosophie française et de la langue française 23, No. 1, 2015, 1–20. 3. Recent examples are: Michael McKenna, Conversation and Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Tamler Sommers, Relative Justice: Cultural Diversity, Free Will and Moral Responsibility (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012); Manuel Vargas, Building Better Beings: A Theory on Moral Responsibility (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Alfred R. Mele, Surrounding Free Will: Philosophy, Psychology, Neuroscience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); Randolphe Clarke, Michael McKenna and Angela M. Smith, The Nature of Moral Responsibility: New Essays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Martha C. Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness. Resentment, Generosity, Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 4. Paul Ricœur, From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (Lanham: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 135. 5. See, for example, Paul Ricœur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 169ff. 6. The main works in which Ricœur engages in a dialogue with analytical philosophy are: Paul Ricœur, “Le discours de l’action,” In: La sémantique de l’action, ed. Dorian Tiffeneau (Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1977); Paul Ricœur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies in the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny, Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978); Paul Ricœur, Time and Narrative (3 vols.), trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, 1986, 1990); Ricœur, Oneself as Another; Ricœur, From Text to Action. 7. Études Ricœuriennes/ Ricœur Studies 5, No. 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.5195/ errs.2014.247 8. For example, in his “little ethics” in Oneself as Another, he draws on the philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre in order to defend his idea of “standards of excellence” for defining the role of practical wisdom in ethical decisions. See Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 176ff. 9. One exception is: Linda Ethell, Narrative Identity and Personal Responsibility (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011). 10. There are many examples, such as: Ricœur, Time and Narrative 3, 47, 162, 188, 237; Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 119, 147, 175, 240, 262, 264.

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11. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 16. 12. Ibid., 172ff. 13. Ibid., 203–39. 14. Among others: McKenna, Conversation and Responsibility; Sommers, Relative Justice; Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness. 15. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 194ff. 16. Ibid., 240ff. 17. See Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. A. Lingis (Pittsburgh: Dusquesne University Press, 2011). 18. Paul Ricœur, The Just, trans. David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 127–32.

Acknowledgments

The process of writing this book started in the winter of 2013, when I completed drafts of its first pages. During this process, there were many people to whom I owe an enormous gratitude for their irreplaceable and invaluable support, both personally and professionally. First of all, I would like to thank Arthur Cools of the Center for European Philosophy at the University of Antwerp, with whom I had lengthy and fruitful discussions that undoubtedly were essential for this project, not only for its completion, but also, and perhaps more importantly, for shaping its basic ideas. I would particularly like to thank my family, my parents Yasmine and Jacques, my brother Steve, and my grandfather Michel with his ardent spirit and determined interest in philosophy. Their continuous support and belief in my philosophical projects, even in the darkest hours, were, and still are, extraordinary. A warm gratitude goes to Stefanie, who showed an exceptional joyfulness and tolerance in coping with the daily routine of my writing, which I know was not always an easy task. I would like to thank my ‘Ricœurian’ friends and colleagues who I met and got to know in Paris, where I wrote most of this work, Marjolaine Deschênes, Johanna González, Anja Solbach, Cyndie Sautereau, Patricia Lavelle, Simona Viccaro, Azadeh Thiriez-Arjangi, Cristina Vendra, Johann Michel, Olivier Abel, Alberto Romele, Gonçalo Marcelo, João Botton, Tomoaki Yamada, Roberta Picardi and many others. A special acknowledgment goes to Feriel Kandil and George Taylor, for their generous commitment in discussing and improving my work. The many discussions we had, in Paris, Marseille, Lecce, Antwerp, Santiago de Chile, Chicago and elsewhere, were an indefinite and essential contribution to this work. xv

xvi Acknowledgments

Finally, my gratitude goes to my colleagues at the Department of Contemporary Continental Philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague, Petr Urban and Jan Bierhanzl in particular, where I found a welcoming professional environment for completing this book.

Part 1

IPSEITY

This part examines Ricœur’s understanding of the relation between singularity in the sense of ipseity on the one hand and responsibility and justice on the other. This is the first sense in which he defines the idea of singularity in his moral anthropology. In fact, his thoughts on moral life intrinsically relate, as is well known, to what he calls in Oneself as Another his “little ethics.”1 As the title of that work suggests, ethics should be understood within the dialectic between oneself and the other. It is thus not surprising that the idea of the self (Ricœur also speaks of ipse-identity and selfhood) lies at the very heart of his conception of moral life. This part’s aim is first of all to trace this relation and to show how the concept of ipseity appears in his moral anthropology. In line with Ricœur I understand ipseity as the singularity of the self: that which constitutes the specificity of selfhood, of being a self, capable of performing ethical and moral actions within the context of just institutions. Yet this part also aims to compare Ricœur’s idea of ipseity with recent developments in moral theory in analytical philosophy. Certainly, several of these theories radically question the idea of understanding morals on the basis of a concept of selfhood or even a concept of subjectivity. They argue in favor of moral relativism and hold that there exist no absolute moral truths (about the capacities of the self or the subject).2 Simultaneously, other moral theories in analytical philosophy naturalize the self and explain responsibility and justice in terms of natural feelings and/or neuroscientific data.3 This part’s intention is to respond to moral relativism in discussing Ricœur’s idea that the ontology of the human being capable of responsibility and justice should be understood in line with the idea of ipseity. I will argue that being responsible within the context of just institutions implies being a self that is capable of understanding moral feelings through the experiences of self-esteem, of caring for others or solicitude based on 1

2

Part 1

sympathy, and of practical wisdom in the sense of making ethical and moral decisions in concrete situations. In living through singular encounters with others and narratives during the course of one’s own existence, one comes to understand responsibility and justice: in the confrontation with moral narratives and the moral language of others one comes to learn the meaning of responsibility, and in the confrontation with the suffering of others one realizes the need for justice. In this sense, Ricœur demonstrates that the idea of ipseity is significant for a moral anthropology that aims at comprehending the ontological conditions of moral life. NOTES 1. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 299. 2. See, for example, Sommers, Relative Justice and Russell Blackford, The Mystery of Moral Authority (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 3. See, for example, Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” or Heidi M. Ravven, The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will (New York: The New Press).

Chapter 1

Language and the Concept of Responsibility

This chapter examines the concept of language in Ricœur’s moral ­anthropology. Therefore, I will focus on Ricœur’s interpretation of analytical philosophy of language.1 This is not only the appropriate starting point for a comparison between Ricœur’s moral philosophy and analytical philosophy, which this book aims to achieve. More importantly, his discussion of analytical philosophy of language demonstrates, as I will argue, that language is the tool for our common understanding of the concept of responsibility. According to him, we use ordinary language to understand concepts such as “responsibility,” “action,” and “self.” This means first of all that we apply these concepts in order to identify persons as physical bodies to which we ascribe actions and responsibility and which we identify empirically as causes: empirical understood in the broad sense as “being physically identifiable” (e.g., x walks through that door). He thus uses analytical philosophy, and particularly ordinary language philosophy, for defining what I understand as the empirical basis of his moral anthropology. Yet, Ricœur’s hermeneutics also aims to supersede ordinary language philosophy by arguing that this method neglects to comprehend the full significance of responsibility. As he points out, ordinary language philosophy defines responsibility in its basic amoral sense (John opens the window is morally neutral) and does not reveal the self’s capacities to engage responsibly in moral life. I will then argue that Ricœur’s idea of the narrative answers to the problem he sees with ordinary language philosophy in a double sense. Language not only allows us to identify objects in physical reality, but also (1) to learn the “moral story” of a community, that is, the meaning of what communities and their institutions consider to be morally significant, and (2) to create one’s own “life story” that accompanies moral decisions and actions. Ricœur thus demonstrates that singularity in the sense of ipseity, that 3

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Chapter 1

is, in the sense of being a self, capable of using language in living a singular existence accompanied by stories, is significant for understanding responsibility and in that sense is significant for moral anthropology. The proper task of hermeneutics with respect to moral anthropology is analyzing singular lived existence in relation to these narratives. EXPLANATION AND UNDERSTANDING AND THE RELATION BETWEEN ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY AND HERMENEUTICS Generally speaking, Ricœur is well known for his interest in ­ analytical ­philosophy, which he discusses at several occasions in his writings. For example, in “Le discours de l’action,” published in La sémantique de l’action—the proceedings of a seminar organized by Dorian Tiffeneau at the CNRS in Paris during the 1970’s—he discusses analytical philosophy of language in order to examine the points in common and the differences between ordinary language philosophy and phenomenology.2 In Oneself as Another, to give another example, he elaborates on ordinary language philosophy, analytical theories of personal identity, as well as analytical theories of ethics, morals, and justice in the context of his own hermeneutics of the self.3 In the secondary literature, scholars agree that in drawing on ordinary language philosophy, Ricœur aims to avoid an idealistic interpretation of consciousness, that is, reducing phenomenological experiences to ideas (cf. Husserl’s eidetic reduction).4 Ricœur’s hermeneutics implies a phenomenology that takes into account concepts of ordinary language philosophy, and therefore does not merely rely on ideas that are derived from subjective experiences alone, regardless of their meaning in our ordinary language, which is commonly understandable and in that sense entails a public domain. Following his line of thought, ordinary language philosophy thus “saves” phenomenology from idealism, because it can make the noematic structure of experiences commonly understandable, linking it to physical objects in the world and keeping it from being merely the result of private intuition. Phenomenology, in its turn, withholds ordinary language philosophy from mere linguistic contingency: language is not only an arbitrary “game” of rules and signs, but expresses lived experiences proper to human existence, which phenomenology should analyze and comprehend. Indeed, in “Le discours de l’action,” Ricœur argues that philosophy of language is crucial in aiding phenomenology. He contends that there are two reasons for combining phenomenology with philosophy of language. The first reason is that, in so doing, phenomenology answers to the problem of introspection. The second reason, for him, is that phenomenology based



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on philosophy of language moreover answers the question how to translate particular lived experiences into general essences or ideas.5 According to Ricœur, philosophy of language thus demonstrates the objective concepts that relate to the subjective experiences phenomenology describes. For example, the concept of responsibility in ordinary language relates to the inner experience of being responsible. Conversely, the experience of being responsible can be made commonly explicable by means of common language. Yet, at the same time, ordinary language philosophy and phenomenology differ fundamentally for Ricœur. Whereas phenomenology describes experiences of consciousness, ordinary language philosophy examines the use of common language.6 It is important to stress that he aims to maintain this tension between ordinary language philosophy and phenomenology, and that, for him, hermeneutical phenomenology ultimately supersedes ordinary language philosophy. Given that phenomenology is inspired by ordinary language philosophy for Ricœur, he believes that phenomenology goes “beyond” or “underneath” ordinary language philosophy. According to him, ordinary language philosophy fails “to reflect upon itself.”7 This means that ordinary language philosophy only examines the concepts that are given in common language, but it does not examine the inner experiences that these concepts express. Phenomenology, on the other hand, reflects upon these experiences. This is the whole idea of phenomenological analysis.8 For Ricœur, phenomenology thus searches for the existential experiences that lie “underneath” the concepts humans use in ordinary language. In that sense, phenomenology is more fundamental than ordinary language philosophy. For example, the word “responsibility” in common language refers to experiences that relate to actually being responsible. Yet since these experiences can only be understood by means of reference to inner experience, ordinary language philosophy, which is limited to the public domain of language, fails to capture them. Ricœur’s idea of the relation between phenomenology and philosophy of language becomes clearer when taking into account his distinction between understanding and explaining. In From Text to Action, he argues that “explanation” and “understanding” are complementary. Whereas explanation, for Ricœur, applies to the physical domain of causality and cognitive science, understanding applies to the spiritual domain of motives and the human sciences. His idea of the complementarity of hermeneutics and analytical philosophy is similar. While analytical philosophy of language explains persons as physical bodies that cause actions, hermeneutics also aims at understanding these actions, their justification and their motives. As Ricœur writes in From Text to Action, the human body “is at once one body among others (a thing among things) and a manner of existing, of a being capable of reflecting, of changing its mind, and of justifying its conduct.”9 Following the line of reasoning captured by this quote, ordinary language philosophy allows

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identifying persons as the cause of actions, but hermeneutics (and phenomenology, which is entangled with it, for Ricœur) also allows understanding the motives of actions and, therefore, what it means for the self to perform responsible actions. More exactly, Ricœur criticizes analytical philosophy of language, and particularly Anscombe’s theory of intentions for distinguishing between explaining the cause of events as a different kind of “language game” from understanding the motives of actions.10 Certainly, he does not deny the fundamental difference between causes/effects and motives/actions. As he points out, for example, in the case of effects, it is possible to describe cause and effect as different physical facts, because there is “no logical connection of implication between cause and effect.”11 In the case of actions, however, identifying the motive implies “mentioning the action,” and describing the motive of the action thus implies explaining its logic. In the case of human actions, the cause and the motive nevertheless overlap for Ricœur. This means that for the idea of responsibility holding agents responsible implies identifying the causes of both their actions and their motives. For example, in court the convict should be identified both as the agent that caused (an) action(s), and as the person who performed (a) crime(s). As Ricœur writes: “Human action is as it is precisely because it belongs both to the domain of causation and to that of motivation, hence to explanation and to understanding.”12 According to him, hermeneutics and phenomenology should thus take into account the public sphere of language and be based on empirical knowledge. Yet, it should also aim at understanding the symbolic and existential significance of action in order to comprehend its motivation. In illustration of Ricœur’s view on the relation between analytical philosophy and hermeneutic phenomenology, consider his early phenomenological understanding of responsibility in Freedom and Nature. In Freedom and Nature, he more specifically proposes a phenomenological analysis in which he derives the basic sense of responsibility from consciousness.13 In this analysis, he argues that the experience that oneself is the cause of one’s own actions leads to the understanding of the basic sense of responsibility. As he states, the basic sense of responsibility lies in the experience that one is ready to respond to the question: “Who did that?”14 Human beings thus understand responsibility, according to Ricœur’s idea of responsibility in Freedom and Nature, when they experience themselves the cause of their actions and are ready to acknowledge that they perform these actions. This idea of ascribing responsibility to oneself differs from Strawson’s semantic concept of ascription (to which I will return in the next section), which Ricœur discusses in Oneself as Another, and according to which the basic sense of responsibility lies in the meaning of the word “responsibility” in ordinary language. Whereas in Freedom and Nature Ricœur derives the basic meaning of the



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concept of responsibility from the inner sphere of consciousness, in Oneself as Another he defines this basic meaning in reference to public language. This difference exemplifies how Ricœur sees the relation between analytical philosophy and phenomenology: as a complementary relation between language analysis and analysis of consciousness. There clearly is an evolution in Ricœur’s writings in that analytical philosophy plays a bigger part in his later works. Ricœur argues that the relation between ordinary language philosophy and phenomenology is dialectical rather than exclusive. This means that hermeneutics should create a dialogue between ordinary language philosophy and phenomenology, even though these methods differ essentially: analysis of speech (“investigation portant sur des énoncés”) as opposed to interpretation of lived experiences (“investigation portant sur des vécus”).15 This dialogue is possible because ordinary language philosophy analyzes concepts that express the experiences, texts, and actions that hermeneutics and phenomenology examine. In this regard, Ricœur’s hermeneutics aims to relate Strawson’s semantic analysis of ascription to his own hermeneuticphenomenological analysis of being responsible. However, for Ricœur, understanding responsibility and ipseity ultimately implies the idea of moral imputation, which, in its turn, implicates the hermeneutical and phenomenological idea of the self. As Ricœur writes in The Course of Recognition, “It is left to phenomenological and hermeneutic philosophy to take up the question … about the self-designation attaching to the idea of imputability as an aptitude for imputation.”16 For Ricœur, understanding ipseity and moral responsibility is the task of hermeneutics and phenomenology. In other words, understanding moral responsibility implies understanding what it means for oneself to be a self, and to designate oneself as the subject of actions that are morally imputed. In this regard, Ricœur contends that a moral anthropology that aims at understanding responsibility should use ordinary language philosophy as a tool of explanation, yet requires hermeneutic phenomenology that makes this understanding possible. Ricœur’s hermeneutics of the self both builds on and, at the same time, supersedes ordinary language philosophy. On the one hand, this hermeneutics builds on ordinary language philosophy, in particular on semantics, in that the phenomenological ideas of this hermeneutics should also be understood as concepts of ordinary language philosophy. This means that, according to this hermeneutics, the ideas of self and of responsibility should be understood as logical concepts that are empirically observable and identifiable by means of common language. For Ricœur, self and responsibility are thus not purely idealistic concepts, derived from the subjective sphere of consciousness. On the other hand, Ricœur’s hermeneutics of the self supersedes ordinary language philosophy. To put it in more exact terms, for Ricœur, analytical philosophy

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of language cannot fully grasp the ideas of the self and of responsibility in their full moral significance. For Ricœur, ordinary language philosophy is thus ultimately insufficient for moral anthropology, and this understanding is the task of hermeneutics. RICŒUR ON SEMANTICS: THE SELF AS SAME AND RESPONSIBILITY AS ASCRIPTION The way in which Ricœur perceives the relation between ordinary language philosophy and phenomenology is exemplary for how he sees the link between the empirical world and moral life. For Ricœur, moral life is not an idealistic construction, but language ties moral concepts to physical reality. This becomes particularly apparent in his interpretation of Strawson’s idea of ascription. In Oneself as Another, Ricœur examines Strawson’s semantic analysis of the concept of ascription in the latter’s theory on basic particulars in Individuals. Ricœur contends that, for Strawson, there are two types of “basic particulars” or “things” that human beings identify as individuals in ordinary language: “physical bodies” and “persons.”17 In Ricœur’s opinion, Strawson’s idea of basic particulars demonstrates the extent to which human beings use ordinary language to recognize persons and physical bodies as “same” or “idem,” in ascribing to them physical and mental attributes.18 In this regard, human beings use speech to identify certain persons or objects as being the same in space and time. Ricœur writes: It is within a situation of interlocution that speaking subjects designate to their interlocutors which particular they choose to speak about out of a range of particulars of the same type, and that they assure themselves through an exchange of questions and answers that their partners are indeed focusing on the same basic particular as they.19

For example, human beings talk about John, and identify him as the tall person standing in the corner, the man that ran off with the stolen diamonds, or the person that just gave that speech. A similar use of the concept of ascription applies for physical bodies. For instance, it is possible to recognize a rock as gray or heavy, or a table as round and yellow. Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, Strawson’s analysis of basic particulars thus demonstrates the basic semantic concept of ascription, or the logical structure of this concept in ordinary language, which humans use to ascribe to each other mental and physical attributes, for example, John weighs sixty pounds and recently made a trip to Marrakech. Further, according to Ricœur, this concept demonstrates that the attributes humans



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particularly ascribe to persons are actions. As Ricœur writes in “The Concept of Responsibility,” “action” is “placed at the center of [Strawson’s] theory of ascription.”20 In “The Concept of Responsibility,” Ricœur summarizes Strawson’s idea of the logical structure of the concept of ascription as follows: ascription means that (1) we attribute to persons both “physical” and “mental/psychic predicates (X walks in the park, X remembers a recent trip),” (2) we attribute these predicates to a “single entity,” the “body,” and (3) it makes no difference whether we ascribe these properties to ourselves or to others (e.g., “speech” basically means the same whether we ascribe it to Peter, Paul, or myself).21 It is easy to see how Ricœur’s interpretation of Strawson’s concept of ascription is fairly unproblematic. In Individuals, Strawson indeed defines the person as a spatiotemporal entity, that is, as a body to which we ascribe both mental states of consciousness and physical corporeal states. Strawson writes, “The concept of a person is to be understood as the concept of a type of entity such that both predicates ascribing states of consciousness and predicates ascribing corporeal characteristics, a physical situation … are equally applicable to an individual entity of that type.”22 Further, in Individuals, Strawson indeed argues, as Ricœur points out, that the central predicates humans ascribe to persons are actions: predicates “that indicate a characteristic pattern, or range of patterns, of bodily movement … such things as ‘going for a walk,’ ‘coiling a rope,’ ‘playing ball,’ ‘writing a letter.’”23 Ricœur is correct that Strawson’s analysis of basic particulars demonstrates the concept of responsibility in the basic logical semantic sense of ascription, which points to the basic common use of the word “responsibility” in ordinary language. This use allows human beings to identify persons as the cause of actions, in ascribing to them physical and mental predicates. Furthermore, this basic logical concept of responsibility also applies for identifying physical objects or phenomena as the cause of events. It is possible to say, for instance, that pollution is responsible for the warming of the climate or that a rock that falls in the water is responsible for creating a wave.24 Although this basic use of “responsibility” has little to no ethical, moral, or juridical implications, it reflects a common use of language in English. Sentences such as “Who is responsible for leaving the window open?” or “The storm was responsible for the damage” are only natural. This basic use of “responsibility” might seem trivial. Yet it is salient for understanding how Ricœur bridges the gap between his moral anthropology and empirical reality. In fact, he uses the semantic concept of responsibility, ordinary language philosophy, and analytical philosophy in general, as the basis or first step of his own hermeneutical understanding of the self. In Oneself as Another, Ricœur aims to demonstrate that his hermeneutics

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implies what he calls a “detour” by way of analytical philosophy and that this detour is “the price to pay” for “positing the self.”25 In defining the self as an empirical body or “same,” analytical philosophy enables an understanding of the self, without positing an idealistic essence of selfhood or an ego cogito. Hence, Ricœur discusses analytical philosophy at the beginning of each of the four subsets of his hermeneutics of the self in Oneself as Another. In each one of these subsets, Ricœur uses analytical philosophy to answer one of the four central questions of his hermeneutics. These questions are respectively for the four subsets: “Who is speaking? Who is acting? Who is recounting about himself or herself? Who is the moral subject of imputation?”26 In this regard, he answers the question of the self indirectly, in examining four different topics (i.e., speech, action, narrative and responsibility) in four different discussions with analytical philosophy. For example, his understanding of speech implies “philosophy of language,” and particularly Strawson’s semantic analysis of speech, and Austin’s and Searle’s theories of speech acts. F ­ urther, for Ricœur answering the question of responsibility, in the moral sense of imputation, implies, as I will show later, analytical moral philosophy, including MacIntyre’s and Nussbaum’s theories of virtues and Rawls’ theory of justice. For Ricœur, analytical philosophy thus partly answers the question of selfhood. According to him, conceptual analysis of speech explains how we understand a person as a physical entity in this world (cf. Ricœur’s idea of idem-identity), because it reveals how humans use concepts to identify these persons as physical bodies. ASCRIPTION AS MORALLY NEUTRAL AND NONEXISTENTIAL CONCEPT Ricœur clearly finds inspiration in analytical philosophy for his hermeneutical understanding of the self in Oneself as Another. Yet semantic analysis of speech also remains insufficient, for Ricœur, in that it fails to understand the complete significance of the ideas of the self and of responsibility, precisely because this analysis makes an abstraction of the moral depth of these concepts. Explaining the linguistic use of concepts still differs from understanding the self’s capacities that allow participation in moral life as a responsible subject. In Ricœur’s words, semantic analysis makes an abstraction of the hermeneutical question regarding what it means for the self to be “the moral subject of imputation.”27 In sum, for Ricœur, semantics partly explains what it means to be a self, in “posing the subject indirectly,” first as a physical body and person. Yet, he also argues that semantics fails to understand the idea of the self, and its ontological-existential significance in particular, in neglecting the idea of subjectivity in the sense of ipseity and the moral implications this idea entails.



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If, for Ricœur, Strawson’s analysis of ascription explains the basic ­semantic concept of responsibility that lies at the basis of the experience of responsibility, this analysis also fails, so I am arguing, to comprehend the moral significance of responsibility. For Ricœur, Strawson’s analysis of ascription has “no consideration of any relation to moral obligation.”28 What is more, Ricœur sees in Strawson’s morally neutral concept of responsibility an expression of what he identifies as the general tendency in analytical philosophy “to demoralize the root of imputation” or to understand ascription in the neutral logical sense of attribution (Ricœur uses these terms as synonyms). As he writes, there is a “gap,” between “ascription in the moral sense [and] attribution in the logical sense.”29 To “attribute” an action to a person in the logical sense is not the same as to “ascribe” in the moral sense of ascription. Ascription in the latter sense expresses the idea of moral “imputation” or of “holding an agent responsible for actions which themselves are considered to be permissible or not permissible,” “praiseworthy” or “blameworthy.”30 As will become clear later, this abstraction of the moral significance of the concepts of the self and of responsibility is less characteristic for more recent theories in analytical philosophy that do focus on describing our moral outlook, that is, what makes us capable of responsible and moral actions. Indeed, for the sake of logical clarity semantic analysis typically uses examples that are simplified to nonmoral basic sentences. For instance, saying, “John is responsible for having left open the door” or “William thought of something” is considerably less complicated than stating long sentences about John’s or William’s moral capacities as selves. Semantics and ordinary language philosophy in general typically use these and similar morally neutral examples, because this type of philosophy is interested in explaining basic logical concepts in ordinary language. Basic logic is typically amoral. From a purely semantic point of view, saying “John killed that man” or “John walks through that door” has the same basic meaning. We use both sentences semantically for identifying agents as the cause of actions and in that sense both sentences express what it means to ascribe physical and mental predicates to persons. Moreover, for Ricœur, Strawson’s semantic analysis of ascription not only neutralizes the moral significance of responsibility, but ultimately also insufficiently defines the idea of the self. This analysis aims to explain the basic concept of the person in ordinary language, and therefore disregards the difference between self and other. As Ricœur points out, a “strictly referential analysis of the concept of person” fails to take into account an essential difference: “Ascribing a state of consciousness to oneself is felt; ascribing it to someone else is observed.”31 Following Ricœur, Strawson’s analysis of ascription contains the concept “person” as used in the common domain of language, and in that sense makes

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an abstraction of the singularity of being a self. For example, saying “John is responsible for giving that speech” has the same basic meaning as saying “William is responsible for giving that speech” or “I am responsible for giving that speech.” Surely, these sentences have different meanings in that they refer to different persons: John, William, or myself. In this regard, Strawson’s analysis of the basic concept of ascription allows identifying persons as particular individuals or simply “particulars,” as Strawson himself calls it.32 This analysis partly explains the idea of the self in explaining what it means to identify the self as being the same identical person (idem). However, the physical and mental predicates humans attribute to each other (e.g., giving a speech, playing ball) have identical semantic significance whether attributed to other persons or to myself. Giving a speech, for instance, means the same in ordinary language whether said of John or of myself, despite the different experiences and proper states of consciousness while giving a speech (ipse). Strawson’s analysis thus eliminates the idea of the singularity of the self, that is, of ipseity in that this analysis does not question the self’s singular lived existence or what it means to be oneself as distinguished from being another. Ricœur’s distinction between self and same more exactly illustrates his interpretation of Strawson’s concept of the person. According to Ricœur, Strawson’s semantic analysis describes identity as “sameness (mêmeté) and not as selfhood (ipséité).”33 For Ricœur, this analysis identifies the self as “same,” as psychophysical substance, or as “single spatio-temporal entity.” Ricœur writes in Oneself as Another: In Strawson’s strategy … the recourse to self-designation is intercepted, so to speak, from the very start because of the central thesis for identifying anything as a basic particular. This criterion is the fact that individuals belong to a single spatiotemporal schema …. The self … is immediately neutralized by being included within the same spatiotemporal schema as all the other particulars.34

The problem for Ricœur is that Strawson’s semantic analysis fails to define what it means, from a singular perspective, to speak, to act, to narrate, and to be responsible, since this analysis defines the person as physical body that is essentially the same, insofar as semantics is concerned, as other physical bodies. Ricœur has sufficient grounds to defend, in my opinion, that Strawson’s semantic analysis of the person in Individuals makes an abstraction of the idea of moral responsibility, and also of the difference between self and other. Semantic concepts like “self,” “other,” and “responsibility” have a particular common sense that is understandable by the members of the language community that uses these concepts. It does not follow, however, that these concepts also have an ontological-existential equivalent. As Strawson writes



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in Individuals, “It is only a linguistic illusion that one ascribes one's states of consciousness at all, that there is any proper subject of these apparent ascriptions, that states of consciousness belong to, or are states of, anything.”35 In Strawson’s opinion, the ontological-existential idea of subjectivity, and of being the subject of moral responsibility as a self, does not follow from linguistic analysis, and is therefore no concern of semantics. According to Strawson’s idea of the person, states of consciousness have the same basic meaning whether ascribed to myself or to any other person. Ricœur shows that semantics is insufficient for understanding the relation between ipseity and responsibility, and that, for that reason, semantics is not the proper method for a full-blown moral anthropology that accounts for the conditions of performing morally responsible actions. Semantics explains the basic logical meaning of the concepts of self and of responsibility, and in that sense, makes an abstraction of the moral significance of these ideas. Further, for Ricœur semantics examines the objective meaning of language, and therefore makes an abstraction of the significance of ipseity for understanding responsibility. If semantics explains how humans use the concepts of self and responsibility in ordinary language, this method ultimately does not lead to an understanding of what it means to be a self, capable of (moral) responsibility. As will become clear, in explaining how we ascribe actions to physical bodies through language semantic analysis demonstrates, for Ricœur, how responsibility relates to empirical reality. RICŒUR ON PRAGMATICS: ASCRIPTION THROUGH SPEECH ACTS In drawing on Strawson’s semantic analysis of ascription, Ricœur aims to avoid reducing phenomenological experiences—and the experience of being responsible in particular—to ideas directly derived from consciousness (cf. Husserl’s eidetic reduction). Indeed, as Ricœur writes in La sémantique de l’action, he defends what he calls a “linguistic phenomenology” (“phénomenologie linguistique”), rather than a “psychological phenomenology” (“phenomenology psychologique”).36 When he defends, in the wake of Husserl, the idea of a phenomenological reduction that aims to define lived experiences through essences or ideas, the significance of these essences and ideas essentially also relates to the significance of concepts in ordinary language. For Ricœur, ordinary language thus helps in expressing and understanding the essence of these experiences and of phenomenology and hermeneutics in general. More exactly, his understanding of the relation between ordinary language philosophy and phenomenology is ambiguous. On the one hand, Ricœur contends that ordinary language philosophy and phenomenology

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have the common task of explaining reality by means of common language. He thus believes that phenomenology should describe experiences of consciousness by means of concepts of common language and not merely reduce these experiences to idealistic essences. However, for him, semantics and analytical philosophy of language are ultimately insufficient for understanding the ideas of the self and of responsibility. Ricœur, of course, does not pretend that analytical philosophy only consists of semantics. His discussion of analytical philosophy of language also covers the field of pragmatics. This section of this chapter examines Ricœur’s discussion of pragmatics, and investigates the extent to which pragmatics can understand the ideas of the self and of responsibility. I will argue first that, for him, pragmatics does explain the idea of agency, as well as the moral significance of responsibility. According to him, pragmatics explains the extent to which moral speech acts function for identifying morally responsible agents. For example, in the context of the court a judge can use moral speech acts to hold an accused morally responsible for a crime. I will argue further that, according to Ricœur, pragmatics nevertheless also makes an abstraction of the idea of the self, and ultimately, insufficiently understands responsibility and ipseity. Since pragmatics, in principle, amounts to the study of the public domain of ordinary language, this method also makes an abstraction—like semantics—of the existential-ontological sphere of ipseity, which implies referring to the singularity of the self and which allows understanding the motives for being responsible. I will argue that Ricœur demonstrates that moral anthropology should therefore take into account the idea of ipseity: only in our lived experiences when being responsible (and not only through the rules of language) we come to understand responsibility, like the chess player only comes to learn the meaning of chess through experiencing the game of chess (and not only through knowing the rules). In his discussion of analytical philosophy of language in Oneself as Another, Ricœur points out the essential difference between semantics and pragmatics. According to him, semantics analyzes the logical significance of concepts in ordinary language. Pragmatics, in its turn, studies the performative function of ordinary language.37 In other words, whereas semantics examines the static logical structure of concepts, pragmatics analyzes utterances or speech acts in ordinary language that we use to perform certain actions (e.g., promises, verdicts, predictions). As Ricœur points out, pragmatics thus examines the ideas of the self and of responsibility differently than semantics does. As I argued above, semantics, and Strawson’s semantic analysis of ascription in particular, demonstrates the basic logical meaning of the concepts of the self and of responsibility. According to Ricœur, pragmatics, as I will argue next, demonstrates the significance of the ideas of the self and of responsibility in analyzing moral speech acts.



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According to Ricœur, pragmatics, in contrast to semantics, does point to the idea of agency. I argued that Strawson’s semantic analysis of the person in particular explains the basic logical concept of the person. However, this analysis examines the logical structure of concepts in ordinary language, and in that sense makes an abstraction of the idea of the self as the subject of speech and of action. There is a fundamental difference, for Ricœur, between examining the structure of concepts in language and examining what it means to speak and to act. Pragmatics does the second thing. Hence, he discusses pragmatics in Oneself as Another in order to define the self as a speaking subject (cf. the second chapter of Oneself as Another, 42 ff.) and to define the self in that sense as an agent (cf. the fourth chapter of Oneself as Another, 88 ff.). Ricœur writes: The person as a basic particular does not stress the capacity belonging to the person to designate himself or herself in speaking, as [is] the case … [for] the subject of utterance to designate itself; here [in Strawson’s analysis of basic particulars], the person is one of the “things” about which we speak rather than itself a speaking subject.38

Pragmatics or speech act theory entails the idea of agency in that speech acts imply a subject of utterance: a subject performing the speech act. For example, verdicts imply a judge, or a person who judges; promises imply a person who promises, etc. According to speech act theory, the subject of speech is then also the subject of action in that speech acts have a performative function. For example, we use verdicts to perform certain tasks: holding persons responsible, sentencing an accused, maintaining justice etc. Hence, Ricœur suggests in Oneself as Another that “pragmatics” is better “equipped,” than “semantics” to define the idea that the self is an agent that performs responsible actions.39 Moreover, according to Ricœur, pragmatics, again in contrast to semantics, demonstrates to a certain extent the idea of responsibility in the moral sense. Exemplary in this regard is his interpretation of juridical speech act theory, and particularly of Hart’s article “The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights.”40 According to Ricœur, Hart’s article demonstrates the extent to which propositions in ordinary language are used to identify agents as the cause of legal and moral actions. In analyzing juridical speech acts of the type “verdictives,” Hart demonstrates, according to Ricœur, that legal and moral verdicts are propositions in ordinary language, which humans use to ascribe moral responsibility to each other.41 For example, the judge’s verdict in court determines whether action X is a murder or whether action Y is an assassination. Pragmatics thus points to the ideas of selfhood and of agency, and to the idea of moral responsibility. A pragmatic theory of ascription, like Hart’s,

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explains moral speech acts, which we use for attributing responsibility to others and ourselves. As Ricœur points out, pragmatics demonstrates “selfdesignation” and “other-designation” in “a speech situation.”42 For example, judges use legal verdicts for identifying others as responsible. And, in cases of legal defense, the accused recognizes herself or himself as responsible or innocent. In this regard, pragmatics explains, like semantics, the empirical essence of responsibility or how humans use language for identifying others and themselves as persons or as same, that is, as physical bodies that are the cause of actions. Yet, as Ricœur points out, pragmatics also explains how humans hold each other morally responsible by means of verdicts. However, according to Ricœur pragmatics is still ultimately insufficient for understanding the idea of the self. He contends in Oneself as Another that analyzing the concept of ascription from a “linguistic viewpoint” only “constitutes … a partial and as yet abstract determination of what is meant by the ipseity (the selfhood) of the self.”43 This means that linguistics, as studied in philosophy of language, be it semantics or pragmatics, insufficiently understands selfhood in neglecting the idea of ipseity. Semantics and pragmatics both explain how we use language for identifying persons as the cause of actions: the person as spatiotemporal entity or body, which we identify in using concepts (cf. semantics) or in using speech act (cf. pragmatics). Yet both semantics and pragmatics nevertheless do not fully disclose the difference between self and other. In the previous section, I argued that semantics insufficiently explains the difference between self and other, because this method makes an abstraction of the idea of singularity insofar as the semantic concepts apply in the same sense to oneself and others. Similarly, pragmatics insufficiently captures the difference between self and other, because speech acts apply in the same basic sense to oneself and to others as well. For example, the verdict that John is responsible for running of with the diamonds has the same basic meaning as the verdict that William is responsible for this action, or that I am. Given that different verdicts identify different persons as the cause of different actions and that speech acts in that sense identify particular individuals (or “sames”), the significance of speech acts does not clarify the idea of ipseity or what it means to be a self, as a subject capable of speech, action, narrative, and responsibility. Certainly, as Ricœur points out, speech acts imply a speaking subject and in that sense also an agent. Yet explaining speech acts implies explaining a universal logical structure of speech, and this is possible without referring to existential features that explain what it means, for the self, to speak. Semantics and pragmatics thus insufficiently answer the question what it means to be a self, or of the idea of singularity in the sense of ipseity. For Ricœur, ordinary language philosophy as such is insufficient for understanding the idea of ipseity. Because semantics and pragmatics in principle



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examine philosophical problems by analyzing the public domain of language, this method makes an abstraction of the idea of subjectivity, which extends that domain. Explaining concepts in common language differs from understanding subjectivity, and therefore the idea of the self that is capable of talking, acting, narrating, and taking responsibility. For Ricœur, understanding ipseity in this sense is the task of hermeneutics. However, subjectivity and ipseity would also be purely abstract concepts, for Ricœur, if they were not related to empirical reality and common language. He aims to avoid, in other words, positing the self “directly” as an idealistic concept, or ego cogito, devoid of the relation with the body, and physical reality in general. Hence, in his hermeneutics of the self in Oneself as Another, he defends the idea of positing the self indirectly, by means of a detour of analytical philosophy. Moreover, given that pragmatics, according to Ricœur, explains the idea of moral responsibility in terms of moral speech acts, this method ultimately insufficiently explains responsibility in the sense of “imputation.” For him, understanding responsibility in this sense implies “ethical evaluation of human action in the teleological and deontological sense—in other words, in accordance with the good and the obligatory.”44 Given that pragmatics does explain, as Ricœur points out, the extent to which humans use moral and legal speech acts to ascribe moral responsibility to each other, pragmatics does however fail to define the deontological and teleological significance of responsibility. More exactly, pragmatics does explain how moral and legal speech acts work, but it fails to understand morals, or the meaning of the good and justice. Hence, he indicates that the task of moral anthropology is different from that of semantics and pragmatics, even though both of these methods are part of such anthropology. Whereas moral anthropology investigates the ontological conditions of human’s capacity to participate in moral life, semantics and pragmatics examine the function and use of (moral) language. He points to the shortcomings of semantics and pragmatics regarding the ideas of the self and of responsibility. Given that semantics explains the logical sense of the concept of responsibility or what it means to ascribe actions to persons, and given that pragmatics explains the act of ascribing actions to persons in the context of situations of (moral or nonmoral) speech acts, these methods fail to address deontological and teleological questions about responsibility. Semantics and pragmatics make an abstraction of the question, for example, what it means, as a self, to perform good actions or of the question what justice ought to be. These and similar questions, for Ricœur, should be answered by means of a hermeneutics of the self in general and of the good life in particular (cf. the final subset of Oneself as Another, chapters 7 through 9), which aims at an ontological-existential understanding of ethics and morals. Hence, he points to the limits of philosophy of language to give an answer

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to the question: “Who is the moral subject of imputation?”45 Philosophy of language explains what it means to ascribe responsibility to persons in using ordinary language, and to identify persons in that way as physical bodies and agents. For that reason philosophy of language constitutes the empirical basis of Ricœur’s moral anthropology. Yet, it nevertheless fails to lead to a proper understanding of what it means for the self to be a responsible subject, which is the ultimate task of moral anthropology. WITTGENSTEIN “UPSIDE DOWN”: THE PROPER TASK OF MORAL ANTHROPOLOGY Ricœur’s idea of the narrative is the key for understanding how he conceives of language as the center of moral anthropology. This might come as no surprise, since his hermeneutics in general repeatedly aims to understand human action on the basis of the interpretation of texts and narratives in general. From Text to Action, where he attempts to define action derived from the structure of the text, is perhaps most exemplary in this respect. Further, in the subset on narrative identity in Oneself as Another (chapters 5 and 6), he explicitly discusses the distinction between, on the one hand, “identity as sameness (Latin, idem; German, Gleichheit; French mêmete),” and, on the other hand, “identity as selfhood (Latin, ipse, German, Selbstheit; French, ipséité).”46 Ricœur builds his idea of narrativity on this distinction. At the end of that subset, he further discusses what he understands as “the ethical implications of the narrative,” defining to what extent the question of narrative identity entails the questions of ethics, morals, and responsibility.47 In the remainder of this chapter I will argue how he demonstrates that being capable of responsibility implies being a self and having a narrative identity, and that philosophy of language, which focuses on the logical structure of language rather than on the meaning of texts or narratives, therefore fails to understand responsibility and selfhood. It will then become clear that his idea of ipseity, which closely relates to his idea of narrativity, lies at the very basis of his moral anthropology, which in that sense points at the deficit of analytical philosophy of language for understanding the motives of human’s ethical and moral actions. Ricœur more exactly introduces his idea of ipseity in the opening chapter of the subset on narrative identity in Oneself as Another. In that chapter, he examines his notion of “permanence in time.”48 For him, this notion marks the difference between the same and the self. He uses the concept sameness or idem-identity to explain the person’s substantial identity, which remains unchanged over time (cf. Strawson’s concept of the person as physical body). For example, part of the person’s idem-identity, for Ricœur, is the person’s



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“genetic code.”49 Selfhood, selfness, or ipse-identity (he uses these terms synonymously), on the other hand, refers to the self’s identity that differs from the person’s substantial sameness. More exactly, selfness is the person’s ability to turn life into a “singular story” or to form an identity by means of the narrative. For example, part of the person’s ipseity, in Ricœur’s opinion, is the self’s capability for making promises or for “keeping one’s word.”50 For him, the “singularity” of the self’s existence relates then to the self’s “character” in the sense of “the unity of a life considered a temporal totality which is itself singular and distinguished from all others.”51 Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, the capacity to make one’s life into a singular narrative, to “play a character in one’s life story,” is what constitutes being a self, acting freely and responsibly in a singular sense. In this regard, responsibility implies ipseity for him. Philosophy of language does not explain this idea of selfhood in the sense of ipseity. It examines the linguistic significance of the concept of the self, but not the narrative side of language or the self. Further, according to Ricœur the idea of ipse-identity, which entails narrative identity, implies moral life in general, and the idea of responsibility in particular. First of all, this means that narrativity as such has ethical and moral significance in that stories often recount ethical and moral actions.52 He writes in Oneself as Another, the “art of storytelling is the art of exchanging experiences” in the sense of “practical wisdom.” This means, for Ricœur, that stories often contain “estimations” and “evaluations” that are “teleological” and “deontological.”53 The actions of characters in stories are thus often ethically and morally loaded. We can think, for example, of biblical literature, Greek tragedy, but also of ethical novels or stories like Dostoyevsky’s. In this respect, the narrative provides “the great laboratory of the imaginary” and “also explorations in the realm of good and evil.”54 In the third part of this book, I will examine more profoundly how narratives—not only as in narrative identity, but also ethical and political narratives—aid to rework and cope with events of evil and express our responsibility to do justice to these events. In this chapter, my aim is to indicate the extent to which philosophy of language insufficiently grasps the motives of responsibility according to Ricœur, and the extent to which understanding these motives implies referring to the ideas of ipseity and of narrativity, in particular to the idea of the self’s narrative identity. Moreover, not only do narratives have ethical and moral significance, as he points out, ethical and moral action also finds its inspiration in imagination, and in narratives. In Oneself as Another, Ricœur writes in this regard about “the refiguration of action by the narrative,” by which he means that stories and their ethical and moral significance can aid moral judgment and practical wisdom. He also speaks about “ethical imagination,” “which feeds off narrative

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imagination.”55 Following his line of reasoning, humans find inspiration in ethical and moral stories for taking ethical and moral decisions, and, in that sense, for performing responsible actions. Ricœur demonstrates, I think, that a moral anthropology that aims at understanding responsibility and justice implies referring to the idea of ipseity in the sense of the singularity of the self’s lived existence. Ordinary language philosophy, as Ricœur points out, does not take into account this idea. Semantics and pragmatics can clearly identify, as I have argued with him, the meaning of concepts such as self and responsibility in ordinary language, and even how we use moral and juridical speech acts to ascribe responsibility to others and to ourselves. Yet ordinary language philosophy fails to understand what it means to be responsible or to be a self. This is not only because, as I argued previously, ordinary language philosophy makes an abstraction of deontological questions about the good life and of ontological questions about subjectivity and selfhood, but also because understanding responsibility and justice implies understanding the self’s narrative identity. The meaning of language extends the semantic or pragmatic analysis. Language allows for moral concepts, which humans share and understand within the context of moral communities and just institutions. Moreover, language allows rendering significance to one’s own proper existence: the ethical and just actions we perform are part of our life story, and, in that sense, the narrative accompanies moral life. In this regard, understanding responsibility entails having a narrative identity, and only through being a self can one understand what it means to be responsible and to engage in justice systems. Rather than being a physical state or relation, responsibility and justice imply a process of understanding, a hermeneutics of one’s own existence. Similarly, the profession of being a doctor, for example, is a profession one comes to learn through experience, rather than an empirical fact. Narratives with ethical and moral significance aid in the process of learning responsibility and justice, and this process is part of the self’s own narrative identity. In chapter 3, I argue that hermeneutical concepts, and Ricœur’s notions of self-esteem, solicitude, and practical wisdom in particular, allow analyzing how this process of understanding takes place. For example, the concrete praxis of care for others, as I will argue, helps understanding justice through the sense of injustice in the confrontation with the suffering of others. Holding selves responsible thus also implies understanding their singular life stories and how they came to act as they did. It is one thing to explain “who did what” (identifying agents as the cause of actions), it is yet quite another to understand “why someone is responsible for.” The second thing appears to imply, as Ricœur contends, an understanding of the singularity of the self who we hold responsible. Therefore, singularity in the sense of ipseity, of having a singular existence that



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differs from others, is crucial for understanding responsibility. This idea lies at the core of his moral anthropology. For Ricœur, the self’s capability to recount life into a singular narrative, and more exactly the self’s capability for “self-constancy” by keeping promises, makes the self accountable for his or her actions. He writes in Oneself as Another: Self-constancy is for each person that manner of conducting himself or herself so that others can count on that person. Because someone is counting on me, I am accountable for my actions before another. The term “responsibility” unites both meanings: “counting on” and “being accountable for.” It unites them, adding to them the idea of a response to the question “Where are you?” asked by another who needs me. This response is the following: “Here I am!” a response that is a statement of self-constancy.56

This means that ipse-identity or the self’s capability to form a singular identity in identifying oneself with stories, and maintaining oneself in those stories, is the condition of free action, and, as a consequence, of responsibility. Given the predispositions of the self’s character, the self’s freedom lies in the capability to act according to the narrative character he or she creates for his or her own life. This capability makes the self accountable for acting in that it makes that others can count on the self who is capable of acting in a constant manner. Hence, Ricœur refers to Levinas’ formulation: “Here I am!” This formulation expresses the idea that responsibility implies the relation with others. In part 2, I will examine more precisely the relation with the other and to what extent the singularity of the other relates to the idea of responsibility. For now, it is clear that, according to Ricœur, responsibility implies the narrative in that the (ethical and moral) decisions humans take throughout their lives depend on the singular character they each choose to play. Consequently, contrarily to the causes of their actions, the motives for their actions are to be found in these singular life stories, which are inspired by the narratives one encounters in life. According to Ricœur, the idea of singularity in the sense of ipseity is thus the condition for understanding freedom and consequently responsibility in the sense of moral imputation, that is, in the sense of attributing ethical and moral actions to agents. Identifying someone as being responsible for an action does not simply amount to finding out whether or not this person actually caused this action, but it also implies understanding what this person’s motives were for performing the action (e.g., whether he acted out of passion or intentionally). In this chapter, I argued, in line with Ricœur that ordinary language philosophy, in the sense of semantics and pragmatics, allows understanding the

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empirical basis of the ideas of the self and of responsibility. Responsibility is empirically observable, so he demonstrates, in that it is possible to identify physical bodies as the cause of actions by using ordinary language: concepts (cf. semantics) and speech acts (cf. pragmatics). Agents are thus physical bodies that we identify by means of language. Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, it makes only sense to hold human beings responsible, because ordinary language makes it possible to explain what responsibility means: to identify a person as the cause of an action (or of multiple actions). At the same time, understanding responsibility in the ethical and moral sense implies taking into account the idea of ipseity. As Ricœur contends, understanding ethical and moral decisions implies the singularity of being a self and having a narrative identity that differs from others. The idea of responsibility in the sense of attributing ethical and moral actions to agents therefore entails understanding the ontological-existential significance of being ethically and morally responsible: ascription of (moral) responsibility to agents by means of ordinary language would make little sense if we would be unaware of what it means to actually live through the state of being responsible corresponding to this ascription: of making promises, of experiencing expectations from others, of living up to one’s role in life, etc. In that case, responsibility would depend only on arbitrary language games: on linguistic rules relating to ascription. Linguistic philosophy examines the objective and empirical domain of language, rather than the sphere of ipseity. Yet if we would never come to understand the motives of our responsible actions and those of others, then it would make little sense to use language in order to hold persons responsible. Similarly, it would make little sense, for example, knowing to apply the rules of chess while never actually playing chess and experiencing what it means for oneself to play chess and why others play chess. Ultimately, Ricœur understands responsibility in his hermeneutics of the self in Oneself as Another in the final subset on ethics and morals (chapter 7 through 9). In these chapters, he elaborates on what he understands as ethical life or “the good life with and for others in just institutions.”57 According to this definition, ethical life includes political life in the sense of institutional life that governs justice. Further, in the final subset of Oneself as Another, Ricœur examines the extent to which this ethical and teleological understanding of the good life relates to the moral and deontological aspects of responsibility.58 This means that, for him, the question of responsibility and justice should be answered by means of an examination of ethical, moral, and political and institutional life. He also discusses analytical philosophy in his understanding of ethics, morals, and justice. However, analytical philosophy should be understood in this context as ethical and moral philosophy, rather than as philosophy of language. For Ricœur, understanding responsibility



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thus surpasses a linguistic approach of the concepts of the self and responsibility, and ultimately this understanding surpasses analytical philosophy as such, since it implies hermeneutical and phenomenological understanding of ethical and moral life in relation to the idea of narrativity. According to Ricœur, analytical philosophy in general, and philosophy of language in particular, are thus a necessary propaedeutic for hermeneutics. Yet hermeneutics is the proper method for understanding responsibility and justice in his opinion. Certainly, this implies constructing a “linguistic phenomenology,” as Ricœur does in La sémantique de l’action. However, it also means abandoning certain basic principles of analytical philosophy. If his hermeneutics of the self finds inspiration in ordinary language philosophy, this hermeneutics ultimately surpasses the domain of linguistics and empirical knowledge. In this regard, Ricœur breaks with Wittgenstein’s principle that philosophy should be limited to investigating language. In the Philosophical Investigations, Wittgenstein famously states that philosophical problems “are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we have always known. Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”59 Ricœur’s hermeneutics of the self uses ordinary language philosophy for explaining responsibility and selfhood, that is, for identifying the causal relation between the self and the actions for which he or she is responsible. Yet this hermeneutics ultimately points at the limits of ordinary language philosophy and abandons one of its basic principles in contending that understanding the motives of responsibility should not be limited to explaining causal relations, because only through lived existence do we come to understand these motives. If Wittgenstein is right that knowing to apply the rules of language is playing a language game and performing actions in life, then we should add that those rules do not fully disclose the meaning of actions in life. Not all philosophy is language analysis. Not all understanding is explaining language. Ricœur thus suggests that we should turn Wittgenstein’s principle “upside down” and states that even though language analysis certainly clarifies philosophical concepts, philosophical problems make little sense when we approach them in making an abstraction of the actual experiences that relate to them. One question is, however, to what extent Ricœur succeeds in reuniting the basic principles of philosophy of language with phenomenology and hermeneutics. Indeed, if phenomenology’s basic principle is that the foundation of knowledge is the relation between consciousness and the world, philosophy of language questions that such a relation exists apart from the language we use to identify it. Conversely, if, according to philosophy of language, philosophical problems are basically language problems, phenomenology

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questions this idea in taking introspection, rather than objective language, to be the starting point of philosophical analysis. If the basic principles of philosophy of language imply reducing the ideas of ipseity, subjectivity, consciousness, and agency, then Ricœur inevitably still assumes the existence of these ontological entities that correspond to these ideas. Indeed, Ricœur uses philosophy of language for defining the empirical basis of his own hermeneutic phenomenology. Yet if philosophy of language makes an abstraction of the idea of the self as the subject of responsibility, this means, for ordinary language philosophy, that subjectivity in this sense is idealistic. In the next chapter, I will propose several theories in moral ­psychology for defining the empirical relation between the self, responsibility, and human nature. These theories are interesting, so I will argue, in that they make use of introspection and descriptive commonsense analysis, in order to define the empirical relation between selfhood, responsibility, and natural feelings. NOTES 1. In particular: Ricœur, “Le discours de l’action;” Ricœur, Oneself as Another; Ricœur, The Just; Ricœur, From Text to Action. 2. Ricœur, “Le discours de l’action.” 3. Ricœur, Oneself as Another. 4. See, for example, Bruno Leclercq, “À l’autre école. Paul Ricœur, lecteur de la philosophie analytique,” In: L’Éthique et le soi chez Paul Ricœur. Huit études sur Soi-même comme un autre, ed. Patrice Canivez and Lambros Couloubaritsis (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires de Septentrion), 28; Jean-Luc Petit, “Ricœur et la théorie de l’action,” Études Ricœuriennes/ Ricœur Studies 5, No. 1, 147. 5. Ricœur, “Le discours de l’action,” 113–4: “a) l’analyse linguistique évite les difficultés de toute introspection, à savoir le recours au sentiment vif, à l’intuition: Wittgenstein, en faisant le procès des “descriptions ostensives privées a fait le procès de toute phénoménologie qui se présente comme une modalité de “perception interne”; à quoi l’analyse linguistique oppose l’investigation des énoncés publics dans lesquels s’exprime l’expérience. b) la phénoménologie, en prétendant saisir l’essence sur l’exemple, rencontre une seconde fois l’embarras du recours à l’intuition: il s’agit de “voir” l’essence sur l’exemple ….” 6. Ricœur, “Le discours de l’action,” 128: “La phénoménologie se tient au niveau du sens du vécu, l’analyse linguistique au plan des énoncés; celle-ci définit le niveau d’expression, celle-là le niveau de constitution. La phénoménologie définit le plan de fondation, l’analyse linguistique le plan de manifestation.” 7. Ricœur, “Le discours de l’action,” 12. All the translations of the quotes taken from this work are my own. 8. Ricœur, “Le discours de l’action,” 13: “Si, en effet, la réduction [phénoménologique] n’est pas la perte de quelque chose, ni aucune soustraction, mais la prise



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de distance à partir de quoi il n’a pas seulement des choses mais des signes, des sens, des significations, la réduction phénoménologique marque la naissance de la fonction symbolique en général; ce faisant, elle donne un fondement aux opérations contingentes de l’analyse linguistique.” 9. Ricœur, From Text to Action, 135. 10. Ibid., 132ff. 11. Ibid., 133. 12. Ibid., 135. 13. Paul Ricœur, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. Erzim V. Kohák (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 55ff. 14. Ibid., 56. 15. Ricœur, “Le discours de l’action,” 13. 16. Paul Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, trans. David Pellauer, (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), 107. 17. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 31. 18. Ibid., 32. 19. Ibid., 31. 20. Ricœur, The Just, 21. 21. Ibid. 22. Peter F. Strawson, Individuals. An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London and New York: Routledge, 1996, originally published in 1959), 104. 23. Ibid., 111. 24. In this regard, Ricœur discusses in La sémantique de l’action John Feinberg’s article “Responsibility and Action.” According to Ricœur, Feinberg explains the sense in which human beings use the concept of responsibility for “ascription of causality.” Ricœur’s interpretation of Feinberg’s concept of ascription is similar to his interpretation of Strawson’s concept of ascription. As Ricœur points out, Feinberg’s idea of ascription of causality expresses the extent to which human beings use the concept of responsibility for ascribing to each other actions, in the basic semantic sense of identifying each other as the cause of these actions, not necessarily in the moral sense of accusing each other of these actions. According to Ricœur, Feinberg’s idea of responsibility also expresses the meaning in which human beings use the word responsibility to ascribe causes to events. See, Ricœur, “Le discours de l’action,” 56. 25. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 17. 26. Ibid., 16. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., 21. 29. Ricœur, The Just, 22. Ricœur, of course, does not neglect the fact that analytical philosophy extends the field of semantics. Indeed, he recognizes in pragmatics the method for explaining the moral significance of the concept of responsibility. In the next section I will discuss his interpretation of pragmatics, and how he sees this possibility. 30. Ibid., 100. 31. Ibid., 38. 32. Strawson, Individuals, 15ff.

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33. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 32. 34. Ibid. 35. Strawson, Individuals, 103. 36. Ricœur, “Le discours de l’action,” 14. 37. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 40. 38. Ibid., 31. 39. Ibid., 89 40. Ricœur sees an example of moral speech acts in H.L.A. Hart’s “The Ascription of Responsibility and Rights.” See: H.L.A Hart, “The Ascription of Responsibility and rights,” The Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 49: 171–94. For Ricœur’s discussion of Hart’s concept of ascription, Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 99. In La sémantique de l’action Ricœur also writes: “Selon l’auteur [H.LA. Hart], pour interpréter les propositions de langage ordinaire du type “Il a fait cela,” il faut les rapprocher des décisions juridiques par lesquelles un juge statue que ceci est un contrat valide, que ceci est un meurtre et non un assassinat. […] Les décisions juridiques sont donc prises comme paradigmes des propositions du langage ordinaire. Elles en révèlent le caractère spécifique qui consiste non pas à “décrire” mais à “ascrire” (describe vs. ascribe)” (Ricœur, “Le discours de l’action,” 51–2). 41. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 100. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., 111. 44. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 112. 45. Ibid., 16. 46. Ibid., 116ff. 47. Ibid., 163ff. 48. Ibid. 116ff. 49. Ibid., 117. 50. Ibid., 118. 51. Ibid, 145. 52. How Ricœur conceives of the difference between ethics and morals will become clear gradually in the following chapters. 53. Ibid., 164. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid., 165. 56. Ibid., 165. 57. Ibid., 181. 58. Ibid., 203ff. 59. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958), 47.

Chapter 2

Feelings and the Causes of Moral Nature

In the previous chapter, I discussed Ricœur’s idea of language and the role it plays in his moral anthropology. I argued that he demonstrates that language allows “attaching” moral concepts to empirical reality and to the physical body. For example, the concept “responsibility” has meaning not only as a formal juridical idea, but also because human beings use it to assign actions to agents and to their physical bodies that perform these actions. This function of language implies that moral anthropology makes sense empirically. Yet it is questionable whether language is sufficient for understanding the empirical implications of moral anthropology. This becomes particularly apparent in light of recent moral theories in analytical philosophy for at least two reasons: one historical and one substantive. Historically speaking, there has been a major development in analytical philosophy around the middle of the twentieth century. Whereas early analytical philosophy mainly focuses on conceptual analysis and philosophy of language, analytical philosophy of the second half of the twentieth century explores new avenues in the philosophy of mind (e.g., as concerned with the problems of narrativity, consciousness, action) under the influence of the cognitive sciences. With respect to the ideas of responsibility and justice in particular, contemporary analytical philosophy analyzes natural feelings and how these feelings allow for moral practices. This historical evolution therefore raises the question how these newer moral theories relate to Ricœur’s moral anthropology In a more substantial sense, an analysis of moral nature, such as recent moral theories in analytical philosophy aim to do, does seem salient for moral anthropology in that such an analysis constitutes an essential part of human’s shared moral outlook, and thus of our capacity to participate in moral life. As Martha Nussbaum puts it, “emotions such as fear, love, anger, and grief are likely to be ubiquitous in some form. … They are elements of our common 27

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animality with considerable adaptive significance: so their biological basis is likely to be common to all.”1 If the biological nature of humans has moral significance, then it appears that empirical analysis of these emotions and feelings is significant for moral anthropology. However, Ricœur, of course, appears to be aware of this evolution in analytical moral philosophy, as he himself discusses the role of moral feelings in his moral anthropology, even if he does not elaborate at great length a discussion with analytical moral theories. This chapter therefore in the first place examines Ricœur’s idea of moral feelings. I will argue that he is sympathetic with the idea of relating moral life to natural feelings, and to human nature in general, as becomes apparent from his “aristotelian” approach to ethical life, and his famous discussion with neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux.2 I will argue next that, for Ricœur, moral life should nevertheless also be understood on the basis of universal moral principles, defined by reason (cf. his reference to Kantian morality). I will then contend that another consequence of his hermeneutical approach to morality is that it assumes the concepts of freedom and agency, in that this approach leans on his idea of attestation: the self’s belief in the capacity to act freely and responsibly. The role of feeling-based moral theories in analytical philosophy—in light of Ricœur’s moral anthropology—amounts then to giving some “empirical support” to the ideas of freedom and agency. These theories demonstrate the empirical significance of selfhood in relation to moral agency for understanding responsibility and justice, which will allow explaining these ideas without first positing them. More exactly, I will argue that moral psychology describes the empirical relation between natural feelings on the one hand and the ideas of the self, responsibility, and justice on the other. I argue that this relation differs from the empirical relation between agents and actions, which is identified by ordinary language philosophy, since ordinary language philosophy renders no cognitive status to those feelings and to the idea of being responsible as a self. Moreover, I will argue that feeling-based theories in analytical philosophy also challenge Ricœur’s idea of universal moral norms, in that they explain how moral norms relate to different cultural frameworks of feelings. The ultimate aim of this chapter is then to show that explanation of moral feelings, as recent moral theories in analytical philosophy do, already underscores the significance of the idea of singularity for moral anthropology (at least to some extent) in that it allows distinguishing between self- and otherdirected feelings (e.g., self-esteem and respect for others). Yet, hermeneutical interpretation of lived existence adds to understanding responsibility—and thus to moral anthropology—insofar as this understanding points out the motives of human action, which implies interpretation of text and of the self’s narrative identity: in narratives, selves learn the reasons for being responsible.



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RICŒUR ON MORAL FEELINGS Human nature and natural feelings without doubt take a central position in Ricœur’s moral anthropology. Yet his understanding of natural moral feelings is also critical and points out the limits of moral naturalism: in explaining how morality relates to human nature, naturalistic theories tend to exclude questions about the historical-cultural dimension of morals. At the same time, his idea of moral life implies, so I will argue, two consequences: the presupposition of the existence of universal moral norms on the one hand and the assumption of the concepts of freedom and subjectivity on the other. According to Ricœur, moral life should be understood in relation to natural feelings. For example, in defining his idea of solicitude, he understands moral action in relation to feelings of sympathy.3 In this regard, his idea of moral life is close to the moral sense tradition in analytical philosophy, of which recent theories in moral psychology and moral anthropology are also the inheritors. Furthermore, in a debate with neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Changeux, Ricœur explicitly states that ethics should be understood based on “moral sentiments.”4 He also contends that “one of the new problems of contemporary ethics is how to establish a mutually reinforcing relationship between benevolent predisposition and norms.”5 Throughout his writings, Ricœur moreover repeatedly points to the significance of feelings and desire for understanding moral norms. In his article “From the Moral to the Ethical and to Ethics,” he, for example, writes that “moral sentiments stitch together … the realm of norms and moral obligation, on the one hand, that of desire, on the other.”6 In the same article, he also mentions “indignation,” an important concept in the contemporary debate on moral responsibility in analytical philosophy, and asserts that this sentiment is especially significant for understanding the motivations for acting in accordance with moral duty.7 He thus clearly welcomes the idea that moral life should be understood on the basis of natural dispositions and feelings. In fact, as I aimed to show in chapter 1, Ricœur supports the idea that hermeneutics in general should be understood based on empirical data. In his discussion of analytical philosophy of language, he defines his moral anthropology in light of his concept of the “same,” which designates our relation with the psychophysical body. In From Text to Action, Ricœur distinguishes, in the wake of Dilthey, between “explanation” and “understanding,” by which he indicates the difference between the “natural sciences” that explain empirical facts and “the human sciences” that aim to understand humanrelated knowledge.8 Although Ricœur agrees with Dilthey that both sciences essentially differ, he also insists on their complementarity. For Ricœur, hermeneutics implies “interpretation” of both nonempirical knowledge and

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empirical facts.9 For him, hermeneutics should thus draw on empirical data about human nature in order to understand the significance of human action and of human existence in general. Ricœur’s understanding of the role of moral feelings in his moral anthropology should be understood in relation to his idea of communal moral standards or mores. In his little ethics in Oneself as Another, Ricœur contends that ethical life and moral life should be understood within the context of institutions, which he understands as particular historical communities. This means that he understands ethical and moral life in the context of communal traditions: religious, moral, ethnic, cultural, etc. Yet he also agrees with Hannah Arendt that institutions should be critical toward these traditions and that politics should thus not be reduced to maintaining the legitimacy of existing traditions. Ethical and moral life is nonetheless rooted, according to Ricœur, in the ethos of particular historical communities or in their mores. He writes in Oneself as Another: By “institution,” we are to understand here the structure of living together as this belongs to a historical community—people, nation, region, and so forth—a structure irreducible to interpersonal relations and yet bound up with these …. What fundamentally characterizes the idea of institution is the bond of common mores and not that of constraining rules. In this, we are carried back to the ethos from which ethics takes its name.10

Following Ricœur’s line of thought, ethics, morals, and politics thus find their roots in communal life, shared feelings, and interpersonal relationships. In this respect, his idea of moral norms has close affinity with the idea, common to moral psychology, that moral norms should be understood on the basis of moral communities and interpersonal feelings. However, although human nature has a central place in Ricœur’s moral anthropology, ethical feelings should not simply be reduced to natural feelings for him. According to him, ethical feelings also have a historical and cultural dimension. For example, he refers to the biblical idea of the golden rule, which is defined in the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, and in the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel of Luke. He defines the golden rule as follows: “Do not do unto your neighbor what you would hate him to do to you.”11 This prohibition to harm others, which is historically rooted in Christian culture, expresses our basic ethical concern for others according to Ricœur. The golden rule is the expression of human’s natural tendency to care for others. In this regard, theories on evolution in analytical philosophy argue that the golden rule originates in evolutionary processes.12 These theories explain cultural-historical principles in terms of universal features of human nature,



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which find their origins in the history of evolution, rather than in relation to the different cultural-historical contexts in which these principles take shape. According to these theories, evolution promotes care for others as for oneself in that evolutionary processes promote mutual collaboration in groups, since such collaboration is advantageous for the survival of the species. In his discussion with Jean-Pierre Changeux, Ricœur also discusses the idea that the golden rule originates in evolution.13 Yet he points out that the original meaning of the golden rule was established in human history long before the origin of evolutionary biology. He agrees with Changeux that, from the strictly biological point of view, the golden rule “searches for its origin” in moral evolution. However, he also points at the limits of naturalism and that we should differentiate between biological discourse and philosophical-anthropological discourse. Indeed, explanation of human nature in the strict empirical sense implies making an abstraction of how human nature takes shape in history and in the context of our different cultures. Yet one important consequence of Ricœur’s understanding of moral life is that it presupposes the existence of universal moral norms. In fact, the central aim of his understanding of responsibility in Oneself as Another is to found universal moral norms on ethics, which find their roots in desire and natural feelings. In fact, the whole idea of his little ethics is to demonstrate that moral norms, in the Kantian sense of universal norms of reason, are based on what he understands as “the ethical aim” for the good life in relation to others, which he defines in line with Aristotle’s idea of friendship. As Ricœur contends, there exists no etymological difference between ethics and morality: “One comes from the Greek, the other from Latin; both refer to the intuitive idea of mores, with the twofold connotation, which I shall attempt to decompose, of that which is considered to be good and of that which imposes itself as obligatory.”14 According to him, we should nevertheless distinguish between ethics, referring to the Aristotelian heritage (which describes the estimation of that which is good), and morals, referring to the Kantian heritage (which prescribe that which is obligated).15 For Ricœur, ethics and morals describe two different sides of the same coin in that both describe the good life, and in that moral norms are an expression of our more basic ethical concern with the good life. In his words, “I reserve the term ‘ethics’ for the aim of an accomplished life.”16 This aim is essentially characterized by a “desire to live well with and for others in just institutions.”17 And, as he writes in his article “Éthique et morale,” ethics reflects “care”: “care for oneself, for others, care for institutions.”18 Further, “the ‘term’ morality” designates “the articulation of this aim in norms at once characterized by the claim of universality and by an effect of constraint.”19 Morality prescribes what we ought to do: it is a translation of our concern for the good life in relation to others into norms. This type of care implies

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friendly natural feelings of concern for others from which moral norms should be derived. One question is, however, whether the Kantian idea of universal moral norms is as compatible with the Aristotelian idea of desire, as Ricœur suggests. Indeed, for Kant moral norms imply duty, which conflicts with desire. And how does Ricœur’s conception of universal moral norms respond to the challenges of moral relativism? I will come back to these questions later. A second consequence of Ricœur’s idea of moral life is that it assumes the concepts of freedom and subjectivity. His hermeneutics posits the ontological existence of ipseity in relation to subjectivity for understanding responsibility and justice, even if it is only indirectly. In this regard, he introduces his notion of attestation in his hermeneutics of the self in Oneself as Another. According to him, “attestation” allows understanding the self’s “ability to act.”20 Attestation reflects his idea of truth proper to hermeneutics. This hermeneutics, which builds on analytical philosophy, implies belief in oneself (cf. his notion of aletheia). In other words, if Ricœur aims to avoid a self-foundational concept of the self, like Descartes’ ego cogito, or a total destruction of the ego, like Nietzsche’s, his idea of the self is “veritative,” and in that sense remains a posited truth that we cannot prove, but should believe. Ricœur writes: attestation, by which I intend to characterize the alethic (or veritative) mode of the style appropriate to the conjunction of analysis and reflection, to the recognition of the difference between selfhood and sameness, and to the unfolding of the dialectic of the self and the other—in short, appropriate to the hermeneutics of the self considered in its threefold structure. To my mind, attestation defines the sort of certainty that hermeneutics may claim, not only with respect to the epistemic exaltation of the cogito in Descartes, but also with respect to its humiliation in Nietzsche and his successors. Attestation may appear to require less than one and more than the other. In fact, compared to both of them, it too is properly atopos.21

Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, understanding how the self is capable of performing (responsible) actions ultimately implies belief in oneself. Yet Ricœur’s idea of attestation also implies, in my opinion, the assumption of the existence of freedom for understanding responsibility. In fact, he defines attestation along the lines of trust in one’s own freedom and capability to act. This is what he suggests when he defines “reliable attestation” as “credence” or “trust”: “trust in the power to say, in the power to do, in the power to recognize oneself as a character in a narrative, in the power, finally, to respond to accusation.”22 Certainly, according to Ricœur attestation differs from “doxa.” Yet it differs also from “episteme.”23 Rather than being an undeniable truth, an “ultimate and self-founding knowledge,” or the result of exact “science,” attestation implies belief in one’s own freedom to act, belief



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that one causes changes in the word, or that oneself is capable of (responsible) action.24 In this chapter, I will argue that moral psychology can explain the relation between the self, freedom, and responsibility in describing the empirical relation between natural feelings and agency. In this regard, moral psychology contributes to a moral anthropology that aims at defining what it means for the self to be the subject of moral responsibility and justice. Ricœur’s understanding of the self and of responsibility in light of the idea of attestation raises questions, in my opinion, about freedom being the condition for responsibility. Given that responsibility also reflects causal relations of actions, it is questionable to what extent responsibility implies freedom. For example, if narrative identity is the condition of responsibility, to what extent are humans in control of their narrative identities, so that they are responsible for their own life stories? Are these stories freely chosen or the product of our environment, moral community, personal education, etc.? Ricœur thus appears to be sympathetic with the idea, which theories in moral psychology and in moral anthropology defend, that moral norms are based on natural feelings and take different forms in different moral communities. However, he is also critical with regard to naturalism and reductionism, and points out the significance of historical understanding and interpretation for defining ethical and moral life. Further, Ricœur defines moral norms as universal imperatives of reason that correct human nature. In that respect, his understanding of moral norms differs from relativist theories that argue that moral norms are relative to different cultures. It is questionable, however, to what extent Ricœur’s understanding of universal moral norms is compatible with the idea that moral norms are expressions of communal feelings. In other words, the question is, to what extent does his argument for founding universal moral norms on the self’s concern for others demonstrate the significance of communal moral feelings for understanding responsibility? It is also questionable as to why the self is capable of freedom and responsibility. To both of these questions, as I will argue in the next section, recent moral theories in analytical philosophy provide answers. PETER F. STRAWSON AND THE SIGNIFICANCE OF MORAL PSYCHOLOGY One of the first philosophical texts to explicitly establish the significance of moral psychology for moral anthropology is Peter F. Strawson’s essay “Freedom and Resentment,” originally published in 1962.25 This essay meant a change in analytical philosophy. Whereas early analytical philosophy of language explains the language we use to identify physical bodies, contemporary analytical philosophy makes use of a range of other methods, such as

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empirical analysis, descriptive analysis, anthropological examination, etc. Moral theories in analytical philosophy understand the self, responsibility, and justice, for example, in terms of communal and cultural mores or in terms of natural feelings. Strawson’s essay was novel when it appeared in 1962 in that it gave impetus to this particular change. It was one of the first texts that applied a descriptive analysis of our moral psychology, that is, human’s natural moral makeup, in order to explain the empirical relation between the self and responsibility.26 Strawson’s essay approaches the problem of moral responsibility differently than his predecessor. Instead of focusing on linguistic analysis to explain the meaning of responsibility, this text aims to describe how practices of holding persons responsible relate to natural feelings such as indignation and praise. Theories in early analytical philosophy of language render no cognitive status to such feelings, as they make an abstraction, as I argued in chapter 1, of the idea of the self having experiences (of consciousness) as a subject. The significance of “Freedom and Resentment” is thus that it opened the way to a different understanding of the self, responsibility, and justice that is relevant for a feeling-based moral anthropology. In the following I will make a “Ricœurian” detour by way of analytical philosophy and aim to demonstrate that Strawson’s essay “Freedom and Resentment,” as well as other moral theories that find their roots in this essay, tells us something about what it means to actually be responsible as a self, in explaining that freedom and responsibility relate to natural feelings, which we experience as selves in moral communities and with which we interact. These theories explain that which Ricœur assumes with his notion of attestation, namely the relation between freedom and responsibility and what it means to be a self, capable as a subject of responsibility. In this regard, moral psychology and moral anthropology, which have become widespread in contemporary analytical philosophy as from the second half of the twentieth century offers a corrective to early analytical philosophy of language. Moreover, I will argue that recent moral theories in analytical philosophy challenge the idea, which Ricœur defends, that there exist universal moral norms in pointing at the cultural differences regarding morals. How does Strawson define responsibility? In “Freedom and Resentment,” Strawson explains that the self and responsibility should be understood, empirically, in relation to natural feelings. He does not discuss semantics in “Freedom and Resentment,” as he does in his analysis of ascription in Individuals. Yet, in “Freedom and Resentment,” he elaborates a “descriptive analysis” of our natural moral feelings.27 This means that he aims to explain responsibility by means of a description of such feelings, which are comprehensible through empirical observation, intuition, and common sense.



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In order to explain more exactly how the ideas of the self and of responsibility relate to natural feelings according to Strawson, it is helpful to note that he distinguishes between three kinds of feelings, which he calls reactive attitudes: personal reactive attitudes, moral reactive attitudes, and self-reactive attitudes. For him, reactive attitudes of the first kind are practices of holding others personally responsible for their good or ill intentions toward ourselves. He writes, “personal reactive attitudes” are essentially “reactions to the quality of other’s wills towards us as manifested in their behavior: to their good will or ill will or indifference or lack of concern.”28 In illustration of these attitudes, Strawson mentions such feelings as “gratitude, resentment, forgiveness, love and hurt feelings.”29 These attitudes or feelings express ways of holding others “personally responsible.” For example, it is possible to blame another person in feeling personal resentment for this person’s ill intentions. Or, in a more positive sense, personal reactive attitudes are personal ways of holding others responsible, in expressing, for example, personal gratitude for another’s good intentions. Strawson’s concept of personal reactive attitudes expresses the way in which human beings personally experience others as being responsible. For example, a person X can personally experience that another person Y is responsible for disrespect, because person Y performed an action that caused person X to feel offended. In this regard, Strawson’s concept of personal reactive attitudes expresses an intuitive, commonly understandable sense of responsibility that we can see in the behavior of others, and that differs from his semantic understanding of responsibility in the sense of ascription, which Ricœur recognizes in Strawson’s book Individuals. As I argued in the previous chapter, Strawson’s concept of ascription in Individuals expresses the basic logical meaning of the word responsibility in ordinary language. Humans use the concept of ascription to identify each other as the cause of actions. For example, we can say that John is responsible for giving that speech or that William is responsible for leaving open this door. Strawson’s idea of reactive attitudes in “Freedom and Resentment,” in its turn, describes the feelings human beings intuitively associate with the concept of responsibility in daily encounters. For instance, we associate feelings such as praise and blame with responsibility. Yet, clearly, Strawson’s concept of personal reactive attitudes does not explain the moral significance of responsibility. For example, if William feels personal resentment toward John for a promotion at work that William didn’t get, it does not follow that he also expresses a moral judgment or that this resentment is morally justified in some way. Strawson clarifies the moral significance of responsibility in defining a second type of reactive attitudes, which he calls moral reactive attitudes. According to Strawson, this type of reactive attitudes is “vicarious,” which implies that these attitudes are also

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“impersonal or disinterested or general.”30 This means that these attitudes are essentially “reactions to the qualities of other’s will, not toward ourselves, but towards others.”31 Whereas, for Strawson, personal reactive attitudes are ways of holding others personally responsible for a good or ill-intended action, moral reactive attitudes are their objective counterparts or attitudes by which humans express moral disapproval or approval about what others do to each other: “where one’s own interest and dignity are not involved … it is this impersonal or vicarious character of the attitude … which entitle it to the qualification ‘moral.’”32 These attitudes are, “the sympathetic,” “vicarious,” “impersonal,” “disinterested,” or “generalized analogues of the [personal] reactive attitudes.”33 Strawson mentions “moral indignation” and “moral disapprobation” as examples of moral reactive attitudes.34 More exactly, Strawson defines moral reactive attitudes in relation to communal moral feelings. These feelings are the basis for communal standards that define moral punishment and condemnation. According to him, explaining the “concept of moral responsibility” amounts to explaining the “bases of moral condemnation and punishment.”35 These practices of condemnation and punishment are efficient instruments of “policy, as methods of individual treatment and social control.”36 For Strawson, reactive attitudes are moral when they express standards and feelings that are attached to mores and social norms. Note that, in Strawson’s opinion, moral practices that regulate social behavior should be understood as actual “expressions of our moral attitudes and not merely devices we calculatingly employ for regulative purposes.”37 Further, he also stresses that these practices “do not merely exploit our natures, they express them.”38 Hence, his theory of moral responsibility is naturalistic, rather than behavioristic. Or, as Gary Watson puts it in his interpretation of Strawson: “In Strawson’s view … the idea (our idea) that we are responsible is to be understood by the practice, which itself is not a matter of holding some propositions to be true, but of expressing our concerns and our demands of our treatment of one another.”39 According to Strawson, practices of holding morally responsible are based on commonly shared moral standards for punishment and condemnation, which relate to natural feelings of moral praise and moral blame. He thus contends that moral responsibility finds its roots in “our human nature and our membership of human communities.”40 His answer to the question concerning what it means to be responsible can then be summarized as follows: We are responsible in that we hold each other responsible in communities by means of moral standards and natural feelings. Yet, to what extent does Strawson’s descriptive analysis of responsibility explain the relation between the ideas of the self and of responsibility? In “Freedom and Resentment,” he distinguishes a third kind of reactive



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attitudes, self-reactive attitudes, by which he introduces his idea of the self. According to him, “self-reactive attitudes” are “associated with demands on oneself for others.”41 More exactly, he mentions such feelings as “feeling bound or obliged; feeling compunction; feeling guilty or remorseful or at least responsible; and the more complicated phenomenon of shame.”42 ­Following Strawson’s line of reasoning, being responsible, as a self, amounts to holding oneself responsible toward others. He explains this practice of holding oneself responsible in referring to self-directed feelings, such as remorse, guilt, shame, etc. He thus applies moral psychology to explain what it means for the self to be responsible. He describes common feelings that we intuitively experience in ourselves and in the behavior of others as being related to responsibility. In this regard, he uses a descriptive analysis, in “Freedom and Resentment,” to explain the ideas of the self and of responsibility. Strawson’s concept of self-reactive attitudes suggests that the ideas of the self and of responsibility should be understood in relation to natural feelings. Yet, note that he remains nevertheless unclear about the exact moral significance of the self-reactive attitudes. In fact, whether or not these attitudes are moral in his opinion has been a matter of discussion in the secondary literature. For example, R. J. Wallace writes: “Strawson’s approach classifies guilt [being an example of a self-reactive attitude] as an exclusively non moral sentiment, since it involves the imposition on demands on oneself rather than on other parties.”43 As Wallace suggests, Strawson’s self-reactive attitudes are not moral by definition, because he explicitly defines the “moral” reactive attitudes as feelings directed toward others and, in that way distinguishes them from self-reactive attitudes, which are feelings directed toward oneself. Indeed, as Strawson defines the moral reactive attitudes, these attitudes are “reactions to the qualities of other’s will, not towards ourselves, but towards others” (original emphasis).44 Jonathan Bennett’s interpretation of Strawson’s understanding of self-reactive attitudes and moral reactive attitudes is similar: “Strawson’s use of the word ‘moral’ is unsatisfactory on any showing, for his ‘moral’ category positively excludes self-reactive attitudes.”45 If, for Strawson, self-reactive attitudes are by definition nonmoral, these attitudes can nevertheless be moral in principle. Both Wallace and Bennett confirm this.46 Similarly, Linda Ethell points out that, for Strawson, “both personal and moral reactive attitudes may also be self-directed.”47 In fact, according to Strawson, moral reactive attitudes are essentially “objective” ways of judging the moral value of the intentions of others. In that sense, these attitudes do not include personal feelings like resentment or love. Yet no essential conflict between self-reactive attitudes and moral reactive attitudes follows from this. As Strawson explains, essential to the “moral” reactive attitudes is that they are “generalized” or “vicarious” attitudes, which means that “they rest on … the demand for the manifestation of a reasonable degree

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of goodwill … towards all men.”48 Since moral reactive attitudes express a moral judgment, they apply for every member of the moral community in the same way, including oneself, to “all men,” as Strawson puts it. Following his line of reasoning, it is thus likely that judging oneself morally as member of the community would imply a mixture of feelings, both self-reactive attitudes and moral reactive attitudes. For example, it is easy to imagine that feelings of guilt express moral disapproval for having transgressed the standards of the moral community. In this regard, the self-reactive attitude of guilt coincides with (or at least relates to) the moral reactive attitude of moral disapproval. In sum, I think that Strawson’s idea of the reactive attitudes provides a descriptive-empirical answer to the question what it means, for the self, to be (morally) responsible. Following his line of reasoning, moral responsibility relates to existing communal moral standards that are expressions of shared moral feelings. Further, these standards and feelings are empirically observable in the behavior of others within communities. They are also intuitively comprehensible by means of introspection and common sense. Strawson suggests in this regard that self-reactive attitudes, like guilt and shame, play a part in being responsible as a self. Consequently, for Strawson, to be morally responsible as a self is to be held (or to hold oneself) morally responsible in accordance with the communal moral standards and sentiments. His descriptive analysis of responsibility in “Freedom and Resentment” marks the difference between self and other. This analysis employs moral psychology and describes those feelings that are significant for ascribing responsibility to others and to ourselves. The difference between the self, participating in a moral community, and the other doing so is marked by the variety of different moral feelings. For example, even though moral standards apply similarly for John, William, and myself, the difference between John being responsible and myself being responsible within moral community should be described by referring to a different kind of moral sentiments: I might feel guilty for transgressing a moral standard, while I might feel blame toward John for doing so. The fact that the ideas of the self and of responsibility find expression in the standards and natural feelings of particular communities means that these ideas have an empirical dimension. Yet, insofar as natural feelings, like shame or guilt, point at the state of our being responsible, those feelings should also be explained for defining a moral anthropology that examines what it means to be and to be held morally responsible within the context of particular cultures or communities. In defining his ideas of the self and of responsibility in light of natural feelings and communities, Strawson aims to explain the empirical-causal relation between freedom and responsibility. Indeed, in “Freedom and Resentment,” he takes position in the freewill debate in analytical philosophy, and aims to reconcile “the two main parties in the classical free will debate,” dominant



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at the time his essay first appeared in 1962: compatibilism and incompatibilism.49 Whereas compatibilists argue that physical determinism, the idea that the physical universe as we know it is causally determined, is “compatible” with holding people morally responsible, incompatibilists argue to the opposite position and contend that physical determinism is incompatible with the practice of holding responsible. In other words, according to incompatibilists physical determinism rules out that we can choose between different possible alternatives of actions (since our course of actions is a causal sequence of physical events in the universe), and therefore holding people morally responsible for their actions makes little sense or is even undesirable. In other words, for incompatibilists, metaphysical freedom is a condition for responsibility. For compatibilists, on the other hand, physical determinism and responsibility are compatible, and they do not believe that metaphysical freedom is a condition for holding people morally responsible. Strawson’s strategy consists in taking a “naturalistic turn” in the freewill debate, in arguing that responsibility does not imply the freedom to choose between different possible actions, but makes sense because responsibility is rooted in human nature and existing communities. This means that he attempts to bypass the possible “threat” of physical determinism for responsibility by arguing that the practice of responsibility is in fact based on alreadyexisting natural emotions and existing practices of holding responsible. He focuses on “what it is actually like to be involved in ordinary inter-personal relationships.”50 If it is possible to understand practices of holding people responsible as natural practices that relate to human feelings, then it does not matter whether or not our course of action is causally determined. In that case, responsibility is the result of our natural response toward agents, rather than the result of free will. If it is possible to understand responsibility on the basis of interpersonal relations, so Strawson reasons, it is possible to defend a compatibilist position, which also “eliminates” the classical freewill problem. Strawson’s descriptive analysis of moral feelings in “Freedom and Resentment” suggests that the ideas of the self and of responsibility should be understood in relation to empirical reality, but in a different sense than Ricœur defends in his interpretation of Strawson’s concept of ascription and of ordinary language philosophy. Strawson’s concept of ascription, as I argued in line with Ricœur in the previous chapter, demonstrates the basic sense in which humans identify each other as the cause of actions in using ordinary language. I argued that this concept of responsibility demonstrates the sense in which humans use the word responsibility to ascribe the cause of certain events and actions (e.g., “the storm was responsible for flooding the street” and “John is responsible firing the gun”). Strawson’s descriptive analysis of responsibility in “Freedom and Resentment,” however, explains the extent to which the concepts of the self and of responsibility relate to natural feelings

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that are commonly understandable and empirically observable in the behavior of others in communities. If we use concepts in ordinary language for identifying the empirical relation between agents and actions, then we express our understanding of commonly shared standards and natural feelings for identifying the empirical relation between agents and moral actions.51 It is therefore clear, I think, how moral psychology offers a corrective to early analytical philosophy of language with regard to the question of moral responsibility. If ordinary language philosophy can function as the empirical basis of moral anthropology in explaining how concepts relate to the physical body, as Ricœur argues in his discussion of semantics and pragmatics, moral psychology can add to moral anthropology by explaining how our human nature allows us to be capable of responsibility. Early analytical philosophy of language focuses on a linguistic analysis, yet not on a descriptive analysis of human nature, since that implies introspection and thus referring to an actual state of consciousness, which is only a “linguistic illusion” to use Strawson’s phrasing in Individuals. Whereas Strawson’s conceptual analysis of ascription in Individuals remains morally neutral and eliminates the difference between self and other, his descriptive analysis of responsibility in “Freedom and Resentment” thus both is moral and marks this difference. Given that Ricœur is correct, as I argued in the previous chapter, that Strawson makes an abstraction of morals and of the idea of ipseity in his semantic theory on responsibility, his descriptive theory on responsibility, however, does point to the ideas of the self and of responsibility. Being morally responsible as a self is different from being morally responsible as another, in that both ways of being morally responsible should be understood in relation to different moral feelings (e.g., there is a difference between feeling guilt and feeling blame). In this regard, Strawson does explain the idea of selfhood in relation to responsibility, even if he does not express this idea explicitly in terms of singularity or ipseity. If, for Ricœur, the proper task of analytical philosophy for moral anthropology is limited to conceptual analysis, moral psychology offers an alternate route to moral anthropology in defining a feeling-based ontology of responsibility. Further, there are two consequences with respect to Ricœur’s moral anthropology. Firstly, I think moral psychology can explain what Ricœur assumes in his moral anthropology, that is, the relation between subjectivity, freedom, and responsibility. More exactly, Strawson’s answer to the freewill problem is significant for explaining the relation between having a physical body, being a self, and being responsible as a capable subject. Explaining how we use language for identifying actions as causal chains, as analytical philosophy of language does, is one thing. Explaining why causality is compatible with responsibility or to what extent responsibility implies freedom, as moral psychology does, is another. As I argued previously, for Ricœur responsibility



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implies the assumption of freedom implied in his notion of attestation related to his idea of ipse-identity: believing that oneself is capable of being responsible. Strawson’s descriptive analysis of responsibility in “Freedom and Resentment,” however, provides an answer with regard to the freewill problem and helps explaining the ideas of the self and of responsibility empirically and why responsibility is compatible with causality. In other words, this analysis explains the ideas of the self and of responsibility without the assumption of freedom, the freedom to choose between different possible actions or the assumption that we are free and capable beings in general (cf. attestation). A second consequence of Strawson’s analysis for Ricœur’s moral anthropology is that it challenges the idea of the existence of universal moral norms. Strawson suggests that there is fundamental relation between communal moral practices and responsibility. For Ricœur as well, so I argued earlier, communal moral standards or mores are important for understanding responsibility. However, Strawson’s idea is quite radical. If we are indeed responsible insofar as we are held responsible in the particular context of a moral community, to what extent is responsibility then relative to the community, culture, or group that holds people responsible? The challenge of Strawson’s theory of moral responsibility is, in other words, how to respond to moral relativism. I will take up this challenge in the next chapter by arguing with Ricœur that the idea of ipseity allows defining a critical attitude toward moral relativism and toward communal mores: the self can apply practical wisdom regarding moral standards, and, therefore, being actually responsible is not quite the same as being held responsible by the community. Strawson’s descriptive analysis of responsibility thus contributes to our understanding of responsibility. Certainly, hermeneutics and moral psychology both have their own legitimacy and proper ways of discourse, and I am not contending that Strawson’s descriptive analysis of responsibility would contradict or should replace Ricœur’s idea of attestation or his idea of moral norms in principle. Indeed, the fact that there exists a causal relation between being responsible and human nature does not contradict Ricœur’s idea that belief in one’s capacities helps understanding the motivations of responsible actions or his idea that there are rational universal moral norms. However, as Strawson’s descriptive analysis of responsibility in “Freedom and Resentment” demonstrates, selfhood and responsibility relate to natural feelings, existing communities, and human nature, in general. Hence, Strawson’s empirical approach to responsibility is significant, I think, for understanding the relation between responsibility and the self in connection to empirical reality and the physical body, and therefore this analysis is significant for moral anthropology. This approach at least challenges Ricœur’s moral anthropology, and will allow questioning, as I will argue later, certain of its basic assumptions.

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MORAL COMMUNITIES AND MORAL AGENCY “Freedom and Resentment” inspired an entire debate on freedom and responsibility in analytical philosophy that spans over the past decades. It would surely expand the scope of this book to summarize this discussion. In this section, I will nevertheless continue the “Ricœurian detour” of the previous section and discuss several moral theories in analytical philosophy in order to elaborate the challenges of these theories for Ricœur’s moral anthropology, namely the challenge of an empirical concept of freedom and selfhood, as well as the challenge of defining universal moral norms. Being and holding responsible One important problem with Strawson’s theory of moral responsibility is the idea that being responsible equals being held responsible. One of the first texts to point to this problem is John Martin Fisher’s and Mark Ravizza’s Perspectives on Moral Responsibility. The authors question Strawson’s thesis that communal standards alone should determine what is actually morally responsible. Fisher and Ravizza write: The close connection that Strawson makes between being responsible and actually being the recipient of the reactive attitudes raises questions about the ability of his theory to criticize and revise existing practices. After all, once the actual application of the reactive attitudes is taken to be constitutive of moral responsibility, one wonders what should be said about situations in which communities hold people responsible who intuitively are not.52

According to Fisher and Ravizza, moral communities and their practices of holding people responsible can thus be seriously mistaken about the criteria for moral responsibility, and therefore Strawson’s thesis that being responsible equals holding responsible is problematic. Laura Wadell Ekstrom, to give another example, also questions Strawson’s understanding of moral responsibility. She agrees with Fisher.53 Ekstrom gives the example of the medieval community of Salem, in Massachusetts, where in the late 1600s “abnormal” women were accused of witchcraft and, therefore being held morally responsible for the misfortunes of other members of society. This example makes it clear that communal beliefs about moral responsibility do not necessarily cover that which is actually morally responsible. Like Fisher Ekstrom argues that control over one’s actions should be understood as the necessary criterion for being held morally responsible.54 Note that Ekstrom’s example also points out the problem of institutional justice and how practices of moral punishment can closely relate to sentiments of violence and of power over others. In a different context, Ricœur



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aims to understand the intrinsic relation between moral punishment on the one hand and violence and revenge on the other, in The Just and in Reflections on the Just.55 In part 3, I will discuss Ricœur’s understanding of this relation in detail, because understanding responsibility is, as I will argue, a matter not only of defining control and understanding what freedom means but also of understanding the ambiguous relation between justice and violence. I will aim to demonstrate that when understanding moral responsibility in relation to natural feelings and communal moral standards we should take into account the idea of evil in that, although they are necessary against violence, the possibility of violence always remains within moral systems and systems of justice. For this reason, justice relates to responsibility, in that it implies the responsibility of communities to regulate and minimize this particular kind of evil. This responsibility differs from the responsibility we ascribe to agents, because it is a collective responsibility, and not only the responsibility of the self as an agent in control. The relation between moral standards/feelings and responsibility is therefore also symbolic and not only empirical, insofar as that retribution and moral punishment are an institutionalized form of vengeance, and therefore symbolic expressions of human’s tendency toward personal vengeance. For now, it is clear that actually being morally responsible differs from only being held morally responsible. Actually being morally responsible amounts to actually being the subject of moral right or wrong, that is, to being the subject of actions that are in principle right or wrong according to moral standards. We can imagine, for instance, that we judge psychotic killers to be morally responsible for their murder, but not fully culpable or blamable because they are not in full control of their actions. In another sense, it is possible to imagine that psychotic killers are considered culpable for their actions, but not fully to blame, because of not being in full control of their actions. This is what the insanity plea used in courts attests to. Understanding moral responsibility implies, as Fisher and Ekstrom point out, defining what it means to actually be responsible. Understanding responsibility thus implies defining the concept of agency. Ricœur offers such an understanding when he elaborates in Oneself as Another on what it means to be the subject of moral imputation and what it means to perform ethical and moral actions in the context of just institutions. As will become clear later, Ricœur’s idea of ethical and moral life is salient for understanding responsibility and justice. However, moral agency also implies, as Fisher and Ekstrom point out, freedom, which Ricœur assumes in his moral anthropology. Hence, the task of moral psychology is to describe the relation between free will and moral responsibility by means of a descriptive analysis of our moral nature. Empirical analysis, or biological and neurological information, might assist in this task. Several recent moral theories, for example,

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examine the relation between the brain on the one hand and free will and responsibility on the other.56 Indeed, if we would simply be responsible because we are held responsible by the moral standards that our community demands of us to live up to, then responsibility would imply no freedom whatsoever. On the contrary, in that scenario these standards impose themselves as absolute obligations or judgments that disregard human freedom. Yet, that would be problematic because it would be impossible to revise existing practices of holding responsible when those are mistaken, corrupt, or unjust. Fisher and Ekstrom search to define free will, or the capacity to choose between different possible actions, for understanding agency and moral responsibility. Clearly, they make a point in demonstrating that being morally responsible implies control to some extent, and that being morally responsible does not follow only from the fact of being held morally responsible. The women in Salem were clearly not responsible for the misfortunes of their fellow members of community, because they were not in control of these misfortunes and were the victims of misogyny. However, even though Fisher, Ravizza, and Ekstrom make a salient point, I think that their critiques do not jeopardize Strawson’s main argument. This argument being that moral responsibility, or at least practices of moral punishment and of holding morally responsible, are in fact expressions of concrete communal feelings and standards. The fact that existing practices of moral punishment possibly amount to violence and even injustice does not exclude that these practices are the concrete physical criteria for what we consider as morally responsible. Ekstrom’s example of witchcraft appears to illustrate only an exceptional case of malfunctioning practices of moral punishment, which are in that sense not representative of practices of holding morally responsible. Note that Strawson himself already suggests that there are exceptions to our natural reactive attitudes. He mentions mental illness as an example of such exceptions. When a person is “psychologically abnormal,” for example, this person’s actions and intentions are met with an “objective attitude,” which implies a suspension of the personal reactive attitudes, like resentment.57 Strawson himself however makes clear that making exceptions to reactive attitudes is natural itself, and not the result of a “theoretical conviction.”58 The importance of understanding the relation between the moral agent and practices of holding people responsible becomes clearer when considering Michael McKenna’s Conversation and Responsibility.59 According to McKenna, there is indeed a fundamental difference between being morally responsible and holding morally responsible. He questions, however, whether the very idea of being morally responsible would have any significance at all if not referring to actual communal practices of imputation, punishment, praise, blame, etc.60



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McKenna writes: A person unable to grasp these demands [i.e., the demands of the moral community], unable to appreciate instances of praise and blame, and unable to see how excusing considerations function, as well as what indictment and punishment are, the role of forgiveness, and so on, could not be a morally responsible agent, nor could she be morally responsible for what she does.61

McKenna’s point is that morality functions like a language game, so that agents can only be morally responsible, act in morally correct and incorrect ways, when they are capable of understanding the rules of the language game that constitutes the moral value system of a particular community, that is, the commonly shared moral feelings, standards, values, etc. Note that Ricœur’s idea that moral responsibility depends on moral speech acts is similar. McKenna further combines moral psychology and philosophy of language. According to McKenna, being responsible is fundamentally prior to being held responsible, in that to hold someone responsible is meant to be a response to someone who is also actually responsible. Nevertheless, for McKenna, our practices of holding people morally responsible renders meaning to our being morally responsible, in that to be a morally responsible agent is only possible for someone who understands and participates in a community in which moral values, demands, feelings, etc., are shared. Thus, responsibility and justice closely relate to the particular community in which they should be understood. It is in the context of a concrete interaction between the moral agent and the moral community that freedom, responsibility, and justice should be understood. An interesting anthropological theory in this respect is Tamler Sommers’ Relative Justice. According to him, moral responsibility is culturally relative, since moral feelings of praise and blame are culturally determined.62 He finds inspiration for his theory in anthropologist Ruth Benedict’s distinction between shame and guilt cultures. For example, Sommers refers to the shooting incident at Virginia Tech University in 2007, for which a Korean senior at that university was responsible.63 After the shooting, a reporter went on the streets to interview Korean-Americans in Los Angeles. One of the people interviewed was a man who declared to feel ashamed that a fellow Korean was responsible for the shooting. The American reporter in her turn was astonished by this declaration, and could not understand why someone who was not in control of an action would feel responsible for it. Similarly, Dong Sun Lim, the founder of the Oriental Mission Church in Koreatown stated later: “All Koreans in South Korea—as well as here—must bow their heads and apologize to the people of America.”64 Further, SouthKorean Ambassador, Lee Taesik, advised Korean Americans to be ashamed

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and to repent for the shooting. As Sommers points out, these reactions seem strange to members of Western cultures, who find it difficult to understand why one would feel ashamed and even responsible for something that one did not control. According to Sommers, this example illustrates how moral responsibility is relative to different cultures. Whereas Western cultures are typically guilt-oriented cultures, Eastern cultures are generally shame oriented. This means that in Western cultures it is commonly believed that it is unjustified to hold people morally responsible for actions that they do not control. The reason is that Western people are generally focused on individual guilt. In Eastern cultures, on the other hand, people commonly believe that moral responsibility is related to communal bond and shame. In these cultures, people feel ashamed for the wrongdoing, even when they do not control it, and which fellow members of the community perform. Sommers’ theory shows an example of how moral agency and control are expressions of commonly shared moral feelings within particular cultural communities. At the same time, this example reveals, in my opinion, a fundamental problem concerning both the question of moral agency and the question of moral diversity. If our practices of holding people morally responsible are indeed culturally relative, how then is it possible to justify these practices in order to determine what it means to actually be morally responsible? Sommers’ answer to this question would be that we cannot find such justification, at least not universally. Yet in my opinion Ricœur’s moral anthropology shows that cultural diversity regarding morals does not necessarily imply moral relativism. I will argue later that it is possible to find shared intuitions and objective, albeit not universal, truths about moral agency, responsibility, and justice across the different cultures. The example of the shooting incident at Virginia Tech illustrates the difficulty of finding such objective criteria. The disagreement between Koreans and Americans on whether or not fellow Koreans were coresponsible for the shooting reveals this difficulty. The problem is, in other words, to what extent it is possible to understand justice in moral systems, in our multicultural society in which moral standards seem to be relative. I will argue more exactly, in drawing on Ricœur’s moral anthropology, that we should approach the issue of justice by means of a phenomenological-hermeneutical analysis of the relation between self and other. Within this relation the self can apply practical wisdom and search by means of a critical dialogue with others for shared sensibilities regarding moral norms. The narrative, as I will argue with Ricœur, offers a medium to communicate and find common ground between different cultural and moral intuitions. I think McKenna’s and Sommers’ theories on responsibility nevertheless demonstrate the significance of moral psychology for moral anthropology. These theories demonstrate that the idea of moral agency relates to empirical



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reality. In pointing at the empirical reality of the relation between agency and responsibility, they explain responsibility without the assumption of freedom. In other words, they demonstrate that we can explain responsibility without Ricœur’s idea of attestation. However, McKenna’s and Sommers’ theories on responsibility also make an abstraction of our lived experiences of being responsible as a self and turn justice into an arbitrary idea. Indeed, if these theories demonstrate that the standards for moral agency, responsibility, and justice differ cross-culturally, they leave open the question what it actually means to be a moral agent, and to act responsible as a self within the context of a particular moral culture. Moreover, if there are no universal norms, then it is important to question how we can understand events of evil, like the shooting at Virginia Tech, and how evil relates to responsibility and to justice. What does evil mean and how does is call for justice and responsibility? The intention of this book is to show, in line with Ricœur, that understanding responsibility, evil, and justice implies a hermeneutical understanding of the singularity of lived existence: in relation to ipseity, alterity, and narrativity. For that reason, radical reductionism, naturalism, and moral relativism will ultimately be unsatisfactory for understanding moral anthropology. Gary Watson’s self-based theory of moral agency In this subsection I argue that Gary Watson’s idea of the self allows for a better understanding of the relation between the moral agent and the moral community and, in that sense, how moral psychology explains the empirical basis of moral anthropology. Watson’s theory is particularly significant, both because it defends Strawson’s idea that responsibility is an expression of specific moral communities and because it examines the relation between responsibility and selfhood. In his article “Two Faces of Responsibility,” Watson argues that being morally responsible depends on the particular ethical self that one is.65 Watson distinguishes between two meanings of responsibility that are linked together: responsibility for the self (what he calls “attributability” or “the aretaic face of responsibility”) on the one hand, and responsibility in the moral sense of holding people to certain moral requirements in a social context (what he calls “moral accountability”).66 Watson specifies the aretaic face of responsibility in referring to Aristotle and defines it more precisely as “our concern with the good human life” or our “moral character,” constituted by our “purposes, ends, choices, concerns, cares, attachments, and commitments.”67 Following Watson’s line of reasoning, building a personal character in making communal virtues one’s own allows being responsible as a self in a concrete community. Watson’s idea is thus that being responsible in a particular community implies being a self. Furthermore, for Watson being concerned with the good life or having a moral character makes how one controls one’s actions, and

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how the community holds one morally responsible based on this character. In another article, “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil,” Watson elaborates this idea in discussing Strawson’s idea of reactive attitudes and a case study.68 Watson refers to the case of Robert Harris, who committed double homicide in the late 1970s in San Diego. Watson cites at length from Miles Corwin’s article about Harris’ case, which appeared in the edition of May 16, 1982, in the Los Angeles Times. For the purposes of my argument I will not analyze Harris’ case in detail here (I will return to it several times later on). I only use the case to illustrate Watson’s idea of character. First of all, it is important to note that, as Watson points out, Harris is not a psychopath. It is not so much the case that Harris was incapable of feeling sympathy for his victims. Quite the contrary, Corwin reports that Harris was initially sensitive to human feelings, but deliberately acts to rebel against the moral community.69 According to Watson, Harris rejects to be part of his moral community and interacts with the commonly shared moral feelings is because he was himself the victim of childhood abuse. Harris’ personal history left an imprint on his moral character. How Watson acted as a moral agent is the result of how he has interacted with his personal history. During his childhood and adolescent years, Harris’s environment acted violently toward him, so that he became “incapacitated for ordinary interpersonal relationships.”70 Watson remarks that typical reactions to Harris’ case are mixed. On the one hand, some reactions were against exempting him of moral responsibility. The article reports that people from the moral community morally blamed Harris—who was sentenced to death in the Californian justice system at that time. Corwin’s report describes that common reactions to Watson also included, on the other hand, sympathy for him being the victim of his personal history. In short, Watson’s example illustrates how practices of holding people morally responsible are influenced by the perception of the moral characters of these people within the context of a particular moral community, yet that there also exists a moral “basis” for understanding moral agency, which we should relate to the ideas of character and of selfhood. Although every self has a proper moral character depending on his or her own interaction with the moral community, it does not follow that there are no shared characteristics or moral feelings between different selves. I think Watson’s theory of responsibility explains, empirically, how agents perform their actions in the context of particular communities and moral value systems. This theory demonstrates that the ideas of the self and of responsibility should be understood empirically in that responsibility is an expression of the feelings, standards, and norms of particular moral communities. We intuitively understand and observe these feelings in the behavior of the members of the moral community. In this regard, Corwin’s report on



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Harris attests to the practices of holding responsible in Harris’ communities. Moreover, the ideas of the self and of responsibility should be understood in relation to the interaction between one singular identity, a self, and the moral community. In this regard, Harris has a singular psychological profile, which relates to his personal identity, to which Corwin’s report also attests. According to Watson, the agent’s control over his or her action then is the result of what Watson calls “consent.”71 This means that control depends on the particular self that one is and one’s capacity to give permission to let one’s former circumstances determine one’s actions. Depending on the self’s character this might also mean that the self is exempted (completely or to a certain extent) from responsibility. In the case of Harris, it is clear that he was the victim of his childhood. Yet he was also capable of controlling and deliberately performing his actions. Hence the mixed feelings of Harris’ community. Being a moral self, and having a personal identity, is then the ontological criterion for the justification of practices of holding people morally responsible. Watson’s theory shows that agency is neither a universal nor a radically relativistic concept, but should be understood in light of the idea of the self that interacts with a concrete moral community. Moral agency is thus the result of one’s moral character, which, in its turn, is the result of interaction with one’s personal history in a moral community. One might of course object that the very idea of selfhood is similar to that of individual guilt, an expression of Western “egological” culture in particular, and that the idea of moral character finds its root in Ancient Greek philosophy. Further, the idea of singularity, which I aim to put at the center of the understanding of responsibility seems an expression of Western European philosophy in that it is a concept of phenomenology and hermeneutics, which found their origin in Husserl’s and Heidegger’s philosophies at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet the idea of singularity allows defining something humans have in common, without claiming this to be an absolute universal feature. Indeed, this idea points at the exceptional character of human existence. Our existence is singular. No two lives are identical. There is no one universal way of existence, no absolute way of taking control and being a moral agent. Yet this singularity is what we have in common. Even if selfhood is a typically Western idea, it still follows that the other’s existence is singular and thus different from that of oneself. Within the context of the singularity and over the different cultures we can thus also search, as I will do in line with Ricœur and Levinas, for common intuitions about morality and for a shared basis for moral anthropology. Yet, what is the significance of moral psychology in relation to hermeneutics? After all, moral psychology and hermeneutics are two distinct fields that have their own proper discourse. Whereas moral psychology describes and analyzes the relation between natural feelings and (im)moral behavior, like

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Harris,’ hermeneutics offers comprehension of lived experiences, texts, and symbols that might help understand moral life. However, in essence Ricœur’s and Watson’s theories of moral responsibility do not exclude each other, at least in that they both define the self on the basis of the idea of having a personal identity, within the context of the community’s ethos, and in relation to certain moral obligations and norms that define responsibility. I think moreover that Watson’s analysis of responsibility adds to Ricœur’s hermeneutical moral anthropology, at least insofar as this anthropology aims to understand the singularity of being a self in relation to empirical reality. According to Ricœur, we use ordinary language to assign responsibility to agents. Yet the practice of assigning responsibility to selves appears to imply something else than knowing the rules for the use of the concept “responsibility.” Indeed, how do we know whether or not a self is responsible or acted freely and intentionally when we are unaware of his or her psychological profile? In order to assign responsibility to a self in a concrete situation, we should trace back this profile. For example, Robert Harris’ psychological history reveals the extent to which he is responsible for the murders he committed. The lack of affection during his childhood is a factor we should consider in assigning responsibility to him. In this regard, Watson’s theory on responsibility does not contradict Ricœur’s, but it does reveal an essential feature of the relation between selfhood, freedom, and responsibility, and therefore is significant for moral anthropology. I will draw four conclusions from my examination of moral feelings in this chapter. First of all, moral responsibility is, as I have been defending, an expression of moral communities in that understanding how moral responsibility works amounts to understanding the moral feelings, values, standards, and norms of particular culturally located communities. Secondly, the fact that moral practices are expressions of different cultures makes it difficult to define universal criteria for moral agency or control. Thirdly, in order to understand moral agency and control, it is helpful to take into account the concept of the self, as both Watson and Ricœur understand it in their own proper ways, in the sense of the historical moral character located within a particular moral community, but also in relation to the idea of singularity, as I have defended. Watson’s concept of the self shows, as I have argued, that agency depends on the singular psychological self that one is, and how one reacts to this self. Finally, it follows that Watson’s theory of the moral self answers the question, from an empirical point of view, what it means for a self to be morally responsible: to be morally responsible is to have a moral character, culturally and historically located, that allows one to interact with the moral community’s shared moral feelings, values, and standards. Being a moral self is in that sense an empirical and ontological condition for being held morally responsible within moral community.



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NOTES 1. Martha C. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought. The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 141. 2. Jean-Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricœur, What Makes Us Think? A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature and the Brain, trans. M.B. DeBevoise (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000), 216. 3. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 180ff. 4. Changeux and Ricoeur, What Makes Us Think? 216. 5. Ibid., 218. 6. Paul Ricœur, Reflections on the Just, trans. David Pellauer (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2007), 49. 7. Ibid., 48. 8. Ricœur, From Text to Action, 125ff. 9. Ibid., 126. 10. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 194. 11. Ibid., 219. 12. Christopher Boehm, “How the Golden Rule can Lead to Reproductive Success: A New Selection Basis for Alexander’s “Indirect Reciprocity,” In: The Golden Rule. Analytical Perspectives, eds. Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton (Lanham, MD: University Press of America), 151–77. 13. Changeux and Ricœur, What Makes Us Think? 191ff. 14. Ibid., 170. 15. For an elaborate analysis of the relation between Ricœur and Aristotle, see Gaelle Fiasse, L’autre et l’amitié chez Aristote et Paul Ricœur (Leuven: Peeters, 2006). 16. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 239. 17. Ibid. 18. Paul Ricœur, “Éthique et morale,” Revue de l’institut catholique de Paris 72: 132. 19. Ricœur’s thesis in his “little ethics” is threefold: (1) To show that moral norms are based on our ethical desire for the good life, (2) that these norms are nevertheless have their function in prohibiting evil, (3) that the singularity of certain ethical situations requires a “recourse” to the ethical aim, because simply applying the norm creates a conflict in these situation. See Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 170. 20. See Ricœur, The Just, 23–24 for the quote. See Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 88–112, 299–302 for his idea of attestation. 21. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 21. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25. Peter F. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” In: Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (London and New York: Routledge, 2008). Originally published in Proceedings of the British Academy 48: 1–25 [1962]. 26. Michael McKenna and Paul Russell, Free Will and the Reactive Attitudes. Perspectives on P.F. Strawson’s Freedom and Resentment (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008), 9.

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27. Ibid., 5. 28. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” 15. 29. Ibid., 5. 30. Ibid., 15. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid., 5. 35. Ibid., 22. 36. Ibid. In this sense, Strawson ultimately agrees with the “compatibilist” accounts in the so-called “free-will debate,” according to which people are actually morally responsible, even despite the fact of physical determinism, in that it is justified to hold them responsible by means of the existing practices of moral punishment and condemnation common to moral societies. 37. Ibid., 27. 38. Ibid. 39. Gary Watson, Gary, “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil,” In: Agency and Answerability (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 222. 40. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” 17. 41. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” 16. 42. Ibid. 43. R. Jay Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 35. 44. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” 15. 45. Jonathan Bennett, “Accountability II” In: Free Will and the Reactive attitudes, 64. 46. Wallace, Responsibility and the Moral Sentiments, 35; Bennett, “Accountability II,” 64. 47. Ethell, Narrative Identity and Personal Responsibility, 203. 48. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” 16. 49. McKenna and Russell, Free Will and the Reactive Attitudes, 5. 50. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” 7. 51. The extent to which Ricœur was familiar with Strawson’s theory in “Freedom and Resentment” is unclear. In fact, Ricœur owned a copy of “Freedom and Resentment,” which can be consulted in his former personal library at the Fonds Ricœur in Paris. Yet, surprisingly Ricœur does not refer to this text in his analysis of responsibility in Oneself as Another. 52. John Martin Fisher and Mark Ravizza, Perspectives on Moral Responsibility (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1993), 16. 53. Laura Waddell Ekstrom, Free Will: A Philosophical Study (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000), 148. 54. Although Fisher and Ekstrom agree on their criticism of Strawson, they both have their own ideas of control. Ekstrom defends an incompatibilist position in the free will debate. According to her, free will is not compatible with physical determinism, and the possibility to choose between different alternative possible actions is



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a condition for an agent’s moral responsibility. Fisher, on the contrary, argues that physical determinism is compatible with moral responsibility (he agrees on this point with Strawson), and that the kind of control that is required for moral responsibility is compatible with physical determinism. An agent that is in control, for Fisher, is an agent capable of responding to reasons for acting. See John Martin Fisher, The Metaphysics of Free Will: An Essay on Control (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994), 178–183. 55. Ricœur, The Just, 127–132. 56. See, for example, Mele, Surrounding Free Will. See also Clarke, McKenna and Smith, The Nature of Moral Responsibility. 57. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” 9–10. 58. Ibid., 14. 59. McKenna, Conversation and Responsibility. 60. Similarly, Paul Russell remarks in response of Smith that the very idea of culpability would make no sense if not somehow connected to blame. According to him, judging someone to be culpable is already blaming this person, at least to some extent. Russell’s point is that it would make little sense to continue judging people to be morally culpable if people were unable to understand any blame at all. That is, suppose we would live in a world in which there would be no blame, then it would surely be odd to continue to hold people morally responsible. See Paul Russell, “Moral Sense and the Foundations of Responsibility,” In: The Oxford Handbook of Free Will, ed. Robert Kane (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, second edition). 61. See, McKenna, Conversation and Responsibility, ch. 5, loc. 731, par. 1. ­McKenna defends what he calls a “conversational theory” of moral responsibility based on Grice’s theory of language. According to McKenna, a person being morally responsible is the result of this person’s proper understanding of the moral standards of a community which holds the person morally responsible (Intro., loc. 108, par. 1). In McKenna’s opinion, a morally responsible agent is thus like “the competent speaker of a language,” who is able to understand not only the semantic content of the language, but also the pragmatic conventions of dialogue. Similarly, a morally responsible agent, for McKenna, is then someone who understands the content of moral conventions within the community by which its members hold each other responsible (e.g., to shove someone out of ill intentions is wrong and evokes reactions of blame). Note the similarities with Ricœur’s discussion of H.L.A. Hart’s pragmatic theory of responsibility. A morally responsible agent is capable of acting according to these conventions and can, consequently, be held morally responsible for these actions (ch. 4, loc. 1223, par. 2ff.). 62. See Sommers, Relative Justice. Sommers argues in favor of the thesis that there is no universal way of understanding moral responsibility. According to Sommers, it is impossible to determine universal conditions for justly assigning what is to be praised and blamed. As Sommers sees it, there are no universally shared intuitions among human beings about what is to be praised and what is to be blamed, and such intuitions are to be understood cross-culturally. Sommers gives the example of the relation between shame and moral responsibility. He adopts the distinction between guilt cultures (i.e., Western societies) and shame cultures (i.e., Eastern societies) that was first introduced by the anthropologist Ruth Benedict in her book The Chrysanthemum

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and the Sword. Whereas in guilt cultures people hold themselves morally responsible (i.e., morally blame themselves) on the basis of a sense of individual guilt they experience for having done something wrong, in shame cultures people feel responsible because their actions cause shame to the community. For example, people who commit wrongdoing will less likely hold themselves morally responsible for their acts in a shame culture when it remains undetected by society and consequently causes no shame to the community. In a guilt culture, on the contrary, people will more likely hold themselves responsible for their wrongdoings (because they feel guilty of wrongdoing) despite the fact whether the rest of the community discovers their actions (63–83). 63. Ibid., 2–3. 64. Ibid., 1. 65. Gary Watson, “Two Faces of Responsibility,” In: Agency and Answerability, 260–88. 66. Ibid., 263–4. 67. Ibid., 285–6. 68. Watson, “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil,” 232. 69. Ibid., 238. 70. Ibid., 242. 71. Ibid., 249.

Chapter 3

Lived Existence and the Motives of Moral Life

This chapter examines the extent to which Ricœur’s moral anthropology demonstrates the significance of the idea of a singular lived existence for understanding responsibility and justice. I will focus primarily on Oneself as Another in which Ricœur elaborates his idea of the self in relation to the ideas of responsibility and justice. If recent moral theories in analytical philosophy are correct that the ideas of the self, responsibility, and justice should be understood empirically, in relation to natural feelings, what is the significance then of Ricœur’s idea of understanding responsibility in light of a hermeneutical-phenomenological analysis of the self’s lived existence? In order to answer this question, I will aim to defend a double hypothesis. On the one hand, I will defend the thesis (in the first section) that Ricœur’s idea of understanding moral life in relation to ipseity does not lose momentum in light of recent moral theories in analytical philosophy. On the contrary, ipseity is particularly significant for understanding responsibility and justice in relation to human nature and natural feelings. More exactly, Ricœur’s ideas of self-esteem, of solicitude, and of practical wisdom demonstrate that being responsible and understanding justice implies being a self and living through concrete lived existence. In living through experiences of self-esteem, care for others, and practical wisdom, we come to learn, as Ricœur demonstrates, the meaning of natural feelings, like sympathy, and the motivations for responsibility and justice. For example, we learn the meaning of being sympathetic with others as we live through moments with others that underscore the importance of our solidarity toward them. Selfhood is thus the result not only of the interaction of natural feelings, but also of understanding those feelings. Responsibility and justice should therefore not be reduced to naturalistic concepts. For that reason, hermeneutical phenomenology, and its interpretation of lived existence, is salient for moral anthropology. 55

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Next, I will defend the thesis (in the second section) that explaining the ideas of the self, responsibility, and justice in relation to natural feelings nevertheless invites to a critical reconsideration of Ricœur’s understanding of moral norms in Oneself as Another. I will argue that moral norms should be understood as communal standards that relate to natural feelings, rather than as universal correctives of human nature. Certainly, in his little ethics in Oneself as Another, he also understands moral norms on the basis of human nature and communal standards (cf. Ricœur’s “Aristotelian” approach to ethics). More exactly, he understands his ideas of the self and of responsibility in relation to his idea of ethical life, which is rooted in desire and communal mores. Moreover, when Ricœur argues in Oneself as Another that moral norms are universal correctives of our fallible nature, he also insists that these norms do not apply universally, that is, to all situations in the same way. For him, these norms are formal guiding rules, which the self should critically apply by means of practical wisdom, inspired by natural feelings and mores. Yet I will argue that moral norms should not be understood as universal imperatives, even if only in principle, because—as the previous chapter also aimed to show—these norms relate to different communities that have different standards and feelings. I will argue that moral norms are universal only in a purely formal sense, but that it is nevertheless problematic to derive from these formal norms actual universal principles of action. NATURAL FEELINGS AND IPSEITY Self-esteem Ricœur defends the idea that ethical and moral life relate to human nature and to the physical body. Yet he also shows that responsibility and justice should be understood in relation to the idea of ipseity, which implies referring to the nonempirical sphere of our singular lived existence. In Ricœur’s opinion, ethical action relates in particular to the experience of self-esteem. He writes in Oneself as Another, “Self-esteem does … draw its initial meaning from the reflexive movement to which the evaluation of certain actions judged to be good are carried back to the author of these actions.”1 In other words, selfesteem amounts to estimating oneself as being worthy of doing something good. Ricœur’s idea of the ethical aim finds its concrete articulation in such reflection: “self-esteem is … the reflexive expression of the aim of the good life.”2 The self’s aim for the good life is motivated by the esteem the self gets for performing good actions. Ricœur’s idea of self-esteem demonstrates, in my opinion, the significance of the idea of ipseity for understanding responsibility and justice. A lack of



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self-esteem often results in the incapacity to take responsibility and to act just. It is significant to note that in the case of Robert Harris, which I discussed in the previous chapter, Harris’ tendency toward evil was rooted in his personal history of ill treatment, and lack of recognition of others, as well as lack of self-recognition.3 The case of Harris shows that a loss of self-esteem or a failing self-appreciation can result in apathy toward others, and indifference with regard to responsibilities. In Miles Corwin’s report of the Harris case in the Los Angeles Times, ­Harris’ brother testifies how he witnessed Harris’ indifference toward his victims, and his state of being in a “lighthearted mood” in the immediate aftermath of the killings.4 Moreover, one of Harris’ inmates on death row states in that report: “He [Harris] doesn’t care about life, he doesn’t care about others, he doesn’t care about himself.”5 “He acted like a man who did not care about anything. His cell was filthy, Mroczko [the inmate who reported] said, and clothes, trash, tobacco and magazines were scattered on the floor. He wore the same clothes every day and had little interest in showers. Harris spent his days watching television in his cell, occasionally reading a Western novel.”6 Apparently, Harris could not care less about moral values, others, or himself. Harris’ case should not only be read as a report that provides empirical data for moral psychology, and for explaining how moral sentiments relate to our practices of holding responsible. This case should also be seen as a narrative that recounts the singular life of a self, Robert Harris, and thus illustrates what it means to be responsible, or, in Harris’ case, what it means to be incapable of responsibility and justice. Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, narratives tell us something about the motivations of responsibility, and hermeneutical interpretation of texts aid in an anthropology that examines human (moral) action. Paul Auster’s novel Travels in the Scriptorium is another example of a narrative that illustrates how self-esteem influences responsibility.7 The book tells the story of a man who wakes up one day and finds himself imprisoned. Deprived of all memory, the man does not know where he is, nor why he is there. As the story progresses, he is morally accused, blamed, and held morally responsible for having let people suffer, although he is not informed, nor is the reader, in what particular way. Auster’s character clearly directs his concerns toward his own minor problems and banalities. Auster writes: The things that concern him most. Where he is, for example. Whether he is allowed to walk in the park without supervision. Where the closet is, if indeed there is a closet, and why he hasn’t been able to find it. Not to mention the eternal enigma of the door—and whether it is locked from the outside or not.8

Even though, unlike the Harris case, Auster’s story is fictional and never reveals the exact criminal acts committed by the main character so that the

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reader cannot form a fair judgment about their seriousness, it is clear that the main character lacks self-esteem, commitment, and the will to take responsibility for his actions. The man has no concern for what he is blamed for, and whether it is justified or not. Indeed, Auster’s story demonstrates, even more so than the Harris case, the significance of taking into account the self’s lived existence for understanding responsibility. The fact that Auster’s main character is held responsible by the persons who imprison him and who express that their moral indignation toward him does not make him actually responsible. On the contrary, Auster’s story demonstrates that the practice of holding responsible risks becoming an absurdity when we are unaware of the narrative or life story of the agents we hold responsibility. Holding people responsible is not simply an expression of our feelings, but implies an understanding of the lives of those we hold responsible. In this regard, it is the fictional character of Auster’s story that allows understanding the significance of responsibility. The self’s personal history is not only important for knowing the extent to which the self can be held responsible. Moreover, Auster’s story also demonstrates the significance of lived existence, that is, of narrating one’s own life story, for understanding the meaning of responsibility. For example, in experiencing self-esteem and care for others, one is capable of accepting responsibility (all of which Harris failed to do). And in living the experience of being accused and being blamed does one come to know what it means to be held responsible. Referring to the idea of the singularity of our lived existence is thus significant for understanding responsibility. Corwin’s report and Auster’s story illustrate the significance of hermeneutics for understanding responsibility and justice. Corwin’s report is a case study that illustrates the empirical relation between selves, responsibility, moral communities, and justice systems. As I aimed to show in the previous chapter, Watson uses this case in “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil” and demonstrates that knowledge of the personal history of selves is important for holding these selves responsible. For example, knowledge of Harris’ childhood abuse helps determining the extent to which he should be held morally responsible for his actions. Yet Harris’ story and Auster’s novel are also narratives, and Ricœur’s idea of self-esteem allows for a hermeneutical interpretation of these narratives, that is, an interpretation of the text in order to understand human action and moral life. In this regard, Corwin and Auster’s stories are texts through which we understand Ricœur’s idea that being responsible and acting in the context of just institutions implies being capable of self-esteem. One might question, of course, the extent to which self-esteem amounts to an experience that motivates being responsible, and not just equals, for example natural feelings that find expression in particular in Western culture



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that focuses on individuality. It is questionable, in other words, whether selfesteem and ipseity define fundamental ontological characteristics of our capability to perform moral actions or rather express an idea of responsibility that relates to Western mores. Yet I think the idea of singularity has the advantage that it allows understanding the motivations of being responsible without claiming these motivations to be universal. Indeed, the singular is opposed to the universal, and in contending that understanding responsibility and justice takes place within the context of singular lived existence, I am stressing with Ricœur that this understanding is no absolute universal process, but occurs differently for different selves, depending on their singular existences and encounters with different narratives. Thus, I conceive of Ricœur’s idea of self-esteem as an illustration of how being responsible and justice implies ipseity, rather than as a universal characteristic of moral agency or a universal condition of free will and of responsibility. Hence, the task of hermeneutical phenomenology is describing existential aspects of human existence that allow understanding of moral life. We thus recognize in Ricœur’s idea of self-esteem a first crucial existential aspect of his moral anthropology that demonstrates the significance of singularity for understanding responsibility. In part 2, I will examine more closely the key elements that constitute Ricœur’s moral anthropology. Yet, first of all it will be helpful to clarify more exactly the contribution of respectively moral psychology and hermeneutics for understanding responsibility, in order to define the significance of hermeneutical phenomenology in light of recent developments in analytical philosophy. In order to see how each of these methods contributes to our understanding of responsibility, consider again the similarities and differences between Watson’s and Ricœur’s approach to responsibility. On the one hand, Watson’s and Ricœur’s theories on responsibility have something fundamentally in common. They both understand responsibility in relation to the idea of the self. Certainly, they define this relation in different terms. However, Watson’s idea of the aretaic face of responsibility is similar to Ricœur’s idea of the ethical aim. Both notions are based on Aristotle’s idea of phronesis.9 According to both Watson and Ricœur, being a responsible self amounts to being able to build a moral character that allows the self to adopt communal moral values, or to use these values for creating a personal identity in order to perform responsible actions. For Watson, as I argued in the previous chapter, communal moral standards and feelings are the basis of the self’s moral character, which is the result of the interaction between the self’s personal history, and the moral community. According to Ricœur, “standards of excellence” on the level of personal virtues, as he calls these virtues in the wake of MacIntyre, and communal mores on the level of institutions are the guidelines for the self’s concern with the good life.10

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In this regard, Linda Ethell draws a comparison between Ricœur’s idea of narrative identity and Watson’s idea of responsibility. In Narrative Identity and Personal Responsibility, Ethell draws on Ricœur’s idea of narrative identity in order to elaborate Watson’s idea that our natural practices of holding people morally responsible are dependent on how we view others as historical moral selves or how they are capable of recounting their personal moral histories. According to Ethell, Ricœur’s concept of the narrative self helps explaining how this reaction is made possible.11 Both Watson and Ricœur thus believe that the self’s capacity to write his or her own life story on the basis of communal values is significant for performing ethical and moral action, and therefore for responsibility. Up to that point, Watson’s and Ricœur’s theories are basically the same. Yet we should stress that Watson and Ricœur’s approaches to responsibility fundamentally differ, and that in their differences we can find the significance of respectively moral psychology and hermeneutics for understanding responsibility and justice. What distinguishes Watson’s theory is the following: whereas Watson’s theory on responsibility explains the conditions for understanding our practices of holding selves responsible, Ricœur’s theory on responsibility allows understanding how lived existence is significant for being responsible as a self. Watson’s theory of responsibility focuses on moral feelings and on how these feelings can be observed as they find expression in communal practices of holding responsible. Watson’s main question is then: To what extent is it possible to identify selves as agents that have a personal psychological character, which allows them to interact with their environment and community? Watson’s example of Robert Harris’ case is quite illustrative in this regard. In order to identify Harris as morally responsible self and agent, as I argued, it is significant to explain Harris’ psychological profile, to map out his personal background of violence, and his feelings toward his moral environment. Ricœur, in his turn, maps out a moral anthropology of the self and how our capability for performing responsible actions takes place within the context of our singular lived existences. Certainly, moral psychology and hermeneutics are independent methods, and I am not arguing that one method would contradict or exclude the other. However, I think that bringing together these two methods provides a more complete image of responsibility in the context of just institutions. Moral psychology and hermeneutics combined can explain what holding responsible means (the task of moral psychology), and what being responsible means (the task of hermeneutics). However, it also follows that a naturalistic approach to moral life is insufficient for understanding responsibility, and that we should thus abandon such an approach to moral psychology. In other words, theories that reduce actually being responsible to being held responsible in a particular



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moral community or culture (cf. Strawson) make an abstraction of the significance of responsibility, because they fail to demonstrate that we come to learn being responsible through lived existence. Like the chess player can only learn the value and significance of chess by actually playing chess, selves come to learn the significance of being responsible in living existence. Although being held responsible, Harris apparently never came to learn the meaning of responsibility, because he was lacking every sense of self-worth. Similarly, Auster’s character failed to understand responsibility, because he refused to assume any responsibility. In this regard, I referred earlier in this book to Ricœur’s idea of truth in the sense of attestation, which differs from the idea of truth of the empirical sciences. I argued that moral psychology points to the empirical-causal relation between free will and responsibility, whereas Ricœur’s moral anthropology assumes the idea of freedom. Ricœur’s idea of attestation also expresses the idea that understanding responsibility implies not only the fact of being held responsible, but also taking initiative based on the belief that one is capable of being responsible in a just society. Hence, Ricœur’s idea of self-esteem points at the significance of the idea of ipseity for understanding responsibility and justice by means of moral anthropology. Solicitude and Practical Wisdom Ricœur’s idea of solicitude explains more exactly the role of the idea of ipseity and of hermeneutics in general for understanding responsibility. In his view, care or “solicitude” is the spontaneous recognition of the suffering of others by way of true sympathy or compassion for the other’s suffering. He writes in Oneself as Another: Solicitude “occurs, originating in the suffering other …”: Being confronted with the suffering other, the self … gives his sympathy, his compassion …. In true sympathy, the self … finds itself affected …. For it is indeed feelings that are revealed in the self by the other’s suffering … feelings spontaneously directed towards others. This intimate union between the ethical aim of solicitude and the affective flesh of feelings seems to me to justify the choice of the term “solicitude.”12

These lines suggest that solicitude or the act of caring for others begins with the passive affect of sympathy or true compassion. By experiencing spontaneous affections of sympathy for others who are vulnerable and exposed to suffering, we care in estimating the value of the lives of these others, in the sense that we are anxious about their suffering.13 Solicitude in the sense of care inspired by true sympathy thus implies suffering oneself, at least in the

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sense of being affected by the suffering of another. Following Ricœur’s line of thought, solicitude points to the significance of ipseity for understanding responsibility. As this idea suggests, in caring for others one comes to understand why responsibility is important: because we are anxious about the well-being of others. Being a self in that sense, in living through moments of care, thus helps understanding responsibility. Therefore, the idea of ipseity is significant for a moral anthropology, like Ricœur’s, that aims at understanding the motives for being responsible. Insofar as that care enables anxiety regarding the well-being of others it entails the experience of a sense of justice. More exactly, solicitude entails an equal relation between self and other in that care for others implies sharing their suffering. In true compassion, the self estimates the other’s existence equally worthy to his or her own existence. Ricœur explains this by introducing his notion of “similitude”: Similitude is the fruit of the exchange between esteem for oneself and solicitude for others. This exchange authorizes to say that I cannot myself have self-esteem unless I esteem others as myself. “As myself” means that you too are capable of starting something in the world, of acting for a reason, of hierarchizing your priorities, of evaluating the ends of your actions, and, having done this, of holding yourself in esteem as I hold myself in esteem.14

It is given that compassion for others who are suffering amounts to suffering oneself to a certain extent, because compassion for the others’ suffering enables one to wish that they do not suffer. In this sense, compassion is the feeling that others are also entitled to a worthy life: a life free of suffering or, conversely, a life in which these others can be selves as well, capable of self-esteem. Solicitude, as Ricœur understands it as true compassion, thus entails the sense of justice, or, better, the experience of the need for justice as a response to the injustice we experience in the confrontation of the suffering of others. In experiencing true compassion, we feel it is unfair that others are suffering while we are entitled to a worthy life. Ricœur’s analysis of solicitude demonstrates the extent to which human beings are capable of understanding justice, even prior to their participation in institutional life or in moral communities. This analysis demonstrates that natural feelings of sympathy, and affective relations with others, are the onset of understanding justice. In this respect, Ricœur’s analysis of solicitude demonstrates the significance of the idea of singularity in the particular sense of ipseity, and of hermeneutics in general, for understanding responsibility. Following his line of reasoning, care for others implies understanding justice, and this understanding implies actually living through affective relations with others as a self. His analysis of solicitude thus demonstrates



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that responsibility results from singular encounters with others. Yet this also means that responsibility is irreducible to natural feelings or communal practices of holding responsible alone. We are not, contrarily to what Strawson contends, responsible because we are held responsible. Actually encountering others within affective relations is part of being responsible and of understanding the meaning of responsibility.15 In illustration, note that solicitude for Ricœur should not be understood in terms of what he understands as pity. For him, pity should be understood as insincere compassion for the suffering of others. According to him, pity is the mental state “in which the self is secretly being pleased to know it has been spared.”16 This means that the experience of pity, in his opinion, amounts to feeling sympathy for another’s suffering while, at the same time, feeling clandestinely relieved that it is the other’s misfortune and not one’s own. In contrast, true compassion involves being truly anxious about the suffering of others: “Sympathy is kept distinct from simple pity. … In the state of true sympathy: the self … finds itself affected by all that the suffering other offers to it in return.”17 Ricœur’s distinction between pity and true sympathy illustrates the significance of the idea of ipseity for understanding justice. Experiencing true sympathy for others helps understanding justice for others. The significance of hermeneutics is in this regard that it demonstrates that understanding responsibility and justice implies singularity in the sense of experiencing and understanding true sympathy as a self. Responsibility is not merely the result of ascribing natural feelings (of sympathy) to selves. Certainly, it is legitimate to make a psychological analysis of a person, for example, in order to determine whether and to what extent natural sympathy is an essential feature for ascribing responsibility to agents. Yet ascribing responsibility to agents would make little, if any, sense if there were no underlying experience of actually being responsible, which gives meaning to the very idea of responsibility and which we learn in living our own existence, that is, in our moments of solicitude in which we are capable of distinguishing true sympathy from pity. Because one has the experience of true sympathy for the other’s suffering, one is able of understanding the injustice this suffering amounts to. This experience, which hermeneutical interpretation and phenomenological analysis clarify, thus demonstrates that understanding responsibility and justice implies the idea of singularity in the sense of ipseity: only in being a singular self does one fully understand justice and therefore why it is important to take up responsibility. In sum, I think Ricœur’s hermeneutical moral anthropology adds to understanding responsibility based on natural feelings. While recent theories in moral psychology and moral anthropology identify selves as agents capable of responsibility by ascribing moral feelings to them and by describing how these feelings interact with moral communities, Ricœur’s hermeneutics of

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the self makes it possible to understand what it means to be responsible and to comprehend justice. In this respect, Watson’s analysis of responsibility empirically explains how Harris became to be a self who was incapable of responsibility. However, Ricœur’s ideas of self-esteem and of solicitude demonstrate existential aspects of human existence that help comprehending what it actually means to be responsible. Responsibility should in this regard not only be understood as the practice of being held responsible (by the community, institutions, friends, etc.), but also as the actual taking up of responsibility and to perform ethically and morally responsible actions accordingly. In this regard, it is also significant to take into account again Ricœur’s distinction between explaining and understanding. While moral psychology implies explaining facts, hermeneutics aims at understanding human action and its motivations. Rather than offering one universal truth concerning morality, hermeneutics implies interpretation of moral life. Interpretation implies a continuing process of understanding, to which possible new interpretations can contribute (cf., the idea of the hermeneutical circle). Ricœur’s ideas of self-esteem and solicitude point at crucial existential aspects of moral life that aid in this interpretation. In being a self and in learning true sympathy by caring for others one understands the need for justice and, in that way, responsibility. This is what hermeneutics and phenomenology demonstrate. I am, of course, not arguing that Ricœur would contend that understanding responsibility and justice only implies ipseity, or being a self, regardless of any normative criteria. In fact, as I already indicated earlier, for him, responsibility and justice relate to moral norms that should guide our actions, and should be understood as imperatives that correct fallible human nature. I will discuss Ricœur’s understanding of moral norms in detail in the next section. Yet, given that moral norms are important for understanding responsibility, this does not make the hermeneutical idea of the self less significant for understanding responsibility. The significance of this idea is that it demonstrates how people value and interpret moral standards, in the sense of both common moral feelings and moral norms. Ricœur demonstrates this significance perhaps most explicitly with his idea of practical wisdom. According to him, practical wisdom amounts to making exceptions to moral principles, when these principles cannot simply be applied to singular situations. In such situations, he explains, we rely on our selfhood or on intuition based on self-esteem, solicitude, and mores to perform responsible actions.18 In illustration of such conflicts, he gives the example of medical decisions, in particular of the doctor’s announcement that a patient is suffering from a terminal illness. In this example, as Ricœur contends, the singularity of the patient shows that the best decision is not simply the result of applying the moral norm.19 In such situations, a conflict exists between two possible opposed attitudes: “Either that of telling



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the truth without taking into account the capacity of the dying to receive it, out of sheer respect for the law, assumed to abide no exceptions; or that of knowingly lying, out of fear, one believes, of weakening the forces in the patient struggling against death.”20 According to Ricœur, situations like this call for a decision in accordance with that which oneself believes is good (cf. phronesis), taking into account a concern for the suffering of the other (cf. solicitude), and what is commonly believed to be good (cf. the common ethos on the level of institutions). In the second part of this book, I will examine the extent to which the singularity of the other relates to responsibility. For now, I think Ricœur’s idea of practical wisdom shows, in another way still than his analyses of self-esteem and solicitude, the importance of hermeneutics for understanding responsibility. The example of medical decisions illustrates that performing responsible actions for others in singular situations implies ethical and moral judgment based on feelings, and such judgment implies ipseity, that is, it occurs in the context of singular lived existence. Only by judging and interpreting the singular existence of the other, within the context of one’s own singular existence, is one capable of understanding responsibility. Hermeneutics, being the interpretation of lived existence, helps understanding being responsible. Learning the practice of being responsible, in that sense, also implies a hermeneutics of the existences of others. UNIVERSAL MORAL NORMS AND DIFFERENT MORAL COMMUNITIES In chapter 2, I discussed several moral theories that find inspiration in Strawson’s idea that responsibility is relative to the feelings, values, and norms of different cultures and communities. As I argued in that chapter, some of these theories, including Strawson’s own, claim that we are responsible in that we are held responsible according to communal moral standards, values, and norms. I argued that this claim raises the question, which several of his critics discuss, to what extent we should distinguish between being held responsible and actually being responsible. Indeed, being responsible is not the immediate result of being held responsible according to communal moral standards, values, and norms. In a slaveholding society, for example, communal mores function to oppress minorities, rather than to determine what it actually means to be responsible. I argued in line with Ricœur that actually being responsible implies the idea of ipseity, that is, of being a self with a singular lived existence. Yet, the problem of the difference between being and being held responsible not only raises the question of moral agency (what does it mean to

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actually be responsible within a cultural community?), but also the question of the possibility of defining universal moral norms within the context of the plurality of moral communities. Are there universal criteria for defining moral agency and moral norms if morals depend on cultural differences? And to what extent should we define universal moral norms that express the human condition as such, regardless of the differences between cultures and communities? Several recent theories in moral psychology raise these questions.21 Moreover, Ricœur himself examines whether and to what extent moral norms should be understood as universal in light of the plurality of existing communities and cultures. For example, in Oneself as Another he argues in favor of understanding moral norms in the universal “Kantian” sense, even though these norms relate to different communal mores.22 And in his discussion with Rawls, Walzer, and Boltanski and Thévenot in The Just, he investigates the possibility of defining the idea of justice at the backdrop of the plurality of justice systems.23 Understanding the extent to which Ricœur’s philosophy can be read as a moral anthropology, as I aim to do in this book, thus implies answering these questions and examining how he would respond to psychologists and anthropologists that defend a relativist theory of morality. Therefore, I will examine in this section the idea of universal moral norms in his moral anthropology. The point I will aim to make in the following pages is that, if we accept that moral norms differ across cultures and communities, then we should question Ricœur’s understanding of moral norms as universal correctives of human nature in chapter 8 of Oneself as Another. First, I will briefly examine the extent to which moral norms should be understood as universal for Ricœur: because they are the result of formal rationality and because they are expressions of existential features that are common to humans as such. For him, moral feelings furthermore allow formulating universal moral imperatives for action. I will argue next that Ricœur understands these imperatives particularly in a threefold sense in chapter 8 of Oneself as Another: as the imperative for self-respect, as the imperative to respect others, and as rules of justice. I will argue further that his understanding of universal moral norms in these three senses is problematic, because these particular norms (self-respect, respect for others, and rules of justice) apply differently in different communities and cultures, rather than that they apply as universal imperatives. Yet, this does not mean, so I will aim to demonstrate next, that we should embrace moral relativism. My thesis is rather that in Ricœur’s work—and in particular in his idea of singularity—we do find the tools for a different, more critical, approach to moral norms. More exactly, I will draw on The Just, on From Text to Action, and on The Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, where he emphasizes less that respect should essentially define universal moral norms,



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and emphasizes more the provisional character of moral norms across the different communities. These texts offer the opportunity to reconsider the idea of universal moral norms. I argue that, given the plurality of moral norms across the different cultures, these norms are not absolute and should be subject to a continuing process of revision and critique, since there is no one universal criterion for defining moral norms. This critique can occur on the communal level (i.e., based on cross-cultural dialogue), or within the sphere of ipseity (i.e., based on the self’s practical wisdom that allows exception, evaluation, decision, etc.). FORMAL CONSTRUCTS OF REASON AND EXPRESSIONS OF UNIVERSAL EXISTENTIAL FEATURES Theories in analytical philosophy that make use of moral psychology and moral anthropology often examine the question whether and to what extent moral norms and moral feelings are universal, given that these norms and feelings differ across cultures and communities. Many of these theories are naturalistic and relativistic. I already discussed Strawson’s article “Freedom and Resentment,” in which he contends that the standards for holding responsible are relative to the moral community in which these standards apply.24 Sommers’ Relative Justice, which I also discussed earlier, is another example. Sommers argues that there exist no universal criteria for moral agency, because the criteria for moral responsibility are culturally relative.25 Yet, on the other side of the spectrum, analytical philosophers, like Martha Nussbaum for example, defend a more complex idea of universal morality, by arguing that certain moral feelings and human sentiments in general are both universal and “differently shaped by different societies.”26 The discussion whether moral norms are universal or rather formed by societies often takes place in the context of the “Kantian-Hegelian” dispute. Several philosophers in both the European and the Anglo-American traditions, Ricœur included, partake in this discussion in discussing Hegel’s critique on Kantian morality.27 Given that moral psychology and moral anthropology provide information about cultural differences regarding the differences between moral feelings, values, and norms, one important question is then whether and to what extent a moral anthropology of responsibility and of justice should imply the idea of universal moral norms. In the following, I will examine how Ricœur understands universality in his moral anthropology, and whether his idea of moral norms can offer a response to this question. In his “little ethics” in Oneself as Another, Ricœur defends the thesis that moral norms should be understood as universal principles. According to

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him, responsibility relates to these universal moral norms (cf. chapter 8 of Oneself as Another). Certainly, as already mentioned, Ricœur is Aristotelian as well, and contends that human nature is predisposed with natural virtues and feelings and tends toward the good. For him, human nature allows us to perform ethical and moral actions. Moreover, he agrees with Hegel that Kantian morality pays too much attention to the universal aspect of moral norms and therefore neglects that morality is shaped by societies and their mores.28 Yet, he is also Kantian in that he contends that human nature in general, and human feelings in particular, are fallible and tend to evil. Hence, his “little ethics” aims “at reconciling Aristotle’s phronesis, by way of Kant’s Moralität, with Hegel’s Sittlichkeit.”29 More exactly, Ricœur argues that self-esteem and desire are fallible and possibly tend to “self-love,” the pathological form of self-esteem and desire.30 For that reason, moral norms should be understood as universal correctives of human nature, as maintained by Ricœur, that is, as formal imperatives that guide moral actions and correct actions based on feelings that might lead to egoism. According to his idea of morality in Oneself as Another, moral norms should thus be understood as universal imperatives of reason. He states at the beginning of chapter 8 of Oneself as Another, which deals with the question of morality, that defining moral norms amounts to “isolating the moment of universality”31 (original emphasis). Further, Ricœur contends that the universal character of moral norms should be thought of along the lines of the purely “reflexive.”32 This means that, for him, moral norms are universal insofar as that these norms are defined by the logic of reason, which is universal to the extent that this logic is comprehensible by all humans that have the capacity to reason. Following his line of thought, moral norms can be understood and should apply to all human beings in the same sense. Certainly, important to note is that Ricœur is no “orthodox Kantian” for several reasons. It is unnecessary to make a detailed comparison between Kant and Ricœur to explain this. However, it is helpful to indicate to some extent the difference between Kant’s and Ricœur’s conception of morality in order to define precisely the latter’s understanding of universal moral norms. First of all, Ricœur clearly is reluctant to accept Kant’s transcendental approach to moral norms. In chapter 1, I argued that Ricœur understands consciousness and subjectivity in Oneself as Another in relation to an “empirical basis,” in defining the self as physical body in his discussion of analytical philosophy of language. Moreover, rather than contending that reason alone provides sufficient proof for moral norms, or that these norms should be derived exclusively from categorical imperatives, he contends that moral norms are universal constructs of reason in the purely formal sense, but should nevertheless be derived from concrete ethical existence as well.



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In this respect, Johann Michel argues, for example, that Ricœur’s Kantian approach to morality is not “auto-foundational.” As Michel points out, according to Ricœur, Aristotle’s ethics “anticipates” the universal aspect of Kantian morality. According to Michel, this means that Ricœur is certain of Aristotle’s ethical principles’ being “universal” “capacities” or “existentialia” (my translation).33 For Ricœur, Aristotle’s idea of phronesis, for example, expresses the universal capacities to make ethical decisions (through decision, initiative, evaluation, etc.). In Michel’s interpretation, Ricœur derives moral norms from what he believes are universal existential features of human nature, rather than from the transcendental structure of reason. Further, Michel argues that in defining universal moral norms Ricœur points to the arbitrariness of particular ethical value systems and to the need of testing these systems by universal moral norms. Although these norms are not imposed upon human nature as a priori constructs of reason, Ricœur nevertheless believes, as Michel rightly points out, that these norms should correct the pathological aspects of human nature and particular historical communities and their value systems. For Michel, this means that Ricœur defends the thesis, in line with Kant, that moral norms are constructs of reason that are universal correctives of particular moral values.34 For Ricœur, the universal aspect of moral norms should thus be understood in a triple sense. First, for him moral norms are expressions of certain traits that are common to human nature as a whole and are universal in that sense. According to Ricœur, these traits can be “translated” in formal principles of reason, which turns these principles into universal moral norms. For example, the imperative to treat others as ends in themselves is universal, because the tendency to care for others is a natural capacity of all humans. Secondly, Ricœur believes—and in that sense, he is Kantian as well—that the formal or logical structure of moral norms is universal, or that all reasonable humans are capable of understanding the soundness and logic of these norms. For example, for him, the imperative to treat others as end is universal, since it is the logical way to act regarding all people. Finally, for Ricœur universal moral norms not only designate universal formal constructs of reason, but they mean something else as well. In his opinion, moral norms are formal laws that also apply universally. For example, the “Kantian imperative” to treat persons as end in themselves is “the formalization of the Golden Rule.”35 According to Ricœur, Kant’s formal imperative to treat others as ends (which passes the test of being a universal law) is the universal equivalent of the Golden Rule to treat others as you would want them to treat you. This universal formulation of the Golden Rule should thus, following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, mediate as a common rule between different cultures and their diverse moral norms. It is this last idea of universal moral norms, in the sense of universal imperatives for action that

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apply to all different communities and cultures, that I will question later in this section. In fact, Ricœur writes in Oneself as Another that moral norms express the self’s ipse-identity, which consists of “traits” or “existentialia,” which he calls universal (or he at least poses the question whether they are universal).36 Moreover, these existentialia relate to self-esteem for him, and he defines self-esteem at the backdrop of Aristotle’s idea of phronesis. Ricœur writes: And when we ourselves, following once again in the wake of Aristotle, posit as the object of self-esteem capacities such as the initiative of acting, choice on the basis of reasons, estimating and evaluating the goals of action, did we not implicitly give a universal sense to these capacities, as being that by virtue of which we hold them to be worthy of esteem, and ourselves as well?37

Further, Ricœur points out that the motivation for acting according to moral norms is “practical reason,” which is “common in principle to all rational beings.”38 Admittedly, as I argued previously, Ricœur’s idea of ipseity also offers a different, nonuniversal approach to moral life. His ideas of self-esteem and solicitude certainly describe existential aspects of ethical existence, but these aspects are not so much universal features of moral agency, at least insofar as that being morally responsible takes place, according to Ricœur, within the context of the singularity of lived existence. Later in this chapter I will argue that the idea of singularity allows defining moral norms more properly than his Kantian concept of the universal. I will argue that we should define moral norms as a translation of aspects that humans find to have in common throughout their different existences and across the different cultures, but that these norms are not necessarily universal. Hence, ethical life reflects the idea of singularity, while moral life reflects the idea of the universal. Yet in order to make this point, I will need to take a closer look first at how exactly Ricœur defines these universal moral imperatives. SELF-RESPECT, RESPECT FOR OTHERS, AND RULES OF JUSTICE For Ricœur, moral norms are formal expressions of existential features and imperatives that also apply universally. Yet, if moral feelings and moral norms find expression differently in different cultures and communities, as his idea of mores also suggests, to what extent should moral norms be understood then as imperatives that are universal, i.e., that are not only universal in the formal sense, but should also be applied universally? In the following, I will



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aim to demonstrate that in Oneself as Another Ricœur defines three concrete moral norms: the imperative for self-respect, the imperative to respect others, and rules of justice. I will argue that these imperatives express three different existential features in his opinion: self-esteem, solicitude, and mores. I will argue further that his understanding of moral norms in these three senses is problematic, because these particular norms (self-respect, respect for others, and rules of justice) apply differently in different communities, rather than that they apply as universal imperatives. According to Ricœur, moral norms should first of all be understood in relation to self-respect. For him, self-respect is the prime motivation for performing moral actions, and, in that sense, it is the moral “equivalent” of self-esteem, which, as I argued earlier, is the motivation for performing ethical actions. He writes in Oneself as Another: “Respect is self-esteem that has passed through the sieve of the universal and constraining norm—in short, self-esteem under the reign of the law.”39 He then aims to define moral norms as variations on Kant’s categorical imperative, according to which humans should act as if the maxim of their action would be a universal norm. According to Ricœur, acting out of self-respect then amounts to acting out of “good will,” “autonomy,” or “self-legislation.”40 This means that we should act out of goodwill, with respect for ourselves and out of the best intentions, as a remedy against the fallibility of our human nature. Concretely, he defines the imperative to act out of goodwill as follows: “Act solely in accordance with the maxim by which you can wish at the same time that what ought not to be, namely evil, will indeed not exist.”41 Acting out of self-respect thus amounts to acting in order to avoid evil. According to him, in order to avoid self-esteem of transforming into evil, one should respect this principle. Avoiding that harm or self-love like hypocrisy, self-idolatry, etc., amounts to acting out of the best intentions. He thus defines his first universal moral norm as the principle to avoid evil and to act out of self-respect. This principle translates self-esteem negatively, that is, it translates the wish for acting good into respect for the prohibition to do evil. Yet one question is, to what extent respect in general, and self-respect in particular, should be understood as universal moral norms? Consider again Sommers’ theory of justice, to which I referred in the previous chapter, according to which moral norms and rules for justice are relative to particular cultures. He argues that whereas “self-esteem” or “personal worth” are generally understood as a condition for moral responsibility in legally institutionalized Western cultures, noninstitutionalized honor cultures less likely consider kinds of self-awareness to be a primary condition for moral responsibility.42 As Sommers points out, in honor cultures the fact that agents honor or dishonor the family is considered to be the key aspect for ascribing moral responsibility to the agent’s actions, rather than the fact that these actions

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were an expression of the agent’s own intentions or states of mind. He writes: “The key factor [in honor cultures] is not whether agents wished to perform the actions; rather it is whether public knowledge of the action will bring honor or dishonor to the family.”43 For example, according to traditional Corsican honor culture, revenge of harmed family members was believed to be the family’s responsibility.44 Failing to carry out this responsibility would cause public dishonor to the family. This example demonstrates that whereas in Western legalized cultures the emphasis lies on public retribution of wrongdoers in justice systems, this is not the case in traditional honor cultures, where the emphasis lies on protecting the honor of the family. If respect is a typical expression of norms in legalized Western cultures that focus on individualism, it is thus doubtful whether respect should be considered as a universal moral norm. Certainly, the example of honor cultures also concerns the difference between personal vengeance and institutional justice, which Ricœur discusses at several occasions in his writings.45 One might therefore object that the difference between honor cultures and legalized cultures ultimately amounts to the difference between cultures in which personal vengeance settles issues of “justice” and cultures in which (universal) rules of justice regulate institutional justice. In this regard, the example of honor cultures illustrates the difference between cultures in which rules of justice are firmly established and cultures in which this is not or less the case. Nonetheless, the example at least illustrates that respect, being an imperative that motivates moral responsibility, finds expression in different ways in different communities. Whereas in Western cultures respect closely relates to selfhood (e.g., an agent is held to be capable of responsibility in Western cultures when capable of self-respect), in honor cultures respect is foremost a public affair (an agent is held responsible when capable of paying due respect to the family or the community). Different communities define the moral significance of respect in different ways, and this questions Ricœur’s idea that self-respect is a universal norm or maxim for performing moral actions, at least one that applies to all the different cultures in the same sense. However, does it follow that there are no universal criteria whatsoever for defining ethical and moral life? In other words, should we accept a radical relativistic theory of responsibility and justice, as Sommers defends? I do not think we should. In Upheavals of Thought Martha Nussbaum accurately captures one important reason why radical relativism insufficiently describes our ethical and moral nature. Nussbaum argues that humans share “the nature of their bodies” and in that sense have “a common animality” that also explains that they have natural sentiments in common.46 These sentiments constitute our human moral nature. In that respect, I think that a radical relativistic theory of moral norms ultimately insufficiently understands our moral nature.



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However, that does not mean, as Nussbaum also explains, that “emotions are not differently shaped by different societies.”47 Further, as I argued, our shared human nature finds expression differently in our lived existence, since this existence is singular and allows us to make up our own life stories. It is nevertheless questionable, in my opinion, whether we should regard certain moral sentiments, and respect in particular, as universal imperatives for action. I argued that Ricœur’s ideas of self-esteem and solicitude demonstrate the significance of the idea of ipseity for understanding responsibility and justice. These ideas demonstrate that in being a self one learns the motivation for responsibility and justice: in experiencing true compassion for the other’s suffering, we learn that it is important to care for others as ourselves and to grant others self-esteem. It does not follow, however, that we should derive universal imperatives from self-esteem or from self-respect, being the formalized equivalent of self-esteem. Nor does it follow that there are no differences in how different communities perceive self-esteem. At best, self-esteem defines, as Ricœur contends, existential aspects based on our shared physical constitution that help understand ethical and moral life. At the same time, a hermeneutical approach to our common moral nature is interpretative and, in that sense, not absolute and open to critique and change. In that respect, the task of hermeneutics is not so much to search for one universal objective truth about morality, like a blueprint of our ethicomoral constitution, but rather to understand what humans have in common along their differences, through dialogue and interpretation and across their singular lived experiences, in order to understand what motivates their ethical and moral actions. Ricœur understands universal moral norms in the second place in relation to respect for others. According to him, “respect owed to persons” is the moral equivalent of solicitude, which, as I aimed to demonstrate earlier, motivates ethical care for others.48 Moreover, he understands respect for others in light of the second formulation of the categorical imperative that prescribes to treat “the person as an end in himself or herself.”49 Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, the imperative to respect others as persons helps avoiding evil in the sense of violence toward others. He writes: “The occasion of violence … resides in the power exerted over one will by another will.”50 Indeed, if violence consists in exercising power over others, respect can avoid violence in that it creates a distance between the self and the other. In this regard, acting out of respect for others withholds solicitude from becoming manipulation, for example, or from becoming patronization or “caring too much.” Ricœur defines his second universal moral norm as the imperative to respect others as ends in themselves. However, another question is whether and to what extent respect for others should be understood as a universal imperative. Ricœur’s understanding of

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respect is ambiguous. On the one hand, he thinks of respect for others as a variation of the second formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative and contends that this imperative is a universal norm for performing moral actions. Yet he also contends, on the other hand, that the roots of the imperative to respect others lie in the golden rule, which is based on Judeo-Christian culture. If respect for others is rooted in the particular history of Judeo-Christian culture, to what extent should this rule then be understood as a universal imperative? Certainly, anthropologists argue that the golden rule is a principle that should be understood cross-culturally or that most cultures share the principle to treat others as oneself.51 Moreover, certain evolutionary biologists defend the thesis that the principle of the golden rule is inherent to the evolution of the human species (which promotes group cooperation).52 However, from the fact that different cultures share the golden rule, it does not follow that all cultures apply the norm to respect others in the same sense. Nor does the supposed fact that the golden rule expresses the biological constitution of human beings as such imply that this rule is universally applicable. It is one thing to trace back the anthropological and biological conditions of ethical and moral actions. It is yet quite another to formulate universal moral norms that should guide the ethical and moral actions of all human beings. Given that Ricœur is correct that solicitude or care for others is a common existential aspect of humanity as such, we should question his idea that respect is a universal moral norm that applies in the same sense to different cultures. At best this norm is universal in a purely formal sense, that is, its universal character depends on its logical structure. Still, it remains to be seen to what extent these norms are thus expressions of Western culture and its emphasis on rationality, and to what extent its formal logic is therefore nonuniversal. In this regard, Daniel Berthold defends the thesis in his article, “The Golden Rule in Kant and Utilitarianism,” that both Kant’s categorical imperative to treat others as ends and the utilitarian principle to maximize the interests and happiness of the greatest number express the principle of the Golden Rule to treat others as ourselves. Berthold writes: Kant’s central principle that the imperatives of morality be “universalized” so as to apply to all, and that in all our actions we respect the other as an “end in itself” and never merely as a means to our own desires, and utilitarianism’s stress upon maximizing the interests and happiness of the greatest number, clearly seem resonant with the spirit of the golden rule. Kantianism and utilitarianism are often presented as endeavoring to correct certain problems entailed by the vagueness of the golden rule (since the rule does not actually specify what we should do), and as offering contrasting reformulations of the golden rule in purportedly more adequate ways.53



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Berthold points out, in my opinion, that two of the major rationalized moral systems in the West, Kantianism and utilitarianism, express the historical principle of the golden rule. In this regard, formal morality is as such the expression of one culture among others. Even if the formal character of moral norms makes these norms understandable for human rationality, it hardly follows that these norms are universal imperatives for action. One might argue, as certain critics do, that even though we should understand moral life in relation to natural feelings and human nature in general, there are nevertheless universal feelings, like respect, love, or blame, common to all humans that often relate to our specific rational nature.54 According to Carla Bagnoli, for example, respect is “the key-mode of recognition of membership in the moral community.”55 Bagnoli offers what she calls a “dialogical account” of respect, which holds that respect is a reflexive capacity shared by all humans.56 This capacity allows humans, according to her, to recognize others as autonomous, which makes it possible to understand that others are constraints of our own reasons and desires, and, in that sense, respect is the condition for a constructive dialogue with others. Respect in this sense is not merely a moral sentiment among others, but human’s reflexive capacity to recognize the authority of others, as in institutions and communal moral norms. Ricœur’s position on respect appears to be similar to Bagnoli’s. Indeed, for Ricœur morality is based on respect, and functions as the test of ethical life, communal mores, and values that are fallible. Surely feeling-based moral norms within communities should allow for dialogue and critique, and this underscores the salience of practical wisdom, of evaluating, taking initiative, making decisions, etc. These norms are not monolithic blocks. They are not fixed structures within culture and language, as a structuralistic account on morality would contend. Yet it is still questionable—so I am arguing—whether respect should be understood as a universal norm that founds practical reason, as Ricœur would maintain. If moral anthropologists are correct that respect is typical for Western cultures that center on rationality and individuality, then we should question the idea that respect is a universal imperative for practical reason. The emphasis on respect and formalism in Western philosophy supports this. It is likely that in different cultures that are less focused on rationality other moral feelings play a part in practical wisdom or in practices of critique toward institutional and communal moral authority. Finally, Ricœur defines universal moral norms as rules of justice. According to him, these rules express the universal sense of justice. In the previous section, I argued that his idea of solicitude should be understood as the spontaneous recognition of justice for others in concrete encounters. However, he understands justice not only within the context of concrete relations of solicitude. In fact, according to Ricœur, solicitude reflects our sense of justice and is therefore only the start of recognition of justice for others. Justice has an

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institutional side and extends the limits of face-to-face encounters, since the other is “also other than the ‘you.’”57 The other who is entitled to an existence free from suffering is not, to put it differently, only the other that one actually meets in face-to-face encounters, but also the third, or the stranger. As Ricœur defines it, the ideal of justice is the recognition of all others within the sphere of humanity as such: “Justice in turn adds to solicitude to the extent that the field of application is all of humanity.”58 Rules of justice are universal institutional laws that regulate recognition of others, according to Ricœur. More exactly, for Ricœur, rules of justice should be understood in the context of institutions and legal systems. By institutions, he understands, first of all moral value systems or mores: “What fundamentally characterizes the idea of institution is the bond of common mores …. In this, we are carried back to the ethos from which ethics takes its name.”59 In other words, Ricœur points to the role of common moral values for defining justice: “By ‘institution,’ we are to understand here the structure of living together as this belongs to a historical community—people, nation, region, and so forth.”60 For him, justice is thus relative to mores that distribute justice among the members of historically and culturally located communities. In this sense, he states, institutions have an essential “distributive character,” which functions to divide “rights and duties, revenues and patrimonies, responsibilities and powers, in short, benefits and charges.”61 Ricœur’s theory of justice is in that sense close to theories of moral psychology and moral anthropology that defend the idea that communal values and feelings determine what is commonly believed to be morally responsible and, thus, what “counts” as responsible in a particular community and what not. However, for him, institutional justice should also imply universal rules of justice. He points out that, ultimately, institutional justice implies legal systems that constitute rules of justice that obligate wrongdoers in a community “to compensate for damages or pay the penalty.”62 According to Ricœur, these rules are rational norms that formalize the communal mores and “claim” “universality.”63 Hence, Ricœur defends the idea that moral norms are universal rules that express particular ethical values. For him, justice is not entirely dependent on common mores or moral values. The reason is that these values give rise to conflict and struggle. He writes in Oneself as Another: the “power [of institutions leaves] open the field for violence, as occurs in great historical debacles.”64 In the final part of this book, I will examine his understanding of the relation between institutional justice and violence. For now, it is clear that mores find expression in judicial systems that aim to define legal principles of justice, which express the obligation not to do harm to others.65 The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is exemplary in this regard. In the end, Ricœur understands universal moral norms in the sense of universal rules of justice.



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Yet to what extent should rules of justice be understood as universal principles, given that these rules are the expressions of particular institutions, communities, and cultures? In fact, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, is the expression of Western culture in particular. Further, if rules of justice exist only in the context of particular legal systems proper to particular historical communities they are not universal in that they would apply to all communities in the same sense. Given that different communities have different justice systems that apply different rules of justice, there is no “one” set of rules that is absolute. If we accept Ricœur’s idea that rules of justice relate to mores, then we should also accept the idea, so I am arguing, that there is no universal set of rules for justice. If rules of justice should be considered as universal norms, then it is only in a purely formal or procedural sense. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for example, remains a declaration, that is, a claim for applying universal rules that originates in the West. These rules interconnect with a particular culture and are therefore not absolute. They likely demand change or, at least, amelioration in view of cultural differences. From the fact that moral norms are universal in a purely formal or procedural sense, it does not follow that these norms are also universally applicable, that is, universal maxims that determine what counts as moral, as responsible, or just over the different cultures. Ricœur’s threefold definition of universal moral norms (i.e., as self-respect, respect for others, and rules of justice) is unsatisfying, in my opinion, if we accept the conclusion that moral norms are expressions of particular historical communities and feelings. If moral norms should be understood in this sense, then these norms should be understood as principles applicable within particular historical communities, rather than as universally applicable principles, and this is particularly so for self-respect, respect for others, and rules of justice. Again, Ricœur does not contend that moral norms are universally applicable without exception, despite the singularity of the situation and the communal context to which they apply. He ultimately criticizes Kant and questions the universal character of morality. According to him, universal moral norms risk conflicting with the singularity of concrete situations.66 Ricœur argues that responsibility implies critical judgment that determines whether universal moral norms are applicable to the singularity of a concrete situation or whether an exception should be made (cf. his idea of practical wisdom). When he contends that moral norms are universal maxims for action, he apparently means that this is only in principle, but not in practice. His point thus appears to be that moral norms are principally and formally universal in that these norms have a logical form that remains the same whether applied to one situation or to another. This does not imply, however,

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that moral norms are also practically universal. For Ricœur, moral norms are formal guidelines, which, however universal, may ask for exceptions in singular situations. It is important not to underestimate the central place Ricœur’s idea of practical wisdom takes in his moral anthropology. As will become clear later, I think that he is also correct to contend that practical wisdom is salient for adopting a critical attitude toward moral norms and their authority. However, I am arguing that moral norms should not be understood as universally applicable, not even in principle or not even as a stage in the larger context of practical wisdom.67 I think Ricœur’s understanding of universal moral norms is particularly problematic in light of recent work in moral psychology and moral anthropology. He seeks to justify universal moral norms by their rational form. In his discussion with Changeux, he states that he agrees with Kant that “legitimation” of moral norms, that is, legitimation of “how human species ought to behave,” should be sought in “a priori” norms of reason.68 For him, searching for the origins of morality in human nature fundamentally differs from searching to legitimize moral norms in searching for their formal a priori soundness and rationality. Hence, he writes in Oneself as Another that Kant’s categorical imperative, to act as if your course of action would have to become a universal law is the “test” of “formalism.”69 Yet, if moral norms originate in human nature and find their expression in particular moral communities, it is problematic to understand moral norms as a priori universal correctives of human nature. Not only is it difficult to see how a priori norms would be different or superior from norms that originate in human nature, as Ricœur suggests in his discussion with Changeux. What is more, it is difficult to understand how we could find one absolute set of universal a priori moral norms that should correct human nature and mores, since moral norms are expressions of particular communities and their mores. Of course, my point is not that responsibility and justice should be understood only in relation to natural feelings or ipseity, regardless of any normative criteria. As I already noted, I am not defending a radical moral relativism. Rather, my point is that moral norms are not, or at least “less,” universal than Ricœur appears to admit in his moral anthropology, and that we should therefore grant more attention to the idea of singularity for understanding responsibility and justice. My point is that moral norms are at best universal only in a prospective or provisional sense. In other words, the universal character of moral norms can only be claimed and should permanently be revised and renewed. There are no absolute universal criteria for defining universal moral norms. The case of Robert Harris, which I discussed in the previous chapter, illustrates the importance of moral norms. Clearly, the fact that Harris is not a proper moral self and does not show any concern for the



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suffering of his victims does not free him from being morally responsible and from facing justice. Moral responsibility implies imputation in the sense of the judicial practice of holding people responsible for moral wrongdoing in excluding them somehow from the moral community. Rules of justice determine what counts as moral wrong in the sense of a crime. Yet the fact that it is questionable whether capital punishment should still be considered as a moral norm in contemporary society also illustrates that moral norms are not absolute. Moral norms should be understood in relation to the singularity of different cultures. I am arguing in favor of the plurality of moral norms, and in favor of a more practical way of understanding these norms in relation to the diversity of different cultural communities. I agree with Ricœur’s idea that responsibility and justice should be understood not on the basis of ethics alone, but also in relation to moral norms: “morality is held to constitute … [an] indispensable, actualization of the ethical aim into norms.”70 Morality has an indispensable legitimacy in prescribing that which is right or in prohibiting that which is wrong. As Ricœur points out, these prescriptions and proscriptions are a necessary remedy against the factual wrongdoing of human beings in this world: “Because there is evil, the aim of the ‘good life’ has to be submitted by the test of moral obligation.”71 I also agree with Ricœur that the idea of ipseity is significant for understanding responsibility in that in being selves we should critically judge moral norms (cf. Ricœur’s idea of practical wisdom). However, I am questioning Ricœur’s claim that this kind of judgment should imply respect as a universal moral maxim for actions. Moral norms should be understood as institutional rules in particular historical communities, rather than as universal maxims of action. In other words, there are no moral norms other than those within particular historical and cultural communities, no imperatives for action that transcend historical and cultural communities, even when the universality of certain moral norms can be claimed by virtue of their rational character. Hence, it is important to stress, I think, that critical judgment of moral norms (cf. practical wisdom) occurs, not only in the context of singular lived existence (i.e., ipseity), but also in the context of singular communities. Therefore, the idea of singularity is also salient for a moral anthropology that aims at understanding responsibility and justice in relation to mores. MORAL NORMS AND PROSPECTIVE MORAL COMMUNITIES Because of their purely formal character, moral norms claim universality in that they apply to all situations in the same sense. However, these norms are articulations of particular communities and institutions, and their universality

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is for that reason also “utopian” or “always in the near future” in that there is no one single community that defines the absolute criteria for moral norms. I am arguing to understand moral norms in a less absolute, less universal sense than Ricœur understands them in the wake of Kant. I think Ricœur nevertheless offers the tools for such an understanding in a number of his writings. In From Text to Action, for example, he stresses more than in Oneself as Another that moral norms are expressions of concrete historical communities. For instance, he writes in From Text to Action: “To speak of a historical community is to place ourselves beyond a purely formal morality.”72 Furthermore, Ricœur points out that what he calls the “State” or “the decision-making organ of a historical community” rationalizes the community’s “history of customs and mores.”73 If the ideas of responsibility and justice should be understood, as I have been arguing, in relation to these customs and mores and in relation to human nature in general, then moral norms are the rationalized equivalents of these customs and mores, rather than formal universal a priori imperatives of reason. It is of course true that Ricœur understands moral norms in the Kantian universal sense in From Text to Action as well. In chapter 9 of that book, “Practical Reason,” he argues that the “Kantian concept of practical reason is a necessary stepping-stone” for defining human action.74 Yet in chapter 15, “Ethics and Politics,” he aims to define social norms “outside formal morality.”75 I think this understanding of social norms, regardless of the existence of formal universal imperatives, offers a way of understanding moral norms in a different, more utopian sense. In From Text to Action and in The Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Ricœur understands moral norms in relation to the interplay of ideology and utopia. In these works, he argues that communal identities are always utopian in the sense that, when communities express their identities in fixed ideologies, these identities claim to provide the universal norms for the true society. However, this society is out of reach.76 There is always room in communities for changing the claimed rules, for realizing better rules or for revisiting the existing rules. Moral norms are among those rules communities claim to represent the universal idea of the good, responsibility, and justice. Whereas ideologies, so Ricœur argues in The Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, justify existing power in defending the absolute character of their norms, utopia invents new structures of power yet to be achieved and in that sense offers a way of critique.77 Not only are moral norms thus empirical in that they express natural feelings but they are also communal rules and symbols of power that risks surmounting into violence (I come back to this connection between justice and symbolical violence in part 3). Moral norms are thus not permanent facts, but subject to change. This change should be accompanied by critique.



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In From Text to Action, Ricœur argues in this respect that ideologies defend symbols and “transform sentiment into significance and make it socially available.”78 Interesting here is how he relates the idea of communal identities to that of ideology and that of utopia, and how those identities relate to moral norms. According to him, the identity of communities justified by their ideologies is always a work in progress, is never fully realized, and, in that sense, has a utopian aspect to it. He writes, “The identity of a community or of individuals is … a prospective identity.” “The identity is in suspense. Thus, the utopian element is ultimately a component of identity.” Communal identity has a “symbolic structure.”79 History has proven that ideologies defend their power in claiming universality for their norms, and that this can have dangerous and gruesome results. In the final part of this book, I will aim to demonstrate the extent to which Ricœur defines the relation between occurrences of evil in historical institutions and responsibility justice. I will then argue that justice is an ambiguous concept in that moral norms, as well as institutional rules of justice, are a necessary remedy against violence that occurs within communities, but that these norms and rules are also expressions of power over others, and thus can lead to violence. Yet, I think Ricœur’s understanding of moral norms in relation to the ideas of ideology and of utopia demonstrates that these norms are part of communal identity. For that reason, moral norms have also a utopian aspect in that they are not absolute or in that their universal character is only claimed permanently in “the near future.” Following this line of reasoning, ideologies define moral norms and claim their universality in order to preserve certain (moral) values, feelings, standards, etc. In From Text to Action, Ricœur writes that ideology “gives ideas the form of universality.”80 In this regard, he points to both the positive and the negative site of ideology. He writes: Whether it preserves the power of a class, or ensures the duration of a system of authority, or patterns the stable functioning of a community, ideology has a function of conservation in both a good and a bad sense of the word. It preserves, it conserves, in the sense of making firm the human order that could be shattered by natural or historical forces, by external or internal disturbances. All the pathology of ideology proceeds from this “conservative” role of ideology.81

In other words, ideologies function to defend (moral) norms, whether or not such defense has a good or bad outcome. In that moral norms claim universality, yet can also be the onset of violence, it is important that these norms are subject to critique and revision. How then is critique of moral norms possible? Indeed, if there are no absolute criteria for determining moral norms, how can there be any critique that

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allows choosing one moral norm over another? I think there are several possible ways of critique regarding moral norms. One possible form is critique by means of cross-cultural dialogue. Communities can question the claimed moral values and norms of other communities and, vice versa, communicate about common values and norms. In Reenvisioning Justice, George Taylor calls this kind of critique “horizontal,” which means that communities can establish a dialogue or communicate to search for similarities along their different moral norms and rules of justice.82 We can learn from different cultures and different values that might question the supposed superiority of our own moral values. For example, the fact that other cultures stress less, the significance of respect in our relation to others raises the question whether respect is always the best approach to others, in particular others from different societies. Or, conversely, we can use our own moral values and norms to question those of other communities. On the communal or institutional level, this kind of horizontal critique appears to imply also the possibility of an agreement or consensus as the goal of the dialogue. In his discussion with Rawls in The Just, Ricœur introduces the idea that societies are capable of a “bond between the rule of justice and the depth of beliefs” in constituting “an overlapping consensus.”83 Following this line of reasoning, consensus about certain beliefs thus allows societies to search for an agreement about rules of justice and moral norms. For example, although the Universal Declaration of Human Rights originates in the West, many different countries embrace the principles of this declaration. Yet critique of moral norms also implies, I think, the idea of ipseity. We can critically judge moral norms not only on the communal and institutional level, through dialogue between cultural values, rules, and norms, but also in our own judgment. Clearly, one can take a critical attitude toward the moral norms of one’s own community or other communities when these communities stand for moral values and standards that one believes should be abandoned, or simply be revised. Such an attitude is the onset of moral and political dissent. In this respect, humans are not simply the products of moral feelings, values, and norms or of their environments and cultural heritage. They can also evaluate these norms, or criticize or plainly reject them. Ricœur’s idea of practical wisdom is salient in this respect. Given that practical wisdom, for him, entails these capacities, it not only allows the self to make an exception of existing moral norms, but also to question and criticize moral norms. Hence, I think responsibility should be understood, as I am trying to show in this book, in light of the idea of ipseity and of singularity in general. Critique of moral norms and our capacity to perform ethical and moral actions takes place within the context of our singular lived experience (opinion, decision, initiative, etc.). This is what Ricœur’s idea of practical wisdom is all about. But, rather than being based on one universal set of moral imperatives (cf. his idea of respect), this critique takes place within the context of the singularity



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of different communities, institutions, and cultures. Judgment and critique take place within the context of a culture and its history of ideas. Another type of critique might be defined in a more “transcendent” sense, as the sensibility for otherness. It is in light of the possible violence that moral norms and institutions inflict upon others that we should critically judge these norms and institutions. Indeed, above-mentioned forms of critique—critique through intercultural dialogue and critique through practical wisdom—rely mainly on opinion, the general opinion about moral values of a community or the individual opinion of the self. Yet the relation with the other offers a more imperative way for critique of moral norms and for finding a common sensibility about morality. I already mentioned Ricœur’s idea of solicitude and argued that it points at our common sensibility for justice: in true compassion for suffering others we experience injustice or that it is unfair that others are needlessly suffering. In the second part, I will elaborate in line with Ricœur and Levinas on this idea that responsibility should be understood in light of alterity or otherness: as an injunction in the relation with the other. I will argue that Ricœur’s moral anthropology demonstrates that the other is the primary object of responsibility and justice in that our ethical and moral feelings are feelings toward others. Further, I will argue in line with Levinas that the affective relation with the other should be understood as a call for responsibility in that our sensibility for the vulnerability of the other makes us responsive to this other and to justice. Hence, the singularity of the other is significant for our understanding of responsibility and for moral anthropology. Finally, critique to moral norms can take the form of the narrative. In the part 3, I will examine this way of critique. I will examine in particular Ricœur’s interpretation of fiction and historical narratives in relation to his idea of obligated memory. He demonstrates, as I will argue, that fiction and historical narratives can aid in criticizing moral norms and institutions when these exercise violence toward others. In recalling the past, and in particular the victims of institutions in the past, fiction and historical narratives provide a critical warning for the future and in that sense function as “media” of moral and political dissent. Next, I will argue in part 3 that Ricœur’s idea of utopia is also a form of the narrative that allows for critique to moral norms. In line with him, I will aim to demonstrate that utopias should be understood, not only as a literary genre (cf. Thomas More’s Utopia), but also as a means by which oppressed minorities and others can exercise moral and political dissent. Being an alternative to the ruling ideology and a revision of dominating power structures, utopias can question and revise existing moral norms and rules of justice. In that respect, narratives—fiction, historical narratives, and utopias—are the expressions of the singularity of the other. A moral anthropology that examines responsibility and justice should therefore take into account the idea of singularity in light of the narrative.

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NOTES 1. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 172. 2. Ibid., 214. 3. Watson, “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil,” 239ff. 4. Ibid., 237. 5. Ibid., 235. 6. Ibid., 238. 7. Paul Auster, Travels in the Scriptorium (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2008). 8. Ibid., 113. 9. Watson, “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil, 263–4; Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 169ff. 10. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 176. 11. Ethell, Narrative Identity and Personal Responsibility, 167. 12. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 191–2. 13. Derived from the Latin sollicitare, the French word sollicitude (which means secouer violemment—being agitated in a violent manner) carries within itself the significance of caring in being anxious, troubled, or worried. See solliciter in: Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française (Paris: PUF, 2008). 14. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 193. 15. In the second part, I will argue that a phenomenological analysis of this affective relation with the other is salient for understanding responsibility. 16. Ibid., 191. 17. Ibid., 190–2. 18. Ibid., 240ff. 19. Ibid., 264. 20. Ibid., 269. 21. One example is Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought. 22. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 203ff. 23. Ricœur, The Just, 58–75, 76–93. 24. Strawson, “Freedom and Resentment,” 22. 25. Sommers, Relative Justice, 1. 26. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 141. 27. See for example, Carla Bagnoli, “Respect and Membership in the Moral Community,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10: 113–28. 28. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 249ff. 29. Ibid., 299. 30. Ibid., 215. 31. Ibid., 204. 32. Ibid. 33. “Au lieu d’opposer polairement la téléologie aristotélicienne à la déontologie kantienne, Ricœur, en historien de la philosophie, préfère d’abord s’attarder sur les structures de transitions de la première vers la seconde. C’est que les principes de l’éthique d’Aristote, sous certains aspects, anticipent le moment d’universalité



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consubstantiel de la morale kantienne. … [U]n aspect concerne le statut que Ricœur, dans le sillage d’Aristote, attribue aux capacités (la délibération, l’initiative, l’évaluation, etc.) de l’agir humain. Considérées comme des transcendentaux, ou plutôt comme des existentiaux, ces capacités ont, aux yeux de Ricœur, un sens universel” (Michel, Paul Ricœur, 308). 34. “L’originalité de l’interprétation Ricœurienne du corpus kantien réside dans le fait de mobiliser ces “ruptures déontologiques, non point pour invalider l’héritage téléologique de l’éthique aristotélicienne, mais précisément pour le “mettre à l’épreuve”, ou, si l’on veut, pour l’épurer. En d’autres termes, il s’agit de se demander si les “étalons” qui règlent les pratiques, les idéaux qui nourrissent nos plans de vie peuvent répondre à un critère d’universalisation. Problème il y a dans la mesure où ces éthiques ne sont relatives qu’à des systèmes de valeur, sans supposer a priori de prétention à l’universalité” (Michel, Paul Ricœur, 310). 35. Ibid., 222. 36. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 205. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., 206. 39. Ibid., 215. 40. Ibid., 206–7. 41. Ibid., 218. 42. Sommers, Relative Justice, 59. 43. Ibid., 60. 44. Ibid., 40. 45. See for example, Ricœur, The Just, 127–32; Ricœur, Reflections on the Just, 223–31. 46. Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 141. 47. Ibid. 48. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 218. 49. Ibid., 219. 50. Ibid., 220. 51. Marcel Hénaff, “Remarques sur la Règle d’Or. Ricoeur et la question de la réciprocité,” In: Cahier de l’Herne Ricoeur, ed. M. Revault-d’Alonnes and F. Azouvi (Paris: Seuil, 2004). 52. Christopher Boehm, “How the Golden Rule can Lead to Reproductive Success: A New Selection Basis for Alexander’s ‘Indirect Reciprocity,’” In: The Golden Rule. Analytical Perspectives, eds. Jacob Neusner and Bruce Chilton (Lanham: University Press of America). 53. Daniel Berthhold, “The Golden Rule in Kant and Utilitarism,” in: Neusner and Chilton, The Golden Rule, 84. 54. For example, Christine M. Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (­Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Bagnoli, “Respect and Membership in the Moral Community.” 55. Bagnoli, “Respect and Membership in the Moral Community,” 114. 56. Ibid. 57. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 194.

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58. Ibid., 202. 59. Ibid., 194. 60. Ibid. 61. Ricœur, “Éthique et morale,” 133. 62. Ricœur, The Just, 19. 63. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 170. 64. Ibid., 197. 65. Ricœur recognizes an example of such a theory of jurisprudence in J. Rawls’ Theory of Justice: “Donner une solution procédurale à la question de la juste, tel est le but de la théorie de la justice” (Ricœur, “Éthique et morale,” 137ff.). 66. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 240ff. 67. In this respect, I agree with George H. Taylor who examines Ricœur’s work in the context of the contemporary post-modern debate on the nature of the universal, and argues in particular that Ricœur, in Oneself as Another, “grants … too much of a role to the universal in norms of ethics and justice” (p. 136). According to Taylor, Ricœur’s idea of universality is problematic (Taylor particularly means formal universalism) in that Ricœur’s idea of the universal “seeks to act as an independent, common source between contesting parties” (George H. Taylor, “Ricoeur versus Ricoeur? Between the Universal and the Contextual,” in: Todd S. Mei and David Lewin, From Ricoeur to Action. The Socio-Political Significance of Ricoeur’s Thinking (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2012), 141). Yet, as Taylor points out, “there is no common source between divergent understandings,” “no one horizon, one tradition, one history, one language, one universalism” (Ibid.). 68. Changeux and Ricœur, What Makes Us Think? 215–6. 69. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 208. 70. Ibid., 170. 71. Ibid., 218. 72. Ricœur, From Text to Action, 330. 73. Ibid., 330–1. 74. Ibid., 197. 75. Ibid., 334. 76. Ricœur, The Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 301. 77. Ibid., 309ff. 78. Ricœur, From Text to Action, 316. 79. Ricœur, The Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 311. 80. Ricœur, From Text to Action, 316. 81. Ibid., 318. 82. George H. Taylor, “Reenvisioning Justice,” Lo Squarda 12: 67. 83. Ricœur, The Just, 72.

Conclusion

Understanding Moral Life as a Self

In this part, I examined the extent to which Ricœur develops a moral ­anthropology that demonstrates that the idea of ipseity is significant for understanding responsibility and justice. In light of recent developments in analytical philosophy, I found this examination particularly relevant. Recent theories in philosophy of mind, which find inspiration in cognitive science, and draw on such areas as moral psychology and moral anthropology, argue that responsibility should be understood in relation to natural feelings. Certainly, most prominent of these theories defend a naturalistic and relativistic approach to responsibility and justice, and contend that there are no absolute universal criteria for defining what it means for agents to be responsible, because our practices of holding responsible are relative to how feelings take shape in different communities. Other theories in contemporary analytical philosophy sketch a more nuanced picture of moral sentiments, responsibility, justice, and/or selfhood, and argue that despite the reality of communal differences regarding morals we can define universal criteria that aid in our understanding of responsibility. Yet, many of the theories of responsibility and justice in analytical philosophy have in common that they understand moral life on the basis of empirical data about and an analysis of human nature. In doing so, these theories reduce moral life to a general picture of human’s “moral blueprint.” My aim in the first part of this book was to question this kind of reduction by examining to what extent Ricœur’s idea that a hermeneutical understanding of the nonempirical, metaphysical idea of ipseity, that is, of the self’s singular lived existence, is salient for comprehending responsibility and justice. As I argued, we come to learn the meaning of responsibility and justice only within the context of singular lived existence, and for that reason responsibility and justice should not merely be explained in terms of causal relations or psychologicalanthropological structures between natural feelings and communities. 87

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In chapter 1, I examined Ricœur’s own interpretation of analytical p­ hilosophy, and in particular his discussion of ordinary language philosophy. The purpose of this investigation was defining how he himself uses analytical philosophy to pinpoint the extent to which language functions as an empirical basis on which moral concepts can be built. I argued that he uses semantics and pragmatics to define the relation between his moral anthropology and the empirical world as well as the physical body. As Ricœur points out, analytical philosophy of language explains how we use the concepts of the self and of responsibility to identify agents as physical bodies that are the cause of actions (X is responsible for Y). Yet, for him, ordinary language philosophy is also insufficient for understanding the ideas of the self and of responsibility in that it explains the causal relation between self and responsibility, but fails to understand the motivations for being responsible as a self. Following Wittgenstein, semantics and pragmatics approach philosophical problems in analyzing the public domain of language, and thus typically contend that the ideas of the self and of responsibility have no other meaning than that of their corresponding concepts in ordinary language. As Ricœur rightly points out, explaining how concepts function in language to identify selves as (moral) agents still differs from understanding our lived experience of being responsible as a self, and what the ontological conditions are of ethical and moral life. In chapter 2, I examined Ricœur’s understanding of moral feelings, as well as more recent moral theories in analytical philosophy. The aim of that chapter was to demonstrate that a descriptive analysis of moral feelings offers an “alternate route”—different than that of linguistic analysis—to explaining the causal-empirical relation between the self on the one hand and responsibility and justice on the other. I argued that whereas analytical philosophy of language explains how concepts relate to empirical reality, moral psychology explains how our being responsible as a self is the expression of natural moral feelings. In holding each other responsible in expressing natural feelings we identify each other, so I argued, as selves that are morally responsible. In chapter 2, I argued furthermore that this conception of the causal-empirical relation between the self and responsibility helps explaining the relation between freedom and responsibility, which Ricœur’s moral anthropology assumes. I argued that, although our practices of holding responsible are the expressions of human nature, the psychological interaction between the self and his or her moral community makes the self responsible and influences the self’s capacity for free will (e.g., the relation between childhood conditions and moral behavior). Yet this close connection between moral agency and moral communities also challenges the idea of finding universal criteria for morals as morals appear to differ cross-culturally among the different communities.



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The aim of chapter 3 was to demonstrate the significance of Ricœur’s phenomenological-hermeneutical approach to moral anthropology in light of the recent developments in analytical philosophy regarding the problems of responsibility and justice. I argued there that his moral anthropology does not lose momentum in light of these developments, and that he demonstrates that understanding what it means to be responsible and to act in juridical contexts implies referring to the singularity of the self’s lived existence. More exactly, his ideas of self-esteem, solicitude, and practical wisdom demonstrate that being responsible should not only be understood in terms of causal-empirical or psychological interaction between the self, natural feelings, and moral communities. As Ricœur points out, we come to learn the meaning of responsibility and justice through actually living existence, that is, the confrontation with others and with narratives (e.g., through the sense of injustice in the confrontation with the suffering of others we come to learn justice and therefore the meaning of being responsible). This confrontation implies interaction with natural moral feelings (e.g., sympathy). Yet a phenomenologicalhermeneutical analysis of our lived existence adds to our understanding of responsibility in that such an analysis shows that being responsible occurs within the context of singular existence, and that we should search for common sensibilities about morality in referring to this singular existence. I argued furthermore in chapter 3 that if we should understand moral norms as expressions of communal standards, values, and feelings, we should nevertheless question Ricœur’s idea of universal moral norms, at least as he understands this idea in Oneself as Another. I questioned his idea of understanding respect as a universal moral imperative for action, because different moral communities attach different values to respect. Finally, I argued in favor of a more practical, less universal way of understanding moral norms as the expression of the values of communities in institutions. I found the tools for this understanding in Ricœur’s work on justice and utopia. This way of understanding moral norms as provisional constructs highlights the significance of the idea of singularity for moral anthropology, because moral norms exist in the context of singular communities. The nonuniversal character of moral norms calls for critique and revision of those norms, which can occur, among other ways, by means of practical wisdom and thus within the context of the self’s singular existence.

Part 2

ALTERITY

In part 1, I examined Ricœur’s moral anthropology and how it conceives of the relation between singularity in the sense of ipseity and moral life. Yet, if ipseity, designating the self’s singular lived existence, is significant for understanding moral life in Ricœur’s moral anthropology, this is not the only sense, so I will argue in part 2, in which the significance of singularity shows in this anthropology. In fact, when he uses the concept “singularity,” it is in the first place to indicate situations in which we rely on practical wisdom for applying moral norms in singular situations.1 For him, others, the other, and otherness (the differences between these terms will become clear gradually in this part) call for an exception in singular situations. Moreover, essential to his understanding of responsibility and justice is Levinas’ idea that responsibility is an “injunction” with regard to “the other.”2 To what extent should responsibility and justice then be understood in relation to the singularity of the other’s lived existence (to the other, others, other norms, others persons)? The aim of this part is to demonstrate that in Ricœur’s moral anthropology singularity, responsibility, and justice relate to each other in a second sense, namely that understanding these ideas on the basis of moral feelings implies taking into account the idea of alterity, which refers to the singularity of the other’s lived existence. There are three reasons for examining Ricœur’s idea of alterity for understanding his moral anthropology. First, part 1 presupposes, yet leaves unexamined the extent to which ipseity should be understood in relation to alterity. I examined Ricœur’s idea of solicitude as an example of the relation with the other. I argued that this idea illustrates the significance of ipseity for understanding responsibility (being confronted with the other as a self allows understanding justice). In so doing, I did not question, however, to what extent solicitude and feelings for others in general are significant for 91

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understanding responsibility. Nor did I answer the question about the relation between oneself and another, and how we should distinguish between different meanings of otherness. To mention that the relation of caring for others is significant for understanding responsibility and justice within particular communities is not yet to define in what particular sense this is the case. Yet the ideas of the self and that of the other are intertwined for Ricœur, and therefore this part examines their relation in Ricœur’s moral anthropology. The second reason for examining this relation is that Ricœur and Levinas themselves have different opinions about the idea of responsibility for the other. In 1990, Ricœur writes in a letter to Levinas: “If there is a difference between you and me, it consists precisely in that I support the thesis that the other would not be recognized as the source of interpellation and injunction if he were not capable of evoking or awaking self-esteem.”3 Ricœur thus suggests that the ethical relation with the other should be understood in terms of the self (cf. Ricœur’s notion of self-esteem), rather than in terms of radical otherness, as is Levinas’ opinion. Moreover, this dispute between Ricœur and Levinas has been of interest recently among Levinas and Ricœur scholars.4 Given that this part’s aim is examining the relation between alterity, responsibility, and justice in Ricœur’s work, it should also take into account Levinas’ understanding of responsibility for the other, since this understanding is paramount for Ricœur’s idea of responsibility. I will aim to clarify that we should question Ricœur’s idea to define “otherness” in terms of the capable self, and hence in function of his moral anthropology. I will argue that alterity should not be reduced to an essence in human nature, anthropological or psychological, and that Levinas’ idea of the metaphysical (physical as in human nature) relation with the other therefore demonstrates that affection and desire for the other than self allows responding to others, even when these others are not part of the same moral community or are recognized as capable selves. For that reason, I will argue, Levinas’ phenomenological analysis of the metaphysical relation with the other is significant for understanding responsibility and justice. Thirdly, this part investigates more exactly Levinas’ idea that others call for responsibility and justice because it is unclear, at first sight, to what extent this idea is reconcilable with recent moral theories in analytical philosophy. The primary subject of responsibility and justice according to these theories is moral agency, rather than the other, as is the case for Levinas’ understanding of responsibility. Since these theories take position in the free will debate, they are primarily concerned with the question to what extent the agent’s actions imply freedom in order to specify how to ascribe moral responsibility to these actions. For Levinas, on the other hand, responsibility is in the first place a call. What is more, Levinas’ radical idea of responsibility implies that “the Good is not presented to freedom; it has chosen me before I have chosen it.”5

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For Levinas, responsibility should not simply be understood as the result of natural feelings or of free initiative. In Otherwise than Being, he writes: “The human subject [who is] called … to responsibility is not an avatar of nature.”6 But in what sense does the other call for responsibility? To what extent is responsibility a call, and not merely the result of the ascription of moral feelings, standards, and norms to actions? NOTES 1. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 175. 2. Ibid., 189. 3. “S’il y a entre vous et moi quelque différend, il se situe exactement au point où je soutiens que le visage de l’autre ne saurait être reconnu comme source d’interpellation et d’injonction que s’il s’avère capable d’éveiller ou de réveiller une estime de soi, laquelle, je l’accorde volontiers, resterait inchoative, non déployée, et pour tout dire infirme hors de la puissance d’éveille de l’autre.” See “L’Unicité humaine du pronom je,” In: Répondre d’autrui: Emmanuel Levinas, ed. Jean-Cristophe Aeschlimann (Neuchatel: La Baconnière, 1989), 37 (My translation). 4. See, for example, Peter Kemp, “Ricoeur between Heidegger and Lévinas,” In: Paul Ricœur: The Hermeneutics of Action, ed. Richard Kearney (London and New Delhi: SAGE, 1996); Patrick L. Bourgeois, “Ricoeur and Levinas: Solicitude in ­Reciprocity and Solitude in Existence,” In: Ricoeur as Another. The Ethics of Subjectivity, ed. Richard A. Cohen and James L. Marsh (Albany: SUNY, 2002); Cyndie Sautereau, “Subjectivité et Vulnaribilité chez Ricœur et Levinas,” in: Études Ricœuriennes/ Ricœur Studies 4, No. 2, (2013): 8–24. 5. Emmanuel Levinas, Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2011), 11. 6. Ibid., 18.

Chapter 4

Moral Communities and Others

In this chapter, I will argue that in reworking Levinas’ idea of responsibility Ricœur demonstrates that moral feelings are essentially other-directed feelings. I will contend that in so doing he underscores the significance of the idea of singularity (in the sense of alterity) for defining moral life. In his moral anthropology, Ricœur discusses several key elements to show this: solicitude, self-esteem, practical wisdom, respect, the golden rule, and conscience. These elements highlight the significance of the idea of otherness for understanding moral feelings. He shows that in experiencing feelings of sympathy (in relation to self-esteem and practical wisdom) the self generally cares for others in sympathizing with these others. This makes it an other-directed set of feelings and a common feature of moral life. Further, he demonstrates that respect for others, the golden rule to treat others as yourself, and conscience in the sense of the deliberation on moral life all imply other-directed feelings of esteem for moral and communal norms and just institutions. Respect, the golden rule, and conscience consequently constitute relations of responsibility and justice for the others of the moral community (with whom we share moral norms). Ricœur’s moral anthropology in that sense demonstrates that the singularity of the other is significant for understanding the self’s capability to perform responsible judgment and actions within particular communities and in relation to moral feelings. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF OTHERNESS FOR MORAL PHILOSOPHY Levinas’ work strongly influenced Ricœur’s. At several occasions in his writings, Ricœur acknowledges this influence. Indeed, Levinas’ influence 95

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on Ricœur’s work already appears from the fact that in several of his texts Ricœur critically examines Levinas’ philosophy. For example, in 1977 Ricœur writes a critical essay on Levinas’ second major work Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence.1 In 1989, to give another example, he publishes a similar critique with his article “Emmanuel Levinas: Thinker of Testimony.”2 Yet he perhaps most elaborately discusses Levinas’ philosophy in Oneself as Another, where he devotes a considerable part of the seventh and tenth chapters to a discussion of Levinas, and in which he builds on this discussion for defining his own idea of the ethical and moral self.3 More exactly, Ricœur finds Levinas’ idea of responsibility original and stresses its importance for contemporary moral philosophy. In “The Concept of Responsibility,” Ricœur writes that Levinas introduces the idea in contemporary philosophy that “other people” are the primary “object of concern” or “care,” and, in that sense, “the source of morality.”4 This means, as Ricœur points out, that their “vulnerability” or “fragility” is the “source of the injunction” for responsibility.5 For Ricœur, Levinas thus introduces the idea in contemporary moral philosophy that “responsibility” should be understood as the result of the injunction to care for vulnerable others, rather than as the result of a “judgment bearing on the relationship between the author of an action and its effects in the world.”6 Ricœur’s interpretation of Levinas’ idea that responsibility should be understood as a relation with others and not only as a causal relation reflects Ricœur’s distinction, which I discussed earlier, between explaining the causes of actions and understanding the motivations of actions. According to Ricœur, the other’s vulnerability, and the self’s feelings for others, are the primary motivations for performing responsible actions. Whereas analytical philosophy focuses on explaining moral agency as the cause of actions, Ricœur follows Levinas and focuses on understanding the encounter with the other as the motivational relation of responsibility. The novelty that Ricœur finds in Levinas’ idea of responsibility is that this idea marks a rupture with the classical juridical idea of responsibility for action. In “The Concept of Responsibility,” Ricœur traces back the historical evolution of the use of the word responsibility to the beginnings of the nineteenth century, when it first appeared in the European languages.7 According to him, the use of the word responsibility at that time was strictly juridical. Moreover, in his opinion this juridical sense of the word responsibility meant obligation in a double sense, depending on whether the word was used in civil law or in penal law. Ricœur writes: “In civil law, responsibility is defined by the obligation to make up or to compensate for the tort one has caused through one’s own fault.”8 In “penal law,” responsibility designates “the obligation to accept punishment” for certain actions.9 Indeed, given that the word “responsibility” was primarily used in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries



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in juridical and political circles and for defining responsibility for action, the emphasis does not lie on the other (or only indirectly insofar as others are involved in the actions for which a person is held to be responsible).10 In this respect, Ricœur recognizes in Levinas’ idea of responsibility a new meaning of the term “responsibility,” regarding not only the etymology of this term but also contemporary philosophy. As he points out, while the concept of responsibility is univocal in its original juridical sense (i.e., it indicates an obligation for action), it is not really well established in the philosophical tradition. Indeed, even though the idea of responsibility, as related to the problem of freedom, is almost as old as philosophy itself and should be traced back to the Homeric Epics and to Aristotle, in the history of contemporary moral philosophy the concept of responsibility is used in several different senses. For instance, Strawson’s understanding of ascription in Individuals expresses, as I argued, the morally neutral basic semantic sense of the concept of responsibility. For Ricœur, this change in contemporary philosophy resulted in the genesis of new meanings of the notion of responsibility, several philosophers use the word “responsibility” in the sense of responsibility for others, like Hans Jonas, for instance, who defends the idea of a responsibility for future generations.11 In his own way, Levinas argues that the other is the source of the moral injunction.12 Further, even in contemporary judicial systems where the problem of responsibility focuses on the idea of risk, so Ricœur contends, there is increasing attention for others that are the subject of harm. He writes in “The Concept of Responsibility,” in contemporary law systems “the risk, the victim of accidents, and harm done occupy the center of the problematic … of responsibility.”13 For example, it is well known that today companies are often held responsible for the health risks of their products for consumers. This emphasis on risk clearly also entails an emphasis on the vulnerability of others. Ricœur’s idea that vulnerable others are the primary objects of our concern already hints, I think, at the significance of the idea of otherness for understanding responsibility and justice in light of recent moral theories in analytical philosophy, and contemporary moral philosophy in general. In times of cultural conflict when minorities and others are the most vulnerable victims of violence and suffering, taking into account the idea of the other for understanding responsibility appears to be particularly relevant. Today’s increasing intolerance toward others and minorities invite to rethink the significance of otherness for responsibility and justice. The increasing number of global conflicts and violence in the name of “justice” demonstrates that we should rethink the ways in which we express and defend our values with regard to others. However, one question is to what extent Levinas’ idea to understand responsibility on the basis of the idea of otherness compares to the idea of recent moral theories in analytical philosophy to understand responsibility

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on the basis of communal moral feelings. I will examine this question in the remainder of this chapter. Answering this question will moreover be imperative in order to understand the significance of the idea of singularity for understanding responsibility and justice. Indeed, Levinas’ idea to understand responsibility in the first place in the sense of responsibility for the other seems at odds with the idea of responsibility that recent theories of moral psychology and moral anthropology defend. These theories understand responsibility as the result of feelings, free will, and ascription of accountability to an agent’s actions. Levinas, however, defends the idea that responsibility for others should be understood in the first place regardless of the other’s cultural heritage or ontological features in general. He contends that responsibility neither is “an avatar of nature” nor should be reduced to a “concept” or an essence of “being.”14 For him, the ethical relation with the other “is situated before Culture.”15 In this relation with the singularity of the other, the other singularizes the self and calls the self to responsibility.16 In order to understand the relation between responsibility and singularity, and how this relation fits with a descriptive analysis of moral feelings, it is thus salient to understand Levinas’ idea of the relation with the other. In fact, moral theories in analytical philosophy rarely discuss the concept of the other and often make an abstraction of the idea of otherness. Certainly, as I argued in chapter 2, in his article “Freedom and Resentment,” Strawson, for example, introduces the notion of the other, and distinguishes between holding others responsible with regard to others (moral reactive attitudes as in moral indignation), holding others responsible with regard to ourselves (personal reactive attitudes as in resentment), and holding ourselves responsible with regard to ourselves (self-reactive attitudes as in guilt). When Strawson uses the term “others” in “Freedom and Resentment,” he thus aims to distinguish between distinct moral feelings that mark the difference between self and other. However, he uses the concept of the other for clarifying to what extent moral feelings relate to our practices of holding responsible, rather than for defending the idea that others are the primary objects of responsibility. Should we understand the relation with the other as the condition of responsibility and justice or should the meaning of responsibility be restricted to our natural and cultural reactive attitudes of holding people responsible? And how does evil in the particular sense of communal violence toward others invite to understand responsibility and justice? In part 3, I will argue that evil in the sense of communal violence toward others calls for the community’s responsibility toward others (which is still different from the agent’s responsibility and from the face-to-face encounter of responsibility for the other), and that understanding this responsibility implies the idea of the narrative: narratives allow reworking and criticizing existing moral standards and rules of justice when those risk resulting into forms of communal violence.



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I will argue in the remainder of this chapter that Ricœur, in introducing his concept of “solicitude,” includes Levinas’ idea that we are in the first place responsible for others in his own hermeneutical and phenomenological understanding of the self, capable of ethical, moral, and political action, and that this idea demonstrates the significance of otherness for a feeling-based moral anthropology. It will then ultimately become clear from this anthropology that in order to understand the full scope of responsibility, we should bring together three different senses of the notion responsibility: the agent’s or self’s responsibility (part 1), responsibility for the other (part 2), and the community’s responsibility with regard to communal violence (part 3).

A MORAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF OTHER-DIRECTED FEELINGS Solicitude and responsibility for the other Ricœur’s thought on morality is essentially, although not exclusively, an anthropology that aims to reorient Levinas’ idea of responsibility for the other. In the secondary literature, critics agree that Ricœur’s philosophy should be read as an anthropology and that intersubjectivity is a central theme in this anthropology. For example, in the introduction of Philosophical Anthropology, a recently published collection of several of Ricœur’s anthropological texts, Johann Michel and Jérôme Porée point out that even though “anthropology” is not a central term in Ricœur’s vocabulary, his philosophy is anthropological through and through, insofar as that it aims to answer the question: What does it mean to be human?17 As Michel and Porée point out, in his autobiography Ricœur also identifies his philosophy as a philosophical anthropology. In this respect, moreover, Michel recognizes, in Paul Ricœur: Une philosophie de l’agir humain, three major levels of analysis in Ricœur’s work that are at the same time “distinct and complementary” (“distincts et complémentaires”): anthropology, hermeneutics, and normative philosophy.18 According to Michel, the intersubjective relation of responsibility for the other is an essential part of Ricœur’s anthropology.19 Other scholars explicitly examine the differences between his anthropology of the capable self and Levinas’ thought, which radically asserts that the other should not be reduced to an anthropological or ontological essence. Nathalie Maillard and Cyndie Sautereau, for example, both argue that Ricœur aims to understand the vulnerability of the other in terms of the self, whereas for Levinas, on the contrary, this vulnerability should not simply be defined in terms of the human essence.20 To what extent should Ricœur’s philosophy be understood then as a moral anthropology that reworks Levinas’ idea of responsibility? Certainly, as is

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the case for Ricœur’s philosophy in general, “anthropology” is not a central term in Oneself as Another either. It is not listed in the index. Nor does it appear in the title of one of the chapters. Yet Ricœur’s idea of solicitude is the central notion in Oneself as Another for understanding Levinas’ influence in this work, and it is in light of this notion Ricœur defines the ontological features that make the self capable of interactions with others and of ethical and moral action in institutions of justice. According to Ricœur, solicitude is the “second component” and “dialogic dimension” of ethical life, which he understands as the good life with and for others in just institutions.21 I argued that his idea of solicitude illustrates how we already experience a sense of justice in the confrontation with the suffering of others. This confrontation, so I argued, evokes compassion for the suffering of others, and the experience of the need for justice as compensation for this suffering. Ricœur includes within his definition of solicitude Levinas’ idea of responsibility for the other. Solicitude is the dialectical relation of two opposed attitudes between the self and the other. On the one hand, this relation should be understood in a similar sense as Levinas understands it, that is, as a relation in which the other has “the initiative … in the intersubjective relation” and “commands justice” as a “summons to responsibility.”22 On the other hand, the self has the “initiative, precisely in terms of being-able-to-act, [to give] his sympathy, his compassion …” in the relation of solicitude, as Ricœur understands it.23 Ricœur’s idea of solicitude thus aims to reconcile Levinas’ idea of responsibility for the other with the idea of the self, capable of responsible initiative through sympathy. In other words, Ricœur suggests that his notion of solicitude “corrects” Levinas’ idea that the other calls for responsibility, in that Ricœur’s notion of solicitude adds to this idea an account of what it means for the self to respond to this call in performing responsible actions. Ricœur is therefore critical of Levinas’ idea of responsibility. In order to examine whether Ricœur’s critique to Levinas does right to Levinas’ understanding of responsibility, I will investigate this criticism in detail in the chapter 6. For now, I will only summarize the bottom line of this criticism in order to demonstrate the extent to which Ricœur reworks Levinas’ idea of responsibility for his own purposes, and in order to define his moral anthropology. Ricœur finds Levinas’ idea of intersubjectivity problematic, because this idea insufficiently understands responsibility in terms of ethical and moral initiative and action. According to Ricœur, Levinas’ idea of intersubjectivity should be understood in the sense of the “face-to-face,” which implies “passivity.”24 More exactly, Ricœur points out in Oneself as Another that, according to Levinas’ idea of the face-to-face, the other’s face affects the self passively and calls the self to responsibility in expressing the moral “injunction” not to kill.25 Ricœur believes that Levinas, in focusing on the passive



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and affective character of intersubjectivity, insufficiently defines responsibility in terms of the capability to take action. In Ricœur’s words, Levinas fails to define what it means to give a “responsible response to the other's call” and also what it means, for the self, to be capable “of reception, of discrimination, and of recognition” of the other’s call.26 Further, understanding responsibility, for Ricœur, implies “an ethical sense” that has “a more fundamental status than obedience to duty” or that lies “under the level of obligation.”27 As these statements clearly suggest, Levinas’ notion of responsibility is insufficient, in Ricœur’s opinion, in that it fails to understand the self’s capacity for performing responsible action, as a result of the self’s recognition of the other’s call for responsibility. According to Ricœur, solicitude meets the problem he finds in Levinas’ philosophy. For Ricœur, solicitude is a “benevolent spontaneity,” and, in that sense, it is not merely passive affection (i.e., the mere passive affection by the face of the other that calls for responsibility).28 For him, solicitude is thus the beginning of an unforced and spontaneous praxis of ethical care or concern. Solicitude implies ethical spontaneity. Ricœur asks: “If this response [of solicitude] were not in a certain manner spontaneous, how could solicitude not be reduced to dreary duty?”29 Moreover, the “resources of goodness” inherent to solicitude provide a response to the injunction in that they are the beginning of “action and the orientation of the person toward others.”30 It is the spontaneous and benevolent aspect of solicitude that will allow Ricœur to understand responsibility in relation to natural feelings, even though solicitude should not be reduced to natural feelings alone. More exactly, he defines solicitude as “benevolence” or “charity,” through which the self “gives his sympathy.”31 That which he calls sympathy or compassion should then be understood, so the following lines suggest, as compassion for the suffering of others, and, in that sense, as the recognition of justice in face-to-face encounters with others. He writes, “the reverse of injunction is suffering.” And, he adds that solicitude is “the self’s recognition” of the “superiority” or “authority” of the other “enjoining it to act in accordance with justice.”32 In pointing to the role of affection for others for justice (i.e., the sense of justice), his idea of solicitude already hints at the role of alterity for understanding responsibility on the basis of feelings (for others). It is moreover significant in this regard that Ricœur uses the word solicitude to define the intersubjective relation. Being derived from the Latin sollicitus, which means anxious, the French word sollicitude carries with it the idea of caring in anxiety.33 Experiencing compassion for the suffering of another, in the sense of being passively touched by such suffering in “the affective flesh of feelings,” amounts to the experience that this suffering is unfair, for nothing, or unjustified.34 For that reason, Ricœur’s idea of solicitude should be understood as the revelation of the sense of justice.

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Being defined in the sense of feeling-based benevolence, Ricœur’s notion of solicitude functions, as I am arguing, as a mediating concept through which he combines Levinas’ idea that the other is the object of responsibility with the idea, which modern empiricists like Locke and Hume defend, that moral sentiments are the motivation for moral life. Certainly, although Ricœur does not go into a detailed discussion of modern empiricism in his moral anthropology in Oneself as Another, clearly natural moral feelings play a major part in this anthropology. Of course, it would be without doubt an exaggeration to call him an empiricist or to identify his ethics as strictly empirical or naturalistic. It is important to stress the dialogical character of his idea of solicitude. I already referred earlier to his distinction between true compassion and simple pity. According to him, whereas true compassion is sincere anxiety regarding the suffering of others, pity amounts to secretly being relieved that others instead of oneself are suffering. This distinction demonstrates that we should not reduce care for others to explaining a natural transfer of feelings or a causal relation between natural sentiments and moral agency, as a reductionist naturalism would have it. Indeed, only in living through moments of true compassion one comes to understand care for others and the need for justice, so Ricœur’s idea of solicitude suggests. Solicitude entails a true recognition of the injustice of the suffering of others. This recognition is dialogical in that it is only possible in living through concrete encounters with others, through interpretation, experience, learning, etc. This process of interpretation is what hermeneutic phenomenology can help understand. In line with Aristotle, Ricœur therefore defines solicitude as a “praxis,” which means that it implies practical wisdom and a learning process that we acquire throughout our lived existence. For example, in having suffered ourselves we come to learn what suffering means and in that sense also the seriousness of the suffering of others and the difference between pity and compassion. Hence, Ricœur stresses the importance of hermeneutic interpretation, which implies referring to the singularity of lived existence, This hermeneutic characteristic indicates that his moral anthropology differs from theories of moral psychology, like Strawson’s, but also from modern empiricist’ theories, like Locke’s or Hume’s, which are the predecessors of contemporary moral psychology. Solicitude and self-esteem: Between hermeneutic phenomenology and moral anthropology Certainly, Ricœur’s moral anthropology extends the limits of his analysis of solicitude. It is also more than an attempt to combine the empiricist idea of sympathy with Levinas’ idea of responsibility. There are a number of other key elements in Ricœur’s moral anthropology in Oneself as Another:



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self-esteem, practical wisdom, respect, the golden rule, and conscience.35 Taking into account the whole of these elements will make clearer, as I will argue in the remainder of this chapter, the extent to which Ricœur reworks Levinas’ idea of responsibility for his own understanding of the self, capable of performing responsible actions in relation to feelings. I will argue that these elements combined constitute the specific hermeneutic-phenomenological character of Ricœur’s moral anthropology, yet also demonstrates the significance of alterity for understanding responsibility in relation to natural feelings. These elements thus function as “go-between” between hermeneutic phenomenology on the one hand and a natural feeling-based moral anthropology on the other. One other key element of Ricœur’s moral anthropology is self-esteem. In relating solicitude to self-esteem, Ricœur gives solicitude its proper phenomenological character. He introduces his notion of self-esteem in order to demonstrate how the self’s consciousness plays part in the experience and the comprehension of feelings of sympathy and in the motivation of care for others in accordance with these feelings. Ricœur therefore contends that solicitude and self-esteem should be understood in connection to each other. He writes in Oneself as Another, “solicitude is not something added on to selfesteem from outside but … unfolds the dialogic dimension of self-esteem.”36 More exactly, Ricœur identifies two experiences that explain the relation between self-esteem and solicitude: “non-substitutability” and “similitude.”37 Both of these experiences explain how we understand feelings of sympathy and how we are capable of performing responsible actions accordingly. Although his analysis of these experiences does not include typical Husserlian concepts, like intentionality or eidos, it is clearly phenomenological in tone, that is, it describes the concrete lived experience of estimating another as oneself. In Oneself as Another Ricœur defines “non-substitutability” as follows: Solicitude adds the dimension of value, whereby each person is irreplaceable in our affection and our esteem. In this respect, it is in experiencing the irreparable loss of the loved other that we learn, through the transfer of the other onto ourselves, the irreplaceable character of our own life. It is first for the other that I am irreplaceable. In this sense, solicitude replies to the other's esteem for me.38

In other words, self-esteem relates to solicitude, as per Ricœur, in that in relations of solicitude we estimate the nonsubstitutable value of our own existence in a dialogical exchange of feelings with others. According to Ricœur, the idea of nonsubstitutability thus denotes the experience of the irreplaceable or singular value of existence one recognizes in sympathy. This value concerns the other’s life, as well as one’s own.

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Exemplary for Ricœur is the experience of losing of a loved other. Not only, so Ricœur suggests, does losing a loved other make the self experience the value of this other’s place in one’s own life (i.e., my concern for you is irreplaceable in my life). In this sense, self-esteem results into esteem for the other (i.e., you are irreplaceable for me), and in that sense solicitude opens the “dialogical” dimension of self-esteem. Losing a loved one moreover makes us estimate our own life as valuable in that this loss reminds us of the irreplaceable singular character of our own existence (i.e., I realize the value of life now (more than before) because I have lost a loved one). In this sense, solicitude adds to self-esteem (i.e., you make me realize that my life is irreplaceable too). Ricœur’s idea of nonsubstitutability points out the extent to which the ideas of self-esteem and of singularity allow understanding sympathy. Only in light of esteeming the value of our own life do we fully comprehend the proper value of feelings of sympathy. Self-esteem thus adds to the comprehension of solicitude in that self-esteem explains that sympathy is not merely a transfer of feelings, but in the first place an existential experience with and for others that adds to the appreciation of the value of existence. In other words, the experience of what Ricœur calls “non-substitutability” helps understanding the motivation for caring for others, and for experiencing that the suffering of others is unjust. We sympathize with others, because we understand the value of life. Ricœur’s notion of “non-substitutability” helps understanding in that sense how we are motivated to comprehend justice and to act responsibly and just accordingly through caring for others: because the self is capable of esteeming the value of life. Yet this is only possible as a self, that is, within a singular relation with singular others, that is, others that have their own singular existence. In this regard, Ricœur’s phenomenological analysis of “non-substitutability” demonstrates the significance of the idea of singularity, both in relation to ipseity and in relation to alterity, for understanding responsibility, and thus for moral anthropology. Next, Ricœur defines “similitude” as the experience that “authorizes to say that I cannot myself have self-esteem unless I esteem others as myself.” “As myself” means that “you too are capable of starting something in the world … of holding yourself in esteem as I hold myself in esteem.”39 Similitude, for Ricœur, thus designates the capacity for recognizing the other as an equal, that is, as a subject of self-esteem. Given that solicitude implies true compassion for Ricœur, it enables the wish that another would not suffer, and, as such, it is the feeling that the other too, similar to oneself, is entitled to a worthy life, that is, a life free from suffering or, a life in which the other is able to be a self, capable of self-esteem. In that solicitude is the recognition of the other as a self, it is the onset of justice: a sense of injustice (sympathy for the suffering of others) that leads to the recognition of others (through the



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experiences of nonsubstitutability and similitude). In that, self-esteem can be projected upon the life of another through solicitude, it motivates, as Ricœur suggests, responsibility for the other in the sense of the recognition of justice for others and, in that way, of acts of responsibility and justice for others. In sum, Ricœur’s phenomenological description of the relation between solicitude and self-esteem, contained in his ideas of “non-substitutability” and “similitude,” helps understanding the self’s capability for comprehending the singular value of existence: in sympathy the self recognizes the value of her/ his own life and that of the other. In this respect, Ricœur’s phenomenological description of the relation between self-esteem and solicitude underlines, not only the value of recognition (cf. similitude) but also the significance of the idea of singularity for understanding responsibility (cf. nonsubstitutability). This phenomenological description suggests the sense in which our recognition of the value of singular existence should be understood as the motivation for responsibility and justice. The value that we attach to our lives (cf., selfesteem, ipseity) helps explaining the recognition of the value of the lives of others, and, in that sense, stimulates recognition of justice for others, and the performance of responsible actions toward others in the sense of actions of care (cf. solicitude, the singularity of the other). Notwithstanding the unmistakable phenomenological character of Ricœur’s ethics and morals, to which his ideas of “non-substitutability” and “similitude” attest, these ethics and morals nevertheless also express the idea that the good life is innate to human nature and to human feelings. Significant is Ricœur’s emphasis, in his “little ethics” in Oneself as Another, on such concepts as benevolence, goodness, and feelings, and his elaborate discussions with Aristotle as well as with analytical philosophers and theories in virtue ethics, like MacIntyre’s and Nussbaum’s. Moreover, in a footnote in his analysis of solicitude in Oneself as Another, Ricœur writes that, apart from being influenced by Max Scheler’s phenomenological analyses of sympathy, hate and love, his notion of solicitude is influenced by the idea of “feelings of pity, compassion, and sympathy, formerly exalted by English-language philosophy.”40 Ricœur thus combines the empiricist idea that moral life relates to natural feelings with the phenomenological idea that ethical life begins in lived experiences in the relation with the other. This blend between analytical philosophy and hermeneutical phenomenology lies at the very core of his moral anthropology. Part 1 of this book dealt with the significance of hermeneutics and phenomenology for understanding responsibility. In that part, I used Ricœur’s idea of solicitude to illustrate this significance. Now, I am arguing that solicitude moreover demonstrates the significance of Levinas’ idea that the other is the primary object of responsibility for understanding responsibility based on natural feelings. In founding his idea of solicitude on natural feelings, like

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compassion and sympathy, Ricœur makes it clear that the other’s call for responsibility should be understood, at least to a certain extent, in terms of natural feelings, that is, in terms of sympathy for the suffering of others. In this respect, he demonstrates how Levinas’ idea of responsibility is reconcilable with the idea, with moral theories in analytical philosophy that defend, that responsibility relates to natural human feelings. Whereas Strawson distinguishes, in his article “Freedom and Resentment,” several feelings that humans use to hold each other responsible (e.g., resentment, indignation, blame, guilt), Ricœur’s moral anthropology, however, gives account of those feelings humans experience when acting responsibly toward others. Yet, it also follows that his moral anthropology demonstrates the limits of naturalism and moral relativism. Indeed, whereas naturalism reduces responsibility and justice to empirical-causal relation between our practices of holding responsible and natural feelings, his hermeneutic phenomenology allows understanding the motivations for being responsible and acting just. Theories of moral psychology are certainly significant, as I argued in chapter 2, in that they explain how responsibility relates to psychological and anthropological relations. Yet, if we want to understand what it means to actually be responsible as a self, we should take into account a phenomenological-hermeneutical approach to moral anthropology, as Ricœur demonstrates. Such an approach offers analyses, like his analyses of similitude and nonsubstitutability, that are key for defining human experiences that help understanding responsibility and justice. His moral anthropology moreover highlights the significance of the idea of the singularity of the other for understanding responsibility. This hermeneutics brings together a phenomenological description of singularity and responsibility on the one hand and a description of natural moral feelings and responsibility on the other. Bringing together different texts and different movements is characteristic for Ricœur’s dialectical approach to philosophy. For that reason, this hermeneutics is most suitable for examining the significance of hermeneutics and phenomenology in light of recent theories in moral in analytical philosophy. PRACTICAL WISDOM, RESPECT, THE GOLDEN RULE, AND CONSCIENCE Next to self-esteem and solicitude there are a number of other key elements that constitute Ricœur’s moral anthropology. In the following I will aim to define these elements, and the extent to which he uses them in his moral anthropology for reworking Levinas’ idea of responsibility for the other. I will argue that these elements therefore further demonstrate the significance of the idea of otherness for understanding responsibility and justice.



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Practical wisdom First of all, Ricœur’s idea of solicitude relates to his ideas of the aim for the good life and of practical wisdom. For him, solicitude unfolds, as I mentioned, the dialogic dimension of this aim. He finds inspiration for his idea of the ethical aim in Aristotle’s concept of phronesis, in the sense of practical wisdom, and combines this concept with MacIntyre’s idea of standards of excellence. Ricœur defines standards of excellence as socially shared rules that determine how we should act in order to achieve excellence in particular fields. In his words, standards of excellence are “rules of comparison applied to different accomplishments, in relation to ideals of perfection shared by a given community of practitioners.”41 For him, phronesis or practical wisdom implies taking into account these standards that motivate the good life in general, and solicitude in particular, which is part of the good life. Even though Ricœur does not specify which specific socially shared standards should guide solicitude for others, it is clear that such standards have an influence on our praxis of caring. Indeed, it is easy to imagine that in concrete relations of care for others humans find inspiration in moral standards to act in accordance to what they believe is good. Ricœur mentions standards that “characterize as good a doctor, architect, a painter or a chess player.”42 Following this line of thought, it is possible to imagine, for example, that doctors care for their patient, in finding guidance in the standards of excellence of being a doctor, like the Hippocratic oath for instance. Given that phronesis or practical wisdom motivates the good life in general, according to Ricœur, it follows that it motivates solicitude, which is part of the good life. Moreover, according to Ricœur, responsibility for others, in the sense of solicitude, should be understood within the context of institutions and communal moral standards. He defines these standards or mores in his examination of Arendt’s idea of political life in Oneself as Another. Again, he remains unclear about the specific relation between mores and solicitude (like he remains unclear about the relation between standards of excellence and solicitude). Yet, the unspecified character of mores allows taking into account the differences between different moral standards and norms across different cultures and institutions. In chapter 3, I argued in favor of understanding responsibility and justice in relation to the plurality of moral standards and norms. Ricœur’s idea of solicitude, which designates human’s capacity to care with practical wisdom within the context of different moral standards of excellence and mores, thus supports this understanding. Ricœur clearly defines mores as the institutional equivalents of standards of excellence that guide solicitude. Whereas standards of excellence guide care for others in contributing to the self’s idea of specific praxes (being a doctor, a lawyer, a school teacher, etc.), and of the good life as the sum of

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these praxes, mores guide care for others in informing the self of what different communities believe to be moral virtues (cf. what is morally praiseworthy). In this regard, mores help the self in finding the “good” way to care for others, in accordance with the moral virtues of community, as well as in accordance with natural moral feelings of sympathy. Next to standards of excellence, mores are thus yet another key concept in Ricœur’s moral anthropology that he uses to correct Levinas’ idea of responsibility for the other. I argued in chapter 3 that, according to Ricœur, responsibility for others or solicitude finds its concrete articulation only when it has passed “through the sieve” of universal moral imperatives.43 For Ricœur himself, these moral imperatives should be understood in relation to Kant’s different formulations of the categorical imperative. I argued that Ricœur understands the moral test of the ethical aim for the good life as the goodwill to act as if one’s action would be a universal principle for action.44 More exactly, Ricœur defines the foundation of universal moral principles as goodwill, as autonomy, or as the capacity to act auto-legislatively. According to Ricœur, reasoning, acting out of goodwill should thus be understood as the basic principle that guides all ethical and moral actions, including actions of solicitude, which is part of the good life. Concretely, Ricœur defines goodwill in line with the principle to act in order to avoid evil: “Act solely in accordance with the maxim by which you can wish at the same time that what ought not to be, namely evil, will indeed not exist.”45 According to Ricœur, responsibility for others in the sense of solicitude should then also be understood as the result of this universal moral principle. Ricœur thus uses Kant’s idea of the categorical imperative as a key element for reworking Levinas’ idea of responsibility for others and include it in his own moral anthropology. Yet, I questioned Ricœur’s idea that responsibility and justice should be understood on the basis of universal moral norms in the Kantian sense. Given that, as I argued, these imperatives should be understood as universal only in a purely formal sense (in that rationality defines their universality, but this universality is never absolute and should constantly be revised), it is clear that communal norms, which humans consider to be universal moral values, can guide acts of care. Even if there is no absolute moral rule, no final moral principle, the principle not to let others suffer or the principle to avoid evil in general, for example, can be considered as a moral principle that should guide the acts of care for others. If we accept with Ricœur that solicitude describes typical human existential features, at least in that it defines our human experience of recognizing injustice (and thus the need for justice) when we are affected by the suffering of others, then we can at least posit the principle not to let others suffer as a guiding principle of morality as such. In that respect, Levinas’ idea that the other calls for responsibility is a common sensibility for defining responsibility and justice across the different



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cultures. Moreover, we should question moral norms and values when those cause others to suffer. This does not imply that we should defend a type of utilitarianism instead of Kantianism, or that the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest kind (of others) should be the guiding principle of morality. Rather, I am arguing that the suffering of the other, of each singular other, has moral priority over moral norms that claim to be universal and that our sensibility for such suffering is a common, albeit not necessarily universal, human existential feature. Ricœur demonstrates that ethical and moral decisions are based on critical judgment of moral feelings, standards, and norms, and these decisions should aim to avoid causing the other to suffer. Respect and the golden rule According to Ricœur, universal moral imperatives should thus guide acts of solicitude. He defines respect in line with Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative, which prescribes that we should treat the other person as an end. Further, in his understanding, respect for others finds its cultural root in the golden rule, which he identifies as Hillel’s Talmudic principle: “Do not do unto your neighbor what you would hate him to do to you.”46 In its positive formulation, the golden rule, for Ricœur, should be defined in the Gospel of Matthew in the Sermon of the Mount, as the principle: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” or in the Gospel of Luke in the Sermon of the Plain, as the rule to “Treat others as you would like them to treat you.”47 In drawing on both Kant’s purely formal idea of respect, and on the culturally rooted principle of the golden rule, Ricœur incorporates Levinas’ idea that the self is responsible for the other into his moral anthropology, and avoids a merely transcendental interpretation of respect (cf. Kant). Yet in the previous part of this book, I argued that it is problematic to understand respect for others as a universal moral norm, since it is the expression of Judeo-Christian culture in particular. Therefore, I questioned that this norm applies to all cultures and communities in the same sense. Nonetheless, Ricœur’s idea of the golden rule does underline the significance of hermeneutics, in my opinion, for moral anthropology. His idea of the golden rule underlines that moral feelings relate symbolically to historical cultures. The golden rule, as he understands it, relates to solicitude in that this rule expresses the sense of justice proper to the feelings of sympathy and to the experience of solicitude. More exactly, this rule translates solicitude in the principle of charity or love of neighbor. In this respect, the principle to treat others as yourself expresses our common experience that the suffering of others is an injustice. Moreover, the golden rule is an example, I think, of how natural feelings find expression in historical and cultural principles. In this regard, moral

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theories in the analytical tradition of the philosophy of mind explain the empirical relation between natural feelings and practices of holding responsible. Ricœur’s moral anthropology in general and his idea of the golden rule in particular, however, help understanding the relation between natural feelings and historical cultural communities. Certainly, analytical moral philosophy is important in itself in that it traces the empirical relations between our human nature and different communities. These relations explain our moral nature, what we have in common, and how morality differs cross-culturally. Yet, Ricœur’s hermeneutical approach to moral anthropology demonstrates that relations between norms and cultures are not merely fixed empirical structures, expressions of our nature and culture, but are also symbolic: they are symbols that cultures use for regulating practices of maintaining justice and of avoiding excess of power over others. Whereas Ricœur’s idea of solicitude demonstrates the extent to which responsibility and justice should be understood in the context of face-to-face encounters, his idea of the golden rule demonstrates, in my opinion, an example of how responsibility and justice relate to historical and cultural symbols. Following his line of reasoning, solicitude is the inspiration for historical and cultural norms that command justice and prohibit violence and power over others. The Judeo-Christian rule to treat others equally is an example of such a norm. As Ricœur contends in Oneself as Another, violence consists of the relation of power over others, which people exercise in different ways, going from the “minor” evil of the verbal insult, to physical violence and, eventually, to murder, being the annihilation of the other’s power to act. In Oneself as Another, Ricœur defines violence as follows: influence, the gentle form of holding power-over, all the way to torture, the extreme form of abuse. Even in the domain of physical violence, considered the abusive use of force against others, the figures of evil are innumerable, from the simple use of threats, passing through all the degrees of constraint, and ending in murder.48

Further, moral norms rooted in human history and culture, like the golden rule, prohibit these and similar examples of violence. The golden rule inspires the Christian commandment: you should not kill. In Ricœur’s words: This sinister—though not exhaustive—enumeration of the figures of evil in the intersubjective dimension established by solicitude has its counterpart in the series of prescriptions and prohibitions stemming from the Golden Rule in accordance with the various compartments of interaction: you shall not lie, you shall not steal, you shall not kill, you shall not torture. In each case, morality replies to violence. And if the commandment cannot do otherwise than to take the form of a prohibition, this is precisely because of evil: to all the figures of



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evil responds the no of morality. Here, doubtless, resides the ultimate reason for which the negative form of prohibition is inexpungible.49

According to Ricœur, the golden rule prohibits that which solicitude aims to compensate for: whereas solicitude aims to compensate for the suffering of the other, the golden rule prohibits this suffering. In this respect, the golden rule prescribes how we should act responsibly and just toward others. Human beings perform responsible actions toward others spontaneously in relations of care or solicitude. Being the prohibition of the suffering of others, the golden rule is thus an alternative motivation—necessary because of the reality of evil, according to Ricœur—for performing responsible actions toward others. Whereas Ricœur’s idea of solicitude expresses spontaneous relations of sympathy-based care for others, his idea of the golden rule expresses relations of the prohibition to let others suffer, of the commandment to care for others, or to love your neighbor. Therefore, he writes that solicitude is the affirmative relation that is “the hidden soul of the prohibition.”50 In drawing the relation between solicitude and the golden rule, he demonstrates that Levinas’ idea that the other is the primary object of responsibility has roots in historical and cultural principles, and how our lived experience of care for others relates to these principles. Hermeneutical interpretation of how this experience relates to justice thus adds to a moral anthropology that aims at understanding responsibility and justice. Ricœur thus understands the sense of justice we experience in relations of solicitude, as the source of inspiration for different moral feelings, standards, values, and norms: moral indignation, respect, neighbor love, the golden rule, etc. According to him, solicitude, for example, “ultimately, arms our indignation, that is, our rejection of indignities inflicted on others.”51 In this regard, his moral anthropology amounts to a hermeneutical understanding of responsibility based on moral feelings, that is, an interpretation of human history and the symbolic significance of moral feelings. Like certain theories in analytical philosophy, this anthropology points out how moral norms are the expressions of our compassionate nature.52 Moreover, Ricœur’s moral anthropology employs an interpretation of the human experiences that correspond to these feelings and of how these experiences symbolize justice. This interpretation is not strictly empirical-descriptive, but implies an understanding of the meaning of the existence of moral norms and symbols. Whereas an empirical-descriptive analysis based on moral psychology demonstrates that moral blame, for example, is proper to human nature, and to particular communities, Ricœur’s understanding of the golden rule demonstrates in what sense moral indignation is rooted in communities and relates to symbols of the Judeo-Christian culture in particular. Rather than

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explaining the causes of the existence of moral norms (because they express our nature), Ricœur’s moral anthropology aims to understand the reasons or motives of these norms (because it helps communities to regulate justice). Ricœur’s idea that the golden rule translates solicitude into moral norms also becomes clear, I think when taking into account his essay “Love and Justice.” In “Love and Justice,” he aims to demonstrate the relation between love on the one hand and justice on the other. He argues in this text that, although love is not exactly equal to justice, they nevertheless relate to each other. His understanding of the relation between love and justice helps defining the motivation for responsible behavior and justice: “Rather than just confusing them or setting up a pure and simple dichotomy between love and justice, … a third, difficult way has to be explored, one in which the tension between two distinct and sometimes opposed claims may be maintained and may even be the occasion for responsible forms of behavior.”53 What is more, Ricœur adds that the relation between love and justice contributes to the understanding of the symbolic significance of existence as object of “solicitude, respect and admiration.”54 For him, neighbor love relates dialectically to justice because this love is, in a sense, a mutual relationship: Love has its own “just” economy, which he understands as the “economy of the gift.”55 Neighbor love should thus be understood as the following principle: “Since it has been given you, give… .”56 In other words, Ricœur understands charity or neighbor love as the backdrop of the idea that life is a gift. For him, understanding that life is a gift is the motivation of responsible behavior toward others motivated by love of neighbor. According to him, the dialectical relation between love and justice makes that love in the sense of charity motivates responsibility for the other in the sense described also by the relation of solicitude. Neighbor love should thus be understood as the moral rule or principle that expresses the idea to treat others equally (i.e., the golden rule). This rule is the symbol of the idea that life is a gift. Yet, strictly speaking Ricœur’s moral anthropology in Oneself as Another does not include love of neighbor. In fact, in the introduction of Oneself as Another, he announces that he excludes the Christian idea of charity or agape from the chapters on ethics and morals in that book, because “Biblical agape belongs to an economy of the gift, possessing a meta-ethical character.”57 In other words, the idea that life is a gift, which founds neighbor love, implies the idea of God, as the giving principle of life. Further, for Ricœur, ethics and morals should be understood in the context of what he calls “an autonomous, philosophical discourse.”58 He writes: “The ten studies that make up this work [Oneself as Another] assume the bracketing, conscious and resolute, of the convictions that bind me to biblical faith.”59 His idea of love of neighbor nevertheless helps understanding, I think, that responsibility relates to moral



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norms and principles that have roots in particular cultures and their symbols, as well as in human experiences of care for others that motivate responsibility. Ricœur’s moral anthropology demonstrates, in my opinion, that the moral norm to respect others should be understood in light of the principle of neighbor love and the principle of the golden rule in Judeo-Christian culture. Yet this implies that this norm, which is historically and culturally located, is not universal, that is, a formal rule that can be applied regardless of historical and cultural contexts. In this regard, I have argued in the previous part of this book that different cultures experience respect in different ways. According to Ricœur, the “Kantian imperative” of respect for persons is “the formalization of the Golden Rule.”60 However, if moral norms are expressions of particular cultures in history, then it appears that these norms are not universal. Given that Ricœur’s moral anthropology demonstrates that solicitude points to common existential traits or existentialia that explain the human capacity to perform ethical actions, I think we should question his understanding of moral norms as universal imperatives in his moral anthropology. His moral anthropology demonstrates that responsibility should be understood in relation to natural feelings and communal norms that express the idea that others are the primary objects of responsibility. Yet, these feelings and norms are not universal in another sense than the purely formal sense. In sum, the golden rule, respect, and love of neighbor are three different key elements of Ricœur’s moral anthropology. These elements designate three different senses in which he reworks Levinas’ idea that the other is the primary object of responsibility, and in which this idea is significant for understanding responsibility on the basis of moral feelings. His idea of the golden rule explains that the idea that others are the prime objects of responsibility is central to Judeo-Christian culture. Further, I think we should add, in line with recent moral theories that draw on moral psychology and moral anthropology, that feeling-based moral norms relate to symbols and experiences of justice that motivate responsibility. For example, feelings of moral indignation toward injustice fuel moral norms and principles, like the golden rule, that define responsibility and justice, yet the meaning of these norms is that they express the sense of injustice humans can experience in the confrontation with the suffering of others. Ricœur’s idea of respect for others demonstrates that others are central to such moral norms in Western culture. For him, Kant’s idea of the norm to respect others is an example of a “rationalization” of the golden rule. Ricœur’s idea of love of neighbor demonstrates that the idea of “giving to others” is central in Judeo-Christian culture. Ricœur’s ideas of the golden rule, of respect, and of love of neighbor demonstrate the significance of the singularity of lived existence for understanding responsibility: in the encounter with the other’s existence we come to learn the motives for being responsible.

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Conscience Ricœur’s notion of conscience, which relates to his idea of attestation, is yet another key concept in his moral anthropology. In the first part of this book, I argued that Ricœur understands attestation as trust, credence or belief, which motivates the self’s power to act freely and responsibly. Moreover, this notion helps understanding the extent to which he reworks Levinas’ idea of responsibility for the other. Interesting in this regard is that in “Emmanuel Levinas: Thinker of Testimony,” Ricœur suggests that his idea of attestation should be understood in line with Levinas’ idea of testimony or witness (témoignage).61 In Oneself as Another, Ricœur explicitly refers to Levinas’ idea of testimony when defining his own idea of attestation as the motivation of speech, action, narrative, and responsibility for others. Ricœur’s idea of attestation finds its concrete articulation in his idea of conscience. He writes in Oneself as Another: Attestation is fundamentally attestation of self. This trust will, in turn, be a trust in the power to say, in the power to do, in the power to recognize oneself as a character in a narrative, in the power, finally, to respond to accusation in the form of the accusative: “It's me here” (me voici!), to borrow an expression dear to Levinas. At this stage, attestation will be that of what is commonly called conscience and which in German is termed Gewissen.62

Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, attestation finds concrete articulation in the voice of conscience or in the state of being accused with regard to others. Conscience thus helps understanding the motivation for performing responsible actions for others. In that sense, conscience (which concludes the final chapter of Oneself as Another) is a key element in his moral anthropology, and he uses this element for reworking Levinas’ idea of responsibility for the other. Further, Ricœur writes in Oneself as Another that his notion of attestation designates “the general ontological commitment” of his hermeneutics of the self.63 According to him, the idea of attestation signifies the ontological foundation of this hermeneutics. In this respect, his idea of attestation should also be understood as the ontological foundation of his moral anthropology, which is part of this hermeneutics. Consequently, attestation conditions responsibility for the other in the sense that it is the ontological basis that explains the motivation for performing ethical and moral actions in general. Ricœur’s notion of attestation reflects his idea of “truth,” not in the “epistemic” sense of factual “certainty,” but in the sense of alētheia, in a sense similar to both Aristotle’s and Heidegger’s interpretations of this term.64 Attestation thus marks the self’s existential capacity to comprehend the truth of being, which is, in Ricœur’s understanding, the foundation of the



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self’s capacity for speech, action, narrative, and responsibility. According to him, attestation is the “assurance,” the “credence” or “trust” of “existing in the mode of selfhood.”65 And this belief that one’s being is true accompanies “language, action, narrative, and the ethical and moral predicates of actions.”66 For him, the self’s capacity to act, including its capacity to judge moral feelings and values and to act responsibly toward others accordingly, comes spontaneously and is motivated by the self’s belief that this or that course of action is the true way to follow. Further, Ricœur recognizes in Levinas’ idea of witness in Otherwise than being the motivation of the self’s response to the other’s injunction to responsibility (cf. Levinas formulation of this response as “it’s me here!”). This suggests that he sees in Levinas’ idea of witness, and in his own idea of attestation, an answer to the problem he finds in Levinas’ thoughts on responsibility, that is, an answer to the question to what extent the self is capable of recognizing justice for others and of performing responsible actions. In that attestation is a belief in one’s own capacities, it is clear that Ricœur uses his idea of attestation to explain the self’s capacity to perform responsible actions toward others based on feelings. In that sense, he uses this idea to rework Levinas’ idea of responsibility for the other by developing a moral anthropology. Ricœur’s notion of attestation demonstrates, I think, that understanding responsibility does not amount to explaining natural feelings only (cf. his distinction between understanding and explaining). This understanding requires a certain belief, not necessarily in the biblical sense of belief, but in the sense that responsibility is not strictly an empirical truth. We come to learn the meaning of responsibility by living existence, rather than by doing science. The significance of the idea of singularity is that it demonstrates that it is in the encounter with the singular existences of others that we come to understand responsibility, and that responsibility is therefore not a universal concept, because we find common sensibilities about morality across the singularities of our different existences. Ricœur defines attestation more precisely as conscience. His idea of conscience reflects the experience of listening to the voice of conscience and, in that way, reflects the self’s capacity for responding to the other that calls to conscience. In Oneself as Another, Ricœur writes: Being-enjoined would then constitute the moment of otherness proper to the phenomenon of conscience, in accordance with the metaphor of the voice. Listening to the voice of conscience would signify being-enjoined by the Other.67

According to Ricœur, the other’s call to conscience should first of all be understood as the call “to live well with and for others in just institutions.”68

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The Other, for him, thus not only refers to other people but also to all possible ­figures of otherness within ethical and moral life that possibly call to conscience. In his words: “It is the entire triad presented in the three preceding studies [i.e., the triad of ethical and moral life as Ricœur understands it in chapters 7 through 9 of Oneself as Another] that offers itself here to a reinterpretation in terms of otherness.”69 In short, the other should be understood here as the inner voice of conscience in general, or as the “passivity” of “beingenjoined” by others in different ways.70 Further, active deliberation on the good life supplements this passivity. Following this line of reasoning, practical wisdom that allows the self to participate in the good life, to form ideas about the good life and to act accordingly, thus spontaneously results from attestation or the self’s belief that he or she is participating in the good life. Conscience, or the experiences of being accused by others, of being summoned to initiative and of believing in oneself, fortifies ethical and moral praxis. For Ricœur, several aspects of ethical and moral life thus possibly call to the voice of conscience, including moral feelings, standards, and norms. For example, respect for others is a possible source of our call to conscience in case we believe we should keep our distance to others. In a different sense, we can think of compassion and care for the suffering of others as the motors of our consciences. Mores, to give yet another example, also represent the others of community that call to conscience in the sense that we take into account what is commonly believed to be good (cf. praiseworthy) in order to act for the good. The self is capable, according to Ricœur, of deliberation in taking into account these different aspects of otherness, and of the performance of ethical and moral decisions and actions. In that respect, the idea of the other constitutes the very heart of his moral anthropology. Yet, one question is to what extent conscience should be understood as an ontological existential feature for understanding the ideas of the self and of responsibility, as Ricœur contends it should. Indeed, if individual guilt relates to Western cultures in particular, as I argued earlier, to what extent should conscience, given that it amounts to experiences of guilt, be understood as an ontological existential feature of humanity as such, or rather as the expression of feelings attached to particular cultures? Certainly, Ricœur’s idea is, following Heidegger, to define with his notion of conscience an ontological feature that helps understanding the self’s relation to being: human beings are capable of participating in (ethical and moral) existence, because each one of us can take initiative through a proper belief, inspired by practical wisdom, of what the good action is in concrete situations. For him, conscience should thus not be reduced to a psychological experience or to feelings that are relative to one particular culture. According to him, conscience has a broader meaning and relates to several other aforementioned existential features.



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In this regard, Ricœur finds inspiration in Heidegger’s idea that conscience as “an authentic potentiality-of-being-one’s-self”71 (original emphasis). For Heidegger, defining conscience in the sense of attestation means understanding conscience as an existential-ontological feature of Dasein, which is more fundamental than a psychological or biological explanation of the experience of conscience, because it discloses the significance of being as such, rather than of one particular experience or a set of experiences. Heidegger writes: “The ontological analysis of conscience … is prior to any psychological description and classification of experiences of conscience, just as it lies outside any biological ‘explanation,’ that is, dissolution of this phenomenon.”72 If Ricœur’s idea of conscience as attestation finds inspiration in Heiddegger’s, then it appears that conscience, for Ricœur, should not be explained in terms of (moral) psychology, biology or even anthropology, that is, as an experience that relates to particular natural feelings that find expression in culture and community. As is the case for Heidegger, conscience, for Ricœur, rather designates the self’s capacity to take responsibility of his or her own being. However, like Levinas, Ricœur is also critical to Heidegger for paying too little attention to the role of others as with regard to the call of conscience. Hence, for him, the call of conscience is foremost, as I argued, the Other’s call, rather than the call of the self’s Dasein. “Da-sein calls itself in conscience”73 (original emphasis). Dasein calls for an authentic mode of being through the mood of “Angst” for nothingness: care for oneself in the face of finite existence.74 Moreover, important to note is that conscience differs from individual guilt according to Ricœur. He writes in Oneself as Another that he aims avoiding thinking of conscience in terms of either “bad” or “good” conscience.75 Again, here he echoes Heidegger who also distinguishes his notion of conscience from both the bad and the good conscience.76 In Ricœur’s opinion, conscience means: “expression of attestation” or self-constancy, rather than self-accusation or guilt. Significant in this regard is that, in defining his idea of conscience, he refers explicitly to Heidegger and to the German word Gewissheit, which means “certainty”: “This word [Gewissen] is better [to describe conscience] than the French conscience, which translates both Bewusstsein and Gewissen; the German Gewissen recalls the semantic kinship with Gewissheit, ‘certainty.’”77 Yet important to note as well is that Heidegger is not the only source of inspiration here for Ricœur. Ricœur defines conscience also as “suspicion,” in line with Hegel’s and Nietzsche’s critiques on morality (cf. what Ricœur famously called the masters of suspicion).78 His notion of conscience then implies two moments, one of suspicion/ reflection and one of certainty/attestation. These moments do not coincide, but the second follows the first and they are both a condition for acting according to conscience, that is, for being morally alert and yet taking

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concrete decisions. The Ricœurian notion of conscience should in that respect be understood as a “mixture” between the good and the bad conscience, that is, a conscience that guides deliberate moral decisions without flipping over to one of the extreme sides of the spectrum: radical self-blame on the one side or “self-glorification” on the other side.79 For Ricœur, conscience should then be understood in the sense of “recognition” through dialogue. Commenting on Hegel’s critique to morality, Ricœur looks for the foundation of ethical and moral life not simply in the passive experience of suffering a bad conscience, as founded on a “legislator outside of this world,” but also in natural “desire,” “satisfaction of action.”80 Similarly, he is inspired by Nietzsche’s critique of the bad conscience as the promotion of inauthentic values.81 Ultimately, he understands conscience as “conviction,” which makes that the self capable of responding to the experience of being accused by others (cf. Ricœur’s expression “Here I stand!”82) For him, responsibility implies conviction or the belief that we are indeed acting good with regard to others; that we are indeed acting on our conscience in the best possible way. Yet, belief, for Ricœur, means “trust in one’s own capacity,” rather than faith within a particular religion, culture or community. Again, he defines conscience as “the other side of suspicion,” by which he aims to stress that the self’s conviction to act good, differs from the “good conscience” that amounts to “self-justification” or “self-glorification,” but in the sense of being suspicious for the danger of moral hypocrisy.83 According to Ricœur, conscience implies deliberation, that is, practical wisdom, on how to act for the good, taking into account different aspects of ethical and moral life, different “others” (moral standards, values, other persons, rules, etc.), and avoiding evil or wrongdoing as the result of ignorance or hypocrisy. In his article “Uncanniness Many Times Over,” Ricœur also puts forward the idea that conscience amounts to inner deliberation in referring to conscience as the “for intérieur” (the inner forum).84 Rather than being a cultural set of feelings or mores, conscience, for him, designates our capacity to take a critical attitude toward cultural feelings, norms and values. However, I think Ricœur’s idea to found morality on the idea of conscience is problematic still. His idea to found human’s capacity for moral action on conscience is problematic, because the idea of individual conscience is typical for Western culture. I think he is correct is that human’s ontological capacity to take ethical and moral initiative should be understood in the context of communities and cultures and in the context of our singular existence: as attestation of oneself (with practical wisdom). Hence, it is helpful to understand responsibility in light of the idea of singularity. The idea of singularity allows taking into account—and more so than that of conscience in my opinion—understanding ethical and moral life in the context of the



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plurality of moral standards, values and norms. More exactly, the idea of ipseity reflects the self’s capacity to perform responsible actions within the context of a singular lived existence (the self cannot take the other’s place in taking ethical and moral decisions and actions, since this kind of decisions and actions implies an attestation of the self, such as critical judgment, interpretation, practical wisdom, experienced moments of solicitude, etc.). The idea of the singularity of the other is important for understanding responsibility in that, as I argued with Ricœur in this chapter, others primarily call for responsibility: it is in the encounters with others that we come to learn responsibility. However, I am arguing that this call should not in the first place be understood as a call of conscience, as Ricœur contends in Oneself as Another, because the idea of individual conscience is an expression of Western culture in particular. Certainly, singularity is, as I indicated earlier, also a Western concept. Yet the advantage of this concept is that it supports the idea of a plurality of moral communities, since it indicates that ethical and moral life takes place within the context of a singular existence embedded in a particular community. Conscience also defines a relation with one’s own existence, but this relation designates the Western idea of individual fault, which makes it less suitable for defining the ontological-existential aspects of moral anthropology at the backdrop of the plurality of cultures. The point I am trying to make here is not merely a question of names or of disposing of certain supposed universal concepts in order to promote others (of substituting singularity for conscience). Rather, I am questioning the existence of absolute universal moral standards and norms, and therefore I am stressing the importance of the idea of singularity for moral anthropology, which I think better reflects the idea of plurality and difference for understanding morality than the idea of conscience does. Ricœur thus proposes understanding moral responsibility not merely in the sense of the ascription of moral feelings to selves, but also in the sense of the self’s capability to comprehend moral feelings in dialogue with others. As I argued in part 1, the significance of hermeneutics is that it offers the tools for the interpretation of texts and human action for understanding the motives for responsibility and justice, as opposed to explaining the causes of responsibility and justice, which is the aim of moral psychology. In this chapter, I therefore discussed several key elements of Ricœur’s moral anthropology (solicitude, self-esteem, practical wisdom, etc.) and argued that these point to human’s capacity for being responsible, and in that sense point at existential aspects that help understand the motivations of ethical and moral life. However, at the same time, I questioned the universality of some of these elements (i.e., self-esteem, respect and conscience). When I thus contend that Ricœur’s concepts in his moral anthropology point at existential aspects that allow understanding the motives for being responsible, I

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do not claim that these concepts are absolute universal concepts for understanding ethical and moral life, but that they are particularly significant for defining our shared human capacity for participating in ethical and moral life. This of course implies that understanding responsibility possibly implies other concepts that are likely also expressions of different cultures (e.g., communal shame). I am also not contesting here that conscience can, and often is, the motivation for responsibility. I am questioning, however, Ricœur’s idea of understanding conscience as a universal ontological feature of human’s capacity to act, because conscience is “too much” of a culturally loaded concept. Even if, as I am arguing with him, practical wisdom or the capacity to deliberate with different others is an essential feature of human’s capacity for ethical and moral action, we should question at least his idea of relating practical wisdom to the idea of conscience in the sense of accusation or the call of conscience. By including Levinas’ idea of responsibility for the other in his own moral anthropology in Oneself as Another, Ricœur demonstrates the significance of this idea for understanding the ideas of the self, responsibility, and justice in relation to moral feelings. More exactly, he demonstrates that the relation between responsibility and moral feelings extends the causal relation between natural feelings and practices of “holding responsible” (cf. morally praising and blaming others). Following his line of reasoning, this relation is foremost a relation of feelings for others or a relation of solicitude. Solicitude not only shows our common moral nature (cf. sympathy as a transfer of natural feelings), but also that understanding others’ need for justice—and thus understanding the motivation for responsibility—implies a process of interpretation that one comes to learn only in actually living through moments of care with and for others. Further, this interpretation implies practical wisdom and attestation of oneself. Hence, Ricœur points at the significance of the idea of singularity, both in relation to ipseity and in relation to otherness, for understanding responsibility and justice. By defining his notion of solicitude in Oneself as Another, and in relating this notion to other key elements (practical wisdom, respect, the golden rule, and conscience), Ricœur reworks Levinas’ idea that the other is the primary object of responsibility and justice, and includes this idea into his own moral anthropology. In this regard, Ricœur demonstrates that feelings for others play a crucial part in the ontology of human beings and their ethical and moral existence. Ricœur’s moral anthropology thus demonstrates the extent to which human beings are capable, not only of interacting with natural moral feelings for acting responsibly (i.e., the empirical approach to moral psychology), but also the extent to which humans are capable of comprehending and of deliberating about feelings, especially feelings for others (i.e., Ricœur’s hermeneutical and



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phenomenological approach), in order to take ethical and moral decisions and to perform responsible and just actions accordingly. However, some of the elements of Ricœur’s moral anthropology should be understood, as I argued, as related to feelings that are expressions of particular communities and cultures, rather than as universal existentialia. Self-esteem, respect, and conscience in particular are related to feelings that are more common in Western culture than in other cultures. The idea of singularity is particularly significant for underlying this cultural difference, since it implies that ethical and moral life occurs within the context of a singular existence, and thus also within the context of a singular community in which this existence takes shape. NOTES 1. Paul Ricœur, “Otherwise. A Reading of Emmanuel Levinas’s ‘Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence,’” trans. M. Escobar, Yale French Studies 104: 82–99. 2. Paul Ricœur, “Emmanuel Levinas: Thinker of Testimony,” trans. David Pellauer, In: Figuring the Sacred. Religion, Narrative and Imagination, ed. Mark I. Wallace (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995). 3. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 188ff., 329ff. 4. Ricœur, The Just, 29. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 28. 7. The word “responsibility” first appears in the European languages at only the end of the eighteenth century, and is in the first used in political circles. See, “Responsibility.” In: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. James Fieser and Bradley Dowden (http://www.iep.utm.edu/responsi/) 8. Ricœur, The Just, 11. 9. Ibid. 10. “So far as responsibility has a place in eighteenth and nineteenth century thought, then, this is in political contexts, where the concern is with responsible action and the principles of representative government.” See, See, “Responsibility.” In: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 11. Ricœur recognizes in Hans Jonas’ idea of prospective responsibility toward future generations another example, apart from Levinas’ idea of responsibility for the other, according to which the vulnerability of others is the primary the object of responsibility (i.e., the vulnerability of the others of future generations in the case of Jonas). 12. Ricœur, The Just, 28. 13. Ibid., 29. 14. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 18. 15. Ibid., 36. 16. Ibid., 86. 17. Paul Ricœur, Philosophical Anthropology: Writings and Lectures, Volume 3, ed. Johann Michel and Jérôme porée, trans. David Pellauer (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2016) ix ff.

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18. Michel, Paul Ricœur, 14. 19. “[O]n peut faire l’hypothèse […] que la rencontre de [l’éthique de Lévinas] a joué un rôle majeur au cours d’intinéraire de Ricœur, contribuant à impulser le “tournant intersubjective” de son anthropologie. […] Il revient pour une large part à Levinas d’avoir permis à Ricœur de passer d’une anthropologie existentialiste à une anthropologie morale” (Michel, Paul Ricœur, 96). 20. Cyndie Sautereau, “Subjectivité et Vulnaribilité chez Ricœur et Levinas,” Études Ricœuriennes/ Ricœur Studies 4, No. 2: 16; Nathalie Maillard, La vulnérabilité. Une nouvelle catégorie morale? (Genève: Labor et Fides, 2011), 317. 21. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 180. 22. Ibid., 188, 189, 190. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid., 189. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 339. 27. Ibid., 190. 28. Ibid., 190. 29. Ibid., 193. 30. Ibid., 189. 31. Ibid., 192. 32. Ibid., 190. 33. See, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue française, eds. Bloch, Oscar and von Wartburg, Walter (Paris, PUF, 2008). 34. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 192. 35. Note that in the original version of Oneself as Another Ricœur uses the French word conscience, which means both consciousness and conscience (in contrast to the English term conscience, which indicates only our moral conscience, rather than the more broad idea of consciousness). I use Kathleen Blamey’s translation of Oneself as Another, which also chooses the English term conscience. As will become clear, Ricœur’s idea of conscience has a specific moral outlook and designates something else than Bewußtsein, even though he distinguishes conscience from good and bad conscience. 36. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 180. 37. Ibid., 192–3. 38. Ibid., 193. 39. Ibid., 193. 40. Ibid., 129. 41. Ibid., 176. 42. Ibid., 176. 43. Ibid., 170. 44. Ricœur argues, in drawing on Kant’s idea of goodwill, that the goodwill explains in what sense that which one estimates as good can be understood as good in the universal sense. “For how could I know whether, in the course of an action, the esteem of a thing is adequate to the absolute esteem of good will, if not by asking the question: Is the maxim of my action universalizable?” (Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 207)



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45. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 218. 46. Ibid., 219. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 220. 49. Ibid., 221. 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid., 230. 52. See for example, Nussbaum, Upheavals of Thought, 304ff. 53. Paul Ricœur, “Love and Justice,” in Figuring the Sacred. Religion, Narrative and Imagination, Mark I. Wallace (ed.) (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 325. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid, 25. (Original emphasis). 58. Ibid., 24. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid., 222. 61. David Pellauer and Mark Wallace translate témoignage as testimony in their translation of “Emmanuel Lévinas, penseur du témoignage.” A. Lingues, on the other hand, translates témoignage as witness in his translation of Levinas’ Otherwise than Being. 62. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 22. 63. Ibid., 298. 64. Ibid., 299. 65. Ibid., 302. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid., 351. 68. Ibid. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid., 352. 71. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. A Translation of Sein und Zeit, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: SUNY, 1996), 247. 72. Ibid., 248. 73. Ibid., 254. 74. Ibid., 272. 75. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 341. 76. Heidegger, Being and Time, 267. 77. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 22. 78. Ibid., 341ff. 79. Ibid, 347. 80. Ibid., 343. 81. Ibid., 345. 82. Ibid., 352. 83. Ibid., 347. 84. Ricœur, Philosophical Anthropology, 267.

Chapter 5

Sense and the Metaphysical Relation with the Other

In this chapter, I intend to define, with Ricœur and Levinas, the relation with otherness in the sense of the other than self, of which chapter 4 makes an abstraction. In chapter 4, I examined moral feelings that connect the self, capable of responsibility and justice, to the (others of) moral community, but leave open the question whether we can define moral features that make us respond to the other that should not simply be understood as another capable self or as part of the self’s moral community. This chapter discusses this problem and aims in that sense to pinpoint the borders of moral anthropology. Are there common features of moral life that should not simply be understood in terms of an anthropology of moral feelings? I will argue that Levinas demonstrates that the affection or the sensibility for the other than self is the condition for responding to others and, in that sense, for responsibility: in being affected by the other in face-to-face relations we become aware of the presence of the other’s singular existence, and in that sense we become responsive to the other than self. This relation allows comprehending how we respond to others that are different from ourselves, especially when these others are “total strangers,” with whom it might be difficult to sympathize, who are not part of our own moral community, or who do not share our familiar moral norms. I will argue that Levinas’ idea of the other therefore allows defining a “metaphysical” or “transcendent” understanding (transcending the physical nature of moral life) of the relation with the other that demonstrates a common feature of moral existence regardless of cultural differences. Yet because this feature should be understood within the context of concrete relations with the singularity of others, it still differs from a universal moral norm or a universal ontological capacity for moral action. I argue next in this chapter that Ricœur, in contrast to Levinas, insufficiently describes— even though he discusses it to some extent—this metaphysical relation with 125

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the other than self. More precisely, I will argue that he clearly describes three different experiences of the other affecting the capable self: the experience of the other world affecting the flesh, the experience of other capable selves in narratives and through collaborations, and the experience of the other that is the inner voice of conscience. In each of those three experiences, however, the other is part of the self, rather than the other than self. The other world is felt as the strangeness of one’s own body rather than as the other than self, other people are other capable selves rather than others than selves, and conscience constitutes a relation with the self’s inner voice of conscience rather than with otherness. THE OTHER AS META-CATEGORY: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MORAL ANTHROPOLOGY AND A PHENOMENOLOGY OF OTHERNESS In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky illustrates the significance of otherness for understanding ethical and moral questions. In the Second Book, the Elder Zosima tells the story of a doctor who declares that he loves humanity and that he is even willing to make the greatest sacrifices for humanity as such, but that he nevertheless fails to spend time with others. Zosima quotes the words of the doctor: In my dreams, he [the doctor] said, I have often come to making enthusiastic schemes for the service of humanity …; and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together, as I know by experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs my self-complacency and restricts my freedom. … I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I detest men individually the more ardent becomes my love for humanity.1

Apparently, the doctor in Dostoyevsky’s example lacks the capacity for the interaction with others in face-to-face encounters. The otherness of other people, or the difference between his own selfhood and others, is exactly what makes him incapable of concrete interactions with others. Yet this incapacity does not withhold him from loving humanity. Ethics and morals extend, as Ricœur demonstrates in his little ethics, concrete relations with others, and imply justice. This passage nevertheless also illustrates the significance of otherness or of the singularity of the other for responsibility. It raises the question whether and to what extent responsibility or the interaction with others presupposes the relation with otherness as an undercurrent, the other than self or the singularity of the other in that this interaction implies a responsiveness to alterity. In this chapter and the next, I will examine this question.



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For Ricœur, the relation with the other is metaphysical, which requires a meta-discourse that adds to a hermeneutical phenomenology of the capable self. Indeed, in “Uncanniness Many Times Over,” Ricœur, for example, defines the relation with the other as a “meta-category” that supports this hermeneutics.2 However, it is questionable to what extent Levinas’ idea of the other can be translated in anthropological terms as easily as I have suggested in the previous chapter. Indeed, Levinas’ main point is that the other is irreducible to ontology and to human essences. In both of his major works, Totality and Infinity and Otherwise than Being, Levinas questions the idea that the other should be understood ontologically. In Totality and Infinity, he aims to demonstrate that the relation with the other should not be understood in terms of a “totality,” a concept or essence, as “Western” philosophy typically does.3 In a similar tone, he argues, in Otherwise than Being, in favor of understanding the expression of the other’s significance (cf. Levinas’ notion of the “Saying”) in nonontological terms (i.e., as different from the “said”).4 Following Levinas, the otherness of the other should thus not be understood in terms of an essence, whether anthropological, psychological, or biological, since this understanding implies the reduction of this otherness to an essence: a totality or system of thought. Indeed, if the other should be understood in terms of the capable self, as Ricœur contends, does this also imply a reduction of otherness to the self? One might contend that the other is, par excellence, a radically different other, from another culture or moral community that stands for different moral values and norms, and that there is always a risk of insufficiently responding to this other by applying our own values, norms, and standards. On the other hand, it seems difficult to understand how we are even capable of responding to the other, as Dostoyevsky’s example attests, when this other is so different from ourselves that we have trouble finding something in common. In this chapter and in the next, I will examine what I understand as the metaphysical relation with the other in the sense of the relation with the other that escapes the realm of empirical science and moral anthropology. It goes without saying that the idea of the other is imperative for Ricœur’s moral anthropology, and for his work as a whole. Significant in this respect is the title of his major work on intersubjectivity, Oneself as Another, which already suggests that the self should be understood in reference to the other and vice versa. Further, as indicated in chapter 4, his idea of otherness is strongly influenced by Levinas. In particular, Ricœur recognizes in Levinas’ idea of the other a breakthrough in contemporary moral philosophy. In his article, “The Concept of Responsibility,” Ricœur claims that Levinas introduces the idea that the “vulnerability” and “fragility” of “other people” are the primary “object of concern” or “care,” and, in that sense, “the source of morality.”5

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Yet Ricœur’s idea of the other, and his interpretation of Levinas in particular, has been the inspiration for much discussion. Whether and to what extent the other should be understood in terms of the self is the main point of divergence between Ricœur and Levinas themselves. Ricœur summarizes this difference in a letter to Levinas: “If there is a difference between you and me, it consists precisely in that I support the thesis that the other would not be recognized as the source of interpellation and injunction if he were not capable of evoking or awaking self-esteem” (my translation).6 He thus suggests that ethical and moral relations with others should be understood ontologically, that is, in terms of the anthropological essence of the capable self (cf. Ricœur’s notion of self-esteem). What is more, recently several commentators criticized Ricœur’s interpretation of Levinas, and particularly questioned his attempt to understand the relation with the other in terms of the capable self. Nathalie Maillard, for example, argues that since Ricœur thinks of the intersubjective relation in terms of mutual recognition and friendship, he does not offer many resources for understanding the specific asymmetrical relation in which a vulnerable other depends on the self’s care.7 Whereas Ricœur certainly offers, in Maillard’s opinion, the resources for understanding the ethical relation in terms of action and in terms of the recognition of the other as a capable human being, Levinas nevertheless demonstrates, even more so than Ricœur, that generosity begins in being affected by the other who is vulnerable and is therefore also different from the capable self.8 Similarly, Cyndie Sautereau argues that Ricœur’s philosophy is first and foremost “a philosophy of human action” (my translation).9 In this respect, Ricœur thinks of vulnerability in terms of subjectivity, or, more accurately, in terms of the negative of subjectivity. Levinas, on the other hand, understands vulnerability in the first place as the fragility of the other, different from the self’s capacities. For Sautereau, Ricœur’s emphasis on capability thus risks a certain depreciation of vulnerability, insofar as Ricœur conceives of vulnerability in the first place as a malfunction or fault in human action. The question Sautereau poses is whether Ricœur’s notion of vulnerability does justice to certain figures of vulnerability that should probably not be understood in terms of a malfunction, which could be associated with people with a disability, for example. Maillard and Sautereau point to a problem in Ricœur’s understanding of the relation with the other. If Ricœur does incorporate the idea that the other is the primary object of our responsibility in his moral anthropology, as I argued earlier, this anthropology of the capable self also insufficiently addresses the question of otherness. Ricœur understands the other in the first place in function of the self, capable of performing ethical and moral actions (cf., the others of moral community, the other as capable self, the other as



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subject of rights, etc.). Yet, by understanding the other in function of his moral anthropology, Ricœur also misses, to a certain extent, pointing to the difference between the other and the self or to the singularity of the other. Indeed, Ricœur understands the other in terms of the capable self. According to him, the relation between self and other should be understood within what he understands as the ontology of “actuel/potential.”10 In a sense, his ontology of the capable self already presupposes the interaction with the other than self. He distinguishes between two different discourses: the metaphysical and the anthropological.11 Furthermore, it is his opinion that the “meta-category” of the other is the subject of metaphysical discourse and that his hermeneutic phenomenology of the self presupposes this metaphysical discourse. According to him, the phenomenology of alterity” is thus related to his phenomenology of action, which he calls a “philosophical anthropology.”12 In that sense, alterity is included in the four dimensions of his hermeneutics of the capable self that defines what it means to speak, to act, to narrate, and to hold oneself to be the subject of moral imputation. What particular role does Ricœur’s phenomenology of otherness then play in his anthropological understanding of the ideas of the self and of responsibility? He understands otherness in a triadic sense (“the triad of passivity and, hence, of otherness”) in his phenomenology of otherness in the final chapter of Oneself as Another and in “Uncanniness Many Times Over.” Ricœur writes in Oneself as Another: First, there is the passivity represented by the experience of one's own body—or better, as we shall say later, of the flesh—as the mediator between the self and a world which is itself taken in accordance with its variable degrees of practicability and so of foreignness. Next, we find the passivity implied by the relation of the self to the foreign, in the precise sense of the other (than) self, and so the otherness inherent in the relation of intersubjectivity. Finally, we have the most deeply hidden passivity, that of the relation of the self to itself, which is conscience in the sense of Gewissen rather than of Bewusstsein.13

In short, the other, for Ricœur, is the other that affects the self passively— first, in the sense of the strangeness of the world that affects one’s own flesh, secondly in the sense of other people (he also uses the notions “stranger” and “the foreign”) that affect the self, and, finally in the sense of the inner voice of conscience that affects the inner forum of the self. However, according to Ricœur’s triadic understanding of otherness, the other should clearly be understood in relation to the self. Significant in this respect is his choice of the adverb as in the title of his work Oneself as Another. This choice not only suggests that the other, even when he understands this other as the foreigner or the stranger, is also a self and, vice versa, that the self is also another—as another—a stranger or a foreigner. For

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example, the other is a self, according to Ricœur, in the relation of solicitude, in which, as I argued earlier, the self esteems the other as a capable self. Conversely, he contends in Oneself as Another that otherness “belongs … to the tenor of meaning and to the ontological constitution of selfhood.”14 For example, according to Ricœur, our contact with the strangeness of the exterior world is also the affection of one’s own flesh. By understanding the other in terms of the self and the self in terms of the other in his phenomenology of otherness, his idea of the other differs from Levinas,’ according to which the other is radically other than the self. In his phenomenology of the other, Ricœur approaches the problem of intersubjectivity from a different angle than either Husserl or Levinas. In fact, Ricœur aims to combine Husserl’s and Levinas’ ideas of the relation with the other. This means that he aims to understand the other as another self (in line with Husserl approach to intersubjectivity), but that he also aims to understand the other as the other than self (in line with Levinas’ understanding of the relation with the other). He thus aims to break with Levinas’ radical argument that the other is absolutely other than the self, with no reference to the self. Yet Ricœur also aims to avoid an epistemic approach to the other, like Husserl’s in The Fifth Cartesian Meditation, that aims to derive the idea of the other from the phenomenological subject.15 Ricœur thus differentiates between two discourses: an ethical and moral discourse or a moral anthropology on the one hand (cf. his “little ethics” in chapters 7 through 9 of Oneself as Another) and, on the other hand, a phenomenological-metaphysical discourse on otherness (cf. his triadic understanding of otherness in Oneself as Another and in “Uncanniness Many Times Over”). According to him, the first discourse nevertheless presupposes the second one. The question I will examine in the next section is: To what extent does Ricœur’s discourse on ethics and morals in his moral anthropology in Oneself as Another presuppose his phenomenological-metaphysical discourse? If the self’s participation in ethical and moral life is essentially a participation with and for others as he defends in his moral anthropology, to what extent does his phenomenology of otherness sufficiently understand the relation with the other than self or the singularity of the other? RICŒUR’S TRIADIC UNDERSTANDING OF OTHERNESS The flesh and the other of the world Ricœur understands the other in the first sense in relation to the world that affects the flesh. In his description of the flesh, he draws on Maine de Biran’s theory of sensation, as well as on Husserl’s phenomenological analysis of



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the flesh and the body. More precisely, the flesh designates, for Ricœur, the possession of a sensible body. In this regard, he defines the body in line with Maine de Biran’s idea of “touch,” and Husserl’s concept of “hule,” in the sense of the body that is part of the material world that affects it. According to Ricœur, “affection” of the flesh is the primordial relation with the other and this relation is the ontological condition of interactions with others. For him, the flesh “is the origin of alteration of ownness.”16 This means that what he calls the flesh marks the condition of sensible relations between the self and the outside world, that is, with the sensible world “outside” the body: in every contact with the exterior world, the body is affected in a particular way. Ricœur’s phenomenological analysis of the flesh demonstrates, in my opinion, in what sense affection of the flesh is the primal contact with alterity, and, in that sense, conditions the self’s capacity to act and to interact with others. Characteristic of existence is that strangeness affects the body, sometimes violently. For example, other objects within the world affect our sight when we are seeing (something can appear as ugly, beautiful, or strange). In the case of diseases, to give another example, others violently affect the body (bacteria in the body make us feel ill or cancer cells even affect the body until its life functions terminate). In Ricœur’s understanding, “selfhood implies its own proper otherness, so to speak, for which the flesh is the support.”17 Moreover, in this regard “the otherness of the flesh” precedes “the stranger.”18 His notion of the flesh thus defines the condition of the relation with the world. It demonstrates that relations with the world occur through the sensation of the strangeness experienced in the contact of one’s own body with this world. Following this line of reasoning, talking, acting, narrating, and being responsible imply being affected by the world, and interactions with others imply the sensation of the strangeness felt in the contact of one’s own body with the world: the whole that constitutes that which resides outside one’s own body and can possibly affect this body. For example, talking to other people in a noisy room implies being affected by the surroundings of the place in which one is talking. Yet if Ricœur’s analysis of the flesh demonstrates the affective experience that conditions action, and interaction with others, this analysis does not therefore describe, I think, the relation with otherness or with the singularity of the other. Certainly, the flesh, as he understands it, may refer to several sensible relations with the other (e.g., desire, compassion, and caress). However, even though his notion of the flesh defines the condition of affective interaction with others, it essentially refers to the other in terms of the self, that is, in terms of the strangeness of one’s own body felt in the contact with the external world. Understood in this sense, the other of the flesh refers to a relation with one’s own body, rather than to otherness beyond the body or to the singularity of the other, that which makes the other different from the self.

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Certainly, Ricœur’s understanding of the relation with the flesh explains the relation of being in contact with the exterior world, and, in that sense, the relation with the other than self. According to him, the other of the flesh can refer to several possible others in the world that might affect the self: other people, but also conscience, mores, or rules that are created by others. For example, in Oneself as Another, Ricœur even defines the other of conscience as “the Freudian superego, as the word of ancestors resonating in my head.”19 Furthermore, for him, the other of the flesh affects the self in several different ways: passive or active, physical or mental, gentle or hostile, etc. In this respect, he refers to the relation with the flesh in Oneself as Another, for example as the sensation of bodily effort and the sensation of suffering caused by others.20 Yet the other that affects the flesh, according to Ricœur’s understanding of the flesh, is the other of one’s own body, rather than the otherness of the other. Hence, he remarks that in the relation of suffering caused by others, for example, the sensation of the body is equal to the relation of violence caused by the other: “the passivity of the suffering self becomes indistinguishable from the passivity of being the victim of the other (than) self.”21 For Ricœur, “otherness” that affects the flesh thus points to otherness insofar the self feels this otherness, rather than to the singularity of the other. To be sure, I am not arguing that Ricœur’s analysis defines the other as an alter ego, like Husserl does in his analysis of Paarung in The Cartesian Meditations.22 In the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl aims to proof the existence of the other subject starting from a phenomenological analysis of consciousness. According to Husserl, the sensation of another body that affects the flesh makes the ego aware, through the analogy of this body with one’s own body, of the existence of another ego.23 In Ricœur’s analysis of the flesh, however, the other is not simply the other self (alter ego) that affects the ego through the flesh. For him, self and other are not merely egos, but in the first place bodies among bodies. He does not defend, in other words, an idealistic interpretation of consciousness, which he recognizes in Husserl.24 In this regard, Ricœur also discusses, as I showed, Strawson’s theory of the person as spatiotemporal entity. He makes this theory the empirical basis of his own ideas of consciousness and subjectivity. His notion of the flesh thus also functions to explain that subjectivity is not idealistic, but should be understood in relation to bodily sensations. At the same time, his analysis of the flesh also demonstrates that our contact with the exterior world is not merely empirical, but also affective. Our experience of this world should not only be understood through observation of a network of causes and effects. This experience is also felt as strangeness that pleasures, hurts, makes ill, etc. For example, the scientist who observes a physical reaction in the comfort of his laboratory is, it goes without saying, also a self, affected by the world,



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with his own troubles and joys, and therefore capable or incapable, active or ill, powerful or suffering, etc. However, given that the other of the flesh, for Ricœur, is not the alter ego in the Husserlian sense or an empirical constitution, the other is nevertheless another self in that it is the other insofar this other affects the flesh of the self. Other people If Ricœur’s analysis of the flesh insufficiently explains the relation with the singularity of the other, his analysis of other people seems more appropriate for demonstrating this relation. Indeed, more so than our own flesh, other people, which differ from the self, obviously imply otherness. In “Uncanniness Many Times Over,” Ricœur defines otherness in relation to his idea of the four modalities of human capability: speech, action, narrative, and responsibility.25 Regarding speech, Ricœur defines other people as other persons that are capable of speaking in a singular manner that is different from the self. Other people, for him, are thus interlocutors with whom we can have a dialogue and who are capable of expressing their otherness in this dialogue. According to him, the otherness of other people should in the first place be understood in relation to the “untransferrable character” other people take in our “personnel experiences.”26 Following Ricœur, other people are singular in that every other person is irreplaceable in the self’s experiences. Further, this means, for Ricœur, that we cannot take the place of others. We can only hear, believe, pay attention to, etc., others when speaking to them, since we do not live their lives. In that sense, “each life” contains “a secret.”27 Yet other people can express this secret by communicating. Next, Ricœur defines the otherness of other people in relation to action and the narrative. As he points out, every human action with other people, every “interaction” going from “struggle” to “corporation,” implies the uncertainty of the other party’s role.28 Hence, he refers to classical political theories, like Hobbes’ Leviathan, which stress that uncertainty and struggle are common to human cooperation: Man is a wolf to man. According to Ricœur, the otherness of other people thus resides in the fact that others have their singular ways of acting. Characteristic for interaction with others is therefore that we are incapable of taking the role of the other with whom we cooperate or struggle. Moreover, this otherness resides in the singularity of the narrative, according to Ricœur. Part 3 examines more exactly in what particular sense narrativity relates to the idea of singularity. Regarding his analysis of other people, Ricœur contends that each person makes his own life story, which is the sum of his or her personal experiences. He contends that, even though different life stories intertwine, they are also non interchangeable.

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Finally, the otherness of other people should be understood, according to Ricœur, in relation to responsibility in the sense of moral imputation. He contends that, because personal life histories interfere and interact with each other, and yet are at the same time not interchangeable, it is difficult to determine who exactly is responsible for which action. Thus, the central question regarding moral imputation is: “How to ascribe to each the part that comes about through [the] opaque interweaving of roles?”29 Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, the fact that ascribing responsibility to people amounts to defining which action relates to which personal history thus points to the otherness of other people. This otherness is the singularity of the other’s personal history or existence in general. As I argued in chapter 1, holding persons responsible therefore does not only amount to identifying these persons as the cause of certain actions (e.g., X fired the gun). Moreover, holding persons responsible implies understanding their personal life stories (e.g., He killed out of jealousy). Ascribing responsibility thus implies interpretation of human action, as if this kind of action were a text or a narrative. The task of hermeneutics for understanding responsibility consists then in offering the tools and concepts that help such interpretation, and these aid by understanding the motivations for responsibility and justice (solicitude, compassion, respect, etc.). These tools and concepts can help furthermore in particular practices of holding particular persons responsible by understanding the motives of their actions (e.g., He acted with a sense of justice, out of personal vengeance, out of compassion, etc.). Important to note is also that, for Ricœur, other people can refer to both interpersonal and institutional relations. The other is both “you” and the “third person” in his understanding of otherness.30 The self’s interaction with others and their personal histories can take place in relation with concrete others, as well as in relation with others at distance. For example, we can have distant relationships with colleagues with whom we nevertheless cooperate closely, and, conversely, we can have close friends that we nevertheless see very few times. Further, for Ricœur the third is not necessarily anonymous, but also has a face. Social relations possibly are interpersonal relations too. For example, it is only natural to have compassion with strangers, even if these people live on the other side of the world. In this respect, Ricœur argues in his article “The Socius and the Neighbor” that the institutional other is also a neighbor.31 Ricœur’s analysis of other people demonstrates, I think, how other people express their personal histories in speech, action, narrative, and responsibility. Other people, so this analysis shows, are singular in that they have personal life histories and narrative identities. The other person’s narrative identity is the whole of his personal experiences or his own life story. In that understanding the singular life stories of others is significant for holding these others responsibility, the idea of singularity is important for comprehending responsibility and thus for moral anthropology.



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Furthermore, other people clearly express their personal histories both in interpersonal relations and in institutions. For example, in face-to-face relations other people tell (parts of) their life stories by speaking to us. However, the life stories of other people who are distant also reach us in speech and narrative. Media, film, and books, for example, recount the personal histories of other people, both real and fictional. In part 3, I will examine how such narratives are expressions of others and therefore bare a trace of the singularity of the other. From the interaction with concrete others and institution, we learn that every encounter with other people is different. We ascribe responsibilities to other people, and, in so doing we identify the singular actions and stories that are the motives of these responsibilities. Hence, moral psychology alone insufficiently understands responsibility. Although it does explain the causes of actions (natural feelings, brain processes, communal standards, etc.), it makes an abstraction of the motives of human action, which we come to understand by means of texts and life stories, rather than in analyzing causal relations. Yet Ricœur’s analysis of other people is ultimately insufficient for understanding the relation with otherness or with the singularity of the other. This analysis explains the relation with the other in terms of the self, rather than otherness. Even if Ricœur points to the idea of the singularity of the other by explaining the extent to which the life stories of others are irreplaceable and therefore singular, the four modalities of the relation with other people he describes are all relations in which others express their selfhood, rather than their otherness. In fact, characteristic of these relations is that the other people in these relations should be understood as capable selves (capable of speech, of action, of narrative, and of responsibility). First of all, relations of speech with other people presuppose other persons that are, like the self, capable of speech. In this respect, relations of speech are relations in which self and other have the opportunity to make their singular experiences commonly understandable. Narratives are not only singular in that each narrative is different; they also function to bring the singularity of the other “out in the open.” When stories of others are told, they become publically accessible and understandable. Dialogue is not only mutual; it also creates the opportunity to search for common ground, and to search for common understanding in general through the use of ordinary language. Speech thus presupposes particular bodies (two or more) that have a singular existence. Yet speech insufficiently expresses this singularity in that it can only express that which is commonly understandable about this singularity, but not its otherness, even if it still bears a trace of otherness. Secondly, interactions with other people presuppose other persons that are capable of action, that is, that are capable selves. Cooperation with other people implies common understanding, and people struggle to express their

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differences. Struggle also implies the recognition of other people as capable opponents. Moreover, the fact that people struggle to express their differences more exactly demonstrates the difficulties they encounter in expressing their singularity. Action and interaction thus imply bodies that are selves, capable of acting in accordance with the singularity of their existence, but not necessarily in expressing this singularity. In fact, human action also relies on the familiar, insofar as that human beings learn to act in imitating the behavior of others. Thirdly, narratives presuppose other persons that are selves capable of recounting narratives. Certainly, creativity results from the singularity of the narrator and aims to produce singular narratives. However, narrative also implies common techniques: plot, rhetoric, suspense, etc. Again, like is the case for speech, narrative expresses singularity by making it commonly understandable. Speech and narrative both translate personal experience into common language, even if speech often seeks clarity, whereas narratives, and art in particular, seek expression and difference. If speech and narratives express the singularity of their authors, then it is only indirectly, in the form of the singularity of the speech/narrative. Further, narrators not necessarily express their singular existence in their stories. Historical narratives, for example, search for the objective point of view that at least to a certain extent makes an abstraction of the singularity of the historian. Yet understanding the heroes and victims of our stories implies empathy, which searches for common experiences. Finally, ascribing responsibility to other people implies the recognition of these others as capable selves, acting and suffering, and being capable of performing free and responsible actions. Surely, responsibility leaves room for singularity, and, so I am arguing in this book, taking responsible decisions and actions occurs within the context of the self’s lived existence with others. Hence, the ideas of both ipseity and alterity are salient for understanding responsibility and justice, and consequently responsibility and justice should be understood in relation to the idea of singularity. Nevertheless, performing responsible actions implies having the existential aspects, which Ricœur defines in his moral anthropology and which make up our human capability for responsibility and justice. In chapter 5, I already examined these aspects in detail and questioned the universal character of certain of them. I questioned the universal character of self-esteem, respect, and conscience, and argued that these concepts express particular Western experiences, rather than universal ideas. Yet, even given that certain capacities are communal or cultural, rather than universal, these capacities still represent what we have in common with others (i.e., the other members of community, and, in that sense, these capacities do not imply a relation with other’s otherness; further, when others express their singularity in their



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responsible actions, we come to understand these actions by means of what we have in common with other people (compassion, respect, guilt, jealousy, etc.), similarly like we come to understand narratives by means of what we have in common with others. In short, relations with responsible others are, following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, foremost relations with other selves, rather than relations with otherness. What his metaphysics of otherness ultimately lacks is a proper account of why and how the self is responsive to otherness. The other of the inner forum or the voice of conscience The voice of conscience represents the third figure of otherness in Ricœur’s phenomenology of the other. In the previous chapter, I briefly indicated the extent to which conscience, as per Ricœur, should be understood as another. I aimed to demonstrate that, according to him, several different others can possibly call to conscience. For him, the voice of conscience can be stimulated by all possible others that the self encounters in the aim for the good life, insofar as that these others call to conscience. He writes: “Listening to the voice of conscience would signify being-enjoined by the Other.”32 Further, he understands this being enjoined in the first place as the call “to live well with and for others in just institutions.”33 Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, the other that calls to conscience can take the form of every possible other within the sphere of ethical and moral norms: norms, values, other people, institutions, etc. For example, the concrete other in face-to-face encounters, who asks for compassion, calls to conscience according to Ricœur. Yet, the other that calls to conscience can also be understood, for him, as the third that calls for justice on the level of institutions, or the other human being that calls for charity, or the other person that calls for respect, etc. The otherness of conscience in Ricœur’s phenomenology of the other should thus not simply be understood as the otherness of other people. In Oneself as Another, he aims to avoid a “reduction” of the idea of “otherness of conscience” to “the otherness of other people,” which he believes is dominant in Levinas’ work.34 As Ricœur also writes in the concluding remarks of Oneself as Another, it is important “to stress, more than he [Levinas] would want to, the need to maintain a certain equivocalness of the status of the Other on the strictly philosophical plane, especially if the otherness of conscience is to be held irreducible to that of other people.”35 Yet for Ricœur, the other that calls to conscience should also be distinguished from Levinas’ idea of the other as the absolutely other than the self. In fact, he defines his idea of conscience, as I argued earlier, in line with Heidegger’s as well. For him, as is the case for Heidegger, conscience also means attestation, that is, a call for self-engagement in one’s authentic relation with being.

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If Ricœur’s analysis of conscience describes the relation with the other in the broad sense of the other that calls to the inner voice of conscience, to what extent does this analysis describe the metaphysical relation with otherness? The relation with the other of conscience is, in my opinion, similar to the relation with the other of the flesh, in that both relations should be understood as relations of self-affection, rather than as relations with otherness. To be sure, affection of the flesh occurs in relations with others that are part of the external world, and thus differ from the self. Yet what we experience in the contact with these others is the affection of the flesh, rather than otherness or the singularity of the other. Similarly, being affected by the voice of conscience implies relations with others as part of the external world: other people, norms, institutions, etc. However, what we experience as our voice conscience is part of ourselves. Conscience’s call comes from within: it is an inner voice, an inner forum. In this regard, both the relation with the other of the flesh and the relation with the other of conscience are relations with otherness, insofar as this otherness relates to the self (to the flesh or to the voice of conscience). In that sense, these relations are not relations in which the singularity of the other, that which differs from the self, affects the self. Furthermore, it is questionable whether conscience should be understood within a metaphysical discourse, as Ricœur believes it should, or rather within an anthropological discourse. In chapter 4, I argued that the idea of individual conscience is typical for Western cultures. If feelings of guilt are expressions of particular communities and their common standards of responsibility, to what extent should conscience then be understood as an anthropological and psychological phenomenon, rather than as a metaphysical concept? For example, if the voice of conscience should be understood as a superego, as Ricœur contends, then it appears that conscience is the result of the relation between the ego and the mores of society. Consequently, conscience is not only, in that case, a relation with what we have in common with others, that is, the mores we have in common with our ancestors and the fellow members of community. Moreover, in this interpretation the idea of conscience is also the expression of Western culture. Yet then it follows that conscience constitutes a relation with our fellows, rather than with otherness. In fact, we should raise the question to what extent the stranger that stands outside of our community is a prime example of otherness. Ricœur’s idea of conscience thus points to a cultural and communal bond, rather than to the metaphysical relation with the singularity of the other. Of course, I am aware, as I mentioned earlier, that Ricœur’s whole point regarding the idea of conscience is that conscience is ontological, rather than psychological, in that it is the expression of attestation and practical wisdom. In this respect he is Heideggerian. As I argued earlier, he argues moreover that conscience should be understood as the inner forum through which the



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self is capable of ethical and moral deliberation, decision and action. His idea of conscience is thus quite complex, and it would be a mistake to contend that conscience is an expression only of moral feelings that relate to Western culture according to him. Nevertheless, given that he offers such an alternate idea of conscience, the question still is whether this idea of conscience designates the affective relation with otherness or with the singularity of the other. Indeed, for Ricœur the Other that calls to conscience is not, as is the case for Levinas, the radical otherness that disturbs consciousness as such (I will elaborate on Levinas’ understanding of conscience in chapter 6). Part of Heidegger’s legacy in Ricœur’s understanding of conscience is the idea that the other calls to conscience through the self. In Being and Time, Heidegger writes: “Da-sein calls itself in conscience” (Original emphasis).36 Further: “The call comes from me, and yet over me” (Heidegger’s emphasis).37 Certainly, Ricœur distinguishes his idea of conscience from Heidegger exactly by stressing, in the wake of Levinas, the importance of the idea that the Other primarily calls to conscience. Conscience, for Ricœur, nevertheless amounts to discourse in the form of an inner deliberation with oneself. Here again he echoes Heidegger, who contends that conscience is “a mode of discourse” (Original emphasis).38 For Ricœur, the others of ethical and moral life mediate this discourse, and this marks his own position on conscience, between Heidegger’s and Levinas.’ Yet this means that, according to Ricœur, the others that affect conscience are part of the self: relating to others, yet also inherent to the self. They are expressions of the self’s inner deliberation or “representatives” of the inner forum. For example, ancestors’ call to conscience implies deliberation on how oneself should respond to the values, norms, or standards of one’s ancestors. Ultimately, his idea of conscience reflects the call of another self—our inner forum—rather than the call of the singularity of the other. I draw the following conclusions from my investigation of Ricœur’s phenomenology of the other. First of all, he understands the other in a triadic sense in this phenomenology: the other of the world that affects the flesh, other people, and the other that is the inner voice of conscience. Secondly, in his understanding of the other of the world that affects the flesh, he describes the extent to which otherness affects the body, as he demonstrates that the sensation of the affection of one’s own flesh constitutes the contact with others in the world. Yet his idea of the flesh therefore describes the relation with the other self (i.e., the strangeness of one’s own body). This relation is consequently a relation of self-affection or a relation in which otherness expresses itself in function of the self, rather than a relation with the singularity of the other. Thirdly, according to Ricœur, the otherness of other people amounts to the personal history of the lives of others. Others express their personal histories, as per Ricœur, in speech, action, narrative, and responsibility, and

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they do this both in interpersonal relations and in institutions. However, even though his idea of other people explains how speech, act, narrative, and responsibility are expressions of the singularity of others, this idea explains foremost that selves and others are capable of creating common relations (i.e., relations of common language, of cooperation or mutual struggle, of sharing narratives, and of mutual recognition between capable or suffering human beings). Finally, his idea of conscience demonstrates that our inner voice of conscience relates to the others of the external world (other people, mores, norms, ancestors, etc.). This idea thus implies the idea of the other in the broad sense of the Other, which covers all possible others that can call to conscience. Yet it is questionable whether these others affect the self in their otherness, or only insofar as that they are part of the self’s inner voice, mediated by the self’s deliberation. Further, Ricœur’s idea of the relation between conscience and the world explains the relation between the self and common aspects of the world (common culture, common standards, common members of community, etc.), rather than the relation with otherness. In short, I argued in this chapter that ultimately Ricœur’s triadic understanding of the other in his phenomenology of otherness is unclear about the relation between the self and the singularity of the other, especially where the responsiveness to this singularity is concerned. Nonetheless, the relation between the self and otherness or the singularity of the other is significant, as will become clearer in the next chapter, for understanding responsibility. The significance of otherness for understanding responsibility is that affection for otherness allows us to respond to others who are different from ourselves, and therefore allows us to be responsible toward these others. In other words, salient for comprehending responsibility is comprehending how we respond to others that are different from ourselves, especially when these others are “total strangers,” are not part of our own moral community, do not share our familiar moral norms, etc. I am thus seeking in chapters 5 and 6 for a “metaphysical” or “transcendent” (with regard to moral anthropology) relation with the other that demonstrates the possibility of responsibility regardless of cultural differences. In this regard, the aim of these chapters is to respond to a particular problem I found at the end of the part 1. There I looked for ways of criticizing existing moral norms and standards. I argued in favor of a pluralistic understanding of moral norms and questioned the universality of moral norms. Different communities and cultures adopt, I argued, different moral norms. Yet if there are no universal moral norms and thus no universal criteria for distinguishing the one “true” norm from the other, the question is how critique of existing moral norms is possible. We should thus raise the question as to how we can still find common ground for understanding morality across the different communities



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and their different moral norms. I am arguing that the idea that we are in the first place responsible for others is part of this common ground. In the first place, others are the primary objects of responsibility and of justice. In chapter 4, I aimed to demonstrate that this idea is significant for moral anthropology, as Ricœur demonstrates, in that moral feelings are in the first place other-related feelings that aid in understanding justice (cf. Ricœur’s idea of solicitude) across cultural differences. A moral anthropology that aims to understand our moral human nature in general, and responsibility in relation to natural feelings in particular, should thus take into account the idea of the other. However, the affective relation with the other that demonstrates how we respond to otherness should not merely be understood in anthropological terms, as I argued in this chapter. Understanding the other in terms of the capable self and what we have anthropologically in common with this other, as Ricœur does in his moral anthropology, implies understanding the other in terms of the self, rather than as the other than self. In the next chapter, I argue that Levinas’ idea of the relation with the other allows understanding how we respond to the singularity of the other, and thus allows understanding the condition of the possibility of responsibility across cultural differences. NOTES 1. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, trans. Constance Garnett (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications Inc, 2005), 47–8. 2. Ricœur, Philosophical Anthropology, 257. 3. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 21. 4. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 6. 5. Ricœur, The Just, 29. 6. “S’il y a entre vous et moi quelque différend, il se situe exactement au point où je soutiens que le visage de l’autre ne saurait être reconnu comme source d’interpellation et d’injonction que s’il s’avère capable d’éveiller ou de réveiller une estime de soi, laquelle, je l’accorde volontiers, resterait inchoative, non déployée, et pour tout dire infirme hors de la puissance d’éveille de l’autre.” See, “L’Unicité humaine du pronom je,” 37. 7. Maillard, La vulnérabilité, 355–6. 8. Maillard, La vulnérabilité, 358. 9. Sautereau, “Subjectivité et Vulnaribilité chez Ricœur et Levinas,” 9. 10. Ricœur, Philosophical Anthropology, 257 11. Ibid., 254. 12. Ibid., 258. 13. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 318. 14. Ibid., 317. 15. Ricœur, Philosophical Anthropology, 266.

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16. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 324. 17. Ibid., 324. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid., 354. 20. Ibid., 320ff. 21. Ibid., 320. 22. Edmund Husserl, The Cartesian Meditations. An Introduction to Phenomenology, trans. Dorian Cairns (The Hague: Martinus Nijhof), 89ff. 23. Ricœur also writes in Oneself as Another, “the decisive distinction between Leib and Korper, ‘flesh’ and ‘body,’ occupies a strategic position in the Cartesian Meditations, where it represents simply one step in the constitution of a shared nature, that is, of an intersubjectively founded nature. In this way, the notion of flesh is developed only to make possible the pairing (Paarung) of one flesh with another flesh, on the basis of which a common nature can be constituted. Finally, with respect to its fundamental intention, this problematic remains the constitution of all reality in and through consciousness, a constitution of a piece with the philosophies of the cogito with which we parted ways as early as the Introduction to this work [Oneself as Another]” (Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 322). 24. “It is because Husserl thought of the other than me only as another me, and never of the self as another, that he has no answer to the paradox summed up in the question: How am I to understand that my flesh is also a body?” (Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 326) 25. Ricœur, Philosophical Anthropology, 265. 26. Ibid., 265. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. Ricœur, Philosophical Anthropology, 266. 30. Ibid. 31. Paul Ricœur, History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbey (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965). 32. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 351. 33. Ibid. 34. In chapter 6, I examine whether and to what extent Levinas understands the other primarily in terms of other people, as Ricœur contends he does. I argue that other in Levinas’ works does strictly mean other people, but also otherness. 35. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 355. 36. Heidegger, Being and Time, 254. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., 249.

Chapter 6

Desire and Responsibility for the Other

In line with the previous chapter, this chapter further examines the relation with the other than self. This examination is salient for defining common features of moral life across the different cultures and for confronting, in that sense, the challenge of moral relativism. Indeed, what makes us responsive to the other than self, that is, the other that cannot simply be understood within the context of the familiar moral community or culture? In order to answer this question, this chapter examines Ricœur’s criticism of Levinas. According to Ricœur, Levinas insufficiently understands the conditions of responsibility in defining responsibility radically in terms of a passive affection, rather than as a proper relation or engagement with the other than self. I will argue that Ricœur’s critique to Levinas should be nuanced, especially regarding Levinas’ first major work, Totality and Infinity. In this work, Levinas describes how the self is capable of welcoming others in the context of the ontological relation with existence. For example, Levinas’ phenomenological analysis of dwelling in Totality and Infinity demonstrates that the security of existence in a home is a condition for welcoming others. Further, I will argue that, even though Ricœur still has a point when contending that Levinas insufficiently defines moral action in his later works, Levinas’ notion of desire in Totality and Infinity does allow understanding the conditions for the self’s responsiveness to the other than self. I will examine the extent to which desire, and affection for otherness in general, should consequently be understood as a common source or shared “transcendent” sensibility (i.e., transcending cultural difference) for understanding the motivation of moral life with the other than self, which attests to the significance of the idea of the singularity (of the other) for understanding responsibility and justice. 143

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HYPERBOLE: RICŒUR’S CRITIQUE TO LEVINAS In several of his texts, Ricœur criticizes Levinas for understanding the relation with the other as what he calls an irrelation. In Oneself as Another and in his essay Otherwise, for example, Ricœur analyzes Levinas’ second major work Otherwise than Being and argues that Levinas understands “responsibility” as “passivity,” rather than as an “initiative.”1 In Oneself as Another, Ricœur contends that Levinas thinks of responsibility in terms of passivity, not only in Otherwise than Being but also in his first major work Totality and Infinity. He writes that the self in Levinas’ philosophy “is not taken in the sense of a self-designation of a subject of … ethical commitment.”2 And again: “E. Lévinas’ entire philosophy rests on the initiative of the other [i.e., the call for responsibility] in the intersubjective relation. In reality, this initiative does not establish any relation at all, to the extent that the other represents absolute exteriority with respect to an ego defined by the condition of separation.”3 According to Ricœur, Levinas’ philosophy thus fails to understand the interaction between the capable self or the subject of responsibility, and the capable other or the other self that demands ethical concern. For Ricœur, Levinas understands the intersubjective relation as a relation in which only the other takes the initiative to accuse the self and call for responsibility, but neglects to define the extent to which the self is capable of performing ethical and moral actions, as a response to this call, or any interaction or communication with others in general. Yet for what reason does Ricœur conclude that Levinas’ understanding of the intersubjective relation insufficiently describes the self’s capacity for interaction and communication? According to Ricœur, the problem in Levinas’ understanding of the relation with the other relates to Levinas’ exaggerative use of words in his philosophical argumentation. Ricœur points systematically to this excess in Levinas’ work. For example, in Otherwise Ricœur points out that in Otherwise than Being Levinas repeatedly uses extreme terms for defining responsibility, such as “obsession,” “suffering for the other,” “persecution,” “hostage taking,” etc.4 More exactly, Ricœur identifies in Levinas’ philosophy a trope to which he refers as “hyperbole.”5 Ricœur uses the term “hyperbole” not only in the rhetorical sense of the word, as a metaphorical exaggerative use of words, “a figure of style, a literary trope, but [in the sense of] the systematic practice of excess in philosophical argumentation” He thus contends that Levinas puts too much of an emphasis in on suffering, and too little on ethical and moral action. The problem Ricœur finds in Levinas’ philosophy is the absence of a concept of the self as capable of moral initiative and action in the relation with the other.6 For Ricœur, Levinas thus lacks a philosophical-anthropological understanding of the qualities that allow us to execute (responsible) actions.



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In Ricœur’s opinion, the problem in Levinas’ philosophy relates to his interpretation of Husserl’s idea of phenomenological subjectivity and to phenomenology in general. As Ricœur points out, Levinas questions Husserl’s idea of understanding the other in terms of the self, as an alter ego. In his writings, Husserl examines the idea of the other from the epistemological point of view and argues that knowledge of others should be derived from the intentional relation of consciousness.7 In The Fifth Cartesian Meditation, Husserl studies the relation with the other in relation to his notion of pairing. According to Husserl, pairing designates the ego’s capacity to become aware of another subject in experiencing the other’s bodily movements and associating these movements with one’s own.8 From this intuition the ego derives through apperception the idea of the existence of others as other selves. If, for Husserl, the experience of the other is indeed the experience of another stream of consciousness, of another sphere of subjectivity, then it follows that otherness is reduced to selfhood. As Ricœur points out, Levinas is skeptical in his examination of otherness Levinas for phenomenology as such, because of phenomenology’s idealistic and solipsistic approach to otherness of which Husserl is often accused. Ricœur Writes in Oneself as Another: Phenomenology and its major theme of intentionality belong to a philosophy of representation that, according to Levinas, cannot help but be idealist and solipsistic. To represent something to oneself is to assimilate it to oneself, to include it to oneself, and hence to deny its otherness.9

In Ricœur’s understanding, Levinas is thus skeptical to the very idea of ­phenomenological subjectivity, because understanding the other in terms of phenomenological subjectivity reduces the other to an alter ego, and ultimately to a representation derived from the intentional relation of consciousness of the ego. Whereas, for Ricœur, classical phenomenology “pushes the other to one end of the hyperbole” in understanding otherness in terms of the self, Levinas pushes the other to the other end of the hyperbole in contending that otherness should be understood without any reference to the self. In both cases, however, there is no “real” relation between the self and the other, according to Ricœur. In the case of classical phenomenology, the relation with the other is a relation with the alter ego. In the case of Levinas’ philosophy, the relation with otherness is pure expression of otherness, without describing how the self is capable of responding to this otherness. According to Ricœur, this is the case for Totality and Infinity, where “the initiative belongs wholly to the Other, [and where it is in] the accusative … that the I is met by the injunction.”10 For Ricœur, Levinas understands responsibility in his second major work, Otherwise than Being, similarly in the sense

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of “being assigned, which is not to be considered the other side of any a­ ctivity, and hence of “a responsibility that is justified by no prior commitment.”11 Being assigned to responsibility signifies here, for Ricœur, “substitution of the I for the other” to such extent that the self is taken “hostage” by the other who can even be seen as “offender.”12 Moreover, Ricœur criticizes Levinas in suggesting that he insufficiently explains the extent to which the self is capable of hearing the other’s call for responsibility, or of any communication with the other in the first place. For Ricœur, Levinas’ idea of the self (interiority), being enclosed in itself, and therefore separated from the other, does not include “a capacity of reception,” or “a capacity of discernment and recognition … that is the result of a reflexive structure” and finally of “reciprocity” in “communication.”13 According to Ricœur, Levinas thus understands the difference between the self and the other in such radical terms that there is no room for common ground, and thus for communication with the other or for recognition of the other’s ethical demands. In short, otherness in Levinas’ philosophy, so Ricœur contends, is radically other than subjectivity and selfhood. Ricœur argues that in Totality and Infinity, Levinas makes an absolute distinction between “the Same and the Other,” between a “locked up ego” and “exteriority in the sense of absolute otherness.”14 In the previous chapter, I aimed to demonstrate that Ricœur reworks ­Levinas’ idea of responsibility, and that he includes it in his moral anthropology in Oneself as Another, which centers on his notion of solicitude. I argued further that he understands the other’s call in relation to his idea of conscience, as the call of several possible others to practical wisdom. In so doing, Ricœur aims to meet the problem he finds in Levinas’ thought and proposes to understand responsibility, as I argued, in relation to several of the self’s capacities that allow him or her to respond to others: sympathy, respect, conscience, practical wisdom, etc. In his critique to Levinas, Ricœur clearly suggests that such an anthropology of the capable self is missing in Levinas’ philosophy, to the point that Ricœur identifies Levinas’ understanding of the relation with the other as suffering, rather than as responsibility. Yet, how does Levinas understand the idea of the injunction or the other’s call for responsibility, and is Ricœur’s critique of Levinas fully justified? In the next section, I will aim to answer these questions. THE PHENOMENOLOGICAL SUBJECT AND THE OTHER Levinas’ appreciation of phenomenology If Levinas is indeed, as Ricœur points out, critical with regard to Husserl’s phenomenology, and to his ideas of the self and the other, Levinas also finds



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much inspiration in Husserl’s work and in phenomenology in general. Husserl’s influence in Levinas’ philosophy is clearly visible from his earliest works on. In fact, this influence already appears in that Levinas’ doctoral dissertation, later published as The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, deals with the subject of Husserl’s phenomenology.15 Levinas also translated Husserl’s Cartesian Meditations into French.16 Certainly, Levinas is critical with regard to Husserl. In The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, for example, he argues that Husserl’s phenomenology begins with a reduction of concrete lived experience to representation. In this regard, Husserl’s method amounts to intellectualism, in Levinas’ opinion, in that it neutralizes concrete lived experiences to theory, that is, to representations of intentional relations.17 According to Levinas, Husserl’s phenomenology essentially is a philosophy of the ego in that it entails the idea of subjectivity in the sense of a totality of intentions to which exteriority is reduced.18 In The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, Levinas anticipates his later critique to Husserl in Totality and Infinity, in which Levinas argues that Husserlian phenomenology ultimately amounts to “transcendental philosophy.”19 In Otherwise than Being, Levinas identifies Husserl’s phenomenology explicitly as ontology of the same that ultimately reduces otherness.20 Certainly, Levinas is quite critical with regard to Husserl and to phenomenology in general, especially in his later works. In fact, Levinas contends in Totality and Infinity that Husserl’s phenomenology amounts “to the affirmation … that the object of consciousness, while distinct from consciousness, is, as it were, a product of consciousness, being a ‘meaning’ endowed by consciousness, the result of Sinngebung.”21 In Otherwise than Being, Levinas returns to his critique to Husserl and attests in a critical note that phenomenology reduces otherness to an eidos or transcendental structure of consciousness: The meaningful [for Husserl] refers to a cognitive subjectivity and to the mathematical configuration of logical structures, as the eidetics of the contents refers to the “spirituality” of the intention conferring a sense on what manifests itself in the openness, by gathering up this sense.22

In sum, Ricœur is correct that throughout his entire work (and especially in Otherwise than Being) Levinas is critical to Husserl for reducing otherness to subjectivity. In particular, Levinas criticizes Husserl for thinking of otherness as being reduced to the intentional relation of consciousness between the ego and the object of consciousness (cf. Husserl’s idea of pairung). Certainly, Husserl is not an idealist in the classical sense, and according to his conception of the intentional relation with the other, this relation should

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not be understood as a representation of the other as abstract idea within the mind of the subject, but rather as a relation between the ego and the other who is bodily present in the world. Generally speaking, the Husserlian intentional relation of consciousness describes the relation between subject and the world, rather than an idealistic substance in the world.23 Nevertheless, Husserl understands exteriority, as Levinas correctly points out, in the sense of that which is transcendent to or other than consciousness, yet in terms of the relation between the phenomenological subject and its object: the noemata. In Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences, Husserl writes: In transcendental experiencing, all “transcendent being,” understood in the normal sense as true being, is suspended, “parenthesized.” What is solely and alone to remain is “consciousness itself” in its own essence, and in place of transcendent being, the “being meant” of something transcendent and consequently all sorts of correlates, what is meant, the noemata.24

Husserl thus indeed reduces the otherness of the objects of consciousness by defining these objects in function of the eidetic structure of consciousness, and in that sense of the ego. Yet despite his critical attitude toward Husserl, Levinas develops a philosophy that is phenomenological through and through, and he uses phenomenological analyses for pointing to otherness and transcendence. In On Escape, one of Levinas’ earliest writings, he, for example, elaborates phenomenological analyses of different experiences of consciousness: need, shame and nausea. Moreover, in these analyses, Levinas aims to demonstrate the metaphysical relation with transcendence. More exactly, in On Escape, Levinas criticizes “Western philosophy” and its tendency to “ontologize” being, in the sense of fixing “harmony between us and the world,” and, thus to neglecting the need to “escape” being, as experienced in shame and nausea.25 Similarly, in Existence and Existents, Levinas elaborates several phenomenological analyses of such experiences as fatigue, exotism, and insomnia, in order to argue to what extent the “I” escapes “the impersonal character of Being in general” or “existence,” in order to maintain itself as a singular being or “existent.”26 In Time and the Other, Levinas contends that a phenomenological examination of time should reveal “the very relationship of the subject with the Other.”27 Surely, the idea of responsibility is rather absent in all of these early works and only becomes a major concept in Otherwise than Being. However, the central theme in these works already is the relation with the Other, in the broad sense of the other that transcends being: the other than self. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas uses phenomenological analysis explicitly to develop his idea of the relation with the other. In the preface, Levinas even



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announces: “The presentation and the development of the notions employed [in Totality and Infinity] owe everything to the phenomenological method.”28 What is more, he finds inspiration in Husserl’s idea of “horizon,” which already indicates, for Levinas, the surplus of significance that is irreducible to consciousness in that consciousness implies the manifestation of only one of several other possible courses of experience. For Levinas, the idea of horizon in this sense points to the limit of “objectifying thought” and demonstrates that this thought is unable to capture all significance that possibly presents itself to consciousness.29 In other words, the idea of horizon indicates, according to Levinas, that significance is not fully covered by representation, and, in that sense, Husserl’s idea of horizon already points to the other that transcends the totality of consciousness. Levinas’ appreciation of phenomenology in Totality and Infinity is thus more nuanced than Ricœur appears to admit. Furthermore, in Totality and Infinity, Levinas employs phenomenological analysis for defining his own idea of subjectivity and uses this idea as the starting point for his understanding of the relation with the other, and of responsibility and justice. Levinas elaborates his phenomenological analysis of the self or “I” and argues that the self’s ontological relation with the world conditions this relation. In this respect, several critics agree that Ricœur is too hasty in concluding that Levinas’ idea of the self represents an enclosed ego.30 These critics contend that, at least in Totality and Infinity, Levinas understands the other in relation to the self, rather than as absolute exteriority only. Indeed, in the preface of Totality and Infinity, Levinas certainly contends that the “I” is “a separated being fixed in its identity.”31 Nevertheless, he also asserts that subjectivity realizes “the astonishing feat of containing more than it is possible to contain.”32 For Levinas, this means that the aim of Totality and Infinity is to “present subjectivity as welcoming of the Other, as hospitality.”33 According to him, the self, although separated, should thus be understood as openness toward the other, rather than as absolute ­interiority, as Ricœur argues. Levinas contends that phenomenology demonstrates the relation between self and other, given that otherness should not be reduced to an intentional relation of consciousness. As Levinas writes: “Intentionality … does not define consciousness at its fundamental level.”34 Subjectivity, for Levinas, does not amount to egotism, as Ricœur suggests it does. It already bears the traces of otherness, even though its fundamental movement is separation. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas thus makes use of phenomenological analysis for explaining the extent to which subjectivity is the condition for the relation with the other. In the second part of that book, “Interiority and Economy,” he engages more exactly in a detailed phenomenological analysis of the subject or “I” as separated being. Levinas identifies the existence of the “I” as economical in the ontological sense in that it describes the self’s

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“economy of being.”35 He therefore analyzes several experiences of consciousness such as need, enjoyment, dwelling, possession, and labor, in order to explain not only how the subject is capable, in living from the other of the world, that is, the anonymity of being or the “elemental.”36 For Levinas, the separated “I” finds itself as singular being (hence Levinas’ usage of the term “I”), but this separated existence is also presupposed within the ethical relation with others. Further, given that Levinas understands the other in the broad sense of the Other than being, he does not appear to reduce otherness to the otherness of other people, such as Ricœur suggests.37 For the purposes of my argument I will not go into further detail in Levinas’ understanding of the different experiences that he describes for explaining how the subject separates itself from the elemental. In fact, many critics have already done this, and much has already been written in the secondary literature on Totality and Infinity in general.38 It suffices to give one example that illustrates more precisely Levinas’ understanding of the ego as the condition of both the separation from and the welcoming of the other. For example, in his analysis of dwelling, Levinas argues in favor of the idea that only in possessing a home, one is capable of welcoming others. In Levinas’ own words: “To dwell … is a recollection, a coming to oneself, as in a land of refuge, which answers to a hospitality, and expectancy, a human welcome.”39 This means for Levinas that only in retreating from “natural existence,” focused on survival, “without security,” one is able to “care” for others.40 In this regard, securing for oneself a place to dwell provides the time and the means for welcoming others, for responsibility, and for moral life and justice in general. Only in experiencing the world, in living from its otherness, in enjoying it, nourishing oneself with it, manipulating it, does one enter in the relation with the other. This is what Ricœur aims to demonstrate with his analysis of the flesh as well. My aim in this chapter, in the first place, is not to demonstrate Levinas’ conception of phenomenology or even showing that Ricœur’s critique to Levinas should be nuanced. Rather, my aim is, as announced, to search for a metaphysical understanding of the relation with the other, which should not be understood in terms of the capable self and therefore points to the limits of moral anthropology for understanding responsibility and justice. The goal of this search is to show how sensibility for otherness is a condition for responding to others and therefore for responsibility and justice. Yet Levinas’ interpretation of phenomenology shows that, even before any engagement in moral life, a responsiveness to otherness implies a separation of the ego: the self “opens up” to the other when disrupted in its comfort and self-directedness. Levinas thus describes the conditions of the metaphysical relation with the other, which precedes moral anthropology.



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In conclusion of this section, it is clear that, even though Ricœur is c­ orrect in contending that Levinas is quite critical to Husserl and his idea of the self and the other, and to phenomenology in general, Ricœur’s critique to Levinas should be nuanced in that it insufficiently stresses the importance Levinas attaches to phenomenological analysis for describing the condition of the self engaging in relations to others. Yet, one question is to what extent Levinas understands the relation with the other in his later works, and in Otherwise than Being in particular, and whether this relation should be understood as one of absolute separation, as Ricœur contends in his critique of Levinas. In the following sections I argue that Ricœur does make a point when contending that Levinas insufficiently describes the self’s capacities for ethical and moral action, and for interactions with others. However, Levinas demonstrates, as I will argue, that being affected by the other than self allows responding to otherness or to the singularity of the other in the first place, before this action and these interactions take place. Unintentional consciousness: The affective relation with the singularity of the other Ricœur is correct when critiquing Levinas for using radical terms when defining his idea of responsibility. In fact, particularly in chapter IV of Otherwise than Being, “Substitution,”41 Levinas uses extreme formulas for defining responsibility. For example, he writes: “For under accusation by everyone, the responsibility for everyone goes to the point of substitution. A subject is a hostage.”42 Moreover, in the third section of chapter IV, “The Self,” he writes: “Suffering in the suffering undergone (without producing the act that would be the exposing of the other cheek).”43 This suffering would allow “to pass from the outrage undergone to the responsibility for the persecutor, and, in this sense from suffering to expiation for the other.”44 Further, in Otherwise than Being, Levinas understands the relation of responsibility for the other as a passive relation, rather than as a relation of ethical and moral interactions with others. More exactly, Levinas defines responsibility as a passive way of being affected, prior to the self’s engagement. Levinas states, again in chapter IV, “responsibility … is justified by no prior commitment.”45 He moreover defines responsibility as “a way of being affected which can in no way be invested by spontaneity.”46 In Otherwise than Being, Levinas defines responsibility as “substitution,” by which he means being “ill at ease in one’s own skin” (être mal dans sa peau).47 Further, responsibility in this sense means for Levinas a “duty overflowing my being ….”48 Responsibility, according to him, amounts then to feeling “accused for what the others do or suffer, or responsible for what they do or suffer.”49 These definitions clearly suggest that, for Levinas,

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responsibility for the other begins in feeling uneasiness in the presence of the suffering of others. In his article, “Le corps de la responsabilité,” Rodolphe Calin argues in this respect that in Otherwise than Being responsibility should be understood in relation to a gut feeling or being touched by the other in the flesh (“être touché aux entrailles”).50 When Levinas uses quite radical terms in that book to define responsibility as a suffering for the other, as Ricœur correctly points out, then it is to stress that our response to the other than self begins in our being sensible with regard to this other. When feeling ill at ease in one’s skin toward the other, we already respond to this other in that we are responsive to the other’s vulnerability. Certainly, this response does not amount to responsibility as participation in ethical and moral life, through institutions, norms, mores, practical wisdom, etc. Yet in defining responsibility primarily in terms of a passive response to the other’s vulnerability, Levinas points out that, even before we recognize the other as another self—as another person, member of our moral community or even another capable self—we already respond to the other in being affected by this other. This affection does not amount to what Ricœur calls “true sympathy,” which is nevertheless also a passive way of being affected by the other, since true sympathy implies, as I argued earlier, the recognition of the other as capable of self-esteem (or more exactly as lacking self-esteem and as suffering). Levinas, on the other hand, points out that being sensible to the other occurs prior to recognition or even prior to natural feelings (which implies a mutual transfer of feelings and hence a reduction of the other’s otherness to a natural essence), in feeling ill at ease toward the other. Insofar as this feeling does not yet imply an act of consciousness (that can be understood as an intentional relation), it is an affective relation with otherness or with the singularity of the other. Indeed, Levinas understands responsibility in his later works in relation to passive affects, as opposed to action and as an unintentional relationship of consciousness. In some articles published at the end of the 1970s, especially during the period 1980–1990, Levinas defines responsibility as the result of a commandment, which should be formulated as the injunction not to kill the other (“Thou shalt not kill”).51 Furthermore, Levinas specifies in these articles that the awareness of this ethical injunction should not be understood in terms of the “Husserlian phenomenology of consciousness.”52 In a language that is similar to that of Otherwise than Being, Levinas writes that the relation of responsibility, “the very relationship of the saying cannot be reduced to intentionality.”53 Nevertheless, he understands this awareness of responsibility as a sensation or revelation of sense, the “gift of meaning [donation de sens],” which is the ethical sense that can be formulated in the injunction not to kill.54 In Levinas’ opinion, this awareness is “an indirect consciousness: immediate but without an intentional aim.”55 Therefore, he defines responsibility,



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as is the case in Otherwise than Being, as a radical passive way of being affected. The word “passive” indicates here not only that the awareness of responsibility is an experience that befalls the self and that the self could not possibly foresee (i.e., that it is involuntary in a general sense), but also that this experience emerges without any possible activity of consciousness performed by the subject of responsibility (i.e., that it is unintentional in a phenomenological sense). The very idea of sympathy, or Einfühlung, on the other hand already implies an intentional relation in that it amounts “moving in” the other’s consciousness or being empathic with his or her feelings. Levinas defines responsibility as opposed to what Husserl calls the intentional reflective act of consciousness, directed at an object of consciousness: As a dim consciousness, an implicit consciousness preceding all intentions … it [the pre-reflexive consciousness] is not an act, but rather pure passivity. It is passivity not only by way of its being-without-having-chosen-to-be, or by falling into a pell-mell of possibilities already realized before any assumption …. The pre-reflective and non-intentional consciousness could not be described as a becoming conscious [prise de conscience] of this passivity, as though within it were already distinguished the reflection of a subject … This passivity is … the correlate of no action.56

As these lines suggest, responsibility, for Levinas, is an experience in which significance or meaning is disclosed, as consciousness remains in its prereflexive passive state. More exactly, Levinas understands this pre-reflexive sensation of responsibility as a state of consciousness that disturbs the ­intentional consciousness. He states, “The very relationship of the saying cannot be reduced to intentionality, [but] rests, properly speaking, on an intentionality that fails.”57 In similar terms, this relationship is a “deficiency of re-presentation,” “a failed experience” or an “unbalanced relationship.”58 Understood in this sense, responsibility dislocates the intuitive mental activity of intentional consciousness, which in itself is the innocent or spontaneous activity of being conscious of objects. So, it appears that in his later articles, especially those that are published in his anthology Entre Nous, Levinas understands responsibility as opposed to action in general, but also to the activity of intentional acts of consciousness. Because this relation of responsibility for the other is unintentional, otherness is not reduced in this relation in which the singular other expresses an ethical significance. Yet what is this ethical significance? How can it be ethical when the injunction is not met, as Ricœur points out, with ethical recognition and action, with participation in a moral community of shared mores and just institutions? In fact, in his later articles Levinas defines responsibility, similarly to Ricœur,

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in relation to the idea of conscience: “Bad conscience or timidity; guiltless, but accused; and responsible for its very presence.”59 However, Levinas understands conscience differently than Ricœur does. As I argued in the previous chapter, according to Ricœur conscience is an ontological relation that designates the human capacity for inner deliberation with several possible others (ancestors, moral norms, other people, etc.). I argued that Ricœur’s understanding of conscience therefore insufficiently explains the relation with otherness, since conscience, for Ricœur, should be understood as a relation of inner dialogue with oneself, rather than as a relation with the singularity of the other. According to Levinas, however, the relation of conscience should be understood as a disruption of intentional consciousness, rather than as an inner dialogue with conscience, that is, as different from any reflective relation or any relation that requires activity of consciousness whatsoever. For Levinas, the relation with the other should not be understood in ontological terms, anthropological terms, or (mental) self or intentionality terms. Thus, Levinas distinguishes his idea of conscience from the experience of having a good conscience and from the experience of suffering guilt, which both imply reflections on our contribution to the moral community, either in the form of self-reassurance that one actually meets the required moral criteria or in the form of self-accusation that one transgresses these criteria.60 Following Levinas’ line of reasoning, the bad conscience should rather be thought of as the sensation that, in the process of having intentional experiences, the other is possibly neglected, reduced, and even hurt or killed. In this sense, bad conscience is the revelation that life as such is the very usurpation of the other’s needs or that existing, being conscious in the world, takes away the means of the life of others: food, air, water, etc. In that respect, bad conscience is the revelation of ethical significance. However, this revelation should be understood, in my interpretation of Levinas, as a passive sensation, in the sense of “feeling ill at ease in one’s skin,” prior to any possible reflection on egoism or on the needs of others. This is not just a matter of conceptual exaggeration or of saying the same thing with different concepts (sympathy for the other’s suffering vs. feeling ill at ease in the confrontation of this suffering). The point of Levinas’ critique of phenomenology is to demonstrate that we should not simply explain responsibility in terms of natural feelings or in terms of an anthropological essence. Our sensibility for otherness does not amount to sympathy. Not every relation can be defined in terms of the self: hence the significance of the idea of the singularity of the other. It is responsiveness to the other’s vulnerability, rather than reflection on moral norms, standards, and values, that makes possible a response to the other. For Levinas, the ethical relation should thus be defined neither in terms of a moral anthropology of ethical life in relation to natural feelings and moral communities (cf. true sympathy or moral conscience) nor in terms of a moral



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anthropology of the capable self (cf. self-esteem or recognition), because this relation precedes action, interaction, and consciousness. Hence, Levinas further defines what he calls bad conscience as “fear that comes … from the face of the other person” or fear that expresses the “exposure to death.”61 Fear, for Levinas, is then the “timidity” that we feel when encountering other human beings.62 Levinas writes: “The alterity of the other is the extreme point of the ‘thou shall not kill,’ and, in me, the fear [la crainte] of all the violence and usurpation that my existing, despite the innocence of its intentions, risks committing.”63 Similarly, Levinas announces at the end of Of God Who Comes to Mind that responsibility means: “To have to respond … in the fear for another.”64 In short, when Levinas understands responsibility, in his later works, in the sense of suffering a bad conscience, or in the sense of fear for another or of feeling ill at ease in one’s own skin, this experience should be understood neither as a moral communal feeling nor as guilt in the anthropological or psychological sense, nor as the experience of the voice of conscience, but as uneasiness in the presence of others in the sense of being sensible to the other’s vulnerability. In Levinas’ later works, the relation with the other is thus certainly a passive relation, as Ricœur contends, but this relation is also different from the experience of the voice of conscience, that is, the experience of others in the internal dialogue with herself or himself. Insofar as that Levinas understands the relation with the other in terms of passive affects, this relation seems similar to the relation with the other that Ricœur identifies with his notion of flesh. Yet although both Ricœur’s idea of the flesh and Levinas’ idea of the relation with the other indicate an affective relation, Levinas’ phenomenological analyses of the bad conscience and of fear in his later works also demonstrate, in contrast to Ricœur’s idea of the flesh, that the uneasiness felt in the presence of others is already the onset of responsibility for others, and the expression of otherness. Face-to-face encounters with others, so these analyses demonstrate, make the self aware of the singular existence of concrete others who are vulnerable and for whom the self has responsibility in that sense. Following Levinas’ line of reasoning, the presence of otherness expresses that which he calls injunction or conscience. Again, this is not the voice of conscience, or the other self (cf. Ricœur’s ideas of the flesh and of other people). Ricœur’s description of the flesh describes that our contact with the world is mediated by feeling the strangeness that results from the contact with the other. Yet Ricœur does not clarify, as I argued in chapter 5, how otherness can be expressed in this contact. According to Levinas, however, the relation with the other should not be understood in hermeneutical terms, as mediation between self and other, or as a relation in which the other is a figure of the self or part of the self. Hence, Levinas stresses time and again the significance

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of understanding otherness radically, without reference to (the consciousness of) the self. The presence of otherness in encounters with concrete others thus “triggers” the awareness that these others are vulnerable. We do not experience this awareness in the nearness of an object that has no face. The other is, contrarily to the mere object, exposed to experiences of suffering. I can perfectly slap the other’s face, but will at least hesitate to do so. When I bash my hand on the television when it refuses to work, I, on the contrary, do not suffer such timidity. Even though this singularity remains a “secret,” to use Ricœur’s expression, and every comprehension of this singularity is yet a reduction of its otherness, the other expresses otherness by making the self aware of its presence. In this respect, Levinas better understands than Ricœur the extent to which the singularity of the other calls for responsibility at least in the sense of a response to the other than self. It appears then that when Levinas defines responsibility in his later work, that is, from the 1970s on, in using such words as bad conscience or fear, and even extreme formulations such as suffering for others and hostage taking, it is to indicate the radical passive aspect of the relation with the other and to argue that the singularity of the other should not be defined in terms of (activity of) the self. According to Levinas, the presence of otherness creates uneasiness, and this presence is in that sense the first response to the other and the beginning of responsibility for others. Levinas demonstrates, as I am arguing, that justice, being the recognition of the other, is based on the relation in which the self is affected passively by the singularity of the other. Recognition of others begins in responsiveness to others, in feeling ill at ease in one’s skin, in being affected by the other. Ultimately, that which Ricœur defines in anthropological terms in referring to sentiments of true compassion, Levinas describes in nonontological or metaphysical terms: for both philosophers responsibility for others is founded on passive affects. However, for Levinas, describing these affects in anthropological terms would imply describing responsibility in ontological terms, and, consequently, reducing otherness to an essence, that is, to the essence of the capable and suffering self or to the moral essence of human nature. Indeed, whereas Ricœur, as I argued in the previous chapter, principally defines otherness in terms of the self (the other of the flesh, other people and the voice of conscience), Levinas demonstrates that the relation with the singularity of the other should be understood in terms of otherness, rather than in terms of the self. In this respect, Levinas, more so than Ricœur, points to the possibility of the encounter with otherness and with the singularity of others. Here, the differences between other, otherness, and others also become clearer. If others means, as Ricœur suggests, all possible others whom we encounter in (ethical and moral) existence, this notion differs from the other, which stresses that otherness or alterity of the other than self.



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Levinas’ idea of responsibility points, in my opinion, in the direction of a shared sensibility for otherness. Humans, rather than moral communities, share this sensibility. Yet this sensibility also differs from universal criteria or norms for understanding morality (I criticized the possibility of finding such criteria and norms in chapter 3). Indeed, for Levinas the ethical relation with the other should not be understood within the context of a particular culture or tradition. He contends that “signification [revealed by the face of the other] is situated before Culture …; it is situated in Ethics.”65 However, this also means, for Levinas, that we should question the idea of a “universal grammar,” or the idea to derive morality from a universal essence.66 Rather, our sensibility for the other is a human sensibility that is metaphysical in that it should not simply be defined in terms of moral communities or in terms of an essence of being: anthropological, biological, or physical. Levinas defends a “Humanism of the Other,” which is the title of one of his works.67 This humanism differs from the humanisms of the Renaissance and that of modernity, which describe the essence of the human being in terms of particular characteristics of our nature and/or culture. Levinas’ humanism implies, on the contrary, that we should question radical moral relativism, because our sensibility for otherness transcends the cultural and moral differences, standards, values, and norms that divide us. Yet it also breaks with absolute moral universalism, because we should question the possibility of finding one absolute moral essence, on our nature or ontological makeup. According to Levinas’ humanism, we share among selves that we are sensible to vulnerable others, to the suffering of these others. Certainly, for him, the relation with the other is, as I have been a­ rguing in this chapter, a relation with the “singularity [of the other] without the mediation of any principle, any “ideality,” and thus any principle of s­elfhood.68 We should conceive of humanism then not as an absolute principle, but instead as a principle based on the idea of singularity. This means that, rather than contending that our sensibility for the vulnerability of the other is a universal trait that we find in all humans in all cases and relations, we should think of this sensibility as something that humans can experience in the encounter with the other, given the differences between moral communities and the singularity of every encounter with the other. Moreover, human’s shared sensibility for otherness allows critique toward existing moral norms. At the end of part 1, I identified possible forms of critique that allow questioning existing moral norms, given that these norms are not absolute and possibly result in evil (see part 3 for the relation between evil and justice). I defined this critique in chapter 3, where I argued with Ricœur that practical wisdom allows criticizing existing moral norms, making exceptions of them and reacting against them. This kind of critique should be understood in light of the idea of ipseity (practical wisdom implies being a

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self). In this chapter, I am arguing in favor of a second kind of critique related to the idea of otherness: our sensibility for the vulnerability and suffering of others can help in questioning moral norms when these norms risk causing violence to others or demand for exceptions. In this respect, Levinas writes in “Humanism of the Other” that the relation with the other “allows us to judge Culture.”69 If the suffering of others is the prime object of responsibility, as Ricœur also contends, then our sensibility for this suffering can make us responsive to moral norms when those risk surmounting into violence. In part 3, I will examine a third form of critique in light of the relation between narrativity and singularity (singular narratives allow criticizing moral norms). Ethical and Moral Action Implies Ontology If, as I argued in the previous section, Levinas understands the relation with otherness or with the singularity of the other in more adequate terms than Ricœur does, Ricœur nevertheless still makes a point in his critique of Levinas, which I will argue in this section. I will also argue that Ricœur is correct when contending that Levinas insufficiently demonstrates what it means to perform responsible actions and to engage in ethical and moral interactions with others. I will argue, moreover, that it is questionable, as Ricœur suggests, to what extent Levinas shows how we are capable of a response to the other’s call for responsibility. Indeed, given that Levinas points at the affective relation in which the other expresses otherness, and in which the self is responsive to this otherness, his understanding of this responsiveness in terms of “violent” affects makes it difficult to understand how sensibility for the other turns into responsibility, that is, into an actual response to the other. How should we distinguish, for example, between actual relations of violence caused by others, to whom we are sensible, from relations of responding to the other’s suffering? What is the difference between being passively affected by the suffering of others or being sensible and in that sense responsive to this suffering, and responding to the other in the sense of engaging in a relation with this other in his or her singularity? Answering these questions is important to define the exact role of Ricœur’s moral anthropology, as is part of this book’s aim, with regard to Levinas’ understanding of the metaphysical relation with the other: to describe the self’s capability for responsibility and justice. Richard Kearney makes a similar point and agrees with Ricœur’s critique to Levinas. In his article “Entre soi-même et un autre: l’herméneutique diacritique de Ricœur,” Kearney argues that Levinas underestimates the significance of the self for understanding moral responsibility.70 According to Kearney, Ricœur rightly contends that recognition of others, and the



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performance of responsible actions imply self-esteem, as well as critical judgment, since, “all selves are not demons and all others are not angels” (my translation).71 Kearney himself argues in favor of what he calls a “diacritical hermeneutics” (my translation).72 For him, this hermeneutics should surely be distinguished from a romantic hermeneutics, like Dilthey’s or Schleiermacher’s, according to which the aim of interpretation is to become one with the conscience of another subject. Yet understanding others and how we should act toward them implies both, so Kearney contends, taking into account their otherness and understanding them in light of one’s own self and critical judgment. Indeed, who is able to distinguish the murderer from the victim without some form of critical judgment? There appears to be a difference then between being sensible and responsive to the other, and actually responding to this other, in taking initiative, in caring, in applying practical wisdom and critical judgment, etc. Although Kearney certainly makes a strong case, we should also take into account that, for Levinas, responsibility differs from being “the victim offering itself” to others, since this supposes a subject “behind the subjectivity of substitution,” that is, a subject that freely chooses to be victimized.73 Indeed, Levinas stresses, as I have argued above, that responsibility in the sense of being sensible to others precedes initiative and commitment, be it the initiative of caring for others or the initiative of playing the victim of others. Further, as Ricœur also admits, in Otherwise than Being the theme of the witness explains the extent to which Levinas understands the recognition of responsibility for the other.74 In chapter V, “Subjectivity and Infinity,” he, more exactly, introduces his notion of “sincerity,” which he defines as the “Saying” and the “Here I am,” to explain in what sense this recognition is possible.75 According to Levinas, responsibility amounts to witnessing the suffering of others, rather than being the victim of this suffering. As his understanding of the theme of the witness suggests, responsibility for the other does not amount to feeling victimized by the other (or to being the martyr of the other), but responsibility for others rather begins in witnessing the vulnerability of others, which is passive and precedes intentions toward this vulnerability. Following this line of reasoning, Levinas’ point is that justice for others begins by sharing in their suffering, rather than that justice would be equal to suffering for others. In fact, Ricœur himself makes a similar case when arguing that the recognition of the need for justice begins with truly sympathizing with the suffering of others.76 Levinas also contends that justice ultimately requires action, as his notion of the third clearly demonstrates. In section 3 of chapter V of Otherwise than Being, “From the Saying to the Said, or the Wisdom of Desire,” he examines this notion.77 In that section Levinas explains that “the third party” denotes

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“the limit of responsibility and the birth of the question: What do I have to do with justice?” Levinas writes: Justice is necessary, that is, comparison, cœxistence, contemporaneousness, assembling, order, thematization, the visibility of faces, and thus intentionality and the intellect, and in intentionality and the intellect, the intelligibility of a system, and hence also a copresence en an equal footing as before a court of justice.78

Justice requires organization, and thus extends the level of face-to-face encounters. In other words, justice demands distribution of goods and rights, and in that sense it requires intelligence, reason, action, and, thus, intentional relationships of consciousness. If Levinas contends, as I argued earlier, that responsibility amounts to the relation, which should be understood in contrast to Husserl’s idea of intentionality, of being affected by the singularity of the other, he also admits that justice and the recognition of others implies intentionality and action in general. In other words, for Levinas, responsibility is the condition of justice, but justice already implies suspension of the original relation of responsibility. In this regard, Ricœur’s essay Otherwise, in which he discusses Otherwise than Being, is most helpful. In this essay, he argues that in Otherwise than Being “justice … allows one to thematize the type of Saying that allows one to philosophize.”79 In other words, he points out that justice for Levinas implies what Levinas calls the said, that is, the thematization of the Saying or of responsibility, which is also the task of philosophy being the wisdom of love. In Ricœur’s words: “to call oneself a philosopher, one cannot be satisfied with the tropes of obsession and hostage taking, or with the ‘traumatic violence’ …. One must also question responsibility, discern ‘the latent birth of the question in responsibility.’”80 For Ricœur, justice for Levinas ultimately implies equality and, consequently should not merely be understood in extreme hyperbolic terms.81 Yet Levinas defines justice as “the limit of responsibility.”82 Moreover, he defines his notion of sincerity, which he employs to designate responsibility in the sense of the recognition of others, again as “passivity” and again in extreme terms: “exposure to the other not … immediately inverted into activity.”83 He thus suggests that recognition of others amounts to passively submitting to the suffering of others. Hence, “sincerity” opens to “recognition,” according to Levinas, but this recognition “is not reducible to anything ontic, or anything ontological, and leads as it were beyond or on this side of everything positive, every position. It is not an act or a movement, or any sort of cultural gesture.”84 According to Levinas, responsibility is passive. Yet justice is action and, thus, already the end of this responsibility.



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According to Ricœur, Levinas’ discourse on responsibility therefore contradicts his discourse on justice.85 In Ricœur’s opinion, Levinas remains unclear about how justice should be understood as responsibility, or rather as a disruption of responsibility. If responsibility amounts to being passively affected by others and their suffering, to what extent is justice, which implies action, also responsibility? To what extent does justice imply the responsibility, for example, toward others that are the victims of others? Moreover, it remains a question whether being affected by the suffering of others, although it amounts to being responsive to otherness, also amounts to responding to otherness. Surely we already respond to the other in being sensitive to his or her vulnerability: feeling the presence of otherness is a way of responding to it. However, this does not imply that we already respond to otherness in the sense that we are welcoming this otherness, being attracted to it. In fact, passively submitting to the suffering of others is not yet the same as welcoming otherness. As we will see in the next section, we find in Levinas’ idea of metaphysical desire an aspect that makes us respond to alterity and that humans share over the different cultures and moral communities. Whereas passive affection makes us responsive to the other, desire makes us respond to the other in that it already sets in motion a “movement” toward, a longing for, otherness. Ricœur’s critique of Levinas demonstrates, I think, that understanding responsibility ultimately implies ontology. That is to say, understanding responsibility implies understanding the ontological capacities that allow the self to perform responsible actions within the context of justice systems. Ricœur’s moral anthropology is helpful in this regard. This anthropology describes, as I argued, the capacities (self-esteem, solicitude, practical wisdom, etc.) that allow the self to understand natural moral feelings, and to act responsibly toward others accordingly. For example, experiences of solicitude, or care for others, help understand feelings of sympathy and compassion for others. In this regard, compassion can help distinguish between others that are in need of care, and others that are not. On the other hand, Levinas nevertheless shows, as I argue in this chapter, the relation with the singularity of the other. Whereas Ricœur defines the other in terms of the capable self (the other of the flesh, other people and the voice of conscience), Levinas demonstrates that the relation with the singularity of the other is a relationship in which the other than self affects the self. METAPHYSICS AND DESIRE Up to this point I have been arguing that Levinas demonstrates the extent to which otherness affects the self. I argued that, whereas Ricœur demonstrates the self’s capacities to perform ethical and moral action in the context of

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institutions of justice, he insufficiently understands the affective relation with the singularity of the other. Yet one question is to what extent responding to others, the condition of interaction with others, implies a more active affective relation than the one Levinas describes in his later works. Does suffering bring us closer to the other? To what extent does responding to others imply a kind of attraction toward otherness, rather than suffering with others? In this section, I will investigate the extent to which desire for otherness should be understood as condition for responsibility. I will first examine Levinas’ idea of metaphysical desire in Totality and Infinity. I will argue that if he demonstrates the relation with the other in terms of passivity in his later works, he nevertheless understands the relation with the other as the welcoming of the other in the sense of desire for otherness in his early works, and particularly in Totality and Infinity. This desire is metaphysical, because it highlights the relation with the other than self, which, as is shown previously in this chapter, is a relation that should not be understood in natural terms. It transcends (meta-) any natural (physical) essence. I will argue that Levinas’ idea of desire for otherness shows that responding to others, especially others with a different culture, different moral standards and values, implies desire for this other, and that desire should thus be understood as a further condition for responsibility and justice, apart from being sensible to the vulnerability of the other. Next, I will examine the concept of desire in Ricœur’s writings. The aim of this examination is to demonstrate that desire is a blind spot in his thought in that his idea of desire insufficiently describes what makes us respond to otherness, even though his moral anthropology describes, as I argued, the capacities that allow the self to perform ethical and moral actions in just institutions. Levinas’ Idea of Metaphysical Desire as Condition for Responsibility The idea of desire plays a salient role in Totality and Infinity. Levinas introduces this notion in the very opening chapter of that book. He writes, the “other metaphysically desired” is “absolutely other” and cannot simply be “absorbed into my own identity as a thinker or a possessor.”86 Furthermore, he suggests in Totality and Infinity that metaphysical desire conditions justice and responsibility. He writes, “The Desire for exteriority” moves toward “justice, in the uprightness of the welcome made to the face.”87 According to Levinas, metaphysical desire further “precedes ontology” in that ontology “renounces the marvel of exteriority from which that Desire lives.”88 As these lines suggest, his idea of metaphysical desire should be understood as the metaphysical condition of ontology in the sense of the thematization of justice on the level of institutions. This idea should not be understood in



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terms of an ontological essence, psychological, anthropological, or yet a different essence. Rather, it expresses our attraction to otherness, prior to the recognition of others as fellow members of the moral community. Desire for otherness thus fuels our response to others. Note that the Other, as Levinas understands this notion in Totality and Infinity, does not simply refer to the otherness of other people. The Other also refers here to transcendence in the sense of the otherness or alterity that the I cannot simply interiorize. Hence, he speaks of “exteriority.”89 Simultaneously, the relation of desire for the other occurs in the first place within the concrete encounter with the other human being, according to Levinas, as it is the “welcome made to the face.”90 Yet, why does desire for otherness add to our understanding of responsibility? I think Levinas’ idea of metaphysical desire in Totality and Infinity demonstrates that desire is a condition for responding to others, and therefore for responsibility and justice. This idea demonstrates that our attraction to otherness and strangeness makes us respond to others. Responsibility implies the reception of others and strangers, even those others that come from different cultures and communities, have different moral values and standards, or that cannot immediately be recognized as other selves. Ethical encounters with others who are not already members of our communities would not be possible if we were incapable of responding, of being open to their otherness in the first place. Surely, I already found in Levinas’ idea of the affective relation with the other a description of being responsive to otherness, in being sensible to the vulnerability of others, which I distinguished from Ricœur’s idea of solicitude. Ricœur founds his idea of solicitude on his idea of true sympathy. The idea of true sympathy demonstrates, according to him, how we are capable of recognizing the suffering of others. True sympathy implies passive affects that allow the recognition of others as other selves (capable of acting and suffering). Yet care for others, especially for those who are quite different from ourselves, appears to imply more than these affects alone. Certainly, humans possibly perform responsible actions out of compassion or because these actions are obligated, and it goes without saying that the motivation for these actions often is inspired by the rational insight that these actions are the right thing to do. Hence, I argued in favor of Ricœur’s idea of practical wisdom for understanding responsibility. The significance of Levinas’ analysis of desire for the other with regard to Ricœur’s moral anthropology is phenomenological. This means that it describes an experience of affection of otherness that should be understood as an “undercurrent” of this anthropology, because it shows why we are responsive to otherness in the first place. As will become clear in the final section of this chapter, Ricœur’s moral anthropology presupposes, but does not elaborate on, this phenomenological experience.

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So, I am arguing that both moral anthropology and a phenomenological analysis of metaphysical desire are important for understanding responsibility. Desire for otherness allows welcoming the other than self, whereas passive affection (sympathy of being sensible to the other) foremost designates a resistance to exercising power over others. The first brings us closer to the other, while the second creates a threshold. History has shown several occasions in which “moral” discourse functions in order to exclude and oppress others in the community. Cases of xenophobia are illustrative in this respect. One might object and express a concern that the term “metaphysical desire” may risk being a universalist notion. The current rise of xenophobia also suggests that the claim that humans have a metaphysical desire is in fact not always the case. I think Levinas’ idea of metaphysical desire does not necessarily imply such a claim. Although Levinas himself speaks of a “humanism” for the other, as I have shown, this is not understood as a humanism in the traditional sense, that is, a humanism that would define the essence of humanity as such or the essence of all humans. Rather, it should be understood as a humanism for the other, which stresses the possibility of a being for the other human. In that regard, desire for otherness is not part of human’s essence or a desire that would be present in every human at every moment, but rather a possibility. That also means that it does imply the possibility of xenophobia as well, yet also its remedy. The precise significance of Levinas’ phenomenological analysis of metaphysical desire becomes clearer when distinguishing it from his analysis of the bad conscience, as well as that of need, enjoyment, and erotic love. I think Levinas’ understanding of neighbor love in his later texts illustrates the extent to which neighbor love implies the bad conscience and the ethical injunction, and why it therefore differs from desire. In several of his later works, he occasionally defines responsibility in terms of neighbor love. He writes, for example, “the responsibility of the I by the face that summons it, that demands it, that claims it, that the other is my fellowman [le prochain]” is ultimately to be understood as “love of one’s fellowman [le prochain] …” as a non-erotic love, a “love without concupiscence.”91 And again: From the start, the encounter with the Other is my responsibility for him. That is the responsibility for my neighbour, which is, no doubt, the harsh word for what we call love of one’s neighbour; love without Eros, charity, love in which the ethical aspect dominates the passionate aspect, love without concupiscence.92

These lines suggest that love of neighbor differs from desire, not only in the erotic sense, but also in the sense of desire for otherness. More exactly, love of neighbor, for Levinas, closely relates to the relation of the injunction not



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to kill the other (“Thou shalt not kill”). In a similar tone, Levinas writes in a footnote in Otherwise than Being: “The Good … loves me before I love it.”93 Insofar as that neighbor love should be understood as the obligation to love others, it is close to what Levinas understands as the bad conscience or the other’s call for responsibility, which differs from desire or the welcome of the other. Surely, neighbor love obligates the welcome of others. Yet neighbor love is first of all a concept and a virtue that should be understood in relation to the golden rule and the biblical idea of agape. Rather than explaining desire for or attraction to otherness, neighbor love explains the obligation to love humanity. Important to note is that, for Levinas, metaphysical desire also differs from need. In this regard, Patrick Bourgeois argues in his article “Ricœur and Levinas” that in Totality and Infinity Levinas introduces the concept of “desire that is not the satisfaction of a need” or “does not have the structure of intentionality.”94 Whereas need, for Levinas, implies the intention to assimilate the other to the self, desire is the attraction to others that we do not require for the satisfaction of our needs. Ricœur writes that metaphysical desire “is a desire that cannot be satisfied,” directed “toward an absolute unanticipatable alterity.”95 Following Levinas’ line of reasoning, metaphysical desire or the attraction to otherness is a surplus, which we experience when basic needs are already met: “Having recognized its needs as material needs, as capable of being satisfied, the I can henceforth turn to what it does not lack. It distinguishes the material from the spiritual, opens to Desire.”96 Further, Levinas writes: Let us again note the difference between need and Desire: in need I can sink my teeth into the real and satisfy myself in assimilating the other; in Desire there is no sinking one's teeth into being, no satiety …. For a body that labors everything is not already accomplished, already done; thus to be a body is to have time in the midst of the facts, to be me though living in the other.97

According to Levinas, “need” means living from the other of the world through the affection of the flesh (to eat, to drink, to labor, etc.). “Desire,” on the other hand, designates the desire for others that we do not need, and in that sense the desire for the other as exterior to the totality or essence of the self. When we are secured within our moral community, we can desire the other or the stranger, even when this other is not part of the same community or should not be understood in terms of the self’s capabilities. Similarly, Levinas’ idea of metaphysical desire should be distinguished from the enjoyment of others. He writes: “Metaphysical Desire, which can be produced only in a separated, that is, enjoying, egoist, and satisfied being, is then not derived from enjoyment.”98 Even though, for him, desire for others

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implies enjoyment, the satisfaction of needs, and, thus, egoism, this desire nevertheless differs from enjoyment. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas uses the notion of enjoyment to define the relation of being passively affected by the strangeness of the world.99 This notion is thus similar to Ricœur’s idea of the flesh. Yet desire for otherness should be distinguished from this relation of being affected by the strangeness of the world. Whereas enjoyment, according to Levinas, again implies the assimilation of the other to oneself, desire is the attraction to the other than self. In other words, enjoyment is the sensation of the “strangeness” of one’s own flesh, rather than the “welcome” of the other than self. In fact, for Levinas, metaphysical desire is different from erotic enjoyment and love as well. He writes in Totality and Infinity, “The metaphysical event of transcendence—the welcome of the Other, hospitality—Desire and language—is not accomplished as love.”100 According to him, metaphysical desire has nevertheless close affinity with erotic desire. He contends, “The transcendence of [metaphysical] discourse is bound to love.”101 According to Levinas, erotic love is thus ambiguous or the “equivocal par excellence.”102 On the one hand, erotic desire is close to being a need in that in this desire the “I” seeks, like in need, for bodily satisfaction through the affection of the flesh. On the other hand, erotic desire is close to metaphysical desire in that both of these desires are desires for the otherness of the other that occur when the “I” has time or when basic needs for self-maintenance are already secured. In Levinas’ words: “Love remains a relation with the Other that turns into need, and this need still presupposes the total, transcendent exteriority of the other, of the beloved.”103 Yet, for Levinas, “erotic desire,” is the “possibility of enjoying the other.”104 He explains erotic desire as a passive consciousness that is characterized by intentionality. He understands this intentionality as “caress”: “The movement of the lover … is absorbed in the complacence of the caress … intentionality.”105 For Levinas, caress is to be understood then as the immediate and spontaneous, hence passive, enjoyment of the other. Further, erotic desire is therefore closely related to enjoyment of the elemental as well, which, for Levinas, designates the intentional relationship of consciousness in which the I is affected by the world, and, in that sense, interiorizes the other of the world. When needs are satisfied, we can desire otherness, the stranger, even when desire is nonerotic or does not bring enjoyment. In that metaphysical desire does not imply enjoyment, it is ethical, that is, it allows the welcome of the other than self. Because erotic desire closely relates to need and enjoyment, it is not the same as metaphysical desire for Levinas. He argues in Totality and Infinity that erotic love is a reciprocal “voluptuosity,” that is, a “spontaneous consciousness” or “pleasure” of the “love of the other” and vice versa.106 Erotic



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love implies mutual pleasure: self-centered or centered on the pleasure one gets from being affected by the other body (that reciprocally enjoys the ego’s body). Levinas writes that erotic love is a “dual egoism.”107 The relation of eros is not the relation of the moral injunction expressed by the face: “The beloved is opposed to me … as an irresponsible animality. … The face fades, and in its impersonal and inexpressive neutrality is prolonged … into animality … freedom [of the other] desired and voluptuous not in the clarity of his face, but in obscurity.”108 Yet, as it is a playful sharing of bodily pleasure, the relation of erotic love also differs, according to Levinas, from metaphysical desire, which does not “ignore” the ethical significance of the other, but conditions it. Erotic desire, however, is “a little death”: in erotic enjoyment, the other dies a little bit with me, as I reduce him or her to the object of my bodily pleasure. In the erotic relation “fragility” and “vulnerability” become objects of enjoyment, rather than of care.109 I am arguing that Levinas’ idea of metaphysical desire in Totality and Infinity better demonstrates the metaphysical relation with the other than Ricœur’s triadic understanding of this relation. Ricœur leaves unanswered the question how we are attracted to the other than self, which is significant for understanding our interactions with others: for understanding the welcoming of otherness. According to Ricœur, ethical and moral interactions with others are motivated by affection for others: compassion, conscience, neighbor love, or love for humanity and respect for other persons. These concepts point at the self’s capacity to perform ethical and moral actions within the context of moral communities (see chapter 4). Yet, rather than need, enjoyment, erotic love, which are self-centered, desire for otherness is other-centered. Moreover, rather than neighbor love and respect that are in relation with an ethical concept (humanity or the moral law), Levinas’ idea of metaphysical desire reflects the relation with the other, that is, the relation of attraction to otherness that conditions interactions with others that are different from ourselves, our moral community, and ethical concepts in that this desire allows responding to otherness. Levinas’ idea of metaphysical desire in Totality and Infinity demonstrates, phenomenologically speaking, the condition for interaction with others, and, in that sense, of responsibility. This idea shows that attraction to otherness makes us respond to the other than self, even before we recognize in this other a common member of the moral community (i.e., another moral self), and even before we recognize in this other a fellow human being (i.e., as the expression of an essence of humanity). Certainly, my point is not that Levinas would demonstrate that desire for others is a sufficient condition for performing responsible actions, or that it would be impossible to perform responsible actions only out of duty, out of respect for other persons, or out of love for humanity, regardless of the

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desires one has for others. Moreover, desire can itself be the onset of exclusion, of choosing one other over another. Yet desire for otherness can function also in a critical sense where moral norms fail. When these norms cause violence to others, desire for otherness can help respond to those others, and in that sense this desire relates to human aspects that allow for a form of critique with regard to moral norms within communities. These aspects are not universal conditions for morality, but humans can find a shared sensibility in desire for otherness across their communal differences. The importance of Levinas’ phenomenological description of desire is thus that it describes an experience that helps understanding the conditions of responsibility and justice, yet moral anthropology fails to capture those conditions. However, one question is, to what extent desire, even in the ethical sense of desire for otherness, risks surmounting into violence and is thus the onset of evil? For example, to what extent does desire for otherness lead to “impaired moral judgment” that makes that we neglect certain moral standards, values or norms in favor of one singular other? Is desire an individual principle that is therefore insufficient for ethics, which requires collectiveness? Clearly, to determine whether or not someone is capable of desire for others is moreover not a sufficient criterion for moral imputation, that is, for ascribing moral praise and blame to this person’s actions. If desire is significant for understanding responsibility in that it demonstrates what it means to respond to the other than self, the ethical significance of desire is clearly also limited. In part 3, I will examine more closely the extent to which moral feelings relate to evil, responsibility, and justice. I will argue that the narrative allows a more collective form of critique in that it thematizes violence and translates it into a common medium: the text or story in general. Narratives then function, as I will argue, to rework passed events of violence toward others in remembering these events, and function in the sense also to criticize existing moral norms when those risk resulting to violence. Yet, first I will need to examine in the last section of this chapter the extent to which Ricœur’s moral anthropology makes an abstraction of the idea of desire for otherness, since desire, of course, plays a significant role in his writings as well. Desire: A Blind Spot in Ricœur’s Metaphysics of the Other? It might seem that Ricœur’s idea of the flesh, which I discussed in chapter 5, shows the extent to which affection of or desire for otherness conditions interactions with others. In fact, his notion of the flesh defines the very condition of desire. In Oneself as Another, He writes: “The fact that the flesh is most originally mine and of all things that which is closest, that its aptitude for feeling is revealed most characteristically in the sense of touch … these primordial features make it possible for the flesh to be the organ of desire,



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the support of free movement.”110 Insofar as it defines the condition of the self’s sensible relations with the world, Ricœur’s notion of the flesh points to the very origin of the self’s desires. As I argued, for him, human actions and interactions are mediated by affections of the strangeness of the world surrounding us. For example, a noisy street makes communication with others more difficult. Sensation is the locus of affection and desire. In this respect, Ricœur is close to Levinas who contends that “enjoyment,” which he uses in the broad sense of being affected by the otherness of the world (the there is), is the locus of the relation with the other and of desire.111 Yet if Ricœur’s analysis of the flesh demonstrates the affective experience that conditions action, interaction with others, and desire, it does not therefore define the experience of desire for otherness and how this experience influences responsibility for the other. Certainly, the flesh, as understood by Ricœur, may refer to several sensible relations with the other, including that of desire for others. However, as I argued earlier, Ricœur’s notion of the flesh essentially refers to the other in terms of the self, that is, in terms of the strangeness of one’s own body, felt in the contact with the external world. Understood in this sense, the other of the flesh refers to the contact with one’s own body, and thus not, in the first place, to the desire for otherness. One might, of course, object that desire for others ultimately amounts to desire of one’s own flesh, since that which is experienced in desiring others is the sensation of one’s own flesh evoked by the other. However, this does not appear to be Ricœur’s point. Indeed, he writes that the flesh is “the organ of desire,” and is not “the object of … desire.”112 His notion of the flesh designates that affection is the condition of desire, rather than that affection is equal to desire. Furthermore, Ricœur’s notion of the flesh designates the passive relation of being affected by the strangeness of others, rather than the relation of desire for otherness, which appears to imply, in addition, a phenomenological analysis of the experience of being attracted to the other than self. In other words, in his phenomenological analysis of the flesh in Oneself as Another, Ricœur is unclear about how the experience of desire for otherness should be understood. Significant in this respect is that Ricœur primarily gives examples of passive relations to illustrate his notion of the flesh. For instance, he mentions the sensation of bodily effort, and the sensation of suffering caused by others.113 Given that Ricœur’s notion of the flesh defines the medium of the relation of desire for others (i.e., being affected by others), it does not define the relation with the object of desire (i.e., the experience of desire itself). However, in his article “Wonder, Eroticism and Enigma,” Ricœur does describe the relation of desire in the sense of attraction to others. More exactly, he defines sexuality in this article as “a language without words” and as “an organ of mutual recognition.”114 Yet clearly this text deals with the notion of

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erotic desire, rather than with the idea of desire for otherness. In fact, Ricœur examines in this article the relation between “Eros” as a form of “violence” or at least as an “instinct,” and “institution,” which aims at “taming” this instinct.115 Within the context of an “ethic of marriage,” so Ricœur points out, sexuality becomes socialized in that it implies responsibilities.116 Ricœur’s aim in “Wonder, Eroticism, and Enigma,” is then to designate the relation between “the singularity of desire … with the universality of institution.”117 In that it defines the sexual relation with the other, this idea of desire does not primarily designate the idea of a metaphysical desire for the other. As I argued in the previous section in line with Levinas, metaphysical desire differs not only from need, but also from erotic desire in that it amounts to desire for that which is other than oneself, while erotic desire centers around enjoyment of oneself, sexual pleasure, and need. Further, as Ricœur points out, the erotic relation with the other focuses on the pleasure of the other, which can become a form of recognition in the sense of “tenderness” but not necessarily a desire for otherness. Desire for otherness, in the broad sense of the other than self, does not necessarily imply sexual relations with other persons or erotic enjoyment of the other. I argued that the idea of metaphysical desire is nevertheless significant for responsibility in that humans possibly find in desire for otherness a motivation for responding to others, even when these others radically differ from oneself, or are no part of one’s community, institutions, norms, etc. If Ricœur’s idea of the flesh insufficiently describes, as I am arguing, the experience of desire for others, an analysis of such an experience nevertheless appears to be significant for understanding responsibility. Narratives about others are often influenced by desire for others, both in positive and negative ways. Racist discourse and action, for example, are often linked to xenophobia.118 In the positive sense, desire for otherness stimulates the self’s welcoming of strangers. In this regard, desire for otherness influences responsibility in the sense of the capacity to respond to others, and thus conditions our engagement in ethical and moral interactions with others. If desire is a blind spot in Ricœur’s moral anthropology in Oneself as Another, it is nevertheless an important notion in his earlier works: Freedom and Nature and Fallible Man. However, although he defines in these works the relationship between desire, volition, and action, he does not so much discuss the relation with the other. It is only with the publication of Oneself as Another and with the influence of Levinas’ philosophy that intersubjectivity becomes a major theme in Ricœur’s thought.119 Further, Ricœur’s analysis of desire in Fallible Man deals with the idea of desire being the condition of evil, rather than with the idea of desire for otherness. In Fallible Man, Ricœur discusses the idea of desire in the context of human “fallibility,” rather than in relation to intersubjectivity.120



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Certainly, it is exactly in relations with others that we are fallible, that we can fail in doing harm to others. Yet the fallibility of desire means, for Ricœur, that in desire “egoism, as well as vice, finds its opportunity: out of difference or otherness it makes a preference.”121 This interpretation of desire points at the egoistic side of desire or at its relation to self-love. In desiring, we choose and exclude others. Nevertheless, there is a different side to desire as well, in that it attracts us to otherness in the first place. As Ricœur also admits: “In desire I am outside myself; I am with the desirable in the world. In short, in desire I am open to all the affective tones of things that attract or repel me.”122 At the same time, however, in Fallible Man Ricœur argues with Kant and with Plato that we should understand human’s fallibility in relation to desire. Levinas, on the other hand, demonstrates in Totality and Infinity, as I argued above, that desire for otherness is what makes us respond to the other, and therefore it is significant for understanding responsibility. I think Ricœur stresses too little in his writings the pertinence of the idea of desire for understanding the welcoming of the other. Yet perhaps we should look for Ricœur’s idea of desire for otherness still elsewhere, for example, in his discussion of Aristotle’s idea of friendship in Oneself as Another. In Ricœur’s interpretation, Aristotle considers true friendship to include the mutual desire, between friends, of each other’s well-being. Ricœur states, “Friendship … presents itself from the outset as a mutual relationship, [r]eciprocity is part of its most basic definition.”123 He contends further in the text: “According to the idea of mutuality, each loves the other as being the man he is … the greatest good that a friend desires for his friend is to stay just as he is”124 (my emphasizes). In Oneself as Another, Ricœur’s phenomenological analysis of solicitude is based upon Aristotle’s idea of friendship understood in this sense of mutual desire. Important to note is that given that Ricœur finds inspiration in Aristotle’s idea of friendship, he is also critical with regard to this idea. According to Ricœur, Aristotle’s idea of friendship insufficiently describes the ethical relation with the other. Ricœur writes, “One will readily grant that there is no place for a straightforward concept of otherness in Aristotle.”125 In this respect, Marcel Hénaff defends the thesis that Ricœur’s critique to Aristotle is related to his interpretation of the golden rule.126 According to Hénaff, Ricœur is critical to Aristotle’s idea of friendship because this idea, although it introduces the concept of mutuality, does not yet define the idea of the obligation of recognition of the other, which the principle of the golden rule expresses. This means that Ricœur sees in Aristotle’s idea of friendship an expression of mutuality in the sense of giving in order to receive equally in return, but this mutuality is not yet reciprocity in the sense of the recognition of the obligation to give equally in return. Yet we can also clearly see why friendship differs from desire for otherness. Even though friendship implies

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desire and relations with others, it essentially is a mutual relation between equals that find something in common, rather than a relation of desire for the other than self. Does Ricœur’s idea of solicitude imply an ethical desire or a desire for otherness? In fact, in defining solicitude in relation to Aristotle’s notion of friendship, Ricœur is foremost inspired by the idea of ethical reciprocity, rather than by the idea of desire, which Aristotle’s notion of friendship implies. Ricœur contends, “From Aristotle, I should like to retain only the ethics of reciprocity, of sharing, of living together”127 (my emphasis). Further, Ricœur explicitly indicates that the equality of solicitude “is not that of friendship, in which giving and receiving are hypothetically balanced.”128 Certainly, he does not ignore that Aristotle’s idea of friendship has ethical significance as well. According to Ricœur, Aristotle defines friendship as a virtue in that it relates to the desire for the good life and to justice. More precisely, as Ricœur states, in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle makes his famous distinction between three kinds of friendship: friendship for the sake of the “good” of the beloved, friendship for the sake of “utility,” and friendship for the sake of “pleasure.”129 Following Ricœur’s path of thought, friendship is a virtue insofar as that friends desire a good life for each other. The friend is thus not a means for one’s own advantage, as is the case in friendship out of utility and in friendship out of pleasure. Rather, in true friendship the friend as such is desired. Ricœur writes: “According to the idea of mutuality, each loves the other as being the man he is …. This is precisely not the case in a friendship based on utility, where one loves the other for the sake of some expected advantage, and even less so in the case of friendship for pleasure”130 (original emphasis). In Ricœur’s interpretation of Aristotle, this means that the object of true friendship is the good, which is the intellect: “what is lovable in each of us is the best of the self, the thinking part, the intellect.”131 In this respect, the ideal friendship for Aristotle is the intellectual friendship between men. In her book L’autre et l’amitié chez Aristote et Paul Ricœur, Gaëlle Fiasse argues in this regard that Ricœur is skeptical about Aristotle’s thoughts about living together, and about the Ancient Greek ideal of intellectual friendship in general.132 Fiasse notes that one of the fundamental differences between Ricœur’s idea of solicitude and Aristotle’s idea of friendship is that Ricœur’s idea of solicitude is opposed to this ideal. Indeed, Ricœur writes in Oneself as Another: I shall not linger on those characters of ancient philia that have more to do with the history of mentalités than with conceptual analysis, such as the tie between friendship and leisure—related to the condition of the free citizen, from which are excluded slaves, metics, women, and children—and the narrowing of living



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together to thinking together, itself oriented toward the sage’s contemplative life, as described in the final book of the Nicomachean Ethics.133

This ideal should be understood in the particular historical context of ancient Greek society, and no longer applies for contemporary societies. Ricœur thus sees in Aristotle’s idea of friendship traces of the recognition proper to solicitude, but this recognition is nevertheless no desire. If Ricœur recognizes the ethical and just character of Aristotle’s idea of friendship, and if this character is an inspiration for his idea of solicitude, he nevertheless distinguishes solicitude from desire for others. As I argued earlier, solicitude implies moral sentiments of true sympathy or compassion, and, in that sense solicitude amounts to the recognition of (suffering) others, rather than to desire or attraction to others. Further, given that friendship is essentially desire in Aristotle’s definition, it is therefore close to self-love or “philautia” in the sense that “one must love oneself in order to love someone else.”134 Even though Ricœur points out that Aristotle’s idea of true friendship is ethical, rather than egoistic, solicitude amounts to care for others, and therefore differs from desire. Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, care for others does not necessarily imply desire for others, since we are capable of caring for others that we do not desire. Mutual recognition in solicitude is thus different from mutual desire according to Ricœur. For Ricœur, Aristotle understands friendship as equal in that friends mutually enjoy each other’s company. According to Ricœur, solicitude, on the other hand, implies that the self and the other equally “share” each other’s suffering: “[The] equalizing [of solicitude] occurs, originating in the suffering other”135 Being confronted with the suffering other, “the self … gives his sympathy, his compassion, these terms taken in the strong sense of the wish to share someone else’s pain.”136 In his discussion with Aristotle, Ricœur therefore points out that there is an essential distinction, which he misses in Aristotle’s definition of friendship, between sharing the suffering of a friend and mutual enjoyment or pleasure among friends. In his own words, “Aristotle … fails to notice … the dissymmetry opposing suffering to enjoyment. Sharing the pain of suffering is not symmetrically opposite to sharing pleasure.”137 Indeed, in the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle suggests that friendship implies both mutual suffering and mutual desire: “Men cannot know each other till they have ‘eaten salt together’; nor can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been trusted by each.”138 Aristotle thus mentions mutual suffering (cf. “eating salt together”) and mutual pleasure (cf. love and trust) in one breath, and in that sense he fails, in Ricœur’s opinion, to mark the distinction between care for suffering others and mutual desire: they are radically different.

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For Ricœur, the important similarity between solicitude and Aristotelian friendship is that both amount to relations of being with others and sharing experiences. Yet the nature of this sharing differs. While for Aristotle, sharing suffering and mutual desire appear to be of the same order, for Ricœur the sharing aspect of solicitude is opposed to desire. Hence, Ricœur defines solicitude as the self’s capacity, through compassion, to support the other in suffering. Even though this capacity is essentially spontaneous for Ricœur, it is nevertheless the recognition of an obligation in the Levinasian sense of the injunction. Ricœur writes, “Sympathy for the suffering other, where the initiative comes from the loving self” is the opposite of “the case of the injunction coming from the other, equality is reestablished only through the recognition of the superiority of the other.”139 For Ricœur, solicitude should thus be seen as the response to the injunction to responsibility for the other, admittedly not necessarily as a “dreary duty,” as it is “spontaneous,” but in any case not necessarily as desire for the other either, since clearly, and luckily so, we are capable of care for others in their moments of suffering, even when these moments are undesirable.140 It is true that Ricœur understands solicitude as part of the self’s aim or desire for the good life. Indeed, according to Ricœur, self-esteem is the reflexive expression of the desire for the good life. Ricœur writes in his discussion with Aristotle, “self-esteem is the primordial reflexive moment of the aim for the good life.”141 As I argued previously, self-esteem closely relates to solicitude in that it motivates actions of care for others. Yet the affective moment of solicitude, true sympathy or compassion, should be understood in terms of passive affects or feelings, rather than in terms of desire. Ricœur not only defines solicitude in line with Levinas as a relation of “passivity,” and of the “summons to responsibility,” that is, as a relation of passively being affected by the suffering of others,142 But what is more, the feelings he ascribes to solicitude stimulate, as he writes, “the affective flesh.”143 And, as I explained earlier, the notion of flesh, for him, designates the self’s passive contact with the world, rather than the self’s desire for the other. Further, if solicitude is part of the self’s desire for the good life, it relates to a desire for a concept or idea (i.e., the self’s notion of the good life), rather than to desire in the sense of attraction to otherness. If solicitude should be understood, as Ricœur proposes, in relation to the spontaneous recognition of the other’s suffering, this recognition relates to compassion in the original sense of the word: to “suffer with.”144 He certainly finds inspiration in Aristotle’s idea of friendship, and in the idea of desire for defining solicitude. Yet he ultimately distinguishes solicitude from desire in defining solicitude in terms of the recognition of the obligation to justice for others. It appears then that his notion of solicitude defines the ethical relation with other people, rather than the relation of the welcoming of the other or of



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desire for otherness. I am not arguing, of course, that Ricœur would defend the thesis that care necessarily equals suffering, or that it would be impossible to desire caring for others, even if these others cause one to suffer. I am not contending either that desireless care for others would be unimportant. On the contrary, clearly people need care even in moments when this is undesirable. However, there are several reasons, in my opinion, for concluding that, even if Ricœur’s idea of solicitude does not contradict the idea of desire for others and even appears to presuppose it—at least insofar as care implies some kind of motivation or attraction for being with another—his idea of solicitude does not necessarily include this kind of desire. First, he thinks of solicitude essentially in terms of mutual recognition through compassion, rather than in terms of mutual desire or desire for otherness. Secondly, he defines solicitude as a relation of “passivity,” and as a “summons to responsibility,” that is, as a relation in which there is a recognition of the need for justice for others, rather than as a relation grounded in desire for others.145 Finally, for him, solicitude relates to desire in the sense of desire for the good life, rather than to desire for otherness. Desire for the good life is a desire of a concept (of the good life), and therefore a relation with oneself and with the moral community, or with a moral concept, rather than with others. It appears then that Ricœur’s analysis of solicitude defines the ethical relation in which there is a recognition of other people, but for this very reason it insufficiently describes the desire for otherness. His analysis of solicitude explains in what sense other people, on the level of face-to-face encounters, motivate the capable self to ethical action, and in this sense to interaction with others. For example, feelings of compassion can guide the self in taking responsibility. Yet desire for otherness (or the incapacity for this desire as in Dostoyevsky’s example of the doctor) nevertheless appears to be significant for understanding the self’s capacity to interact with others and thus for understanding responsibility. More exactly, whether or not we are attracted to otherness nevertheless influences our capacity to respond to others and strangers, prior to our recognition of these others as other selves. Moral anthropology alone is thus insufficient for understanding responsibility and the conditions of justice. I argued in this chapter that the idea of responsibility and that of justice imply an understanding of the metaphysical relation with the other than self and in that sense with the singularity of the other. Ricœur recognizes the need of such an understanding “on the meta-level,” but he insufficiently explores its connection to desire. Therefore, Levinas, and his metaphysical and phenomenological analysis of desire in Totaltity and Infinity, can add to understanding responsibility and justice in light of the idea of singularity. This relation is the “undercurrent” of moral anthropology in that its discourse “flows in a different direction” than the discourse of moral anthropology, and yet it also supports it.

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NOTES 1. Ricœur, Otherwise, 83. 2. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 335. 3. Ibid., 188–9. 4. Ricœur, Otherwise, 84–92. 5. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 337. 6. Patrick L. Bourgeois adequately summarizes Ricœur’s critique to Levinas as follows: “Ricœur contends that Levinas, with his powerful message of responsibility elicited within the face-to-face epiphany of the other, describes the other as so separate, isolated and solitary that no real encounter is possible without a supplementary dimension to give a basis for a response of responsibility, one that makes it possible.” See, Bourgeois, “Ricœur and Levinas,” 110. 7. Dermot Moran and Joseph Cohen, The Husserl Dictionary (New York: Continuum, 2012), 211. 8. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations, 89ff. 9. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 336. 10. Ibid., 337–8. 11. Ibid., 338. 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid., 339. 14. Ibid., 337. 15. Emmanuel Levinas, Théorie de l’intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl (Paris: Vrin, 2001). 16. Edmund Husserl, Méditations cartésiennes. Introduction à la phénoménologie, trans. G. Peiffer and E. Lévinas (Paris: Vrin, 1947). 17. Emmanuel Levinas, The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, trans. André Orianne (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1995). 18. Ibid., 82. 19. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 123. 20. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 8. 21. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 123. 22. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 96. 23. As Dermot Moran and Joseph Cohen put it, the “transcendental ego … is not a substance of a ‘thing’ understood as ‘a real object within the world’ …. It is ‘subject for the world’.” See, Moran and Cohen, The Husserl Dictionary, 59. 24. Edmund Husserl, Phenomenology and the Foundations of the Sciences. Book 3. Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, trans. Ted A. Klein and William E. Pohl (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1980), 65. 25. Emmanuel Levinas, On Escape, trans. B. Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003), 51. 26. Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existents, trans. Alphonso Linguis (Dordrecht, Boston, London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1995), 18. 27. Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2011), 39.



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28. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 28. 29. Ibid., 28, 44–5. Important to note is that Levinas is ambiguous about Husserl’s idea of horizon in that this idea ultimately functions as an ontological concept in phenomenology according to Levinas (i.e., to capture the essence of consciousness), through which otherness is thus reduced. 30. Peter Kemp argues, for example, that the other is already part of Levinas’ description of “enjoyment and habitation,” as well as in his description of “love and fecundity.” See, “Ricoeur between Heidegger and Lévinas,” 56). In a similar way, Patrick Bourgeois argues that “totality in Levinas’ sense already contains a capacity for relation with the other” (Bourgeois, “Ricœur and Levinas,” 111). Richard Cohen, to give another example, writes that Ricœur “nowhere touches upon Levinas’s […] analyses of the self’s capacity of reception found in Part Four of Totality and Infinity [i.e., Levinas’ analyses of erotic love and fecundity]” (Cohen, “Moral Selfhood,” 138). 31. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 27. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., 39. 36. Ibid., 140. 37. In this regard, Levinas understands otherness in the sense of the anonymous presence of being, which he calls the there is (il y a) (Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 162ff.). In “Uncanniness Many Times Over” Ricœur does appear to recognize this sense of otherness in Levinas’ works. As Ricœur states, he recognizes a similarity between Levinas’ notion of the there is and his own (Ricœur’s) idea of the other that is the world of the flesh: “The uncanniness of the world itself is in one way or another mediated by the flesh. This uncanniness can … don … the young Levinas’s “il y a”” (emphasis in text). See Ricœur, Philosophical Anthropology, 263. 38. See for example, Scott Davidson and Diane Perpich (eds.), Totality and Infinity at 50 (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2011). 39. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 156. 40. Ibid. 41. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 99–129. 42. Ibid., 112. 43. Ibid., 11. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 102. 46. Ibid., 101. 47. Ibid., 109. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid., 112. 50. As Calin points out, if, for Levinas, responsibility is first of all a passive relation, this means that consciousness and subjectivity are incarnated in the body that is vulnerable to suffering others. See, Rodolphe Calin, “Le corps de la responsabilité. Sensibilité, corporéité et subjectivité chez Lévinas,” in Les etudes philosophique 78, No. 3: 297–316.

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51. Levinas, Entre Nous, 160. 52. Ibid., 56. 53. Ibid., 61. 54. Ibid., 108. 55. Ibid., 109. 56. Ibid., 173–5. 57. Ibid., 61ff. 58. Ibid., 61–3. 59. Ibid., 123. 60. Understood in this sense, bad conscience differs from the moral feeling that Tamler Sommers identifies as typically relative to Western cultures. Nor is it the experience of bad conscience that Ricœur criticizes in the wake of Nietzsche’s and Hegel’s critiques of moral conscience. When Levinas uses the term “bad conscience,” he indicates the relation of being affected by others, rather than the moral experience of guilt. 61. Levinas, Entre Nous, 111. 62. Ibid., 110. 63. Ibid., 146. 64. Emmanuel Levinas, Of God Who Comes to Mind, trans. Bettina Bergo (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 175. 65. Emmanuel Levinas, Humanism of the Other, trans. Nidra Poller (Illinois: University of Illinois Press), 36. 66. Ibid., 37. 67. Ibid., 1. 68. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 100. 69. Levinas, “Humanism of the Other,” 36. 70. Richar Kearney, “Entre soi-même et un autre: l’herméneutique diacritique de Ricœur,” Cahier de l’Herne Ricoeur, 213–4). 71. Ibid., 207. 72. Ibid., 211. 73. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 143. 74. See, Riccœur, Oneself as Another, 340–1; Ricœur, “Emmanuel Levinas: Thinker of Testimony,” 108–26. 75. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 143. 76. For a detailed analysis of how Ricœur sees the relation between true sympathy and the recognition of justice, see Chapter 3. 77. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 153. 78. Ibid. 79. Ricœur, “Otherwise,” 93. 80. Ibid., 96. 81. In this respect, I disagree with those critics that contend that Ricœur misunderstands Levinas. See for example, Cohen, “Moral Selfhood.” 82. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 157. 83. Ibid. 84. Ibid., 143–4.



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85. Ricœur, “Otherwise,” 96. 86. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 33. 87. Ibid., 83. 88. Ibid. 89. Ibid. 90. Ibid. 91. Levinas, Entre Nous, 160–1. 92. Ibid., 88. 93. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 187. 94. Bourgeois, “Ricœur and Levinas,” 116. 95. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 34. 96. Ibid., 117. 97. Ibid. 98. Ibid., 148. 99. Ibid., 110. 100. Ibid., 254. 101. Ibid. 102. Ibid., 255. 103. Ibid. 104. Ibid., 254–5. See also page 264 where Levinas states that “Eros … goes beyond the face.” 105. Ibid., 258. 106. Ibid., 265–6. 107. Ibid., 266. 108. Ibid., 265. 109. Ibid. 110. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 324. 111. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 109. 112. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 324. 113. Ibid., 320ff. 114. Paul Ricoeur, “Wonder, Eroticism, and Enigma,” In: Cross Currents 14: 135. 115. Ibid., 134, 136. 116. Ibid., 135. 117. Ibid., 136. 118. See for instance the report of the World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance (WCAR) 2001 . 119. See, Michel, Paul Ricœur, 73–119. 120. Paul Ricœur, Fallible Man, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), 4. 121. Ibid., 55. 122. Ibid., 53. 123. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 183. 124. Ibid., 18. 125. Ibid., 187.

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126. Hénaff, “Remarques sur la Règle d’Or,” 331. 127. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 187. 128. Ibid., 190. 129. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 182. 130. Ibid., 183. 131. Ibid. 185. 132. Fiasse, L’autre et l’amitié chez Aristote et Paul Ricœur, 65ff. 133. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 188. 134. Ibid., 182. 135. Ibid., 1911. 136. Ibid., 191–2. 137. Ibid., 191. 138. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Jonathan Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 146 [1156b, 26–9]. 139. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 192. 140. Ibid., 193. 141. Ibid., 188. 142. Ibid., 189. 143. Ibid., 192. 144. See, The Oxford Dictionary of English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). 145. Ibid., 189.

Conclusion

Desire as the Welcoming of the Other than Self

In this part, I examined the relation between responsibility and singularity in the sense of otherness. I investigated therefore Levinas’ influence in Ricœur’s moral anthropology, because Ricœur finds inspiration in Levinas’ philosophy when elaborating his idea that we are foremost responsible for others in singular face-to-face encounters as well as in institutions. The aim of this investigation was to pinpoint the extent to which otherness plays a part in the performance of ethical and moral action. Ricœur’s moral anthropology can mediate, I aimed to show, between, on the one hand, recent theories in moral psychology and moral anthropology that explain responsibility in terms of natural feelings and regardless of the idea of the other, and, on the other hand, Levinas’ radical idea of responsibility, according to which morality should not be reduced to an ontological essence, be it psychological, anthropological, or biological. Ricœur shows in other words that natural moral feelings are essentially feelings toward others in that these feelings concern a moral community with others, face-to-face encounters, relations of justice, etc. In chapter 4, I argued that Ricœur demonstrates that the idea of others is salient for understanding responsibility and justice in relation to moral feelings. Indeed, moral feelings, like sympathy, should be understood in the first place as feelings regarding others, which allow for a dialogue with others, rather than that they should be explained only as a causal transfer. For example, sympathy for the suffering of others allows us to understand the need for responsibility and justice in relations with others: others who suffer are incapable, call for recognition, demand care, etc. Ricœur thus shows that how we perceive of responsibility and justice is not absolutely relative to how natural moral feelings take shape in different cultures and communities and their practices of holding responsible, as certain theories in analytical philosophy contend (e.g., Strawson). 181

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A moral anthropology that aims at understanding responsibility and justice should take into account, for that reason, the existential features that allow understanding the self’s capacities to perform ethical and moral actions, and should take into account that the self comes to understand these features in singular relations with others. Hence, Levinas’ idea that we are foremost responsible for others is significant, so Ricœur also shows, for moral anthropology. Yet, at the same time, I argued that we should question the universal character of some of the existential features Ricœur develops in his moral anthropology (i.e., self-esteem, respect, and conscience), because those relate to feelings that typically relate to Western culture. Ricœur nevertheless points out, as I argued, that otherness is significant for moral anthropology. However, Ricœur insufficiently understands otherness in his moral anthropology, as I argued in chapters 5 and 6. In chapter 5, I argued that even though Ricœur’s moral anthropology shows that others are part of ethical and moral life, this anthropology defines the other in terms of the self, as another self: the other of one’s own flesh, other people, and the other that is the voice of conscience. Consequently, Ricœur’s moral anthropology remains unclear about the relation with the other than self or with the singularity of the other. This relation is nevertheless important for understanding responsibility, as I aimed to demonstrate with Levinas in chapter 6, because being sensible to otherness makes us responsive to others, even when it is not immediately possible to recognize these others as other selves with whom we have in common a culture, moral norms, ethical features, etc. In this regard, I found in Levinas’ phenomenological analysis of the affective relation with the other a way to critique of existing moral norms. As this analysis demonstrates, when passively being affected by the other, we are sensitive to the other’s vulnerability and, in that sense, critical with regard to moral norms that exercise power over and possibly violence against others. Certainly, Ricœur’s notion of true sympathy already suggests that our sensibility for the vulnerability of the other makes that we are responsive to the suffering of others. However, Levinas’ description of the relation with the other reveals that in feeling uneasiness toward others (passive moment) and in desiring otherness (active moment) we are responsive to others, even before performing an intentional act of consciousness: perception of the other as another capable self, a critical interpretation of the other’s intentions, a judgment about the good life based on norms, etc. Hence, Levinas’ description of the relation with the other clarifies that in their sensitivity toward the vulnerability of others, humans share the possibility of being “critical” toward moral communities, which allows being critical with regard to moral standards, norms and values, even if this possibility should not be understood in terms of an anthropological essence.



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Yet Levinas’ phenomenological description of the relation with the other in radical passive terms raises questions about how to understand, not only responsiveness to otherness, but also actually responding to otherness, that is, being attracted to the other than self. I argued that we find in Levinas’ idea of metaphysical desire in Totality and Infinity the possibility of understanding how we respond to otherness in being attracted to this otherness. Finding this possibility is, as announced, part of this book’s aim to approach the universal starting from the idea of singularity in order to respond to radical moral relativism. If there are no universal moral standards, norms, and values how then can we criticize and revise existing standards, norms and values? The first part of this book aimed to demonstrate that Ricœur’s idea of ipseity offers one possible way to such a critique. The self, in applying practical wisdom and critical judgment, can criticize existing moral standards, norms, and values, when those demand an exception in singular situations. The second part’s aim was to show that the idea of otherness offers a second way to critique. Our sensitivity for otherness, together with our desire for otherness, can help in criticizing moral norms when these norms are the occasion of violence against others. This second path to critique allows understanding how we respond to others across the different cultures and moral communities. In sum, in this part I explored several senses in which we should understand the singularity of the other in relation to responsibility. (1) Being responsible, as Ricœur demonstrates, implies ethical and moral actions, not only in institutions and communities, but also in singular situations with others mediated by feelings (cf. chapter 4). (2) Responsibility implies, as Levinas shows, being responsive to the singularity of the other in the sense of the other’s singular existence (chapter 5). (3) Affection and desire for the singularity of otherness in the broad sense of alterity supports our response to others (chapter 6).

Part 3

EVIL, JUSTICE, AND NARRATIVITY

This part’s aim is to demonstrate that in Ricœur’s moral anthropology responsibility and justice relate to singularity in yet a different way than the ways explored in part 1 and part 2. There are several reasons for understanding this relation differently. First, Ricœur defines responsibility and justice in divergent senses throughout his writings, senses that remained unexamined in the previous chapters of this book. Justice not only relates to singularity, for him, in that it connects to ipseity as the self’s capability for responsibility, both in concrete relations with singular others and as on the level of institutions. He also points at the intrinsic relation between institutional justice and evil. For example, in The Just and Reflections on the Just, Ricœur argues that justice is an institutionally regulated means to maintain peace, but is also close to evil, irreducible but connected to personal vengeance, violence, and power.1 Similarly, if, in The Course of Recognition, Ricœur understands justice in relation to “states of peace,” he also agrees in that book with Hegel and Honneth that justice is a justification for violence, which is part of “the struggle for recognition.”2 In the third volume of Time and Narrative and in Memory, History, Forgetting, Ricœur argues that occurrences of evil in history call for the responsibility to rework and remember these occurrences. If justice is not only part of “the good life,” but also relates to evil, as he argues it does, justice thus appears to relate to responsibility in yet another sense. The inherent possibility of violence within concrete historical moral communities and justice systems then points at our collective or communal responsibility to deal with this kind of violence, rather than at our individual responsibility to participate in the good life. In this regard, Ricœur scholars agree that evil within communities calls for a responsibility toward the victims of this evil, and invites to think of justice in relation with the narrative.3 185

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One question is then how this responsibility relates to singularity, which, as I am arguing in this book, is salient for understanding the ideas of responsibility and justice. Singularity, as this part aims to show, helps in understanding the relation between evil, justice, and the narrative. As will become clear, understanding this relation will not so much be a matter of introducing a new sense of singularity that is different from ipseity (cf. part 1) or alterity (cf. part 2), but rather of demonstrating with Ricœur that justice relates to ipseity and alterity differently—in light of the narrative. Narratives do justice to others by remembering the victims of the past and in criticizing and reenvisioning justice for the others of the future. Narratives relate to singularity in that they are expressions of the author’s singularity (i.e., ipseity), although made publically accessible, and recount about the singularity of others. A second reason I find for understanding the relation between responsibility, justice, and singularity differently than I already did in the first and in the second part is that evil exists on different levels for Ricœur. This part aims to understand these different levels, which, as will become clear, adds to understanding responsibility and justice in light of the idea of singularity. As I argued earlier, according to Ricœur, evil exists within concrete relations with singular others, as the result of “power,” which both others and selves can exercise over each other.4 Hence, he contends that moral norms function to correct individual errors. Humans have a responsibility toward the moral standards, values, and norms of their community that help regulating the abuse of violence. Yet if violence also occurs within the context of institutions and justice systems, as he points out, then the reality of evil also exists on the communal level, as the result of mores, standards, and values, whose formal-institutional rationality neglects the singularity of the other. In this respect, I questioned the universal character of such norms and argued that both the ideas of ipseity and of alterity offer ways of critique: practical wisdom, sensibility regarding the suffering of others, and desire for otherness help criticizing existing moral norms. However, if evil possibly exists both within the singular relation with the other and in institutions, then we should ask how humans maintain justice within institutions. In fact, the idea that justice relates to violence, and in particular to violent sentiments like vengeance, is not new. It is as old as Greek tragedy and classical philosophy. Aristotle, for example, examines how revenge and sentiments relate to justice and retribution.5 In “Critique and Violence,” Walter Benjamin, to name a more recent example, analyses the question “whether violence, as a principle, could be moral means even to just ends.”6 Ricœur’s understanding of the relation between justice and violence is different, however, in that it demonstrates, so I will argue, how justice can imply a reduction of the singularity of others by exercising power over others.



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In order to fortify this point, I will again draw on Levinas’ philosophy. Levinas, like Ricœur, also thematizes the difficult relation between responsibility, justice, and violence toward others.7 Indeed, Levinas on the one hand does not deny the possibility of violence in face-to-face encounters and stresses the necessity of justice in that regard. He writes in Totality and Infinity: “The Other, inseparable from the very event of transcendence, is situated in the region from which death, possibly murder, comes.”8 For Levinas, justice, insofar that it implies action and rationality, is nevertheless also necessarily a “limit of responsibility.”9 According to Levinas, justice demands equality, calculation, and rationality, and it disrupts in that way the self’s responsibility for the other which is, as argued previously, without measure. It appears then that there is an inherent difficulty or what I will call an ambiguity regarding justice. This ambiguity is this. On the one hand, justice brings the equality that is lacking in relations with singular others, and for that reason it contributes to moral life. It is thus, as Ricœur’s moral anthropology shows, a common source of moral life. Yet, on the other hand, it reduces otherness insofar that rules of justice imply a rationality that makes an abstraction of otherness and exercises power over others. In order to answer to this ambiguity of justice, I propose, in line with Ricœur’s idea of the narrative, a third way of critique (different from practical wisdom, sensibility for the suffering of others, and desire for otherness). I argue in the following that we find this way of critique in narratives, both in historical narratives that do justice to others in remembering them and in utopian narratives that offer the means for reenvisioning justice for the future. Narratives are therefore another source of moral life that aids institutional justice. Another reason for discussing the relation between responsibility, justice, and evil, as this part aims to do, is responding to theories in moral psychology and moral anthropology that question the idea that justice relates to violent feelings and anger feelings of revenge. One example of such a theory is Martha Nussbaum’s Anger and Forgiveness.10 In drawing on Nussbaum’s theory, this part intends to maintain the discussion between Ricœur phenomenological-hermeneutical approach to moral anthropology and an analytical approach to moral anthropology. I will argue that, even if Nussbaum is correct to contend that there is no intrinsic relation between justice and violent feelings, justice does entail the risk of exercising power over other, precisely because of the rational and authoritative structure of institutional justice. This part continues arguing, in line with the first and the second part, in favor of hermeneutic phenomenology for approaching moral anthropology. In particular, the aim of this book is to understand responsibility and justice in light of the phenomenological-hermeneutical idea of singularity. Examining the significance of the idea of singularity is particularly relevant, so I argued up to this point, in light of recent theories in moral psychology

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and anthropology that tend to make an abstraction of this idea in explaining responsibility in terms of natural feelings, disregardful of our singular lived existence and of what it means to be responsible. Up to this point I have been arguing that we should take into account the idea of having a singular lived existence for understanding responsibility and justice, because in living this existence we come to understand the motives of, and are impelled to responsibility and justice. In the following, I will argue that the idea of singularity is important also for comprehending the relation between evil and justice. I will argue that moral feelings imply, not only an individual responsibility (cf. agency), but also a communal responsibility toward the occurrences of violence these feelings entail. As will become clear, Ricœur demonstrates that this communal responsibility finds moreover its expression in the comprehension of the singular lived existences of others and of ourselves in the past and in the future through narratives. NOTES 1. Ricœur, The Just, 127–32; Ricœur, Reflections on the Just, 223–31. 2. Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 150ff. 3. See for example, Richard Kearney, “On the Hermeneutics of Evil,” Revue de métaphysique et de morale 52, No. 2: 197–215; Taylor, “Ricoeur versus Ricoeur?;” Roger Savage, “Fragile Identities, Capable Selves,” Études Ricœuriennes/Ricœur Studies 4, No. 2 (2013): 64–78; Roger Savage, “Judgment, Imagination and the Search for Justice,” Études Ricœuriennes/Ricœur Studies 6, No. 2 (2015): 50–67. 4. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 220. 5. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics. 6. Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” in Reflections. Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Schocken Books), 277. 7. It is a point of discussion in the secondary literature to what extent Levinas thinks of justice as being at odds with responsibility, and to what extent he thinks of justice as the thematization and hence reduction of otherness through rationality. See, for example, Simon Critchley, “Five Problems in Levinas’ View of Politics and the Sketch of a Solution to Them” Political Theory 32, No. 2 (2004): 172–185; Madeleine Fagan, “The Inseparability of Ethics and Politics: Rethinking the Third in Emmanuel Levinas,” Contemporary Political Theory 8 (2009): 5–22; Arthur Cools, “The Tragic Sense of Levinas’ Ethics,” Ethical Perspectives 21, No. 3 (2014): 345–69. 8. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 233. 9. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 157. 10. Martha C. Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

Chapter 7

Violence and the Ambiguity of Justice

In this chapter, I will first examine with Ricœur how evil relates to justice and therefore to communal responsibility. I argue that evil, in the particular sense of power over others, calls for justice (as responsibility toward the suffering that results from this power), yet that institutional justice also implies a rationality that exerts power over others (that possibly results in suffering). This is what I understand as the ambiguity of justice. I argue then that justice relates to evil in four different ways: in that justice is the expression of violent feelings (cf. vengeance), in that rules of justice thematize and therefore reduce otherness, in that the formal character of these rules does not allow taking into account otherness, and in that justice implies a struggle for recognition between different communal members that embrace different moral standards. In order to demonstrate the ambiguity of justice, I will draw on Ricœur’s conception of the relation between violence and justice in both volumes of The Just, and on Levinas’ idea of justice. Next, I argue that the ambiguity of justice entails a communal responsibility to maintain justice within institutions. If justice is a matter not only of singular selves capable of participating in the good life with and for others, but also of institutions that exercise power over others, how then are these institutions capable of regulating justice and violence within their institutional systems? INSTITUTIONAL JUSTICE AND EVIL In several of his articles in The Just and in Reflections on the Just, Ricœur aims to understand the intrinsic relation between institutional justice and violence.1 For example, he argues in “Justice and Vengeance” that justice relates to violence in that it expresses “the spirit of vengeance.”2 He, of 189

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course, does not deny the essential differences between institutional justice and personal vengeance. As he points out, vengeance implies a personal and “hasty reprisal,” as the expression an eye for an eye also suggests.3 Justice, on the other hand, is impersonal and implies an institutionalized and legal form of “punishment.”4 Ricœur writes in “Justice and Vengeance,” the “distance between the imposition of an initial suffering by the offender and that of a supplementary one applied as punishment” breaks “the initial tie between vengeance and justice.”5 This means that justice and vengeance differ in that justice involves a third party that mediates between the party of the offender(s) and the party of the victim(s). In the case of personal vengeance, victims take the task of punishing the offenders in their own hands. In the case of institutional justice, a third party decides which punishment applied to the offender(s) should compensate for the victim(s). Both institutional justice and personal vengeance nevertheless have in common for Ricœur that they are ways of inflicting suffering to an offender as compensation for the initial suffering this offender caused to a victim. In this regard, institutional justice is “a kind of legal violence,” but it also inevitably implies punishment, and, as such, “suffering.”6 Ricœur’s distinction between justice and personal vengeance demonstrates, I think, the ambiguity of justice. On the one hand, justice is part of “the good life” in that it aims at compensating for equality and thus for unjust suffering. On the other hand, it is precisely this aim that makes justice ambiguous, because, even on the institutional level, justice inflicts suffering in the form of punishment and, more generally, power over others in order to compensate for suffering. One might object of course that punishment is only “the last resort” of justice, and that justice essentially aims at establishing peace. In other words, punishment is only the necessary minimum of evil and a means for establishing peace. Ultimate justice would amount to the state where there is no unjust suffering and no need for punishment. Indeed, as Ricœur points out, the very function of institutional justice is to avoid excessive violence, which results from practices of personal vengeance. In “Justice and Vengeance,” Ricœur distinguishes four components that mark the essential difference between justice and vengeance. First, he argues in line with Max Weber that justice implies a state as “political entity” that has the “capacity to impose its will on subordinate individuals or communities.”7 Secondly, institutionalized justice entails a “corpus of written laws” for Ricœur.8 The third component of the state that regulates institutionalized justice, according to him, is the “judicial institution,” or the system that organizes hearings and trials, “with its tribunals and courtrooms, whose task is to pronounce the word of justice in a concrete situation.”9 The final component is the verdict of the “judge,” that has “the right and the power” to state this



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word of justice.10 Exemplary in this regard is the trial in court, according to Ricœur, which functions to resolve conflicts between offended parties in applying written laws. Following his line of reasoning, states and their laws in general, and the judge in court in particular, carry out sentences that have the task of compensating offended parties, and in that sense aim to overcome that citizens exercise personal vengeance, or take justice in their own hands. Martha Nussbaum offers another way of objecting to connecting justice and vengeance in Anger and Forgiveness. Nussbaum discusses the feeling of anger, which is close to that of vengeance, at least in that it implies the desire for retribution of an offender (or offenders) for a certain kind of wrongdoing.11 This is what Strawson terms resentment for another’s ill will. Nussbaum writes: Anger is always normatively problematic, whether in the personal or in the public realm. … I argue that anger includes, conceptually, not only the idea of a serious wrong done to someone or something of significance, but also the idea that it would be a good thing if the wrongdoer suffered some bad consequences somehow.12

According to Nussbaum, anger is normatively problematic in a double sense. First, it entails the false assumption that the suffering of the wrongdoer ­somehow restores the damage done by the fault. Secondly, she admits that there exists one case in which anger makes sense, which she understands as a case of “relative status.”13 According to her, it makes sense for the victim to be angry at an offender in case that the victim sees the offence as humiliating or “down-ranking,” and that the anger restores the self-esteem of the victim.14 Yet even in this border case, as Nussbaum contends, anger ought not to be the proper reaction, and thus we should learn selves and others not to react in that manner. In short, for Nussbaum, there is no way to do justice by means of violent feelings, anger in particular. Nussbaum makes a strong point in showing that anger or violent feelings do not lead to justice in that normative sense. Such feelings clearly cannot undo the damage done by the wrongdoer or restore equality between victim and offender. For restoring this equality, other kinds of compensation are more effective. A financial compensation, for example, can make up for material damage. Or one can imagine that imprisonment even, in certain cases, can ensure that the wrongdoer does not commit the same crime. In that way it can compensate or relieve the harm done to the victim. Apparently, Nussbaum has a point in arguing that violent feelings toward offenders can only, at best, restore the honor or esteem of the victim. Yet, one important question is whether anger is inappropriate in all cases, for all crimes. One might ask whether it is only natural to feel angry with the

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offender of a murder for instance. But more importantly, if Nussbaum has right to contend that anger should not be seen, normatively, as a way to justice, this does not mean that justice has no ontological link with justice. Indeed, Ricœur demonstrates, I think, that justice in itself has a close connection with violence, even though justice and violence are obviously not the same thing. The very rationality of justice makes it ambiguous. The fact that the capacity of justice is “to impose its will on subordinate individuals” makes that it amounts to exercising power over others and therefore to violence.15 Furthermore, insofar as practices of holding responsible and institutional justice relate to punishment, there remains a residue of violence within these practices and institutional justice. The formal character of written laws also implies reduction of otherness. In principle, these laws apply in the same sense to every member of community, despite singular differences that may ask for an exception on the law, even though in the context of the court room the verdict can take into account mitigating factors. The ambiguity of justice consists in that justice seeks for the compensation for harm. Yet its mechanism, in doing so, implies exercising power over others, and thus violence, even if only in a minimal sense. In this respect, Ricœur writes in his article “The Act of Judging”: “justice is opposed not just to violence per se …, but to that simulation of justice constituted by vengeance, the act of procuring justice by oneself.”16 In other words, justice is an institutionalized form of violence and therefore opposed to personal vengeance, yet it still is a form of violence. Justice relates to vengeance in that both justice and vengeance imply violence as “just” compensation for harm. In the case of justice, contrary as in the case of personal vengeance, society exercises this violence in the form of legal punishment in order to avoid the violence that results from personal reprisals. In Ricœur’s understanding, justice aims to establish “social peace” in inflicting a minimum of violence. For that reason it is also an effective remedy against more extreme forms of violence and against evil. Justice is part of the good life, for Ricœur, and therefore constitutes an essential key of his moral anthropology. Social peace establishes “mutual recognition,” by which both the party of the offender(s) and that of the victim(s) recognize each other as equal subjects of rights. Ricœur writes in “The Act of Judging,” justice establishes social peace, when someone who has, as we say, won his case still feels able to say: my adversary, the one who lost, remains like me a subject of right, his cause should have been heard, he made plausible arguments and these were heard. However, such recognition will not be complete unless the same thing can also be said by the loser, the one who did wrong, who has been condemned.17



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In short, in institutional justice the conflict between the party of the victim(s) and that of the offender(s) is resolved, in the ideal case, when these parties mutually recognize each other’s arguments and agree that the court’s sentence was justified. Yet even when this agreement is achieved, there is (except in the case of an even settlement) one party that has the power over the other, that is, one party that is compensated and one that is punished. I think Ricœur’s idea of justice throughout his writings clearly demonstrates the ambiguity of justice. According to him, the problem of justice equals the problem of the good life, considered in relation to others. In Oneself as Another, he perhaps most explicitly argues in line with Aristotle that justice is essentially part of the self’s aim “for the good life with and for others in just institutions.”18 In the first and the second parts of this book, I examined what I called Ricœur’s moral anthropology of the self capable of ethical and moral action, and discussed his idea of justice as part of the good life. I argued that this idea is significant for understanding responsibility in relation to natural moral feelings in that he explains that humans understand justice through the comprehension of moral feelings. His ideas of self-esteem and solicitude are particularly significant, I argued, in that they explain that feelings of self-worth and sympathy for others allow to comprehend justice by means of the sense of injustice these feelings cause in the confrontation with suffering others. To a certain extent, we find justice already in friendship and in relations of solicitude. According to Ricœur, the mutual character of Aristotle’s idea of friendship makes it a relation that is close to justice. In Ricœur’s reading of Aristotle, friendship installs a relation of equality similar to equality in relations of justice. Friendship is just in that friends give equally in return what they receive from their friends. In Ricœur’s words, in Aristotle’s definition of friendship “each of two friends rendering to the other a portion equal to what he or she receives.”19 For Ricœur, this means that Aristotle’s relation of friendship installs justice on the level of “interpersonal relationships” among “a small number of partners,” as opposed to justice on the level of “institutions” among “many citizens.”20 The mutuality on the level of shared affection in the desire between friends to spend time with each other installs equality between both parties of the friendship relation. In a different fashion, solicitude creates equality. As I already discussed earlier, Ricœur contends that in relation of solicitude the self and the other equally “share” each other’s suffering: “The equalizing [of solicitude] occurs, originating in the suffering other.”21 Being confronted with the suffering other, “the self … gives his sympathy, his compassion, these terms taken in the strong sense of the wish to share someone else’s pain.”22 Certainly, the equality that is established in relation of friendship and solicitude is only partial. Evidently, the self cannot take the other’s place, neither

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his desires, nor his suffering. Friendship is equal to the extent that friends find something in common: mutual interests for example. In the case of solicitude, the self “shares” the other’s suffering to the extent that the self is capable of feeling compassionate with this suffering, and of comprehending that the other is in need of recognition. In this respect, solicitude is close to justice in that the self recognizes the need of justice in the sense of injustice he or she feels in the confrontation with the suffering of the other. Justice is thus a virtue, so Ricœur shows, in that it is not only an institutional construction or a formal concept, but finds its roots in the ethical constitution of the capable self. As a virtue it is part of Ricœur’s moral anthropology of the capable self, and a common source of moral life. Yet if justice is a virtue for Ricœur, he does not cease to point to the intrinsic relation between justice—as judicial institution—and violence. He contends that, I argue, given that in institutional justice conflicts are resolved through punishment, a “residual degree of violence remains” in institutional justice.23 The ambiguity of justice becomes even clearer, I think, when taking into account his idea of the struggle for recognition in The Course of Recognition. In that book, Ricœur argues in line with Hegel and Honneth that justice is characterized by struggle. He returns to the example of the trial in court. According to him, the trial in court is exemplary for what he understands as the struggle for recognition inherent to institutional justice. The trial regulates “dispute” that results from “violence” caused by offenders and in that sense compensates for “vengeance.”24 As the example of the trial attests, judicial systems essentially function as mechanisms of struggle between offenders and victims. According to Ricœur, judicial systems thus aim to regulate violence and vengeance. In that institutional justice intrinsically relates struggle, justice relates to violence. On the other hand, Ricœur contends in The Course of Recognition that institutional justice also aims to establish social peace. In that respect, he argues in favor of “more peaceful experiences of recognition” than Hegel’s and Honneth’s ideas of the struggle for recognition propose.25 For example, he discusses the idea of agape as a peaceful relationship that is, although irreducible to justice, also closely related to the mechanism of recognition of justice. I already discussed Ricœur’s understanding of the relation between love and justice in his article “Love and Justice.” Love relates to justice, according to Ricœur, in that both are relations of recognition of others: personal recognition by means of affection in relations of love, and recognition of others as equal subjects of rights in relations of justice. Given that love relates to justice, for Ricœur, he nevertheless stresses one essential difference between agape and justice, namely that agape is a state of peace—part of the good life—whereas justice, at least in the institutional sense, implies “dispute, to which states of peace are opposed.”26



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Ricœur thus understands institutional justice in two opposed ways throughout in his moral anthropology. On the one hand, the idea of justice is part of his moral anthropology of the self. With the publication of Oneself as Another in 1990, the ideas of ipseity and otherness become central issues in Ricœur’s philosophy. It is then that he examines the idea of justice in relation to his idea of the self as capable moral agent, participating in the good life with and for others in justice systems. Yet, on the other hand, institutional justice and evil are rooted in Western symbols of evil. Part of Ricœur’s moral anthropology that examines ethical and moral life is thus also the idea that justice relates to evil, albeit a necessary minor form of violence. In fact, Ricœur’s examination of the anthropological conditions of moral action already begins much earlier than the publication of Oneself as Another. In Fallible Man (1950), he elaborates a phenomenological analysis of the will in order to investigate the fault as the condition of human evil. In The Symbolism of Evil, Ricœur traces back the roots of justice and evil in Western tradition as he engages a hermeneutics of the symbolic meaning of evil in myths and scripture.27 Further, in “Evil, a Challenge to Philosophy and Theology,” he returns to his hermeneutical understanding of the symbolic significance of evil, and particularly focuses on responses to evil, such as lament, blame, and theodicy.28 In this essay, he thus hints at the relation between moral feelings and practices of holding responsible on the one hand and evil in the particular sense of violence against others on the other. In short, from his earliest writings on, Ricœur understands institutional justice both in relation to the good life, and in relation to violence. In that respect, I think his moral anthropology demonstrates the ambiguity of justice. FOUR WAYS OF UNDERSTANDING THE RELATION BETWEEN JUSTICE AND VIOLENCE Justice as the expression of violent mores Yet what kind of evil relates to justice, and in what particular way does it relate to justice? In my view there are four ways in which justice relates to evil. These ways become clear, as I will argue next, in examining Ricœur’s and Levinas’ notions of justice. First of all, institutional justice relates to evil insofar as it relies on punishment and to violent feelings in general, which amount to power over others, as a means to establish peace. In other words, institutional justice systems connect to evil in that they use (minimal) violence to compensate for violence. Because institutional justice originates in practices of personal vengeance, it relates to evil. This is what Ricœur’s conception of the relation between vengeance and justice demonstrates.

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The specific kind of evil that relates to justice is thus human violence, as opposed to nonhuman violence. More exactly, the violence that comes with institutions amounts to what Ricœur calls “power-over.”29 In fact, according to him, all human encounters that include action are relations in which one party exercises power over another. He writes in Oneself as Another: “It is difficult to imagine situations of interaction in which one individual does not exert a power over another by the very fact of acting.”30 Indeed, power comes with action. When acting, we set certain things in motion that possibly cause harm to others, even if that acting is well intended. This is the case, not only in concrete encounters with singular others, but also on the level of institutions and justice systems. We should differ then between violence caused by humans, which implies the responsibility that we ascribe to agents (cf. chapter 2), and nonhuman violence which is caused by events: earthquakes, avalanches, floods, etc. Obviously this second kind of violence does not so much relate to justice. One might say of course the damage of a storm caused a great damage to certain areas of town, which in that sense is an injustice for the people who live in that area with regard to other areas. It is even likely in this case that justice systems organize (part of) the compensation for the victims. But it is at least absurd to bring to justice natural phenomena. In chapter 1, I argued in this respect that semantics demonstrates how we use the concept responsibility in a morally neutral sense to ascribe actions to events (e.g., the storm was responsible for the damage). Further, institutional justice is much closer to human violence. Institutions “act” to maintain justice: distribution of goods, passing of sentences, exercising punishments, etc. Hence, institutions imply “domination” of certain groups and/or individuals over other and thus the possibility of “political violence.”31 This happens in corrupt regimes, for example, that explicitly aim at oppressing certain minorities to maintain power. Yet, insofar as that action implies power over others and justice implies action, justice relates to power and therefore to violence, even given that it is precisely the remedy against violence performed by individuals and/or groups. The fact that in the Occidental tradition the idea of justice is from the start closely related to that of violence and that of sentiments of vengeance only confirms their connection. Revenge and justice are often the themes of Greek tragedy, for example. Aristotle, from his side, discusses anger and whether it relates to virtue. In contrast to Nussbaum, he does not radically dismiss anger from the moral sphere. In fact, anger can, for Aristotle, be seen as a virtue when “we are angry at the right people, at the right things, in that right way.”32 Not only the ancient Greeks, but also more recently philosophers, like Walter Benjamin for example, see a relation between justice and violence.33 It is not my intention here to return to the question whether or not anger can lead to justice in the normative sense. And I definitely do not wish to promote violence



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within justice systems. But it is nevertheless clear how the idea that there exists a relation between violence and justice is entangled in Western thinking. For Ricœur as well, justice relates to evil in Western culture and to symbols of violence and punishment in particular. In his essay, “Evil, a Challenge to Philosophy and Theology,” he argues that “in the traditions of the West,” “evil” is “the common root” of both wrongdoing and of suffering.34 Again, he, of course, does not fail to note the differences between evil and justice in that evil implies suffering related to sentiments of “lament,” while justice implies punishment related to sentiments of “blame.”35 In fact, evil is, as I mentioned, not necessarily caused by wrongdoing. Evil, or even injustice, possibly occurs without there being agents directly responsible. In a similar fashion, Ricœur elaborately examines in The Symbolism of Evil the symbolic meanings of evil in Western myth and in scripture. More exactly, he argues in The Symbolism of Evil that the idea of responsibility in the “ethico-juridical” sense of “penal imputation” finds its roots, in Western society, in the experience of “guilt,” recounted in Greek myths and in the Judeo-Christian tradition.36 As Ricœur points out, the distinction in Ancient Greek culture between “Cosmos” and “City” in particular introduces the idea of injustice, that is, of the fault that should be punished objectively by the city and that is thus profane and unrelated to the violation of the sacredness of the cosmos.37 Interesting is that Ricœur notes that the psychological experience of guilt appears in poetry as the result of this Ancient Greek idea of punishment. For Ricœur, the story of Oedipus is exemplary in this respect. If responsibility relates to natural moral feelings, like guilt in Western cultures or shame in Eastern cultures (cf. the analytical theories on responsibility discussed earlier), then it appears that the idea of responsibility is also the result of a history of ideas, and not simply an expression of natural feelings. Further, Ricœur argues in The Symbolism of Evil that the experiences of guilt and of responsibility find their roots also in “Pharisianism.”38 In particular, the Pharisees’ idea to lead a people under the “Law,” that is, the Thorah, should be understood, according to Ricœur, as one of the sources of these experiences.39 Finally, the experiences of guilt and of responsibility should be understood in the context of St Paul’s law, in Ricœur’s opinion, before the Roman juridical system came into existence, which is the basis of justice as we know it today.40 My intention is not to examine in detail Ricœur’s symbolic reading of evil in Western culture or to provide a history of the relation between evil and justice. Yet it is clear that the Western idea of institutional justice relates to the idea that agents can be individually responsible for evil. The purpose of institutional justice is to compensate for this kind of evil, by means of legal punishment, that is, in inflicting evil upon the wrongdoer. If institutional justice relates to violence and vengeance, one question is then to what extent natural moral feelings, which relate to justice, should be

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understood in relation to violence as well. To what extent are our feelingbased practices of holding responsible, which find expression in communities, institutions, and justice systems, related to feelings of violence? For example, to what extent do our practices of holding responsible relate to feelings of personal vengeance? In what sense are blame and indignation violent? These questions are important for examining moral anthropology in light of natural feelings, as I aim to do in this book. Ricœur’s idea of the relation between institutional justice and evil demonstrates how moral feelings fuel evil and violence toward others. In “Evil, a Challenge to Philosophy and Theology,” Ricœur hints at the relation between mores and evil. He contends that, in Western culture, the idea of “evil” relates, not only to “suffering,” but also to “blame” and “punishment.”41 The idea that evil should be compensated with evil, at least in the sense that suffering should be compensated with blame and punishment, is thus rooted in Western culture. In tracing back the symbolic meanings of the Western idea of evil, and in relating this idea to the ideas of blame and punishment, Ricœur exposes the intrinsic relation between institutional justice and violence (i.e., in the form of punishment). Following his line of reasoning, moral feelings relate to evil, at least in our Western culture, in that practices of blame, punishment, and holding responsible result from feelings of violence like vengeance, struggle, and the desire to inflict compensate suffering with suffering. Ricœur’s understanding of the intrinsic relation between institutional justice and violence thus highlights, so I am arguing, the relation between moral feelings and evil. Moral feelings are neither necessarily “good,” nor neutral. They can be violent. For that reason, understanding responsibility on the basis of feelings implies more than explaining the empirical relation between natural feelings and moral agency, as recent theories in moral psychology and moral anthropology do. It also implies understanding the symbolic significance of these feelings, and how they relate to the symbolic meaning of evil in particular cultures. Ricœur’s hermeneutical understanding of evil then adds to a moral anthropology that aims at understanding this meaning and human’s ethical and moral practices. In illustration, consider again the example of the Robert Harris murder case. As I already pointed out earlier in this book, significant in Harris’ case is that there are mixed feelings of sympathy and antipathy toward Harris. Indeed, as Miles Corwin’s report of Harris’ case attests, knowing Harris’ history of childhood abuse his sister in particular expressed feelings of sympathy for her brother.42 Yet other people in Harris’ surroundings expressed their feelings of blame, and even contempt, for Harris’ actions. Corwin quotes one of Harris’ inmates on death row, who called Harris “a misery” and “a total scumbag.”43 Further, San Diego County District Attorney Richard Huffman stated: “If a person like Harris can’t be executed under California law and federal



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procedure, then we should be honest and admit that we’re incapable of handling capital punishment.”44 Similarly, State Deputy Attorney General Michael D. Wellington asked the court during an appeal about Harris’ case: “If this isn’t the kind of defendant that deserves the death penalty, is there ever going to be one?”45 These are of course bold statements, and should probably also be understood in the context of the time, but they show at least that the mixed feelings people express toward Harris’ case illustrate, in my opinion, the ambiguous nature of justice. Justice relates to both good nature and violence, because it is the expression of a mixture both kind feelings (sympathy, solicitude, feelings of brother- and sisterhood, etc.) and feelings that relate to violence (blame, contempt, resentment, etc.). Justice expresses recognition of others as equal, but institutional justice (and Harris’ trial in particular) also reflects our violent nature and desire for vengeance when it comes to punishment. Moral values relate to feelings of violence not only in Western institutionalized cultures but also in other cultures. Consider for example, Tamler Sommers’ analysis of honor cultures to which I referred earlier. In honor cultures, as Sommers argues, the fact that agents did honor or dishonor the family is considered to be the key aspect for ascribing moral responsibility to the agent’s actions. He writes: “The key factor [in honor cultures] is not whether agents wished to perform the actions; rather it is whether public knowledge of the action will bring honor or dishonor to the family.”46 For example, he discusses the traditional Corsican honor culture, in which revenge of harmed family members was believed to be the family’s responsibility. Failing to carry out this responsibility would cause public dishonor to the family. Sommers’ example demonstrates, I think, how practices of holding responsible relate to feelings of violence in noninstitutionalized honor cultures. In these cultures, as this example illustrates, moral values and standards relate to feelings of personal vengeance which function to defend the honor and power of the family with regard to others. Yet, if mores possibly do express violent feelings, then they do not only function to identify agents as responsible, as acting out of free will, or as culpable of violence, but do also apply violence to others. For example, Robert Harris’ responsibility clearly depends on how he is held responsible, blamed, and punished by his moral community. In this regard, I argued in the first part that responsibility and moral agency should be understood as the result of the self’s interaction with the moral feelings of community. Harris’ incapacity for self-esteem and solicitude, and his apathy toward the moral values of his community, constitute the moral (or immoral) agent that he has become. Yet holding agents responsible therefore also implies the communal responsibility to do justice to the victims of these agents or to apply punishment to them. This responsibility finds in moral life concrete expression in institutional

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justice and in the trial in court in particular. In a different sense, in the traditional ­Corsican honor culture vengeance does not only function to assign responsibility to those who transgressed the mores of community, but also to apply ­violence to others in order to ensure the authority of the family in community. The Harris case thus demonstrates, I think, the extent to which violent feelings play part in trial cases, and influence legal punishment (in the act of judgment, the perception of the case by the public, the choice of the punishment etc.). Hence, Ricœur points at the importance of objective rules of justice or “a corpus of relatively homogeneous laws that have not been called into question, at least at the time of the trial,” as a common source for understanding justice and moral life in general.47 These rules are designed for passing fair judgments. However, also important for the act of judging is “practical wisdom” or “wisdom in judgment.”48 This is not only because rules may ask for an exception, as Ricœur points out, but also because rules of justice are embedded in institutions and exercise power over others so that these rules should be applied with care. For that reason also the idea of singularity is significant for understanding responsibility. Practices of holding people responsible are not simply expressions of feelings and should be understood at the backdrop of the idea of ipseity: judging implies selves (the judge, the members of the jury, etc.) that are capable of understanding justice and of fair judgment. Legal punishment is important, as Ricœur points out, to maintain social peace within communities. In this respect, the trial of Robert Harris functions to compensate for the victims and their desire for recognition. However, insofar as that legal punishment, although it is institutionalized, relates to personal vengeance and violence, it also implies responsibility toward the agents that are punished. There has been some controversy about the cruelty of Harris’ execution in the gas chamber.49 The victims of Harris’ murders demand some kind of reconciliation for the harm Harris caused to them. If not vengeance, they ask at least that Harris’ crimes will not be unpunished. Admittedly, as Nussbaum contends, this is perhaps not the best reaction, but, as Ricœur’s moral anthropology shows, this reaction is ontologically and symbolically rooted in Western culture. Punishment ultimately amounts to violence toward others, and therefore to responsibility toward others. Understanding responsibility on the basis of moral feelings implies, as I am arguing, taking into account this idea of responsibility. The rationality of justice and its formal character as reduction of otherness Another way in which justice relates to evil is that the rationality of justice connects to power over others. Levinas’ idea of justice highlights how rationality, and justice which presupposes rationality, implies a reduction of



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otherness. For Levinas, the relation with the other is the condition for justice, but also the locus where the self possibly reduces otherness through rationality. As argued earlier, for Levinas this relation has, on the one hand, ethical meaning in that the passive relation of being sensible to the vulnerability of the other makes one responsive to this other. For that reason, the affective relation with the other is awareness of the good or the realization that one should not simply neglect the other. In this regard, Levinas defines the relation with the other as a “judgment of justice.”50 Yet, for Levinas, this relation should not be understood, as I argued, in terms of action or as an intentional relationship of consciousness. That which Levinas understands as the passive awareness of the other’s vulnerability is a passive sensitivity, rather than an idea of the good life or an action for the good life. This means, on the other hand, that evil is possible within the relation with the other. Because the awareness of the singularity of the other is a radical passive relation for Levinas, the other possibly is hostile or “evil” with regard to the self that is sensitive to this other.51 Further, the self possibly neglects the other, possibly exercises “violence,” which comes with reason.52 Indeed, according to Levinas, rationality and action imply the risk of violence, because all rationality and action, even when justified, risk reducing the other to an idea, as part of a plan of action, and thus risk doing “too little,” or insufficiently meeting the other’s needs. Justice, which requires organization, a plan of action, thematization, order, etc., therefore relates to violence and evil. Hence, Levinas writes in Otherwise than Being that the relation with the other “is troubled and becomes a problem when a third party enters.”53 He adds: It [the third party] is of itself the limit of responsibility and the birth of the question: What do I have to do with justice? A question of consciousness. Justice is necessary, that is, comparison, cœxistence, contemporaneousness, assembling, order, thematization, the visibility of faces, and thus intentionality and the intellect, and in intentionality and the intellect, the intelligibility of a system, and thence also a copresence on an equal footing as before a court of justice.54

In this respect, Arthur Cools recognizes in Levinas’ thoughts on justice an “insurmountable paradox.”55 According to Cools, Levinas contends that action is necessary for achieving justice within institutions, but this also means a break-up with the relation with the other which is passivity. At the same time, this relation is the condition, so Cools contends, for justice according to Levinas. The paradox is then this: “As long as it is not clear how the activity of doing justice is conditioned by (and originates from) the passivity of vulnerability, action can be considered only as a betrayal of the ethical meaning of responsibility.”56

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Cools makes a strong point. It remains unclear how passive affection, for Levinas, relates to action. Yet one should ask whether this paradox not only points to an ambiguity in Levinas’ work, but to the ambiguity of justice itself. I think Levinas’ idea of justice demonstrates, like Ricœur’s, that justice is ambiguous. On the one hand, justice means “being for the other,” the compensation for the suffering of others. Yet on the other hand, institutional justice, which is organized justice, relates to violence. Levinas thus points at a second way, I think, in which justice relates to violence: because of its rational structure, justice does not take into account the singularity of the other, which resists being organized in an essence. Indeed, in the context of institutions, all others are equal and treated according to the same in principle, despite their singular differences. This is a requirement for justice and necessary to prevent favoritism. The risk of violence nevertheless not only exists “on the level of singularity” (in concrete encounters between selves and others) but also on “the level of the common” (within institutional relations). Ricœur’s idea of formal rules of justice allows describing a third way in which justice relates to evil, which is connected to the second, and underscores this ambiguity. As he points out, like formal moral norms, formal rules of justice possibly fail to apply to singular situations and therefore demand for an exception.57 He gives the example of Antigone, in which the laws of the city conflict with the singular situation to which they are applied: the conflict between religious tradition that prescribes Antigone should bury her brother and the laws of the city that forbid this. Ricœur’s idea of the problem of formal justice is similar to the problem Levinas sees in justice. As Ricœur points out in the wake of Levinas, justice implies a reduction of the singularity of the other. For Levinas, this reduction results from the rationality of justice: institutional justice reduces otherness to an essence. For Ricœur, this reduction results from the formal character of institutional justice, which does not allow for exceptions in singular situations, because the laws of institutions apply in the same sense for everyone. For both Levinas and Ricœur, institutional justice reduces the singularity of the other, because its rational structure fails to take into account this singularity, and because its formal structure allows for no exception, and therefore justice relates to violence in the sense of a reduction of otherness. If Nussbaum is correct to contend that vengeance does not lead to justice, despite its aim for the good life, there clearly is a link between justice and evil, precisely because justice entails a rational and formal structure that eliminates otherness. This negligence of difference is necessary in order to maintain equality, which is the goal of justice. Yet it also means that those who are different and other are not necessarily treated in their difference and otherness within institutional justice systems. Minorities, for example, are often sidelined by mainstream institutional rules, because those rules demand for no exception or because there is no formal rule to take into account the



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singularity of a particular case. Although essentially designed to maintain peaceful relations, justice systems always contain a risk of violence. For that reason, justice is ambiguous. Evil and the struggle between mores Ricœur offers a fourth way of understanding the relation between justice and evil. This way should be thought of in light of the problem of institutions. Because rules of justice are expressions of particular institutions that, as I argued, find their roots in communal standards, values, and norms, these rules are possibly expressions of violent “values” or standards that function to oppress minorities. One might object again that this is the case for corrupt regimes, but that a just community with proper institutions aims at including others and minorities. One can think, for example, of laws against racism. However, the provisional character of communal justice makes that justice possibly tends to the oppression of minorities. As I argued in the first part, communal mores express what members of particular communities consider to be the good life. The fragile identities of communities imply that the values that represent these communities possibly lead to violence. In his article “Fragile Identities, Capable Selves,” Roger Savage draws the connection between Ricœur’s idea of communities as fragile identities and communal values. As Savage explains in line with Ricœur, communities are essentially places where struggle of values occurs: “Religious, ethnic, cultural, and gender differences thus become sites of contested values that are inseparable from demands for recognition. By itself, each way of living holds out the prospect—received and chosen—of the ‘good’ life.”58 This means that within communities members struggle to promote different values, different mores, or values that are about “the good life.”59 Furthermore, Savage points out that history has proven that communal struggle for values often leads to violence toward minorities. We find examples of such violence in practices such as racial discrimination, colonial violence, or ethnic insults. Following this line of reasoning, violence occurs within communities when the leading members that represent the values of the communal identity oppress minorities that represent different values. In the first part I argued that there are consequently no universal rules of justice, since these rules are expressions of particular communities and permanently open to improvement. Yet if this is the case, a continuous risk of evil resides in the justice systems of moral communities, because rules of justice exercise power over, and possibly violence toward, others with different values. In this respect, the claimed universal character of institutional justice implies the ambiguity of institutional justice: the possibility of violence is inherent to peacemaking justice systems.

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Savage makes a point, I think, by arguing that communal values are fragile, and possibly are the sources of violence. In fact, communal mores can lead to serious, even extreme, forms of violence. In part 1, I referred to the example of the community of Salem in the 1600s, whose mores dictated that woman that were supposed to be witches should be punished severely. The following more recent example demonstrates in a similar way to what extent mores can be the onset of extreme forms of violence. In mid-January 2014, a woman was raped in a village in West Bengal in India on order of the elders of the Santhal tribe, of which the woman was part. The cause of the incident was that the elders of the tribe had judged the woman responsible for having an affair with a man from another village.60 The Indian government later arrested the elders and the men who had performed the rape. This example demonstrates the ambiguity of justice. On the one hand, it demonstrates how authorities can misuse their power to violently oppress minorities in the name of “justice.” Yet, on the other hand, the example also points at the undeniable importance of institutional justice in order to maintain social peace within communities and to regulate mores when these risk surmounting to violence. Yet even when they are institutionalized, rules of justice remain violent to some extent, because these rules imply the ideas of authority and of power over others. Ricœur’s idea of ideology is helpful in this regard. Earlier I argued that, for Ricœur, ideologies express institutional mores and use power so that institutions can maintain authority. According to him, an ideology “preserves the power of a class,” “ensures the duration of a system of authority,” or “patterns the stable functioning of a community.”61 Insofar as that rules of justice are institutionalized, they express a communal idea of the good life, if not an ideology. This idea is entangled with a system of justice that aims to maintain power over the members of the institutions in order to ensure they live up to the good life. Surely, this system is in principle designed to maintain peace within the community, and not every justice system is an oppressing ideology. Yet, justice systems relate to violence, as is the case in a police state for example, in that it is a mechanism of power. Hence, ideology “has a function of conservation in both a good and a bad sense of the word.”62 I think Ricœur’s idea of the state as organization of power further demonstrates the relation between institutional justice and violence. In From Text to Action, he defines “State” as the organization of a “historical community.”63 For him, this means that moral norms should be understood “beyond a purely formal morality,” but in relation to “mores,” “accepted norms,” which form the “narrative and symbolic identity of a community.”64 Further, the state defines justice in relation to these common mores, according to Ricœur. Following his line of thought, the state allows communities to exercise power over its members. This power allows communities to translate mores, which constitute the communal identity, into rules of justice. These rules regulate



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the actions of the members of a community according to what communities consider to be the good life. Institutional justice is thus community’s mechanism of power to control the dominant mores and to compensate actions that deviate from the “good life” with legal punishment. In that respect, rules of justice, although they can maintain social peace, can also oppress others and exercise violence toward minorities. In this chapter, I discussed four ways in which evil in the particular sense of violence as power over others manifests itself in institutions: through practices of punishment that originate in vengeance, through justice’s rationality that implies reduction of otherness to an essence of justice, through its formal character that implies a similar reduction, and through justice’s claimed universal character that oppress others with different values. Certainly, institutional justice is a remedy against violence and evil, like the Robert Harris murder case or the rape case in the Santhal tribe also attest. Yet a risk of violence always exists within systems of institutional justice. Hence, it is ambiguous. Ricœur writes in From Text to Action, “A residual violence continues to afflict even the State that comes closest to the ideal of a State of law, for the reason that every State is particular, individual, empirical.”65 Rules of justice relate to concrete historical communities that share moral values, standards, and norms. In the first part, I argued that these rules are therefore not absolute. However, rules of justice also claim to be universal to a certain extent. These rules apply to all members of the state or community in the same sense. Ricœur argues in Reflections on the Just, institutional justice should be understood in the context of a “state,” which claims to have the “monopoly” on “legitimate violence,” that is, the justice system that determines “the good life” by means of justified “punishment.”66 In a similar voice, he states in The Just, that the state is the “guardian of legitimate violence.”67 Following him, there exists a thin line between legitimate punishment and unjustified violence, between justice and unjust suffering. The problematic character of capital punishment only underlines this. The thin line between justice and violence constitutes, as I argued, the ambiguity of justice. This ambiguity is this: justice is the necessary remedy against violence, but in its goal to achieve this remedy justice implies a reduction of the singularity of the other, and thus violence. Ricœur’s understanding of the relation between institutional justice and violence demonstrates, I think, both the necessity of justice and how institutions exercise power over others. Rules of justice are “a necessary remedy” against occurrences of evil in communities. Justice aims at maintaining social peace. Yet Ricœur’s understanding of the relation between institutional justice and violence also points to the inherent struggle between the protagonists of mores and values within institutions. In that sense, justice implies a residual amount of evil.

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However, does this mean that there is no universal way of approaching justice or that justice is relative to particular institutions? In this book, I have been arguing that there is no universal way of understanding moral norms and rules of justice. Yet I am also looking, with Ricœur, for “trans-cultural” sensibilities for approaching morality, which help understanding justice. I discussed the idea of both ipseity (cf. part 1) and otherness (cf. part 2), and argued that those ideas offer ways of criticizing existing moral norms and thus of approaching morals across the different cultures. In being oneself and in critically judging morals with others (cf. ipseity), one is capable of identifying culturally located mores when these tend toward evil. Certainly, this kind of judgment relies on practical wisdom, and practical wisdom is sensible to making mistakes. It finds inspiration in cultural values, standards, and norms: our moral judgment is based on the morals we have learned in our community. In that sense I think the idea of otherness is imperative for understanding responsibility. In light of their sensibility for others, humans can criticize moral norms when these norms amount to evil in the sense of violence against others. Again, this is not to advocate a kind of utilitarianism, according to which the greatest amount of pleasure for the greatest kind is the basic principle for morality. Rather, evil possibly occurs in every singular encounter with the other, when power over others is applied. As Levinas rightly contends, “evil relates back to suffering,” at least suffering that is an “absurdity,” “for nothing” and therefore “useless.”68 Hence, it is significant to understand morality in light of the idea of singularity (both in relation to ipseity and in relation to alterity), rather than on the basis of the universal. Still, evidently singular encounters with others possibly tend to violence, even in relations where selves are sensible to the suffering of others. We should thus inquire whether we can find a more objective form of critique for approaching morality, of criticizing and reenvisioning moral norms and rules of justice. In the next chapter, I will argue that we can find such a form of critique by examining Ricœur’s idea of narrativity. NOTES 1. In particular in: “The Act of Judging” (Ricœur, The Just, 127–45) and “Justice and Vengeance” (Ricœur, Reflections on the Just, 223–31). See also: “Sanction, Rehabilitation, Pardon” (Ricœur, The Just, 133–45) and “Conscience and the Law: The Philosophical Stakes” (Ricœur, The Just, 146–55). 2. Ricœur, Reflections on the Just, 229. Compare with Ricœur’s analysis of the four elements of the trial that mark the difference between justice and vengeance (Ricœur, The Just, 134–6). 3. Ricœur, Reflections on the Just, 223.



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4. Ibid. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 229. 7. Ibid., 225. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 226. 10. Ibid. 11. Martha Nussbaum, Anger and Forgiveness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), intro., loc 164, par. 1ff. 12. Ibid, intro., loc 164, par. 1. 13. Ibid., intro., loc 171, par. 2. 14. Ibid. 15. Ricœur, Reflections on the Just, 225. 16. Ricœur, The Just, 130–1. 17. Ibid., 131. 18. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 172. 19. Ibid., 184. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., 191. 22. Ibid., 191–2. 23. Ricœur, Reflections on the Just, 228. 24. Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 184. 25. Ibid., 186. 26. Ricœur, The Course of Recognition, 223. 27. Paul Ricœur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967). 28. Paul Ricœur, “Evil, a Challenge to Philosophy and Theology,” In: Figuring the Sacred Religion. 29. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 220. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, 74 [1126b, 6]. 33. Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” In: Reflections. Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings (New York: Shocken Books, 1986). 34. Ricœur, “Evil,” 250. 35. Ibid. 36. Ricœur, The Symbolism of Evil, 108ff. 37. Ibid., 110. 38. Ibid., 118. 39. Ibid., 120. 40. Ibid., 139. 41. Ricœur, “Evil,” 250. 42. Miles Corwin, “Icy Killer’s Life Steeped in Violence,” Los Angeles Times, May 16, 1982, 30. 43. Corwin, “Icy Killer’s Life Steeped in Violence,” A1.

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44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46. Sommers, Relative Justice, 60. 47. Ricœur, The Just, 154. 48. Ibid. 49. Dan Morain, “Witness to the Execution: A Macabre, Surreal Event,” The Los Angeles Times, April 22, 1992 (http://articles.latimes.com/1992-04-22/news/ mn-509_1_gas-chamber). 50. Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 233. 51. Ibid., 233. 52. Levinas, Otherwise than Being, 16. 53. Ibid., 157 54. Ibid. 55. Arthur Cools, “The Tragic Sense of Levinas’ Ethics,” Ethical Perspectives 21, No. 3, (2014): 363. 56. Ibid. 57. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 240ff. 58. Roger Savage, “Fragile Identities, Capable Selves,” Études Ricœuriennes/ Ricœur Studies 4, No. 2, (2013): 68. 59. Ibid. 60. “Indian village elders arrested for ‘ordering’ gang-rape,” The Telegraph, January 23, 2014 (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10592303/ Indian-village-elders-arrested-for-ordering-gang-rape.html). 61. Ricœur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 318. 62. Ricœur, From Text to Action, 318. 63. Ibid., 330. See also Ricœur’s article “State and Violence,” In: Ricœur, History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbey (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965): 234–46. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid., 333. 66. Ricœur, Reflections on the Just, 228. 67. Ricœur, The Just, 135. 68. Levinas, Entre Nous, 79.

Chapter 8

Narratives and Moral Critique

In the previous chapter I aimed to demonstrate the ambiguity of justice, ­following Ricœur’s and Levinas’ thoughts on justice. I argued that although justice is imperative as a remedy against evil, it also relates to evil in that institutional justice is a mechanism that exercises power over others and thus possibly causes suffering to others. Yet one question is how evil understood in this particular sense—as institutional violence toward others—calls for responsibility. Indeed, it appears that we have a responsibility with regard to our institutions in order to ensure that violence within these institutions is kept to a minimum. Another question is how this responsibility relates to the idea of singularity, which I aim to understand as the “backbone” of Ricœur’s moral anthropology. I argued that the responsibility toward the evil in institutions is collective, rather than individual, and that we, as members of these institutions, share a responsibility for this evil, rather than that we are responsible as selves in singular relations with the other. In other words, responsibility expands the interhuman face-to-face encounter. Examining Ricœur’s moral anthropology and his idea of narrativity in relation to his idea of responsibility will demonstrate, as I will argue in this chapter, how we use narratives to understand and rework this collective responsibility toward institutional evil and how humans are capable of reenvisioning justice systems through these narratives. I will argue first that although narratives thematize ethical and moral issues, they should nevertheless be understood in light of the idea of singularity in that they are singular creative expressions that communicate our responsibility toward others in institutions. Next, I will argue that in recalling occurrences of institutional violence that happened in the past, historical narratives, and fiction in particular, express a collective responsibility toward these occurrences in reminding us of their horrific character. I continue by 209

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contending that institutional violence therefore calls for a collective responsibility not only toward the past but also toward the future: recalling occurrences of evil in order to withhold that they repeat themselves in the future. Finally, I examine Ricœur’s idea of utopias as another form of the narrative, and contend that utopias function to critically reenvision ideologies in which institutional violence occurs, and aid in that way in reenvisioning justice for the future. OBLIGATED MEMORY AND RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE PAST Ricœur draws the attention to the relation between responsibility and narratives, when he introduces his idea of obligated memory in the third volume of Time and Narrative, and again in Memory, History, Forgetting. More exactly, in the eighth chapter of Time and Narrative 3, Ricœur defends the thesis that narratives testify to what he understands as our debt toward history by refiguring the past. Ricœur writes in that chapter, “Fiction makes use of history … to refigure time.”1 By refiguring past events into an imaginary narrative, fiction bears witness to the people who lived during these events, and in that sense expresses the “debt we owe the dead.”2 This means, for Ricœur, that fiction in particular, and narratives in general, refigure historical time by recounting the story “as if it were past,” or as if passed events are actually happening in time.3 Central to this process of refiguration in narrative is the role of “imagination,” according to Ricœur.4 For him, fiction can reenact the past by means of imagination in narratives (se figurer que).5 In this regard, narratives recreate the past in the timeline of the story, and in that sense testify to history. I think Ricœur’s idea of obligated memory demonstrates how we use narratives to express what we experience as our responsibility toward the past. This experience finds expression, for example, in processes of mourning. The fact that humans find it significant to mourn the dead attests to their experience of feeling obligated to remember that which has happened in the past and especially those who have gone before us. The imagination of stories can provide knowledge of the past, and thus can help remembering the past and mourning history’s dead. In this regard, Ricœur’s idea of the relation between narrativity and obligated memory in Time and Narrative 3 should be understood in the context of his analysis of historical knowledge. Ricœur understands historical knowledge as “standing-for,” which he distinguishes from “representation” in the particular sense of “giving oneself a mental image of some absent external thing.”6 In contrast to representation of external objects, which consists of a direct mental representation of the objects in question, historical knowledge



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in the sense of “standing-for” amounts to obtaining “knowledge” indirectly or “through traces.”7 For Ricœur, this means that knowledge of history is mediated by traces of the past, like, for instance, the traces we find in historical novels or documentaries, which are not simply imaginary, but represent the past through mimesis, as if they were the past and in that sense take “the place of” the past (“lieutenance”).8 Ricœur thus demonstrates that stories, both “historical” and “fictional,” express human’s responsibility toward the victims of the past, and others that passed away before us in general, in that they are the creative expressions of our mourning the past.9 For Ricœur, narratives are essentially interwoven with moral life, and therefore constitute a crucial part of his moral anthropology In Memory, History, Forgetting, Ricœur discusses again his idea of obligated memory. In the third chapter of that work, he aims to understand “memory in the imperative mood.”10 According to him, memory in this sense should be understood as a “duty … imposing itself on desire,” and “exerting a constraint experienced subjectively as obligation.”11 Certainly, forgetting and remembering are, as Ricœur points out, spontaneous activities that befall us, and are therefore inevitable and uncontrollable, at least to a certain extent. Ricœur himself writes in Memory, History, Forgetting: “It is characteristic of memory to emerge as a spontaneous evocation, hence as pathos.”12 Yet human beings not only grant each other the right of (inevitably) forgetting certain passed events, as the idea of amnesty also underlines, but they also experience the obligation to hold on to certain passed events, which they find should be remembered. Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, the narrative is thus the medium humans use to express the experience that they should not forget the past, and that they should bring the past back to life in reenacting it in stories. In this regard, he introduces the idea that we have a responsibility for the past. He shows how narratives constitute an essential timely ­dimension of moral life. Ricœur’s idea of responsibility for the past demonstrates that responsibility extends the self’s capability to perform ethical and moral actions “with and for others in just institutions.” Responsibility, as this idea demonstrates, is also collective and relates to the sum of all possible narratives that testify to the past. Surely, responsibility for the past is the self’s responsibility as well, if only because every narrative implies a self (or several selves): the narrator(s) and the listener(s). Moreover, text and action are interwoven in that we find inspiration in (historical) narratives to perform responsible actions as selves. In this respect, Ricœur refers to his idea of responsibility for the past in Oneself as Another in order to define practical wisdom. For him, selves are capable of taking into account past and future for taking concrete responsible decisions and actions in the present.13 On the basis of other narratives, the self is capable of constituting his or her own narrative identity, which allows

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taking (moral) decisions and performing (moral) actions. For example, the mistakes of the past can help the self in making future decisions. Yet institutions and communities also have a responsibility for the particular historical events that occur within these institutions and communities, at least in that the collective of their members feel it their duty to write narratives about these events. Our responsibility is thus not “only” the expression of the agent’s natural feelings, as recent theories in moral psychology and moral anthropology contend, but also a collective experience that humans share. Practices of mourning within particular institutions and communities should be understood in connection to particular mores and social customs. Ricœur demonstrates that a moral anthropology that aims at understanding responsibility in relation to mores should take into account the idea of narrativity. In fact, several anthropologists examine the phenomena of death and mourning cross-culturally.14 One might oppose that, in contrast to what Ricœur’s idea of narrativity suggests, there is no intrinsic ethical value to narratives and to the persons that are involved with them. Perhaps best known for its critique of narrative identity is Galen Strawson’s essay “Against Narrativity.”15 In his essay Strawson refutes what he understands as the “ethical Narrativity thesis.”16 For him, this thesis “states that experiencing or conceiving one’s life as a narrative is a good thing; a richly Narrative outlook is essential to a well-lived life, to true or full personhood.”17 Strawson draws on experimental psychology and contends that there are genetic differences between people who see their lives as a narrative entity and people who live a more episodic lifestyle. Hence, according to him there are several ways of lifestyle, and there is nothing particularly of higher value about making one’s life into a story. Strawson also briefly discusses Ricœur’s thesis that narratives aid in the self’s capability to take ethical and moral decisions and perform ethical and moral actions.18 According to Strawson, Ricœur and other defenders of the narrativity thesis take as a universal trait of human psychology what is actually a singular aspect of their own lives, namely that they view existence as a higher telos. In a similar fashion, one might argue that narratives about the past do not—or not necessarily—express any ethical value, since they are not essential to processes of mourning or recollecting. They simply have an “episodic” value, in offering a piece of information or diversion to the person in the present that reads or encounters it. Yet the problem with Strawson’s criticism is that it fails to undermine Ricœur’s idea that narratives are entangled with moral life. Indeed, even if people do not necessarily view their lives as a narrative entity or life story as Strawson contends, this does not undermine the moral value that narratives can have. Rather than contending that selves universally steer their existences to a certain kind of higher telos, Ricœur appears to defend the idea that selves



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often use narratives to give meaning to their (moral) decisions and actions. The fact that people in several cases use narratives to recollect the victims of the past attests to this. The narrative essentially has the potential to give meaning to our lives. In “Stories, Lives, and Basic Survival” Marya Schechtman makes a similar point when arguing that it is implausible “that one could act responsibly without the sense that present options were constrained by past choices and that present choices have implications for the future.”19 I think the idea of singularity is again helpful here. This idea implies a reference to the concrete lived existences of selves and others. And that means that, even if having a narrative identity is not a universal trait of every human being in the same sense, selves and others do find moral significance in narratives in different ways within the context of their singular existences. The narrative is thus something we have in common that helps bridging cultural and moral differences. Therefore, it is salient for moral anthropology. It is part of our ontological makeup. Yet that does not mean that it is universal genetic trait, as Strawson implies. Moreover, from a certain perspective the episodic life style can also be seen as a narrative life style. Indeed, the narrative does not necessarily have to have a linear time line, with a clear beginning, order of events and ending. Narratives can be episodic. They can present us a series of different episodes that do not necessarily need to have an ultimate goal or of which the significance does not need to be one single unity. We can think of contemporary cineasts, like David Lynch, for example, who search to break out the traditional narrative, by showing a range of episodes, rather than a classical story. Even given that, for Ricœur, the narrative par excellence is the Modern novel, he also stresses repeatedly the productive aspect of imagination and the narrative (cf., his idea of the narrative as a threefold mimesis: a prefiguration of events, figuration of a story of these events and a re-figuration of their meaning).20 Narratives allow for a creation of different and new meanings and every encounter with the same narrative allows for a new interpretation and the revelation of new meaning. Understanding narratives implies a hermeneutical circle. Similarly, a narrative identity can be episodic. I might live through my existence as if I were encountering different episodes and the meaning of those episodes might be quite scattered. Another possible line of objection to Ricœur’s idea that narratives express moral significance is Levinas’ critique of narrativity. In fact, Levinas’ opinion about narrativity is equivocal. On the one hand, narratives often appear in Levinas’ writings, where they function as examples for defending his idea of responsibility. Dostoyevky, Shakespeare, and Proust are only a few of the many narrators to whom Levinas refers. In “Levinas, Storytelling and AntiStorytelling,” Will Buckingham argues that in Totality and Infinity Levinas

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often uses literature, going from Macbeth, to The Brothers Karamazov, and from Hamlet to Oblomov.21 Moreover, in his youth Levinas planned to become a writer. Some of his literary texts were recently published posthumously.22 According to Buckingham, Levinas’ philosophy should even be read as a story in which the other is the intrigue.23 Yet, on the other hand, Levinas criticizes narratives time and again throughout his writings.24 Indeed, Levinas writes in Humanism of the Other, “signification is situated before Culture and Aesthetics; it is situated in E ­ thics, presupposition of all Culture and all signification.”25 Levinas criticizes narratives in his work, because narrating about the other implies “translating” this other into an essence, that is, into the structure of the story: sequence, plot, narrated time, etc., and that means reducing otherness. The relation of responsibility, which, as I previously argued, cannot be reduced to an essence for Levinas; therefore, it should also not be reduced to a narrative, according to him. However, I think Ricœur’s idea of the narrative shows that there is a relation between narratives and otherness, at least in the case of fiction and historical narratives. For him, there are three particular reasons for defining the narrative in terms of a responsibility for the other. We find these reasons when taking into account his notion of obligated memory. The first reason is that memory does justice to others. In Ricœur’s words, “The duty of memory is the duty to do justice, through memories, to an other than the self.”26 According to him, human beings thus experience it their duty to remember the others of the past through narratives in order to do justice to these others. Secondly, Ricœur points out that the notion of “debt” explains more precisely his idea of obligated memory. Note that his understanding of “debt” differs from what he calls “guilt.”27 For him, “debt is inseparable from the notion of heritage.”28 His notion of debt in that way should be understood, in the first place, in the more broad sense of remembering other people or making the “inventory [of] the heritage” of “those who have gone before us.”29 Finally, Ricœur states: “Among those others to whom we are indebted, the moral priority belongs to the victims. … The victim at issue here is the other victim, other than ourselves.”30 This means that the third reason Ricœur gives for understanding memory as an obligation or a duty is that humans experience that memory does justice to victims who suffered injustice in history. For him, human beings thus experience the duty to remember history in general, and the victims of history in particular, not necessarily out of (natural feelings of) guilt toward those victims or because they would be genetically inclined to build their lives around narratives, but in the first place to ensure recollection of the past and to mourn the victims of the past. The idea of alterity, or, more exactly, the idea that others lived before us and will live after us, thus inspires our responsibility toward the past. In this regard,



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our responsibility toward the past relates to the idea of singularity. Museums that are devoted to past wars, for example, have the task of teaching future generations passed events as they happened, and in that sense of doing justice to the victims of the past in remembering the deceased of those wars. Certainly, one might assert that recounting about others in stories implies a reduction of the singularity of their lived existences to the narrative structure of the text. In fact, what remains of the victims of the past that are no longer among us is only a character in our memories and in our stories. In that sense, narratives reduce the singularity of the other to the character that stands for this other. Nevertheless, I think there exists a “trace” of otherness in the narrative at least in that it is not simply a causal chain of events or a logical essence. Narratives, it goes without saying, have a physical support: ink on paper, light on film, digitals on microchips, etc. Yet their content, the story, differs from causal chains of natural events or from a definite logical essence in that the story is undetermined. Narratives certainly recount about historical facts, which imply causal natural events. In this regard, natural disasters, for example, can be the inspiration for narratives that recall the victims of these events. Occurrences of evil of which narratives express our responsibility toward the past are thus not necessarily caused by agents. More importantly, as Ricœur rightly points out, the narrative is no representation or mental image.31 It does not turn the other into a fixed idea, but rather stands for the others of the past. Stories allow for different readings, different interpretations, and there is no true one interpretation. Surely the singularity of the other of whom a narrative recounts is made public. It is no longer a strictly private lived existence. We witness this existence through the narrative, yet we do not have access to the singularity of the other in that we can live the other’s existence. In that sense, the narrative bears a “trace” of the singularity of the other. Although narratives recount about facts and events, they do not reduce the singularity of the other to these facts and events, since it leaves open the permanent possibility of a different reading: the otherness remains “contained” in the narrative, because there is no one reading that can capture the “true” essence of this otherness. Also, rather than reducing otherness to an anthropological essence of the capable self, historical narratives and fiction recount about the other in order to remember the singular lived existence of this other. By remembering, the narrative does justice to the other. Narratives are singular creative expressions of a self, but because they are public and call for multiple readings they do not reduce otherness to ipseity, to an idea or fixed image of the self. As Levinas points out, justice implies language and therefore it organizes otherness. Yet in doing justice to others through narratives, the singularity of the other, although organized in the structure of the story, is not completely reduced.

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Richard Kearney’s article, “On the Hermeneutics of Evil,” helps understanding the relation between justice for others and responsibility for the past. Kearney writes: Ricœur analyses the “testimonial” role of narrative when confronting historical trauma and evil. The whole problem of Holocaust testimony is central to this analysis. A hermeneutics of narrative, he maintains, must include a sense of ethical responsibility to “the debt we owe the dead.”32

According to Kearney, Ricœur demonstrates to what extent history relates to responsibility. As Kearney argues, in Ricœur’s understanding historical traumas and evil imply the responsibility to testify to these events in narratives. Following this line of reasoning, history thus implies the responsibility to do justice to the victims of historical events of evil, like the Holocaust for example, by recounting about these events in narratives. Kearney draws a double connection between history and responsibility. On the one hand the reality of historical trauma and evil implies the responsibility to reconstruct the past, that is, to make the past present in the narrative. As Kearney writes in “On the Hermeneutics of Evil,” “figural reconstructions of the past … enable us to see and hear things long since gone.”33 Humans thus experience it their responsibility to archive the past, so that future generations can have access to it. In this respect, the historian’s task amounts to passing on history to future generations. On the other hand, history implies the responsibility to recall the past, that is, to emphasize the past in order to stress that certain events “actually happened.”34 I think the narrative’s power of recalling the past makes that it does justice to others, rather than reducing otherness. Kearney demonstrates that stories can help avoiding that certain events of the past, and the singular others that lived through them, will be forgotten. Narratives underline the seriousness of certain events, and thus can ensure that certain traumas of the past remain in our collective memory. By stressing the seriousness of history, of evil, and of the victims of the past in particular, narratives do justice to the victims of history and are the expression of our responsibility toward these others. Narratives thus make that the others of the past are not reduced to the anonymity of “being” in the past—an ontological essence—but live on in the narratives of the future. Certainly, the singular existences of these others are only contained in the narratives we create, and these narratives cannot replace these existences or make them totally accessible. Yet narratives bear a trace, I think, of the singularity of the other in that they recall others instead of forgetting them. The narrative relates to the idea of singularity in the sense of otherness, but also to the idea of singularity in the sense of ipseity. For Ricœur,



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understanding historical events of evil implies being a self. Not only are stories expressions of selves. Stories are creative expressions, which imply the ipseity of the narrator: his or her singular experiences of the world that find expression in a singular creative process—episodic or not. Moreover, the mimetic character of the stories that narrates about these events calls for a self: the reader, watcher or listener who retraces the mimesis in stories. And this implies imagination through an act of consciousness of the self. Yet does this mean that the processes of reading, watching, or listening reduce otherness to the object of an act of consciousness? I think Ricœur’s idea of mimesis shows how the story bears a trace of otherness. In the third volume of Time and Narrative, he points to the “mimetic value of the trace …” of the narrative.35 In so doing, he argues that fiction plays an exemplary role in understanding our responsibility toward history. Ricœur draws on Aristotle’s notion of lexis in the Rhetoric. According to him, the writer’s use of words is in a rhetorical fashion, through “metaphor” and “irony,” and this invites the reader, watcher, or listener to imagine the events told as if they are witnessed. Following his line of argument, mimesis in fiction thus creates the “illusion that confuses,” which implies “seeing-as” in the sense of “believing we are seeing” what we are told through the narrative.36 This seeing-as is key for understanding our responsibility toward history. In this regard, authors are selves that use narrative and rhetoric techniques to express their creativity, which constitutes the singularity of the story. Further, stories imply the self as a singular witness of the story when reading, watching, or listening to it, and ipseity is in that sense also significant for understanding responsibility for the past and future. Ricœur’s idea of mimesis highlights the significance of his notion of ipseity for understanding responsibility and justice. However, although mimesis implies resemblance rather than singularity, the mimesis in the story does not negate the otherness of the others in the story. Mimesis implies the creation of a narrative of events, through rhetoric techniques, as if those events are actually occurring. Even though this means copying the others of those events in the story and thus replacing the singularity of the other by a character in the story, mimesis allows for a trace of otherness, creating a “double otherness,” that of the character and that of the other, rather than reducing it. Indeed, the creation of stories as if they are events entails the presentation of others as if we encounter them. This encounter evidently differs from the face-to-face encounter in that we do not encounter the other in the story “in the flesh.” Yet the aim of the story, fiction and historical narratives in particular, is to present the other of the past as he or she was, rather than to transfigure this other into an essence or idea. Even the caricature is more of an emphasis on the singularity of the

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other, than a reduction of this singularity. Hence, there is a crucial difference between the narrative that presents the others of the past as if they are among us, and the ideology, for example, that negates otherness in function of the propaganda of ideas. Ricœur’s idea of responsibility for the past thus relates to the idea of singularity in several ways. First, this idea of responsibility implies the idea of the singularity of particular historical events. Further, these events are the inspiration for singular narratives, which express our responsibility for the past. The singularity of historical events often inspires narrators. In this regard, Richard Kearney points at Ricœur’s idea of “tremendum horrendum” in order to stress the significance of the singularity of the historical event for understanding the responsibility that it implies. According to Kearney, narrative techniques, like the use of metaphor, allow the narrator to refigure historical events subjectively. Narratives present these events, not as purely objective facts, but uses narrative techniques to present historical events to the audience as if they are actually happening. Following this line of reasoning, stories present the horrible “as horrible,” as if the audience is an actual spectator of the horrible events, and, in that way, help remembering the evil of certain events in history.37 In other words, the imaginative function of the narrative makes that the audience does not perceive historical events as brute facts or neutral causal relations, but as events through which others actually lived. In this regard, narratives constitute a relation between the audience and the singularity of the other. As Kearney writes, the “refigurative powers of narrative prevent historians from neutralizing injustice.”38 By stressing the singular horrible character of certain historical events, singular narratives thus underline the singularity of these events and of the others that lived through them. The singularity of historical events, and particularly the singularity of their horrific character, inspires human beings to take the responsibility by reworking these events into singular narratives in order to do justice to them. In that singular narratives attest to the idea that we are responsible for remembering and recounting (violence of) the past, responsibility should be understood in light of the singularity of the narrative. Historical novels, like Berthold Brecht’s’ Mother Courage and her Children, or, more recently, films that recount historical events, like Steve McQueen’s 12 Years a Slave (2013), are examples of this idea of responsibility. These and similar stories are singular, not only in that they recount a unique series of events about singular others, but also in their singular creativity. The story is a unique expression of the storyteller. No two stories are the same. The idea of responsibility, understood as responsibility toward history, should in that sense be understood in light of the idea of the singularity of the narrative, the singularity of the other, and ipseity.



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OBLIGATED MEMORY AS A MEANS OF CRITIQUE OF INSTITUTIONAL VIOLENCE I think Ricœur’s idea of responsibility for the past, which relates to the idea of singularity, demonstrates a way of critique with regard to moral norms that are the expression of moral feelings. In chapter 7, I argued that communities are essentially systems of potential institutional violence toward others, and this brings to light the responsibility to do justice to the victims of these kinds of violence in history. Essential in the search for justice is finding ways of critique that help in reenvisioning existing moral norms that exercise institutional violence. In part 1, I examined how practical wisdom offers such a critique. In part 2, I investigated how affection and desire for others contributes to such a critique. Here, I propose to understand the narrative as a possible, more common (i.e., in the public domain rather than in the face-to-face encounter) way of critique to existing moral norms. Historical narratives and fiction in particular can recall the past and its victims, as I argued. The others who are the victims of the past are possibly the victims of institutional violence. In recalling this violence, historical narratives and fiction criticize moral norms that are the onset of institutional violence, at least in that these narratives offer a critical warning. They draw the attention to occurrences of institutional violence and, in so doing, remind us that those occurrences should not repeat themselves. Ricœur’s idea of obligated memory therefore demonstrates that a moral anthropology that aims at understanding responsibility and justice in relation to feelings should not be limited to a descriptive analysis of how natural feelings find expression in different communities and influence our practices of holding responsible. Indeed, the norms and rules that shape those practices are not merely empirical facts. They are part of the institution’s symbolical order that functions both to maintain peace and to exercise power over others. When power over others amounts to institutional violence, narratives help criticizing this kind of evil. This is not to reduce history and narrativity to the victims of the past, but to point at a critical function of the narrative. For that reason, Ricœur’s idea of obligated memory is an important part of his moral anthropology, and demonstrates that understanding responsibility and justice implies taking into account the narrative. Hence, the task of hermeneutics with regard to moral anthropology is the interpretation of the text, as well as the understanding as to how the text relates to action and ethical and moral life. Moreover, understanding the relation between responsibility, justice and the narrative implies the idea of singularity, as I argue, in that our responsibility toward institutional violence is a way of doing justice to the others of the past, and thus of responding to otherness.

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Gary Watson’s article “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil,” to which I referred earlier, is once again illustrative in this regard. In the first part, I argued that this article explains the empirical relation between personal identity and moral agency. I argued that Watson explains that responsible actions are the result of the psychological interaction between selves and their moral communities. For example, the Robert Harris murder case, which Watson examines in his article, demonstrates how Harris’ murders resulted from the interaction between his personal history and the moral community in which he grew up. Watson’s article touches upon the question of evil in that it explains to what extent selves are capable of evil, and in what sense examples of evil, like Harris’ case, influence moral communities and their practices of holding responsible: “It is the individual’s own response [to one’s former circumstances] that distinguishes those who become evil and those who do not.”39 In this regard, Harris’ history of childhood abuse, which resulted in his rejection of the moral community, explains his tendency toward evil. Further, Harris’ responsibility depends on how he is held responsible and blamed by means of the moral feelings, standards, and norms of his community. Miles Corwin’s report of Harris’ case in the Los Angeles Times functions as “proof” or as illustration for defining responsibility in the sense of agency in relation to empirical data on natural feelings and moral communities. Yet Corwin’s report and Watson’s article are also narratives that attest to historical occurrences of evil. These narratives illustrate how humans use texts—whether or not by means of the popular media—to remember these occurrences and their victims. Corwin’s newspaper article and Watson’s philosophical discourse both are texts that aim at understanding these passed events for future generations. In this regard, these texts express our responsibility for the past. Yet the Harris’ murder case also raises questions about the nature of evil and how evil relates to responsibility. It appears that evil should not merely be explained as a psychological causal relation between the agent and his or her actions. Corwin’s report reminds us that evil occurs in face-to-face encounters within institutions. This is not simply an empirical fact, but calls for the communal responsibility to deal with occurrences of evil and to maintain justice. Ricœur contends in Time and Narrative 3 that “the concept of ‘reality’ that is applied to the past” differs from the idea of observable empirical reality.40 In this respect, it makes no difference to say “that a given event reported by a historian was observable by witnesses in the past.”41 Moreover, one might ask to what extent popular media does sufficient justice to the victims of which it recounts, as discussions of media-ethics attest.42 In Time and Narrative 3, Ricœur introduces his idea of “having-been,” by which he explains that we have only access to the past indirectly, through memory and imagination.43 The imagination of the narrative, yet in relation



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to the reality of the past, thus adds to our understanding of responsibility in that it allows recalling the past. Rules of justice are imperative within communities. However, because of the ambiguity of justice—it relates both to peace and to evil—narratives are alternative ways of reworking and criticizing occurrences of evil both in face-to-face encounters and on the level of institutions. Corwin’s report and similar narratives therefore also inspire thinking, for example, about the adequateness of capital punishment as a way of maintaining peace, and how it relates to institutional justice and penal responsibility. I think Ricœur’s hermeneutical understanding of evil thus demonstrates that responsibility and justice should be understood, not only in relation to agency, but also in relation to the narrative. Narratives are critical ways of warning for occurrences of evil in referring to evil in the past, and, as I will argue in the next section, in warning for future’s evil. UTOPIAS AND FUTURE EVIL Responsibility for the past and for the future In this section I aim to demonstrate with Ricœur that our responsibility for the past implies a responsibility for the future. In a certain sense, the whole idea of remembering the past is to pass it on to future generations. If we are responsible for recalling the occurrences of evil of the past, then this is clearly not simply out of a curiosity for history, but also in order to withhold these occurrences from repeating themselves in the future. In other words, it is first of all, so it appears, for the present and for the others of future generations that we recollect the past. Therefore, I think that Ricœur’s idea of narrative draws our attention to our responsibility not only toward the past but also toward the future, and that this sense of responsibility is part of his moral anthropology. In Ricœur’s understanding, memory should be understood as an obligation or duty in relation to the idea of a future project of justice for others. As he writes in Memory, History, Forgetting, “justice … turns memory into a project; and it is this same project of justice that gives the form of the future and of the imperative to the duty of memory.”44 Following Ricœur, human beings have the duty or obligation to remember certain passed events, because these memories of these events will do justice to the others of the past and the future. Humans hold on to memories of the past, and make this holding on a project for the future, in order to learn from the mistakes of the past and avoid them in the future. In a different context, Ricœur argues with Hans Jonas in “The Concept of Responsibility,” and in Oneself as Another, that we are responsible, not only for the action we perform, but also, at least to a certain extent, for the consequences of these actions and for future humanity as such.45

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I think Ricœur’s understanding of obligated memory relates to his understanding of responsibility. As I argued, Ricœur discusses in “The Concept of Responsibility” Levinas’ idea that others are the primary objects of responsibility. This idea is also significant for Ricœur’s understanding of obligated memory in that, according to this idea, we are responsible for the others of the past and the future. Further, in “The Concept of Responsibility,” he defends the idea that human beings have a responsibility not only for the actions that they control, but also—to a certain extent—for the harmful effects of these actions, even if those effects are beyond their immediate control. He writes, responsibility has an extended “scope,” both “temporal” and “spatial” in that we should not only ascribe responsibility to persons for the actions of which they are the direct cause, but also to the side effects of these actions over space and time.46 This idea can be understood in relation to the so-called “butterfly effect” in chaos theory, or the phenomenon whereby a minor change in one part of the universe can cause major changes elsewhere.47 According to Ricœur, the fact that human action has consequences over time and space makes that we have responsibility toward “the future vulnerability of humanity and its environment.”48 Ricœur’s idea of responsibility toward future generation in “The Concept of Responsibility” helps understanding, in my opinion, his idea, in the third volume of Time and Narrative and in Memory History, Forgetting, that history implies the responsibility to be remembered for future generations through narratives. In that history has consequences for the future, it should neither be dismissed nor be categorized simply as the empirical facts that they are, but recollected for the future in narratives. Hence, Ricœur’s moral anthropology shows how narratives help understanding the ideas of responsibility and justice (toward past and future generations). Yet important to note is that Ricœur’s idea of responsibility toward future generations in “The Concept of Responsibility” should be understood in a different context than his idea of responsibility in the third volume of Time and Narrative and in Memory, History, Forgetting. Following Hans Jonas and others, Ricœur aims to examine in “The Concept of Responsibility” the idea of collective responsibility, and whether and to what extent understanding responsibility implies leaving aside shared risks and “the secondary effects” of actions.49 According to him, understanding responsibility in this sense means avoiding two opposed positions. On the one hand, the position that we are only responsible for the intentions of our actions results in closing “one’s eyes to the consequences” of these actions and “washing one’s hands” in innocence. On the other hand, contending that responsibility would imply taking into consideration “every consequence, including those contrary to the original intention, ends up rendering the agent responsible for everything in an indiscriminate way.”50



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In Time and Narrative, however, Ricœur discusses the idea of obligated memory in his analysis of the structure of narrative. In Memory, History, Forgetting, he examines this idea in the context of his examination of the relation between history and the experiences of memory and forgetting. Insofar as that all of these texts discuss the idea of collective responsibility toward others (in the past and in the future), these texts nevertheless have in common, I think, that they highlight the significance of narratives for understanding responsibility. Historical narratives and fiction in particular not only express our responsibility with regard to evil in that they do justice to historical occurrences of evil but also express this responsibility in that they help to prevent future occurrences of evil. For that reason, and to paint the bigger picture of his moral anthropology, I think it is insightful to bring together Ricœur’s idea of responsibility in Time and Narrative 3 and in Memory, History, Forgetting on the one hand and his idea of responsibility in “The Concept of Responsibility” on the other. In “The Concept of Responsibility,” Ricœur emphasizes the significance of moral feelings for understanding responsibility. In referring to Hegel, Ricœur contends that understanding responsibility in relation to mores has the advantage of answering the dilemma whether we are responsible for the consequences of our actions or not. Ricœur writes: Hegel claims to get out of this dilemma only by surpassing the point of view of morality with that of Sittlichkeit, of the concrete social morality that brings with it the wisdom of mores, customs, shared beliefs, and institutions that bear the stamp of history.51

Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, understanding responsibility within the situational context of concrete historical communities and their moral ­standards, values, and feelings demonstrates that our responsibility for the consequences of our actions depends on concrete communal judgments. If we are responsible insofar as that we are held responsible by means of feeling-based standards within communities, then these standards determine the extent to which a person is responsible for the consequences of his or her actions. Whether or not we are responsible for the consequences of our actions then depends on the community’s judgment and on the concrete situation in which this judgment takes place. Circumstantial events in childhood are beyond one’s control. Yet the community can judge agents as being responsible even when they are not in full control of these circumstantial events. However, as I stressed, feeling-based communal judgment can be seriously mistaken about circumstantial events and the extent to which persons are responsible for these events. In “The Concept of Responsibility,” Ricœur

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therefore points to the importance of critical judgment concerning mores. According to him, holding persons responsible should be based on “prudentia, heir to the Greek virtue of phronesis; in other words, the sense of moral judgment in some specific circumstance.” He continues: It is to such prudence … that is assigned the task of recognizing among the innumerable consequences of action those for which we can legitimately be held responsible.52

I think Ricœur underscores in this passage the significance of the idea of ­singularity in its threefold relation (i.e., in relation to ipseity, to alterity, and to narrativity) for understanding responsibility. Following Ricœur’s argument, in order to withhold mores from causing evil or violence to others they should be applied with critical judgment. Such judgment implies a self (or several selves), with a singular narrative identity and capable of critical judgment. Further, critical judgment implies taking into account the singularity of the situation to which they are applied, and the singularity of concrete others within these situations. Not only does such critical judgment imply the idea of ipseity and alterity: the self capable of judging with regard to others. Moreover, narratives play a significant role in this kind of judgment. Exemplary in this regard are narratives that question leading moral standards, values, or feelings. Hence, Ricœur points at the significance of ipseity, alterity, and narrativity for understanding responsibility on the basis of natural moral feelings, as recent theories in analytical philosophy aim to do. I am arguing that responsibility for the past and the future should be understood in relation to the idea of singularity. In this respect, we should distinguish, in my opinion, between two different meanings of the concept “responsibility” in Ricœur’s moral anthropology. On the one hand, Ricœur understands responsibility in relation to the idea of agency. On the other hand, he proposes to understand responsibility in relation to the community. Responsibility in this last sense should be understood, for Ricœur, not in the first place as the agent’s or the self’s responsibility (in relation to others), but as the collective responsibility humans have, within communities, toward history, and toward future generations. I think we should further distinguish between Ricœur’s idea of evil in Oneself as Another on the one hand and his idea of evil in the third volume of Time and Narrative, and in History, Memory, Forgetting on the other hand. In his “little ethics” in Oneself as Another, Ricœur thinks of evil in the first place in terms of fallibility or in terms of failure of the self’s capacity to act according to the good life with and for others in just institutions. For him, the reality of evil resides in the “occasion of violence.”53 Given that the self is capable



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of acting for the good life, the self possibly exercises violence in dominating over the will of others. He writes, “The turn toward violence, resides in the power exerted over one will by another will.”54 In Oneself as Another Ricœur gives several examples of violence of different degrees, going from “influence,” being “the gentle form of holding power-over,” to “torture,” and “abuse.”55 For Ricœur, evil understood in this sense thus means that the self’s capability for ethical action fails when capacity transforms in or amounts to power over others. In the third volume of Time and Narrative and in History, Memory, Forgetting, however, Ricœur understands evil in terms of occurrences of evil in history. Clearly, selves often perform these occurrences. Yet these events are also possibly the result of communities and institutional violence. The example of the women who were accused of witchcraft in the seventeenth-century community of Salem attest that communal feelings or mores can be the onset of violence and evil. Moral feelings thus possibly entail evil and violence when these feelings find expression in institutions and are translated into norms. Hence, I think that a moral anthropology that aims to understand responsibility and justice in relation to moral feelings should take into account this idea of evil, like Ricœur’s does. For that reason also, I think Ricœur’s moral anthropology has significance in today’s philosophical landscape, in which several moral theories in analytical philosophy reduce responsibility and justice to an analysis of those feelings. Ricœur shows that things are not quite as simple as that. In chapter 7, I identified four different ways in which institutional evil occurs: (1) insofar as that moral feelings relate to violent feelings (blame, vengeance, resentment, etc., (2) because the rationality of the universal norm reduces otherness (the norm amounts to an essence and does not take into account the singularity of the other), (3) in that the formal structure of the norm reduces otherness (it applies for everyone in the same sense), (4) because moral feelings find expression in institutions that make use of ideologies that exert power over others (possibly in violent ways). At the same time, institutions and norms are necessary, as I argued, to maintain peace in institutions. I think narratives offer an answer to this ambiguity inherent to justice. In recalling occurrences of institutional violence historical narratives and fiction provide critical warnings for the future: they warn us about evil in history and, in so doing, help to avoid similar evil and to maintain peace in the future. Utopia as a different kind of narrative for the responsibility for the future In the previous section, I examined how fiction and historical narratives express a responsibility for the past and the future. I argued that these kinds of narratives can offer a way of critique with regard to institutional

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(moral) norms by recalling the occurrences when these norms result in evil. In this section, I will examine utopias as a different kind of fiction and as a way for criticizing and reenvisioning institutional norms. Therefore, I will draw on Ricœur’s idea of utopia in the three concluding lectures of the Lectures on Ideology and Utopia.56 In the Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Ricœur understands the utopia as a social group’s or minorities capacity to constitute a narrative that goes against the leading ideological or institutional ideas and norms. Hence, for Ricœur, utopias have a sociological meaning and thus should not be understood merely as a particular literary genre in history, which Thomas More gave birth to with his Utopia. Ricœur defines the utopia then in relation to imagination, as opposed to ideology. In the Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, he writes, imagination works in two different ways. On the one hand, imagination may function to reserve an order. In this case the function of imagination is to stage a process of identification that mirrors the order. Imagination has the appearance here of a picture. On the other hand, though, imagination may have a disruptive function; it may work as a breakthrough. Its image in this case is productive, an imagining of something else, the elsewhere. … Ideology represents the first kind of imagination; it has a function of preservation, of conservation. Utopia, in contrast, represents the second kind of imagination; it is always the glance from nowhere.57

Following Ricœur’s line of reasoning, minority groups are capable of ­writing their own utopian narrative. They can search a common voice through these narratives that allows them to criticize existing institutional rules and moral norms. One can think of feminist literature, Afro-American music or of ­theories that more explicitly present a utopian political idea, like Marixism. In that respect, they can find a way of moral and political dissent regarding the ruling and oppressing classes. Ricœur’s discussion of Mannheim’s sociological criteriology of utopias is particularly fruitful, I think, for defining the utopia as a way of critique of moral norms. He distinguishes several main features in this criteriology. First of all, utopia is “situationally transcendent while ideology is not,” which means that utopias envision a different social reality than the one that is situated within the existing institutional system.58 However, despite its transcendent character utopia, understood as a way of scattering and redefining the social order, is also realizable in principle, and not “merely a dream” that is “a-topos,” pure fiction.59 Next, a “utopia is the discourse of a group and not a kind of literary work floating in the air.”60 It is an expression of “ascending groups,” against “a collective ego,” rather than the voice of the “dominant



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groups.”61 Moreover, while ideologies represent the ruling order of the “past,” utopias aim at breaking with this order. I think Ricœur’s interpretation of Mannheim’s idea of utopia demonstrates how utopias function as critiques of existing moral norms. In chapter 2, I discussed several theories in moral psychology that aim to understand responsibility in relation to existing culturally located moral norms and practices of holding responsible. We are responsible, so these theories argue, in that we hold each other responsible in the context of particular communities. Although those theories are certainly valuable, as I aimed to demonstrate in that chapter, the idea of narrativity questions a reductionist approach to the question of responsibility. By writing narratives, humans—and in particular minority groups that aim to break with the existing social order—are capable of questioning the symbolic order of a community, institution or ideology. This order is therefore not simply a fixed empirical-causal network: it can change in light of new ideas that narratives can introduce, by introducing a concept of another social order for the future, rather than in creating a fictional dream world. Hence, I think Ricœur demonstrates that a moral anthropology that aims to understand responsibility and justice in light of mores that take shape differently in different cultures should take into account the idea of narrativity. Yet, important to note is that Ricœur is also critical with regard to Mannheim, in particular in that he reduces “the individual element of ­utopia … to social structure.”62 This point is significant for my investigation of the ideas of responsibility and justice in light of that of singularity. Indeed, if the idea of utopia offers a way of understanding our responsibility for the future, that is, a way of criticizing and reenvisioning institutions when these oppress minorities, to what extent does the idea of utopia reduce the idea of a singular lived existence to a social structure? Does the utopia as a common source of critique maintain a trace of the singularity of the self and that of the other? Although Ricœur does not so much as elaborate the idea of singularity in the Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, I think his idea of the relation between ideology and utopia reflects the relation between the self and the other, and in that sense relates to the idea of singularity. In fact, it is significant that he defines ideology as a “collective ego,” while he calls utopia the voice of “ascending groups.”63 Ideologies represent the conservative side of institutions in order to preserve the same. They aim at maintaining the power of the ruling groups over those who are the other. As Ricœur points out, power is “repetitious.”64 “One power imitates another. Alexander tried to imitate the oriental despots, the Roman Caesars tried to imitate Alexander, others tried to imitate Rome, and so on throughout history.”65 Ideologies aim to maintain

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the power of the ruling class, even though the ruling class may switch places. Utopias, on the other hand, bear the trace of otherness. They offer others a way of expressing their otherness against that which remains the same in the institutional order. Hence, Ricœur’s main thesis in the Lectures on Ideology and Utopia is, as he contends, that “ideology is always an attempt to legitimate power, while utopia is always an attempt to replace power with something else.”66 Hence, Ricœur also stresses with Saint-Simon the importance of “imagination” in utopias.67 Insofar as that utopias are the expression of the imagination of others, they bear a trace of otherness, yet in a different sense than historical narratives. Whereas historical narratives bear witness to the others of the past, utopias narrate about the others of the future. Surely, both kinds of narratives thematize otherness, and therefore “translate” the singularity of the other to the narrative structure of the story. However, utopia is not a total reduction of the singularity of the other in that resists reducing the other to a complete “picture.”68 For Ricœur, utopias that give a complete picture of the future institutional order miss their mark, since the whole idea of utopia is that others can use narratives to question and scatter the ruling institutional power system. This questioning that utopias make possible is thus a never-ending process, because otherwise the utopia would become a fixed ideology. Regarding the idea of utopia, we find another similarity between Ricœur’s thought and Levinas.’ In fact, Levinas comments on this idea in the interview “The Other, Utopia, and Justice.”69 According to Levinas, the idea of utopia reflects the tension between responsibility for the other and justice. As I argued, this tension is, according to Levinas, that the other calls for justice on the one hand, but that justice implies thematization and organization, and thus reduction of the singularity of the other on the other hand. Absolute justice is therefore a utopia in Levinas’ opinion, because we have debts and are responsible toward others, yet “in this responsibility want peace, justice, reason.”70 In other words, responsibility implies sacrifice for others in order to achieve justice. Yet justice means equality, and hence a limit to this sacrifice. Similarly, I argued previously, justice is ambiguous in that it aims for peace, but at the same time relates to institutional violence. Similarly also, the utopian society for Ricœur leans toward the impossible and unrealizable. He writes, “All utopias have the ambiguity of claiming to be realizable but at the same time of being works of fancy, the impossible.”71 He offers a hermeneutic approach to utopia. In contrast to Levinas, he contends that utopia, the just institutional society, is not only a thematization of otherness. Rather, utopia is a “polemic tool,” which others can use to advocate for different institutional norms.72 In that sense, utopia relates to responsibility for the other and bears a trace of the singularity of the other. Utopias, in the sense of the narratives of others that are oppressed by institutional power,



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recall the need for justice for others and thus call to responsibility. They are rhetoric tools that question and criticize institutional power and violence. Yet insofar as the utopia proposes an alternative structure of power, it also implies the risk of becoming an ideology that exercises institutional power over others. Hence, the dynamic between ideology and utopia is a “spiral” for Ricœur, which means that it is never fully realized, but that we should search with “practical wisdom” for justice and the right institutional norms.73 This means that, although they are not absolute, moral norms and practices are not merely causal relations between natural and communal feelings. In conclusion, the critique of morality, through narratives, offers a third way of critique to moral norms. I already examined two ways of critique to moral norms: practical wisdom (the first part), and affection and desire for otherness (the second part). Practical wisdom relies on ipseity: the self uses practical wisdom to make ethical decisions in concrete situations and in so doing he or she critically approaches moral norms, which might ask for an exception or be revoked. Yet practical wisdom presupposes sensibility for the suffering of the other and desire for otherness. Exception or revocation of moral norms through practical wisdom is inspired by a response to the other than self, in particular to the suffering of this other, rather than by a means for one’s own ends. However, these two ways of critique should be understood in the context of face-to-face encounters. Narratives offer a more public way of critique, like the dialogue between different cultures. At the same time, narratives should be understood in relation to the idea of singularity. Rather than being a decision of one single self, or a relation with a single other, the narrative is a public critique; it can be read by several, criticized, reworked, etc. Certainly, a narrative is the creation of a self (or selves): the author(s). Further, it bears a trace of the other insofar as that it narrates about the singular existences of others and recalls the past for the others of the future. In that respect, the narrative is the expression of our responsibility toward the others of the past and the future. The narrative is thus also located within a particular historical and cultural context as it is the creation of an author that writes in the context of his own zeitgeist. Different people nevertheless read narratives across different cultures, and therefore they are the inspiration for a critique of moral norms across the different cultures. Here again, it is clear how people do render ethical meaning to their existence, in contrast to what Galen Strawson and other opponents of the narrativity thesis contend. People use utopian narratives to express their views on how ethical life should be understood, and what justice ought to be. This is not to say that every one of us is genetically or psychologically inclined to make stories of their life or to live up to a higher telos. Ricœur’s moral anthropology shows, in a more practical sense, that narratives do play a part in how selves and others give ethical meaning to the world.

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NOTES 1. Paul Ricœur, Time and Narrative 3, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 181. 2. Ibid., 184. 3. Ibid., 189. 4. Ibid., 184. 5. Ibid., 181. 6. Ibid., 143. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 100. 10. Paul Ricœur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 88. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid., 87. 13. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 249. 14. Antonius C. G. M. Robben, Death, Mourning and Burial. A Cross-cultural Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). 15. Galen Strawson, “Against Narrativity,” Ratio 27 (2004): 428–52. 16. Ibid., 428. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 436. 19. Marya Schechtman, “Stories, Lives, and Basic Survival,” In: Narrative and Understanding Persons, ed. Daniel D. Hutto (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 173. 20. Paul Ricœur, Time and Narrative 1, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 52 ff. 21. Will Buckingham, Levinas, Storytelling and Anti-storytelling (London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). Kindle e-book edition. ch. 4, loc. 1137, par. 1. 22. Emmanuel Levinas, Oeuvres completes. Tome 3: Eros, littérature et philosophie, ed. Jean-Luc Marion et al. (Paris: Grasset, 2013). 23. Buckingham, Levinas, Storytelling and Anti-storytelling, ch. 4, loc. 1034, par 1 ff. 24. According to Buckingham, he even “turned his back on stories” with the publication of Otherwise than Being (Buckingham 2013, ch. 11, loc. 2144, par. 1). 25. Levinas, Humanism of the Other, 36. 26. Ricœur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 88. 27. Ricœur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 89. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid. 31. Ricœur, Time and Narrative 3, 143. 32. Kearney, “On the Hermeneutics of Evil,” 205. 33. Ibid., 205. 34. Ibid.



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35. Ricœur, Time and Narrative 3, 143. 36. Ricœur, Time and Narrative 3, 186. 37. Kearney gives several examples of such events: “Dachau, Hiroshima, the Gulag, the Armenian massacre, Mai Lai, Bloody Sunday, the Killing Fields of Cambodia, Sabra and Chatilla, Tienehmien Square” (Kearney 2006, 208). 38. Ibid. 39. Watson, “Responsibility and the Limits of Evil,” 249 40. Ricœur, Time and Narrative 3, 157. 41. Ibid. 42. It is not my intention in this chapter to discuss the precise extent to which popular media can express our responsibility toward the victims of institutional violence. This would take a book length on itself. In this chapter, I only intend to point in the direction of how narratives can serve as a common source of critique of institutional injustice. It is clear that, in principle, popular media can serve as such narratives. 43. Ricœur, Time and Narrative 3, 157. 44. Ricœur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 88. 45. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 294; Ricœur, The Just, 12ff. 46. Ricœur, The Just, 29. 47. See, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. 48. Ricœur, The Just, 29. 49. Ibid., 32. 50. Ibid. 51. Ricœur, The Just, 32. 52. Ibid., 34. 53. Ricœur, Oneself as Another, 220. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56. Paul Ricœur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, George H. Taylor (ed.) (New York: Colombia University Press, 1986), 269–314. 57. Ibid., 265–6 58. Ibid., 272. 59. Ibid., 273. 60. Ibid., 274. 61. Ibid., 273. 62. Ibid., 285. 63. Ibid., 273. My emphasis. 64. Ibid., 298. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid., 288. 67. Ibid., 296. 68. Ibid., 295. 69. Levinas, Entre Nous, 223–33. 70. Ibid., 231. 71. Ricœur, The Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 301. 72. Ibid., 310. 73. Ibid., 312, 314.

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Conclusion

Historical Narrative, Fiction, and Utopia as Ways of Critique

In this part, I argued with Ricœur that justice is essentially ambiguous. I defined this ambiguity as follows: on the one hand, justice’s goal is to compensate for the injustices done to others and to establish relations of peace and mutual recognition, yet, on the other hand, justice also finds expression in institutions that risk exercising power over others. I argued that Ricœur’s moral anthropology highlights this ambiguity. His idea of institutional justice in particular shows how institutional justice systems imply practices of punishment and rules of justice that are necessary to maintain justice, but also find their roots in violent moral feelings (e.g., vengeance and resentment). These rules moreover have a formal structure that makes an abstraction of the singularity of the other (i.e., rules of justice apply for every person in the same sense), and they entail a struggle for recognition between the members of the community, who defend different and diverging moral standards, values, and norms. In chapter 7, I argued that, insofar as justice is ambiguous, it calls for a communal responsibility to maintain justice within institutions in which violence might take the upper hand. If we agree with Ricœur and Levinas that (vulnerable) others are the primary objects of our responsibility, then responsibility should be understood, not only as an individual responsibility, but also as a collective responsibility toward these others. Communities, and not only selves, are capable of performing violence toward others and are therefore responsible. The possibility of evil exists, not only in the self’s capacity, but within the communal practices of holding others responsible, and within moral practices in general. This communal responsibility does not only amount to finding “good” rules of justice that can maintain peaceful relationships: a necessary condition for and common source of moral life. It also implies, precisely because 233

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of the ambiguity of justice, a permanent vigilance and critique of existing institutional rules of justice, when those rules risk violating others. I argued in line with Ricœur that narratives allow for such vigilance and critique in testifying to the others that were the victims of institutional violence in the past and in being the medium of moral and political dissent performed by others and minorities. Chapter 8 discussed how Ricœur’s idea of obligated memory demonstrates that communities use narratives to recall and rework occurrences of evil and institutional violence. They do this through fiction and historical narratives, which can recall the past. In that sense, fiction and historical narratives do justice to the others that were the victims of evil in the past. These narratives bear witness to these others, and thus express responsibility for these others. Further, the responsibility toward institutional violence also finds an expression, as I argued, in utopias in the broad sociological sense, rather than in the strictly literary sense. Whereas historical narratives can recall the past and warn against the recurrence of passed evil in the future, utopias can create and review institutional systems. Even if the process of utopian critique is permanently prospective and never complete, since the utopia remains to some extent a fantasy, the utopia expresses a communal responsibility toward others in institutions. This idea of communal responsibility for the other relates to the idea of singularity. There is a trace of the singularity of the other in the narrative: although narratives thematize the other, as Levinas also contends, they can nevertheless recount about the singular lived existences of others. Fiction and historical narratives recall the existences of others in the past. Moreover, minorities and others can use utopias to reenvision existing institutional systems in order to promote their singularity or otherness through advocating for different norms, values, and standards that might be oppressed by those systems. Responsibility and justice should therefore not simply be understood as expressions of existing moral norms and practices of holding responsible or as culturally relative, because the narrative allows criticizing and reviewing these norms and practices cross-culturally. Even though a narrative should be understood in a particular historical and cultural context, it also offers a way of critique that is accessible to different members of different cultures. Narratives thus offer a textual or hermeneutical approach to moral anthropology and to understanding responsibility and justice. For that reason they do play a crucial part in moral life.

Epilogue

Analysis and Interpretation A Hermeneutical Dialogue with Analytical Philosophy

In this book I examined the extent to which Ricœur’s philosophy should be understood as a moral anthropology that demonstrates the significance of the idea of singularity for understanding responsibility and justice. This examination was inspired by the growing interest in contemporary philosophy–in particular in analytical philosophy–in naturalistic moral theory. Because of this growing interest and the increasing number of theories that contend that responsibility and justice should be explained in terms of natural feelings that find expression in moral communities, this book aimed to demonstrate with Ricœur the significance of phenomenological analysis of the relation with the other as well as of hermeneutical interpretation of our lived existence and of the narrative for defining the ideas of responsibility and justice. There are several reasons Ricœur’s moral anthropology is particularly suitable for a confrontation with analytical moral theory. First of all, Ricœur himself points at several occasions to the significance of analytical philosophy and contends that hermeneutics should find its way by means of a “detour” through analytical philosophy. Therefore, his phenomenological-hermeneutical approach to moral anthropology does not offer, so this book aimed to show, a blunt critique to analytical philosophy, but rather a critical reflection that includes a constant dialogue with analytical philosophy. I argued in part 1 that Ricœur’s discussion of analytical philosophy of language demonstrates an essential difference between analytical philosophy and hermeneutic phenomenology regarding the question of responsibility. Whereas analytical philosophy explains the empirical-causal relation between agency and responsibility hermeneutics understands the motives for being responsible. Analytical philosophy of language examines concepts in ordinary language that we use to ascribe responsibility to agents in empirical reality, and hermeneutic phenomenology investigates human action and text in order to find 235

236 Epilogue

the ontological conditions of being responsible as a self who has a singular existence. For Ricœur, the discourse of analytical philosophy should be combined with that of hermeneutic phenomenology in order to both explain and understand responsibility and justice. Moreover, Ricœur’s hermeneutic phenomenology is also significant with regard to more recent theories of responsibility and justice in moral anthropology and moral psychology. As I pointed out, these theories provide a corrective to earlier analytical philosophy that find that moral feelings to have no cognitive status. Whereas early analytical philosophy explains how we use the concepts of the self and responsibility to ascribe responsibility to agents, theories in moral anthropology and moral psychology explain the empirical relation between responsibility and human nature, or how we use natural moral feelings to ascribe responsibility to each other (cf. praise and blame). Yet Ricœur demonstrates that we come to understand our ethical and moral feelings, and therefore come to understand the motivations for being responsible only through our singular lived existence with others and with narratives: through self-esteem and solicitude we come to learn the reasons for being responsible and for justice. Hence, the idea of singularity is significant for understanding responsibility, so I argued, in that it demonstrates that a moral anthropology that aims at understanding responsibility and justice in relation to feelings should imply the interpretation of the self’s singular lived existence. Recent theories in moral anthropology and moral psychology are legitimate and important in that they empirically explain responsibility, but hermeneutic phenomenology adds to moral anthropology in that it understands the ontological conditions of responsibility and justice. Furthermore, Ricœur’s philosophy is exemplary for confronting recent theories in moral anthropology in that it is a thoroughly anthropological philosophy. Indeed, as I argued, Ricœur’s philosophy is first of all an anthropology of human action. Yet, instead of a reductionist moral anthropology that contends that moral life should be explained in terms of causal relations between natural feelings only, Ricœur offers a hermeneutical anthropology that draws both on the analysis of feelings, as well as on the interpretation of human action through narratives. I examined Ricœur’s moral anthropology in light of contemporary theories that hold that responsibility is relative to feelings within particular moral communities and cultures. According to these theories, we are responsible insofar as we hold each other responsible by means of the moral feelings, standards, and norms of the moral community. These theories hold that different cultures have different moral norms. Drawing on this idea of cultural difference regarding morality, I questioned Ricœur’s idea of understanding moral norms as universal imperatives of action. I argued in

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part 1 that, because moral norms differ cross-culturally, there are no universal moral norms, as Ricœur contends in Chapter 8 of Oneself as Another. Yet rather than defending a radical moral relativism, I aimed to define different ways in which humans find common ground in their ethical and moral existence across the cultures. I argued that humans find common ground not so much in universal formal moral norms, but rather in intercultural dialogue about moral norms. This kind of dialogue possibly leads to metacultural consensus about moral norms (cf. the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). What is more, the affective relation with the other should be understood, so I argued in the second part, as a common source of ethical and moral life. Further, in the third part I examined the narrative as a way in which humans can express and find common sensibilities about ethical and moral existence. In order to define the affective relation with the other as a common source of morality I turned in the second part to the discussion between Ricœur and Levinas. The aim of examining this discussion was to define the extent to which the affective relation with the other should be understood as a crosscultural sensibility of moral life. After all, it is questionable whether and to what extent feelings and affections are common, if moral feelings find different expressions in different cultures. Ricœur adopts Levinas’ idea that the affective relation with the other is the center of morality and reworks this idea into his own moral anthropology. In doing so, Ricœur demonstrates the significance of the idea of the other for moral anthropology. He points out that natural moral feelings are foremost feelings toward others: sympathy, respect, conscience, etc. However, because Ricœur defines the other in anthropological terms, that is in terms of the self capable of performing ethical and moral actions (the other person, the other as the voice of conscience, the other capable self, etc.), he insufficiently understands the singularity of the other than self, as I argued. This notion of singularity is nevertheless salient for understanding the affective relation with the other as common source of morality, that is, for defining a sensibility for or responsiveness to otherness that demonstrates how humans are responsible for the other, even when this other is not part of the same moral community. I examined Levinas’ phenomenological analysis of the relation with the other. For Levinas, the other should not be reduced to an ontological essence, be it anthropological, psychological, or biological. Levinas demonstrates, I contended, that our sensibility for the vulnerability of others makes us responsive to the other in that it makes us feel ill at ease in our skin. This sensibility is nonontological, that is, it should not be reduced to an intentional relation of consciousness: it is a radically passive relation prior to the act of consciousness, and therefore a relation with the singularity of the other.

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Moreover, humans share this sensibility despite their cultural heritage, at least in that it allows for critique to existing morals that find their roots in moral cultures. I argued that Levinas demonstrates that the sensibility for the vulnerability of the other allows for a critical attitude toward morals, when those morals result in violence toward others or minorities. Yet as Ricœur also points out, the passive affective relation with the other makes us responsive to the suffering of the other, rather than responding to the other than self. Therefore, I argued that Levinas’ idea of desire for otherness should be understood as a common sensibility to respond to the singularity of the other, in welcoming otherness, regardless of cultural differences. Affection for the vulnerability of the other together with desire for the other than self should thus be understood as the onset of a critique toward morals. In that regard, alterity is significant for understanding responsibility in relation to singularity as the backdrop of moral anthropology. However, if sensibility and desire for the other are the onset of a critique of moral norms and allow finding a common way of approaching morality, sensibility and desire also leave open the question of evil. Indeed, evil occurs, as I argued in part 3, as a result of practices of holding responsible not only within particular moral communities, but also within the affective relation between the self and the other. The relation in which the vulnerable other affects the self is possibly a relation in which the self exerts power over the other and abuses his or her vulnerability. In part 3, I therefore examined in more detail what I called the “ambiguity of justice.” This ambiguity is the following. On the one hand, institutional justice is a necessary remedy against evil in the sense of violence in the concrete relation between self and other (hence the importance of legal punishment and justice systems). On the other hand, institutional justice relates to evil in that in its application it exercises power over others. I defined four ways in which institutional justice systems exercise power over others. (1) Institutional justice is the expression of violent feelings like blame and vengeance. (2) Justice implies thematization and organization and therefore leads to an abstraction from the singularity of the other (equality at the price of singularity). (3) Institutional rules of justice are the same for everyone and therefore also make abstraction of the singularity of the other. (4) Institutional justice entails a struggle for recognition between the defenders of different norms, standards, and values within communities. The aim of the part 3 was then to find a way of critiquing (violent) moral norms and rules of justice within the public domain, rather than within the context of the affective relation with the other. The narrative, as I argued, offers such a way of critique. Ricœur’s idea of obligated memory in particular demonstrates that we use historical narratives and fiction in order to recount about others that were the victims of institutional justice in the past.

Epilogue 239

In recalling those others through texts humans express what they experience as their obligation to do justice to the victims of the past. This way of being responsible with regard to the past implies the idea of singularity in that historical narratives and fiction are expressions of a self and bear a trace of the other. Further, I discussed the utopia as a different kind of narrative that we use to express our responsibility toward institutional violence. Utopias in the sociological sense allow others and minorities in communities a voice of protest against oppressing moral standards, values, and norms. In that they are the expressions of singular others, utopias imply the idea of singularity, which is important for understanding responsibility and justice.

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———, “Two Faces of Responsibility,” in: Agency and Answerability (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Williams, Garrath, “Responsibility,” in: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, James Fieser and Bradley Dowden (eds.) (http://www.iep.utm.edu/responsi/) Wittgenstein, Ludwig, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958).

Index

Anscombe, Elizabeth, 6, 26n Arendt, Hannah, 30–107 Aristotle, 31, 47, 51n, 59, 68–70, 97, 102, 105, 107, 114, 171–74, 180n, 186, 188n, 193, 196, 207n, 217 Auster, Paul, 56–58, 61, 84n Austin, John L., 10 Benedict, Ruth, 45, 53n Benjamin, Walter, 186, 188n, 196, 207n Boltanski, Luc, 66 Brecht, Berthold, 218 Descartes, René, 32 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 29, 159 Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 19, 126, 127, 141n, 175,213 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 67, 68, 117, 118, 178n, 185, 194, 223 Heidegger, Martin, 49, 93n, 114, 116, 117, 123n, 137, 138, 139, 142n, 177n Hobbes, Thomas, 133 Honneth, Axel, 185, 194 Hume, David, 102 Husserl, Edmund, 4, 13, 49, 130–33, 142n, 145–49, 151–53, 160, 176n Jonas, Hans, 97, 121, 221, 222

Kant, Immanuel, 28, 31, 32, 66–71, 74–80, 84n, 85n, 108–9, 113, 121n, 171 Kearney, Richard, xiiin, 93n, 158, 159, 178n, 188n, 216, 218, 230n, 231n Levinas, Emmanuel, xi, xii, xivn, 21, 49, 83, 91–93, 95–123, 125– 42, 143–79, 182–83, 187–89, 195, 200–202, 206, 208n, 209, 213–15, 222, 228, 230n, 231n, 233–34, 237–38 Locke, John, 102 Lynch, David, 213 MacIntyre, Alasdair, xiin, 10, 59, 105, 107 Maine de Biran, 130–31 Mannheim, 226, 227 McQueen, Steve, 218 More, Thomas, 83, 226 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 32, 117–18, 178 Nussbaum, Martha, xiiin, xivn, 10, 27, 51n, 67, 72–73, 84n, 85n, 105, 125n, 187–92, 196, 200, 202, 207n Plato, 171 Proust, Marcel, 213 Rawls, John, 10, 66, 82, 86n

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248 Index

Saint-Simon, 228 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 159 Searle, John, 10 Shakespeare, William, 213 Strawson, Peter F., 2n, 6–18, 25n, 26n, 33–42, 47, 48, 51–53n, 61–67, 84n, 97, 98, 102, 106, 132, 181, 191, 212

Strawson, Galen, 212, 213, 229, 230n Thévenot, Laurant, 66 Walzer, Michael, 66 Watson, Gary, 36, 47–50, 52n, 54n, 58–60, 64, 84n, 220, 231n Weber, Max, 190 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 18, 23, 24n, 26n, 88

About the Author

Geoffrey Dierckxsens obtained his PhD in philosophy from the University of Antwerp (Belgium) in 2015. His dissertation discusses Paul Ricœur’s moral anthropology in relation to contemporary moral theories in analytical philosophy. In 2013 and 2014, he worked as an associated researcher at the Fonds Ricœur in Paris (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales; EHESS). His main areas of research are hermeneutics, phenomenology, as well as moral and narrative theories in analytical philosophy. His publications include “The Ambiguity of Justice” (Ricœur Studies/Études Ricœuriennes), The Animal Inside. Essays at the Intersection of Philosophical Anthropology and Animal Studies (Rowman and Littlefield), “Responsibility and the Physical Body. Paul Ricoeur on Analytical Philosophy of Language, Cognitive Science, and the Task of Phenomenological Hermeneutics” (Philosophy Today). Geoffrey Dierckxsens works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Prague. His research project examines Ricœur’s hermeneutical-phenomenological approach to cognition and its significance in light of recent theories of enactivism in analytical ­philosophy of mind (2017–2019).

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