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Paul Marinescu

Romanian Society for Phenomenology, Alexandru Dragomir - Institute for Philosophy, Postdoctoral researcher

Lyon III University - Jean Moulin, Institut de Recherches Philosophiques de Lyon, Post-Doc

Romanian Society for Phenomenology, Members, Postdoctoral researcher

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Paul Marinescu has a PhD at the University of Bucharest and the University Lyon 3, with a thesis on “The Universality of Hermeneutics”. From 2011, he works as researcher at the Alexandru Dragomir — Institute for Philosophy, Romania, within different postdoctoral research projects. From 2013, he is member of the board of the Studia Phaenomenologica journal. In 2015, he was Fellow of the French Government & Fondation Maison Sciences de l’Homme. Coeditor of two journal issues devoted to Paul Ricoeur’s philosophy: Studia Phaenomenologica’s issue (2013): “On the Proper Use of Phenomenology” and Meta. Research in Hermeneutics’ issue (2017): “Exploring the Undisclosed Meanings of Time, History, and Existence: Ricœur and Patočka as Philosophical Interlocutors”. Coeditor of two collective volumes on the phenomenology of history (2012) and respectively on the existential vulnerability (2014). He translated into Romanian books by Paul Ricoeur, Eric de Rus, Jean Sevillia and Boris Cyrulnik. He published articles in international journals: Human Studies, Ricoeur Studies, International Journal for Philosophy and Theology, Archivio di Filosofia etc. His main areas of research are: Hermeneutics, Phenomenology and Historiography.

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Papers by Paul Marinescu

Puncte oarbe ale identitatii cu sine [Blind Spots of the Self-Identity]

Comunitate, identitate, diferenta. Priviri fenomenologice, 2018

Conferences by Paul Marinescu

„La vulnérabilité de l’être historique. La tension d’un indécidable: oubli destructeur / oubli fondateur”, Colloquium: Through crisis and conflict. Thinking differently with Paul Ricœur, organized by Université de Salento, 26 September 2012, Lecce, Italy.

„La traduction: ‘cas extrême’ ou ‘paradigme’ de l’expérience herméneutique? Un dialogue possible Gadamer – Ricœur”, Colloquium: Thinking about Translation: Philosophy on the Way between Languages, organized by Universidad Carlos III, 24-26 September 2012, Madrid, Spain.

„Hermeneutical crisis as rethinking the humanities. The question of trace: traces of the past, mnemonic traces”, Colloquium: Paul Ricoeur and the Future of the Humanities, organized by Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, 27-29 June 2013, Netherlands.

De la phénoménologie du témoignage à la crise de l’historiographie, Colloquium: Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, organized by Polish Association of Phenomenology, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, 28-29 November 2014, Warsaw, Poland.

Paradoxe et indétermination de la traduction : un dialogue esquissé entre Ricœur et Quine, Colloquium: Ricoeur et la philosophie de langue anglaise, organized by Fonds Ricoeur, EHSS, Society for Ricœur Studies, 18-20 November 2013, Paris, France.

Edited Books by Paul Marinescu

Paul Marinescu and Cristian Ciocan (eds.), From Witnessing to Testimony (Studia Phaenomenologica, Volume 21 / 2021)

by Cristian Ciocan, Paul Marinescu, Gert-Jan van der Heiden, Rodolphe Olcèse, Rafael Pérez Baquero, Lovisa Andén, Cassandra Falke, Gabriele Baratelli, and Alexis Delamare

Studia Phaenomenologica, 2021

On Conflict and Violence (Studia Phaenomenologica vol. 19 / 2019)

Studia Phaenomenologica, 2019

Paul Marinescu & Christian Ferencz-Flatz (Editors), Figuri ale vulnerabilităţii existenţiale. De la uitarea de sine la uitarea fiinţei [Figures of Existential Vulnerability. From the Self-Oblivion to the Oblivion of Being], University „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Publishing House, Iasi, 2014, p. 254.

Christian Ferencz-Flatz & Paul Marinescu (Editors), Timp, memorie şi tradiţie. Studii de fenomenologia istoriei [Time, Memory and Tradition. Studies in the Phenomenology of History], Bucharest, Zeta Books, 2012, p. 232.

Translations by Paul Marinescu

Paul Ricoeur, Sinele ca un altul [Soi-même comme un autre], Bucharest, Spandugino, 2016, p. 455 (translated by P. Marinescu & A.-D. Marinescu)

Bucharest, Ed. Spandugino, 2016, p. 455 (translated in collaboration with A.-D. Marinescu).

Eric de Rus, Persoana umana in orizontul intrebarii. Pentru o antropologie a interioritatii [La personne humaine en question. Pour une anthropologie de l'interiorité], Bucharest, Spandugino, 2016, p. 152.

Boris Cyrulnik, Rezilienta. Convorbiri cu Boris Cyrulnik, N. Martin et al., Bucharest, Spandugino, 2016.

Eric de Rus, Viziunea educativa a lui Edith Stein. Abordarea unui gest antropologic total, Bucharest, Spandugino, 2016.

Eric de Rus, Edith Stein – Arta de a educa. Antropologie, educaţie, viaţă spirituală [L’Art d’éduquer selon Edith Stein], Bucharest, Spandugino, p. 339, 2015 (translated by P. Marinescu & A.D. Marinescu)

Jean Sévillia, Corectitudinea morala [Moralement correct], Bucharest, Humanitas, col. „Zeitgeist”, p. 194, 2009, (translated by P. Marinescu & A.-D. Marinescu)

Paul Ricœur, La şcoala fenomenologiei [A l’école de la phénoménologie], Bucharest, Humanitas, col. „Acta Phaenomenologica”, p. 390, 2008 (translated by P. Marinescu & A.-D. Marinescu)

Journal Articles by Paul Marinescu

Introduction: On Conflict and Violence

by Cristian Ciocan and Paul Marinescu

Studia Phaenomenologica, Oct 11, 2019

The premise of the present issue of Studia Phænomenologica is that phenomenology, by virtue of it... more The premise of the present issue of Studia Phænomenologica is that phenomenology, by virtue of its being anchored in the concrete experience of subjectivity, of its specific conceptual endeavour and descriptive approach, has a unique theoretical potential not only to understand how the various aspects of violence are articulated with fundamental existential structures, but also to bring to light the intertwined meanings of the phenomenon of violence. In particular, the present issue is engaged in the task of capturing the complexity of the experience of violence by criss-crossing phenomenological perspectives on intersubjectivity (e.g., the problem of the hostile other, understood as an adversarial alterity), affectivity (e.g., the emergence of irritation, anger, wrath, and rage as a condition for conflict), and embodiment (e.g., the problem of vulnerability and of the infliction of pain intended by those involved in the factical situation of violence, having murder, the ultimate violence, as a limit). Another major reflection at stake is to consider how these structures of the phenomenon of violence are modalized according to the essential possibilities of spatiality and temporality, either by coming to the fore, or by fading, or by changing their configuration. In this case, it is only the description of the variations of the phenomenon of violence as a whole that can indeed reveal the modifications of its fundamental structures.

The Duty of Memory Revisited: Ricoeur's Contribution to a Crisis in French Historiography

Human Studies, 2021

The relationship between memory and history, which has preoccupied historiography and the philoso... more The relationship between memory and history, which has preoccupied historiography and the philosophy of history since the middle of the nineteenth century, took a particular course in France at the end of the millennium. The forms this relationship took in this particular context have been the subject of heated debate around whether the reconstruction of the past should bear the sign of a moral imperative or, on the contrary, it should be kept away from any moral conditioning. To address this question and underline its particular relevance to the present, I will revisit a significant debate, based around Paul Ricoeur's interpretation of the duty of memory developed in his book Memory, History, Forgetting. I will do this by means of a three-step approach. First, a short introduction will provide several guidelines for understanding the issues at stake in the debate in which Ricoeur was caught and explanations regarding the significance of the main notions around which the discussions took place, i.e., the duty and work of memory. Second, I will identify how historical debates, political decisions and civic concerns about the past gradually coagulated into two different "camps" in France during the 1980s and 1990s, i.e., the advocates of memory against those of history, foreshadowing the emergence of a historiographical crisis, the stakes of which I will analyse in detail. Finally, I will show how Ricoeur's solution to this debate, i.e., an incomplete dialectic between the duty and the work of memory, developed on the horizon of justice, continues to have relevance for the present, being an innovative form of "defatalizing" the past.

Figures de la distanciation dans l’expérience du langage chez Hans-Georg Gadamer: la traduction et le texte

Puncte oarbe ale identitatii cu sine [Blind Spots of the Self-Identity]

Comunitate, identitate, diferenta. Priviri fenomenologice, 2018

„La vulnérabilité de l’être historique. La tension d’un indécidable: oubli destructeur / oubli fondateur”, Colloquium: Through crisis and conflict. Thinking differently with Paul Ricœur, organized by Université de Salento, 26 September 2012, Lecce, Italy.

„La traduction: ‘cas extrême’ ou ‘paradigme’ de l’expérience herméneutique? Un dialogue possible Gadamer – Ricœur”, Colloquium: Thinking about Translation: Philosophy on the Way between Languages, organized by Universidad Carlos III, 24-26 September 2012, Madrid, Spain.

„Hermeneutical crisis as rethinking the humanities. The question of trace: traces of the past, mnemonic traces”, Colloquium: Paul Ricoeur and the Future of the Humanities, organized by Faculty of Philosophy, University of Groningen, 27-29 June 2013, Netherlands.

De la phénoménologie du témoignage à la crise de l’historiographie, Colloquium: Phenomenology and the Social Sciences, organized by Polish Association of Phenomenology, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, 28-29 November 2014, Warsaw, Poland.

Paradoxe et indétermination de la traduction : un dialogue esquissé entre Ricœur et Quine, Colloquium: Ricoeur et la philosophie de langue anglaise, organized by Fonds Ricoeur, EHSS, Society for Ricœur Studies, 18-20 November 2013, Paris, France.

Paul Marinescu and Cristian Ciocan (eds.), From Witnessing to Testimony (Studia Phaenomenologica, Volume 21 / 2021)

by Cristian Ciocan, Paul Marinescu, Gert-Jan van der Heiden, Rodolphe Olcèse, Rafael Pérez Baquero, Lovisa Andén, Cassandra Falke, Gabriele Baratelli, and Alexis Delamare

Studia Phaenomenologica, 2021

On Conflict and Violence (Studia Phaenomenologica vol. 19 / 2019)

Studia Phaenomenologica, 2019

Paul Marinescu & Christian Ferencz-Flatz (Editors), Figuri ale vulnerabilităţii existenţiale. De la uitarea de sine la uitarea fiinţei [Figures of Existential Vulnerability. From the Self-Oblivion to the Oblivion of Being], University „Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Publishing House, Iasi, 2014, p. 254.

Christian Ferencz-Flatz & Paul Marinescu (Editors), Timp, memorie şi tradiţie. Studii de fenomenologia istoriei [Time, Memory and Tradition. Studies in the Phenomenology of History], Bucharest, Zeta Books, 2012, p. 232.

Paul Ricoeur, Sinele ca un altul [Soi-même comme un autre], Bucharest, Spandugino, 2016, p. 455 (translated by P. Marinescu & A.-D. Marinescu)

Bucharest, Ed. Spandugino, 2016, p. 455 (translated in collaboration with A.-D. Marinescu).

Eric de Rus, Persoana umana in orizontul intrebarii. Pentru o antropologie a interioritatii [La personne humaine en question. Pour une anthropologie de l'interiorité], Bucharest, Spandugino, 2016, p. 152.

Boris Cyrulnik, Rezilienta. Convorbiri cu Boris Cyrulnik, N. Martin et al., Bucharest, Spandugino, 2016.

Eric de Rus, Viziunea educativa a lui Edith Stein. Abordarea unui gest antropologic total, Bucharest, Spandugino, 2016.

Eric de Rus, Edith Stein – Arta de a educa. Antropologie, educaţie, viaţă spirituală [L’Art d’éduquer selon Edith Stein], Bucharest, Spandugino, p. 339, 2015 (translated by P. Marinescu & A.D. Marinescu)

Jean Sévillia, Corectitudinea morala [Moralement correct], Bucharest, Humanitas, col. „Zeitgeist”, p. 194, 2009, (translated by P. Marinescu & A.-D. Marinescu)

Paul Ricœur, La şcoala fenomenologiei [A l’école de la phénoménologie], Bucharest, Humanitas, col. „Acta Phaenomenologica”, p. 390, 2008 (translated by P. Marinescu & A.-D. Marinescu)

Introduction: On Conflict and Violence

by Cristian Ciocan and Paul Marinescu

Studia Phaenomenologica, Oct 11, 2019

The premise of the present issue of Studia Phænomenologica is that phenomenology, by virtue of it... more The premise of the present issue of Studia Phænomenologica is that phenomenology, by virtue of its being anchored in the concrete experience of subjectivity, of its specific conceptual endeavour and descriptive approach, has a unique theoretical potential not only to understand how the various aspects of violence are articulated with fundamental existential structures, but also to bring to light the intertwined meanings of the phenomenon of violence. In particular, the present issue is engaged in the task of capturing the complexity of the experience of violence by criss-crossing phenomenological perspectives on intersubjectivity (e.g., the problem of the hostile other, understood as an adversarial alterity), affectivity (e.g., the emergence of irritation, anger, wrath, and rage as a condition for conflict), and embodiment (e.g., the problem of vulnerability and of the infliction of pain intended by those involved in the factical situation of violence, having murder, the ultimate violence, as a limit). Another major reflection at stake is to consider how these structures of the phenomenon of violence are modalized according to the essential possibilities of spatiality and temporality, either by coming to the fore, or by fading, or by changing their configuration. In this case, it is only the description of the variations of the phenomenon of violence as a whole that can indeed reveal the modifications of its fundamental structures.

The Duty of Memory Revisited: Ricoeur's Contribution to a Crisis in French Historiography

Human Studies, 2021

The relationship between memory and history, which has preoccupied historiography and the philoso... more The relationship between memory and history, which has preoccupied historiography and the philosophy of history since the middle of the nineteenth century, took a particular course in France at the end of the millennium. The forms this relationship took in this particular context have been the subject of heated debate around whether the reconstruction of the past should bear the sign of a moral imperative or, on the contrary, it should be kept away from any moral conditioning. To address this question and underline its particular relevance to the present, I will revisit a significant debate, based around Paul Ricoeur's interpretation of the duty of memory developed in his book Memory, History, Forgetting. I will do this by means of a three-step approach. First, a short introduction will provide several guidelines for understanding the issues at stake in the debate in which Ricoeur was caught and explanations regarding the significance of the main notions around which the discussions took place, i.e., the duty and work of memory. Second, I will identify how historical debates, political decisions and civic concerns about the past gradually coagulated into two different "camps" in France during the 1980s and 1990s, i.e., the advocates of memory against those of history, foreshadowing the emergence of a historiographical crisis, the stakes of which I will analyse in detail. Finally, I will show how Ricoeur's solution to this debate, i.e., an incomplete dialectic between the duty and the work of memory, developed on the horizon of justice, continues to have relevance for the present, being an innovative form of "defatalizing" the past.

Figures de la distanciation dans l’expérience du langage chez Hans-Georg Gadamer: la traduction et le texte

Tradition et distance temporelle : « de la justesse de la compréhension » chez Hans-Georg Gadamer

Oblivio comme vulnérabilité du soi. Augustin lu par Heidegger et Ricoeur

Hermeneutical crisis as rethinking the humanities: the question of the trace-traces of the past, cortical traces

In the present paper, I would like to highlight Ricoeur’s manner of rethinking the humanities, by... more In the present paper, I would like to highlight Ricoeur’s manner of rethinking the humanities, by focusing on a particular case, namely his hermeneutical reading of the question of trace. Taking into consideration two different contexts: historiography (as captured in Time and Narrative) and the cognitive sciences (as it appears throughout Ricoeur’s dialogue with the neurobiologist Changeux, in What Makes Us Think?), I will show that the very notion of trace is the limit-notion that induces a hermeneutical crisis at the core of the historiography as well as at the centre of the cognitive science.

La traduction : « cas extrême » ou « paradigme » de l’expérience herméneutique? Un dialogue possible Gadamer – Ricœur

The purpose of this paper is to open up a dialogue between two different theories on translation ... more The purpose of this paper is to open up a dialogue between two different theories on translation developed by Hans-Georg Gadamer in Truth and Method and Paul Ricœur in his work On Translation. Therefore, I will firstly point out the unifying and the dividing aspects of their hermeneutical thinking. Secondly, I will question their manner to define the phenomenon of translation, by taking into consideration the relation in which the translation engages with the thing of the text and with the world of the text. By doing this, I will try to establish the particular status the translation holds within the frames of the philosophical Hermeneutics: is translation a paradigm, as Ricœur defends, or rather an extreme case, according to Gadamer?

Questionner une quasi-absence : le témoignage dans Temps et récit

The starting point of this article is a surprising finding about Ricœur’s Time and Narrative. Thi... more The starting point of this article is a surprising finding about Ricœur’s Time and Narrative. This impressive trilogy – essentially dedicated to the narrative and its capacity to refigure time, often defined as a poetics of history, laying the basis of the theory of narrative identity – barely considers the phenomenon of the testimony, generally understood as someone’s narration about a past event. But suspecting a paradoxical lacuna in the problematic of Time and Narrative doesn’t exempt us from searching its ‘reasons’. Thus, in the first part of this paper, we’ll take into account, from a genealogical point of view, Ricœur’s article on the hermeneutics of the testimony, written few years before his trilogy. In the second part, the questioning of what we’ve called the quasi-absence of the testimony in Time and Narrative will involve keen analysis of the theories concerning the reality of the past determined according to different criteria: proximity / observation versus pertinence / possibility.

Traduire le passé. Enjeux et défis d’une opération historiographique

The aim of this article is to think about possible connections between the hermeneutics of histor... more The aim of this article is to think about possible connections between the hermeneutics of history and the
theory of translation, as they were elaborated upon, outlined, perhaps even suggested by Paul Ricoeur,
taking as its point of departure the question of the translation of the past. This would establish whether the
phrase “translation of the past” – that we find in his article of 1998 entitled, "ʺLa marque du passé"ʺ – could
form the title of a coherent programme of a Ricoeurian hermeneutics of history or whether it would remain
at the level of metaphors that invite an easy conceptual vagueness.

L'Universalité et les "sans fins" de l'herméneutique. Jean-Luc Marion, lecteur de Ricoeur, in Lectures de Jean-Luc Marion, (eds. C. Ciocan & A. Vasiliu), Paris, Cerf, 2016, p. 339-349.

Understanding the Protester’s Opposition: From Bodily Presence to the Linguistic Dimension—Violence and Non-violence

HUMAN STUDIES, 2019

This paper aims to address the manner in which the protester’s opposition, or what I consider as ... more This paper aims to address the manner in which the protester’s opposition, or what I consider as the protester’s being-there-against, “profiles” itself in the no-man’s-land between non-violence and violence. My focus is therefore to unfold some of its constitutive layers, relying on the conceptual tools prominently provided by Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology. The first constitutive layer concerns the protester’s bodily presence, seized first of all as a specific “here” and “there,” and then as an expressive body that is communicating through gestures. Within the interpretation of one of these gestures—the fist raised in the air—I highlight the anamnestic nature of the protester’s being-there-against as it appears in the relationship with a state whose legitimacy comes from taking over the monopoly on violence. The second constitutive layer is related to the linguistic dimension of the protester’s presence: here special attention is paid to the way language and violence connect, having as background an analysis devoted to the surplus and the deficit of meaning attached to the slogans chanted by the protesters.

"L'énigme du passé" Vers les fondements du rapport entre l'histoire et la psychanalyse

Ricoeur Studies, 2019

This article aims to address, by means of a two-step analysis, the foundations of the relationsh... more This article aims to address, by means of a two-step analysis, the foundations of the relationship between history and psychoanalysis as "disciplinary practices" that deal with the past. In the first step, I examine the different relationships between history and psychoanalysis but also the uses of psychoanalysis in historical approaches. My goal here is to situate the context and the guiding questions. As a second step, I try to show that Ricoeur puts forward, in his book Memory, History, Forgetting, a major thesis regarding the foundations of the relationship between psychoanalysis and the hermeneutics of history. By means of the phenomenology of wounded memory, he identifies a fundamental structure of collective existence that provides the basis of this relationship. Finally, I seek to determine the scope of this structure, which takes the form of an originary trauma affecting the collective existence, by drawing an analogy with the psychoanalytic concept of afterwardsness.

Exploring the Undisclosed Meanings of Time, History, and Existence: Ricoeur and Patočka as Philosophical Interlocutors: Introduction by the Editors (Ludger Hagedorn&Paul Marinescu)

Co-authors: Ludger Hagedorn & Paul Marinescu

Olivier Abel & Paul Marinescu (Editors), Studia Phaenomenologica, vol. XIII / 2013: On the Proper Use of Phenomenology. Paul Ricoeur Centenary, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2013, p. 512.

Introduction: From Witnessing to Testimony

by Cristian Ciocan and Paul Marinescu

Studia Phaenomenologica, 2021

The 1972 colloquium on testimony, organised by Enrico Castelli in Rome, brought together contribu... more The 1972 colloquium on testimony, organised by Enrico Castelli in Rome, brought together contributions from over 30 renowned philosophers and theologians, including Paul Ricoeur, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Emmanuel Levinas, Gabriel Marcel and Alphonse de Waelhens, to name a few. Despite the great number of prestigious thinkers engaged in the debate and whose very presence there justified the relevance of this theme, one of the guests, Gianni Vattimo, did not hesitate to declare in the opening of his communication that the question of testimony is one shrouded in anachronism. In his opinion, the attempt of reviving this question that is strongly associated with existentialism, years after the extinction of this philosophical current, was threatened by obsolescence. However, the last five decades of the history of contemporary philosophy contradict this claim. Indeed, testimony is gradually gaining the attention that it deserves within philosophical reflection: it does so by opening up a field of research so wide-ranging and profound that it raises the need to build more comprehensive approaches and to construct dialogues between the various disciplines that are involved in deciphering its complexity. The half-century that separates us from the time of the Castelli colloquium has known major events, historical trials, and technological innovations in which witnessing and testifying have played a fundamental role in establishing the truth of past events, captivating irreversibly the attention of the humanities. From historiography to epistemology and from memory studies to cultural anthropology, all these disciplines have tried to identify structures, dynamics,