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Introduction

Man, by nature, has the desire to know. 1 This celebrated quotation

coming from Aristotle gives an impression that it is natural for man to desire for

knowledge. The inclination of man for what is to be known is an inevitable

reality. This reality is essential for him to survive with his every day existence.

Thus, this knowledge that must be known is not for its own sake but must go

beyond, that is, in the realm of praxis. It is in putting what is known that makes

man a man in action. But what is the implication of this?

Human beings are not necessarily human. This may sound puzzling. But if

one tries to analyze the statement, it could mean that man, or to be a man,

there are requisite characteristics. For a man, to be a man, aspects of his being a

human should be realized. It is in this realization that man can be classified as

such. Moreover, this may further imply that man is a being-in-process. He is not

a static being but a dynamic one. He is considered then a being in action 2 or a

being in actualization.

1
Aristotle, Metaphysics, Book I, trans. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2009), 1.
2
In Oneself as Another, Ricoeur stated that man is not only a being of action but also an
agent of action. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. K. Blamey (Chicago & London:
University of Chicago Press, 1992), 56. Ricoeur further explicated that actions are parts of whole
man’s life. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative I, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer
(Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 22.
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL Page 2

Within the historical development3 of Western philosophical

anthropology, man is apprehended into varied perspectives. From ancient Greek

era towards the post-modern period, different shifts of views on man emanated

to play. And alongside with the historical unveiling of man, he continues to

desire or search anything which is exclusively man and anything related to his

humanity.

Man is the supreme question for man.4 The question of ‘Who-What man

is?’ is a fundamental question that every man should engage and respond to.

This question has received a lot of responses already. But still, man is not

satisfied with those answers. He cannot still evade the other that he encounters

within and outside of himself. It is in this very context that Ricoeur’s

Hermeneutics plays a tremendous significant role.

Hermeneutics of Restoration and Suspicion

The term hermeneutics comes from the Greek word ermhneuein

(hermeneuein) which means to interpret.5 Thus, it may imply that to do

3
It may be argued that the term “development” is not proper or appropriate. But this is
used to imply expansion or even enlargement. This should not be understood as a claim that the
succeeding periods after the ancient (Western) philosophy are better than what is previously held
by the latter.
4
Felipe V. Nantes, Jr. and Bryan Benedict Olarte, Philosophy of Man (Bayombong,
Nueva Vizcaya: SMU Publishing House, 2009), 1.
5
Feorillo P. A. Demeterio III, “Hermeneutics: The Philosophy of Interpretation”, ed. by
Rolando M. Gripaldo, The Philosophical Landscape: A Panoramic Perspective on Philosophy, 5th
ed. (Quezon City: C & E Publishing, Inc., 2008), 148. Ermhneia (hermeneia), which means
interpretation, is the derivative of ermhneuein (hermeneuein) (Ibid.).
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL Page 3

interpretation [Ermhneia (hermeneia)], there is a necessity for an interpreter.

Most likely, the same task of Hermes 6, the messenger of the gods, has to be

done. Both hermeneuein and Hermes as etymologies of hermeneutics are put

into question of credibility7, but nonetheless, it gives one an idea that it is

inevitable to encounter interpretation in the field of hermeneutics.

One of the most influential and prominent thinkers in the field of

hermeneutics is Paul Ricoeur.8 With the publication of his book Freud and

Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (1970), he laid down the very foundation

of his hermeneutics.

Language, according to Ricoeur, means something other than what is

says, it has a double meaning, it is equivocal. 9 It implies that language in itself is

not simply a one is to one correspondent. It opens itself for a possibility of

meaning. To those who understand language, meaning is conceivable. 10

However, simultaneous with the “welcoming” of meaning is a restriction of it. To

6
Hermes is the mediator between Zeus (and the other gods and goddesses) and the
mortals. He makes the unintelligible intelligible. He bridges the gap between the gods and
humans. Rev. Fr. Dennis M. Edralin, Philosophical Hermeneutics: Phenomenology of
Historically Affected Consciousness (Aparri: Research and Publication Office, 2010), 6. The same
sense can be found in the work of Abulad. Romualdo E. Abulad, “What is Hermeneutics?”,
Kritike, vol. 1, no. 2 (December 2007): 11.
7
T. M. Seebohm, Hermeneutics. Method and Methodology (Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic Publishers, 2004), 11.
8
Karl Simms, Paul Ricoeur (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 30.
9
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage
(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970), 7. For Ricoeur, to mean something other
than what is said is the symbolic function (Ibid., 12).
10
Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language, trans.
Robert Czerny et. al., (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 57.
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL Page 4

be into language is to engage with multiplicity of senses. In order to comprehend

language, interpretation should thrive. That even before one interprets

language, language itself is an interpretation. 11 Ricoeur claimed that, “to

interpret is to understand a double meaning”. 12 Interpretation is deemed

necessary in the encounter to language, of equivocal language to be specific.

Thus, to be in language is to be in interpretation.

Ricoeur himself admitted that there are no absolute hermeneutics but

only diverse and contrasting or even conflicting theories concerning the rules of

interpretation.13 Theories on interpretation are multiple. Because theories on

interpretation are plural, conflict of interpretation may be inevitable. 14 One can

encounter a predicament if he will attempt to create a full account of

hermeneutical theories. Ricoeur, in his investigation, begins with the recognition

of a polarized opposition that creates a greatest tension. For him,

According to the one pole, hermeneutics is understood as the manifestation and

restoration of meaning addressed to me in the manner of message, proclamation,
or as sometimes said, a kerygma; according to the other pole, it is understood as
15
a demystification, a reduction of illusion.

11
According to Wood, this is one of the things that one can learn from Aristotle. David
Wood, On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation (London and New York: Routledge, 1991),
5.
12
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, 8.
13
Ibid., 26-27.
14
Alexis Deodato S. Itao, “Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics of Symbols: A Critical
Dialectic of Suspicion and Faith”, Kritike, vol. 4, no. 2 (December 2010): 4. Leonardo, quoting
Ricoeur, stressed that “It is because absolute knowledge is impossible that the conflict of
interpretations is insurmountable and inescapable.” Zeus Leonardo, “Interpretation and the
Problem of Domination: Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics”, Studies in Philosophy and Education 22
(Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2003), 334.
15
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, 27.
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL Page 5

The polarities (extreme polarities as Ricoeur would call it) create the greatest

tension in his hermeneutics. As Ricoeur would stress, “hermeneutics seems to

me to be animated by this double motivation: willingness to suspect, willingness

to listen; vow of rigor, and vow of obedience.” 16 The ‘willingness to suspect’

brings about suspicion. This type of hermeneutics is an approach by way of

demystification of meaning presented to the interpreter in the form of a

disguise.17 What is given is put into suspicion to unmask what is apparent. The

‘willingness to listen brings about faith’. Restoration of meaning is the very

intention in this approach.18 Faith, for Ricoeur, is the contrary of suspicion. 19 But

what is faith for him? Ricoeur bluntly supposed,

No longer, to be sure, the first faith of the simple soul, but rather the second
faith of one who has engaged in hermeneutics, faith that has undergone
criticism, a postcritical faith…It is a rational faith, for it interprets; but it is faith
20
because it seeks, through interpretation, a second naïveté.

Faith for Ricoeur is not simply equated with blind adherence to what is given, but

rather it is a kind of faith that is capable of interpretation, of rational

deciphering. Because of the two motivations in interpretation, i.e., suspicion and

faith, not a few authors would attribute hermeneutics of faith and suspicion to

16
Ibid.
17
Ruthellen Josselson, “The Hermeneutics of Faith and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion”,
Narrative Inquiry, vol. 14, no. 1 (2004): 3. This is characterized by a distrust of the symbol as a
dissimulation of the real (Ibid.).
18
Ibid. This is characterized by willingness to listen, to absorb as much a possible the
possible message in its given form and respects the symbol, understood as a cultural mechanism
for the apprehension of reality, as a place of revelation (Ibid.).
19
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, 28.
20
Ibid.
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Ricoeur.21 What delineates then hermeneutics animated by faith from

hermeneutics animated by suspicion?

An interpretation motivated by faith is characterized by the

instrumentality of phenomenology.22 In the recollection of meaning,

phenomenology23 plays a significant role for the interpreter to restore meaning

in an unbiased sense. This is an emphasis made by Ricoeur when he claimed that

“Phenomenology is its instrument of hearing, of recollection, of restoration of

meaning’.24 This implies then that this kind of interpretation is an interpretation

which is characterized by willingness to listen, willingness to believe 25 and a

belief that through listening, meaning is thought to be recollected. Moreover, by

way of phenomenology, an interpreter would be able to engage himself to an

interpretation that is “neutral”. He can able to decipher something without

being bias. But how can one do this? Ricoeur would reply,

That concern, as we know, presents itself as “neutral” wish to describe and not
to reduce. One reduces by explaining through causes (psychological, social,
etc.), through genesis (individual, historical, etc.), through function (affective,

21
Some authors would call ‘Hermeneutics of Faith’ as ‘Hermeneutics of Restoration or
Restoration of Meaning’. Others may call ‘Hermeneutics of Suspicion’ as ‘Hermeneutics of
Demystification’. You can see the variations with the references used in this paper.
22
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, 28.
23
According to Josselson, “the epistemological basis of the hermeneutics of restoration
is derived from a Husserlian return to the phenomenology of experience as a basis on which to
found an understanding of human existence as well as a privileging, following Dilthey, of the aim
of grasping the subjectivity of others.” Ruthellen Josselson, “The Hermeneutics of Faith and the
Hermeneutics of Suspicion”, Narrative Inquiry: 6.
24
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, 28.
25
It is through believing that meaning can be restored. Meaning would not be possible
with the prior act of believing. Alexis Deodato S. Itao, “Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics of Symbols:
A Critical Dialectic of Suspicion and Faith”, Kritike: 8.
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL Page 7

ideological, etc.). One describes by disengaging the (noetic) intention and its
(noematic) correlate- the something intended, the implicit object in ritual, myth,
26
and belief.

To describe then, in this sense, is to describe something as intended by that

something. It is a description that is free from self-intervention. When we say

self-intervention, this should be understood as the interpreter’s subjective

behavior, discourse, and emotion. The interpreter participates in order to

describe. His participation must be in a neutralized mode, that is, without

positing absolutely the object of his belief. 27 If this is in the context of the

interpreter’s experience, there is an assumption that the interpreter is the

expert of his or her own experience. Now, if hermeneutics of restoration is to be

used here, its aim is to “re-present, explore and/or understand the subjective

world of the participant and/or the social and historical world they feel

themselves to be living in”.28 While it is true and valid that the interpreter is the

most reliable expert in his or her own experience, interpretation does not end

here. It is but proper to turn into another paradigm of interpretation, that is,

according to Ricoeur, interpretation as exercise of suspicion.

The school of suspicion, as opposed to the school of restoration, is

seemingly dominated by three thinkers: Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud. 29 These

26
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, 28-29.
27
Ibid., 29.
28
Ruthellen Josselson, “The Hermeneutics of Faith and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion”,
Narrative Inquiry: 5.
29
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, 32.
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL Page 8

three, in their own way, attempted to reduce illusions by way of suspicion.

Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of suspicion is indebted to the principles established by

Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche. In his book Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on

Interpretation, he called the three as ‘masters of suspicion’. 30 These three rise

up as advocates of suspicion who rip away masks and pose the novel problem of

the lie of consciousness and consciousness as lie.31 Freud, Marx, and Nietzsche,

having their own way of suspicion, tried to uncover the prevailing ideologies

during their time. By way of suspicion, they unveil what is not apparent. Theses

‘masters of suspicion’ look upon the contents of consciousness as in some sense

‘false’; all three aim to transcend this falsity through a reductive interpretation

and critique.32 As Ricoeur posited:

Thus Marx is relegated to economics and the absurd theory of the reflex
consciousness; Nietzsche is drawn toward biologism and a perspectivism
incapable of expressing itself without contradiction; Freud is restricted to
33
psychiatry and decked out with a simplistic pansexualism.

They gave Ricoeur new methods of interrogating and challenging cultural norms,

certain ways of looking at symbolism and interpreting symbols- problems he has

endeavored to resolve in earlier works. 34 “All three clear the horizon for more

authentic word, for a new reign of Truth, not only by means of a “destructive”

30
Ibid.
31
Ibid, 8.
32
Ruthellen Josselson, “The Hermeneutics of Faith and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion”,
Narrative Inquiry: 13.
33
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, 32-33.
34
Alison Scott-Baumann, Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion (London and New
York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009), 44.
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL Page 9

critique, but by the invention of an art of interpreting”. 35 This art of

interpretation is instrumental to Ricoeur. He understands suspicion as an enabler

for the reason that it is instrumental in facing up inconsistencies. 36 And what

inconsistencies are these? It is, according to the three masters of suspicion, the

fundamental category of consciousness is the relation of hidden-shown or

simulated-manifested.37 What may be given in an experience may not

necessarily given, in the sense that there is an automatic certitude in terms of

meaning. As Josselson explains,

Many experiences may be both known and not known simultaneously. That
which is unconscious may nevertheless be apparent in symbolization processes,
such as in dreams and parapraxes, which was the foundation of Freud’s
discoveries. Attention is directed then to the omissions, disjunctions,
inconsistencies and contradictions in an account. It is what is latent, hidden in an
38
account that is of interest rather than the manifest narrative of the teller.

What is given in this approach in hermeneutics is presumed to be not apparent,

that there is a necessity to decipher in such a way that something may be

unveiled in what is given. This kind of hermeneutics does not have the intention

to destroy consciousness and make it appear as unreliable but rather it aims at

extending it.39 “So what suspicion does is not really to deny the existence of
35
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, 33.
36
Alison Scott-Baumann, Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion, 73.
37
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, 33-34. “What all
three attempted, in different ways, was to make their “conscious” methods of deciphering coincide
with the “unconscious” work of ciphering which they attributed to the will to power, to social
being, to unconscious psychism” (Ibid, 34.).
38
Ruthellen Josselson, “The Hermeneutics of Faith and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion”,
Narrative Inquiry: 5.
39
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, 34. According to
Ricoeur, “All three begin with suspicion concerning the illusions of consciousness, and then
proceed to employ the stratagem of deciphering; all three, however, far from being detractors of
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL P a g e 10

consciousness but its immediacy, that is, “its pretensions to know itself

completely from the very beginning, its narcissism.” 40 Posting consciousness as a

complete basis for meaning is something that should be put into suspicion. It is

not that the consciousness is untrustworthy but rather complete adherence to it

may hide what should be known and understood. In this approach to

hermeneutics, according to Josselson,

experience is assumed not to be transparent to itself; surface appearance masks

depth realities; a told story conceals an untold one. What may be taken for
granted in hermeneutics of restoration is problematized from this vantage point.
The taken-for-granted is always that particular level of experience which
41
presents itself as not in need of further analysis.

This implies then that suspicion should be applied as a form of analysis to the

taken-for-granted. With this, a possibility of meaning is deemed viable.

Aside from calling this hermeneutics as hermeneutics of suspicion, it is

also known as hermeneutics of demystification. Why hermeneutics of

demystification? Itao replies,

It demystifies and puts to light is not only the falsity of immediate consciousness
but also the very thing which accounts for this falsity itself. By and large, what
falsify consciousness are the layers of illusions and prejudices that mask the
genuine cogito or the “ego of the ego cogito.” For this reason, the hermeneutics
of suspicion involves “unmasking”, “reducing”, and “destroying” these various
illusions “to deconstruct the false cogito, to undertake the ruin of the idols of the
cogito.” As such, the hermeneutics of suspicion is also a form of “iconoclasm,”
42
that is, the destruction and elimination of the presence of idols.

“consciousness”, aim at extending it” (Ibid.).

40
Alexis Deodato S. Itao, “Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics of Symbols: A Critical
Dialectic of Suspicion and Faith”, Kritike: 6.
41
Ruthellen Josselson, “The Hermeneutics of Faith and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion”,
Narrative Inquiry: 13.
42
Alexis Deodato S. Itao, “Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics of Symbols: A Critical
Dialectic of Suspicion and Faith”, Kritike: 7.
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL P a g e 11

Hermeneutics of demystification then is an approach which is characterized as

decipherment of false consciousness. It is a method employ to reduce prejudices

in interpretation. It is a kind of “suspicion that should be part of critical exegesis,

'the act of dispute exactly proportional to the expressions of false

consciousness', with the requirement for rigorous back questioning to identify

false consciousness and other obscured areas”.43 From this perspective,

hermeneutics of demystification seeks to discover something in one that is

disguise and decode it using a form of hypothesis.44

With the two interpretative approaches, by way of restoration and by

way of suspicion, what could be its implication in the pursuit of man in coming

into terms with his or her self? What significant role can Ricoeur’s hermeneutics

play in man’s inquiry regarding his humanity, regarding his self?

The Self and the Other than Self: Identity and Alterity

Human beings, according to Ricoeur, are capable beings for the reality

that they are capable of talking, acting, narrating, and eventually taking

responsibility with these acts.45 If this is the case, the capacities to talk, act,

narrate, and be responsible are modes of being human. Somehow, these speak

43
Alison Scott-Baumann, Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion, 76.
44
Ruthellen Josselson, “The Hermeneutics of Faith and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion”,
Narrative Inquiry: 15.
45
Theo L. Hettema, “Memory, History, Oblivion: Ricoeur on the human condition”, Ars
Disputandi, vol.1, (2002): 1.
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL P a g e 12

about the “who-what” man is. These capabilities are not exclusive to the self.

“Others” are indispensable in the realization of these capacities. 46 Within the

expression of the capable self, the other is not dispensed. It is a reality that one

cannot do away with. Even within consciousness itself, one cannot avoid the

presence of other. Ricoeur, following Husserl, recognizes that that consciousness

is always a consciousness of…”47 And this intentionality of consciousness is a kind

of awareness of other than awareness of the one doing awareness. “As recent

experiments on sensory deprivation have confirmed, there is no consciousness

unless it is a consciousness of an object—and, conversely, an object presents

itself as an object only for a consciousness.”48 Otherness, then, is existent in this

context.

The way to the self is through the other, that the self is similar and at the

same time different to another. Ricoeur purported this in Oneself as Another in

his words,

Oneself as Another suggests from the outset that the selfhood of oneself implies
otherness to such an intimate degree that one cannot be thought of without the
other, that instead one passes into the other, as we might say in Hegelian terms.
To "as" I should like to attach a strong meaning, not only that of a comparison
(oneself similar to another) but indeed that of an implication (oneself in as much
49
as being other).

46
Peter Emmanuel A. Mara, “The Capable Human Being and the Role of Language in
Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutical Philosophical Anthropology”, Kritike, vol. 5, no. 1 (June 2011): 52.
47
Erazim V. Kohak, “Translalator’s Introduction” in Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and
Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. Erazim V. Kohak (USA: Northwestern
University Press, 1966), xiii.
48
Ibid.
49
Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 3.
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL P a g e 13

This suggests that the self should be understood in reference to the other and

vice versa.50 The self implies similarity or similarities to another and difference or

differences as well. Here a play between the self and other is qualified as a

dialogue between the self and the other. It constitutes by the dialectic between

identity and otherness51, that is, between the self and an(other) self. Why is this

so? Most primarily, this is supposed to be in order for the self not to rely

absolutely on itself, not to see itself as the only reliable source of things that

could be known about itself. As Ricoeur puts it, “By Self I mean a non-egotistic,

non-narcissistic, non-imperialistic mode of subjectivity which responds and

corresponds to the power of a work to display a world.” 52 This art of

interpretation of the self “transforms and renews the philosophy of the Cogito,

doing away with the illusions of the idealistic, subjectivistic, solipsistic Cogito”. 53

This goes with his hermeneutics of suspicion. In this kind of hermeneutics,

suspicion is not only applied to the things outside of the self but as well as into

the self, into the cogito. The other then may be recognized within the application

of suspicion on the self. The transformation of the self is through the route of

other.
50
Geoffrey Dierckxsens, “Otherness and Desire in Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics of the
Self”, Outramargem: revista de filosofia, Belo Horizonte, no. 1 (2nd Semester 2014): 70.
51
Paul Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition (London: Harvard University Press, 2005),
93.
52
Paul Ricoeur, “Philosophical Hermeneutics and Theological Hermeneutics”, Studies
in Religion/Sciences Religieuses 5, no. 1 (1975): 30.
53
Domenico Jervolino, The Cogito and Hermeneutics: The Question of the Subject in
Ricoeur, trans. Gordon Poole (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group, 1990), 42.
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL P a g e 14

In Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of the self, the idea of the other is vital. This is

seen in the title of Ricoeur’s major work Oneself as Another. Ricoeur’s insistence

on understanding the self in close relationship to the other appears to be a

principle that dominates his book. Dierckxsens cited Johann Michel who

interprets the publication of Oneself as Another as what he calls “the turn to

intersubjectivity” in Ricoeur’s philosophy.54 Man is seen as a subject, a subject

who is with the other subjects. Man realizes his being by interacting and

interrelating with his fellow. As Jervolino puts it,

Man...is intermediate because he is a mixture, and a mixture because he brings

about mediations. His ontological characteristic of being intermediate consists
precisely in that his act of existing is the very act of bringing about mediations
between all the modalities and all the levels of reality within him and outside of
55
him.

Articulating about the self is possible through the things outside of the self, the

“other”. This “other” is construed in this context as language. It utters and

reveals being.56 Understanding of the self necessitates exposure to language and

even to the text. Jahnke cited Ricoeur articulating it,

To understand is not to project oneself into the text but to expose oneself to it; it
is to receive a self-enlarged by the appropriation of the proposed worlds that
interpretation unfolds. To receive thus becomes the dialectic counterpart to
57
distancing; to receive also means to surrender the notion of an inert self.

54
Geoffrey Dierckxsens, “Otherness and Desire in Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics of the
Self”, Outramargem: revista de filosofia, Belo Horizonte, no. 1 (2nd Semester 2014): 70.
55
Domenico Jervolino, The Cogito and Hermeneutics: The Question of the Subject in
Ricoeur, 15.
56
Ibid, 42. “Part of its (language) essence is to transcend itself towards that which is the
other of itself, even if it is only in language that we can utter the other” (Ibid.).
57
Marcus Jahnke, “Revisiting Design as a Hermeneutic Practice: An Investigation of
Paul Ricoeur’s Critical Hermeneutics”, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Design Issues, vol.
28, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 35.
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL P a g e 15

Here one can see the relation and significance of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of

suspicion, that the self should not project oneself. It is a critical stance about the

self. It goes with the contention that the desire to be and the sign are in the

same relation, that is, “understanding the world of signs is the means of

understanding oneself”, and “in the opposite direction, this relation between

desire to be and symbolism means that the short path of the intuition of the self

by the self is closed”.58 By way of appropriation, a better and different

understanding is possible. But what is appropriation? Ricoeur expounds:

By ‘appropriation’, I understand this: that the interpretation of a text culminates

in the self-interpretation of a subject who thenceforth understands himself better,
understands himself differently, or simply begins to understand himself. This
culmination of the understanding of a text in self-understanding is characteristic
of the kind of reflective philosophy which… I have called ‘concrete
59
reflection’.

Within the process of appropriation, interpretation is an inevitable reality. This

interpretation opens the self for possibilities. The cogito then is mediated by the

whole universe of signs in the concrete reflexion.60

Understanding the self necessitates understanding the life of the self. For

self-understanding to take its place, a recount of a narrative of one’s own life

should be present. “Our capacity to understand is measured so long as we

58
Domenico Jervolino, The Cogito and Hermeneutics: The Question of the Subject in
Ricoeur, 42.
59
Paul Ricoeur, “What is a Text? Explanation and Understanding”, Hermeneutics and
the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation, ed.by John B. Thompson
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 158.
60
Domenico Jervolino, The Cogito and Hermeneutics: The Question of the Subject in
Ricoeur, 42.
 LYCEUM OF APARRI GRADUATE SCHOOL P a g e 16

hermeneutically understand ourselves in front of the text, as self- understanding

is not independent of any elements.”61 Self-understanding, then, is possible by

way of interpretation.

Concluding Remarks

Man, capable as he is, is a being who is in search for his self. His search

for the self is made possible with other than self. He cannot but to explore in the

signs present in the world. Care should be taken in deciphering signs, for the self

not to impose his own subjectivistic biases and to allow the self to be in dialogue

with the other.

Ricoeur basically was inspired by the “three masters of suspicion” in his

formulation of his hermeneutics of suspicion. Ricoeur maintains his suspicion in

his analysis of the self. While maintaining his suspicion, he is open to different

and various interpretations. This openness relates to his hermeneutics of

restoration. The self is an instrument for meaning and at the same time capable

of reception of meanings. “Ricoeur suggests we think of the examined life as a

61
Peter Emmanuel A. Mara, “The Capable Human Being and the Role of Language in
Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutical Philosophical Anthropology”, Kritike: 59-60.
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narrated life, characterized by a struggle between concordance and discordance,

the aim of which is to discover, not to impose on oneself, a narrative identity.” 62

The question on “who and what man is?” is a question that cannot be

answered as easy, direct, and precise like the mathematical question “1+1?”.

There is a necessity for man to search for meaning. Indulging into interpretation

is significant in this effort. However, man is not a static being. He is a being-in-

action, a being-in-the-process. Knowing and understanding man, then, can be a

continuous process. It may stop temporarily but not permanently. At the end, it

could be a life time endeavor.

62
David Wood, On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and Interpretation, 11.
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