morny joyaspect of justice — particularly expressed as a recognition of the rights
of others, according to an exercise of respecting the irreplaceable
integrity of another — that is of interest to Ricoeur as he attempts to
build a bridge between “the poetics of love” and “the prose of justice.”^54
For Ricoeur they intersect with one another around the basic issue of
human action — respectively making claims as to the modes of conduct
that are efficacious or appropriate, if not even incommensurate in the
case of love. As one exemplar of good conduct, then, there is the golden
rule, which Ricoeur describes as operating according to “a logic of
equivalence.”^55 Justice, in one sense, can be seen as an institutional
enactment of this good. In contrast, love, within an economy of the
gift — as described earlier by Ricoeur — works in terms of “a logic of
superabundance.”^56 Yet Ricoeur does not hold that these two logics
need necessarily be viewed as incompatible. Their intersection can
foster a deeper awareness of the dimensions of the categories involved.
Ricoeur’s favored manner of dialectical exchange figures prominently
in their interaction. He describes a specific instance:
In this relation of living tension between the logic of superabundance
and the logic of equivalence, the latter receives from its confrontation
with the former the capacity of raising itself above its perverse
interpretations. Without the corrective of the commandment to love,
the golden rule would be constantly drawn in the direction of a
utilitarian maxim whose formula is Do ut des.^57Ricoeur then continues with an expansive depiction of the benevolent
influence on the part of the logic of superabundance as it is associated
with the gift:
This economy of the gift touches every part of ethics, and a whole range
of significations confers a special articulation of it. At one extreme, we
find the symbolism, which itself is quite complex, of creation, in the
most basic sense of an originary giving of existence. The first use of the
predicate “good” applied to all created things in Genesis 1 belongs to- Ricoeur, “From Metaphysics to Moral Philosophy,” 32. Ricoeur, “From Metaphysics to Moral Philosophy,” 32.
- Ibid., 34. Ibid., 34.
- Ibid. Ibid.
- Ibid. Ibid.