Phenomenology and Religion: New Frontiers

morny joy

on the dimension of otherness. By way of comparison, in Ricoeur’s
estimation Heidegger is too preoccupied with the subjective dimension.
Ricoeur’s own understanding of the relationship involved in inter-
subjectivity is one of mutual recognition, where each acknowledges
the integrity of the other. Ricoeur’s following discussion of the
comparative merits of Heidegger and Levinas is quite dense, though
he will not dismiss either of them out of hand, acknowledging he has
learnt much from both of them. Perhaps the best account of his own
position occurs in a late interview with Richard Kearney:

Here I try to explore the possibilities of an ethical ontology beyond the

Heideggerean model of ontology without ethics, and the Levinasian model

of ethics without ontology. By trying to think ethics in terms of action

(praxis/ pragma) and action in terms of being as potency and act [pace

Aristotle], I am seeking ways beyond the either/or of Heidegger/

Levinas. The ultimate purpose of hermeneutic reflection and attestat-

ion, as I see it, is to try to retrace the line of intentional capacity and

action beyond the mere objects (which we tend to focus on exclusively

in our natural attitude), so that we may recover the hidden truth of our

operative acts, i.e., of being capable, of being un homme capable.^33

In his ethical ontology, conscience is a guiding principle for Ricoeur,
summoning, as it were, a person to act according to his or her capabil-
ities with solicitude, respect, and responsibility — all encapsulated in
his adaptation of the term mutual recognition — towards others.
Ricoeur elaborates further on his understanding of conscience in an
article, “From Metaphysics to Moral Philosophy.”^34 Here he describes
conscience as an “inner forum” that is not beholden to any idea of an
inherent moral law. At the same time, without employing the full
panoply of the Hegelian system, he nonetheless observes:

With the Hegel of the sixth chapter of the Phenomenology of Spirit, I

affirm the primacy of the “spirit certain (gewiss) of itself” over every

moral vision of the world, where the active and judging consciousnesses,

confessing the limit of their respective points of view, and renouncing

their respective partiality, mutually recognize and absolve each other.^35

33. Ricoeur, “On Life Stories (2003),” in On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of Minerva, ed.
    R. Kearney, London: Ashgate, 2004, 167.


34. Philosophy Today, 14/4 (1996): 443–58.


35. Ibid., 454. Ibid., 454.