morny joyonly in the light of the revised mode of mutuality that Ricoeur re-
commends:
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 evaluat-
ing the ends of your actions, and having done this, of holding yourself
in esteem as I hold myself in esteem.^21This mode of intersubjectivity indicates that, according to Ricoeur,
each person must be held in the same inestimable regard as one holds
oneself. In this way, affirming the integrity of the other as actually
different from myself is also paramount. It is from this exacting mode
of reciprocal relationship that Ricoeur derives the title of his book,
Oneself as Another. Ricoeur here describes the change from his early
work in hermeneutics where he had first posited a non-egoistic or
non-imperialistic self who stood before a textual other so as to be
receptive to its meaning. After many further detours in his explorations
of personal identity in connection with narrative, and then with ethics,
he states that the return of a self to itself, as a thinking and capable
subject, is now completed. Once again, however, the self cannot
impose its own agenda on the other. This time, instead of a text, that
featured in hermeneutics, the other is, in this instance, a fellow human
being. For Ricoeur, it is this demanding mode of inter-relationship
with fellow human beings that has definite consequences for one’s
actions in both ethical and political aspects. Ricoeur states:
The passage from recognition-identification where the thinking subject
claims to master meaning, to mutual recognition, where the subject
places him- or herself under the tutelage of a relationship of reciprocity,
passes through a variety of capacities that modulate one’s capacity to
act, one’s agency. [translation amended]^22Ricoeur is aware, however, that this interpersonal model of friendship
cannot be expanded on a grand scale to deal with communal, let alone
- Ibid. Ibid.
- Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, trans. David Pellauer, Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard UP, 2005, 248.