paul ricoeur, solicitude, love, and the giftdeliberations concerning justice and rights — to always keep in mind
their responsibility to the actuality of living and breathing human
beings about whom they pronounce judgments. Secondly, that in
discussions of pluralism and multiculturalism, something more than
a perfunctory abstract nod in the direction of diversity is needed.
Instead of appealing to moral requirements as a way of attempting to
account for this recommended conduct towards others, Ricoeur will
call upon the resources provided by conscience.
Conscience
It is in Study 10 of Oneself as Another that Ricoeur first analyzes carefully
Heidegger’s notion of conscience, which he acknowledges has
influenced him, but from which he will ultimately differ. He quotes
Heidegger from Being and Time: “In conscience Dasein calls itself.”^28 It
is a call that “comes from and yet from beyond me and over me.”^29 For
Ricoeur, this call is indicative of a certain primordiality and summons
to one’s authenticity and also marks, as he observes, “the complete
immanence of Dasein to itself.”^30 What troubles Ricoeur in this de-
piction by Heidegger is “the absence of authentic forms of being-with,
upon which a different approach to conscience could be grafted.”^31 In
the same paragraph, Ricoeur notes that “It is not that all reference to
others is lacking, but others are implied only with respect of the ‘they’
and on the inauthentic level of concern.... The major theme is the
separation of the self from the ‘they’ [Das Mann].”^32 What Ricoeur
discerns as missing in Heidegger is any summons emanating from the
other as a necessary part of any intersubjective ethics. (Again the
influence of Levinas is palpable.)
From Ricoeur’s perspective, however, Levinas’s own position is also
not without problems. He regards Levinas’s summons that comes
from the other as a necessary call to responsibility, but as being
definitely one-sided. For Ricoeur, Levinas places too much emphasis
- Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 348.
- Ibid. Ibid.
- Ibid. Ibid.
- Ibid. Ibid.
- Ibid., 348n60. Ibid., 348n60.