morny joyhe declines to cross.^40 This entire examination of solicitude and justice
in Oneself as Another has been carried out within the purview of
philosophy — and, indeed, Ricoeur would not have it any other way, as
he has distinctly stated that this was his intention for this particular
volume. He had in fact eliminated two sections that had religious
implications, putting them aside for a later volume. He discussed this
deliberate omission with Charles Reagan:
As I say in the preface [to Oneself as Another], I cannot deny that there
may be religious motivations in the very fact that I am interested in the
self. But there is no self-interpreting motivation, although there may
be some connection; but for the arguments, there is no recourse to any
biblical argument in the whole work, even in the ethics section.^41Evil and Regeneration
Ricoeur’s explorations in ethics in Oneself as Another constitute the first
steps in his development of a contemporary ethical ontology. He
deems that this is necessary in order to try to counter the destructive
effects of evil and suffering rampant in the world. What becomes
obvious in Ricoeur’s work is a fascinating oscillation between his
seemingly inherent hopefulness and his anguish at human
suffering — both personal and collective. On the one hand, there is his
seeming optimism about the inherent goodness of humanity that
derives from Kant. He writes about Kant’s remarks on the capacity for
the regeneration of the will in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone:
“As radical as evil may be — radical as first of all the maxims concerning
evil — it is not original. Radical is the ‘propensity’ [Hang] to evil;
original is the ‘predisposition’ [Anlage] to good.”^42 He then continues:
- Ricoeur later remarked about this declaration: “In the final pages of Oneself as
Another, I risk the formulation of a philosophical agnosticism concerning the
radical injunction speaking through the voice of consciousness [conscience].... I
have had occasion to speak of ‘freedom within the horizon of hope’: related to
this are reasonable expectations concerning living well, civic peace, and a world
order answering to the Kantian idea of perpetual peace. Philosophy can extend
that far”, Ricoeur in Hahn, Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, 570. - Ricoeur in Reagan, Paul Ricoeur: His Life and Work, 120.
- Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. K. Blamey and D. Pellauer, Chica-