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The Question of the Self in Ricœur and Marion

Publication at Faculty of Humanities |
2015

Abstract

The aim of this paper is twofold: first, to identify what place the self occupies in the philosophies of Ricœur and Marion; second, to sketch what possible links may be established between their respective conceptions of subjectivity. This will be done in two parts.

The first part will take a look at some methodological concerns, in particular how each author understands the relation between phenomenology and hermeneutics. At stake in this discussion will be the supposed immediacy of experience and, concomitantly, the need to interpret it.

The second part will turn to a privileged site of this exigency for interpretation: the self, or more precisely, the non-immediacy (or even the inaccessibility) of the self to itself. We will turn at this point to St.

Augustine (or our respective authors's treatment of his work, specifically in Time and Narrative vols. 1 and 3 for Ricœur and In the Self's Place for Marion) as the common ground (or at least the common reference) of their attempt to redefine selfhood. Without discounting their differences, we hope to show that narrative identity (Ricœur) and the self as gifted [l'adonné] address in their own proper way the same philosophical concern.