Abstract
This paper examines Ricoeur’s phenomenology and its points of divergence with Derrida’s. Ricoeur developed phenomenology in a theological direction and directed phenomenology’s emphasis towards intersubjectivity and an examination of how Otherness is constitutive of the self and the fundamental unit of phenomenology rather than ipseity or the ego. Derrida differs from this emphasis on Otherness in his discovery of the quasi-transcendental, or the differance between the transcendental and empirical which enables phenomenology. Derrida thus performs a meta-phenomenology in place of Ricoeur’s existential phenomenology and philosophical anthropology. Derrida inscribes phenomenology more powerfully by bringing it to terms with its condition of possibility.
Keywords: Ricoeur, Derrida, Transcendental, Empirical, Iterability
Introduction
This paper will examine the radical empiricisms of Ricoeur. As previously shown with Heidegger, radical empiricisms translate into repetitions rather than deviations from metaphysics. Ricoeur, Levinas and Merleau-Ponty’s turn to existential phenomenology and intersubjectivity represents a turn to overcome metaphysics, not unlike Heidegger, and thus repeat it by inscribing it as a negative or Jewish variant in the emphasis on Otherness and intersubjectivity in place of Being and presence. Their “ethical turn” was a turn to privilege Other over self and corporeality over transcendental which elides differance and the quasi-transcendental. In place of this radical empiricism or non-philosophy Derrida would argue for the importance of the quasi-transcendental as the meta-condition that grounds philosophy and non-philosophy.
Ricoeur’s early engagement with Husserl saw him breaking from phenomenology as an ‘egology’ and solipsistic enterprise towards a definition of phenomenology as an engagement with intersubjectivity and “otherness”. Ricoeur is interested in limiting phenomenology and defining it in terms of its concrete and existential manifestations, which he defines in Fallible Man as the symbolics of evil and the disproportion or discrepancy between the finite and the infinite.
Ricoeur’s Existential Phenomenology
Ricoeur does not think the “Other” is subordinate to the ego as the transcendental reduction performs in bracketing the world; indeed Ricoeur argues that phenomenology is premised upon ‘Otherness’ in allowing a definition of subjectivity to take place. Ricoeur thinks that the ‘Other’ is essential to determining selfhood; indeed Ricoeur takes the Other as the foundation of his phenomenology. Ricoeur elevates the ‘Other’ to something primary rather than secondary in phenomenology. He argues that Husserl’s importance was in discovering intersubjectivity as the condition of his phenomenology rather than the traditional view of Husserl’s phenomenology as a Cartesian, ego-centred phenomenology. Ricoeur defines the Other as essential to determining selfhood and subjectivity in Oneself as Another.
Ricoeur thus argues that the objective self is predicated and premised upon the foundation of “Otherness”, rather than derived from what he calls a strictly Husserlian “egology”. Indeed he defines the “Other” as the “pole of reference” for the definition of own-ness, or selfhood. The “Other” is the ontological foundation of the self, rather than something which is simply exterior or alien to the concept of the ego as Husserl’s phenomenological reduction would have it.
Ricoeur defines selfhood as concretely and ontologically situated as “the flesh”, subjectivity is embodied and corporeal as well as situated in relation to the “Other”. Indeed this relation to the Other is the fundamental defining trait of subjectivity, selfhood exists only in relation to the Other, it is thus dynamically constituted by this relation to the Other rather than being any simple form of “egology”.
Derrida’s Quasi-Transcendental
Derrida, in “Violence and Metaphysics”, argues that this flight towards the Other is a characteristic of Jewish philosophy. Derrida does not privilege the Other in his phenomenology, but examines the aporia and differance between presence and absence which enables phenomenology. The notion of the quasi-transcendental, or the differance between transcendental and empirical, or philosophy and non-philosophy, which enables phenomenology, is Derrida’s contribution to phenomenology.
Derrida does not think that Ricoeur’s existential phenomenology manages to escape metaphysics as it is a Jewish and negative repetition of metaphysics with its emphasis on “Otherness” and intersubjectivity in place of Being and presence. The radical empiricism of Ricoeur and his turn to privilege the Other over the Same merely inscribes metaphysics as a negative and thus does not overcome metaphysics as the transcendental and the empirical are the same. The movement of the trace institutes the difference between the transcendental and empirical as a non-difference, or a sameness.
The quasi-transcendental, or the difference between the transcendental and empirical, conditions metaphysics in its entirety as it functions as the limit and spacing which produces both transcendental and empirical and allows metaphysics to perpetuate itself through the distinguishing movement of the trace.
Ricoeur’s Fallibility and Disproportion
In Fallible Man, Ricoeur attempts to bring an affective dimension to phenomenology in examining the reality of misery as a human condition, as well as to define man as essentially fallen and capable of evil, which paradoxically also enables man’s capacity for good. Ricoeur defines the relation between the finite and infinite as one of disproportion and discrepancy. Ricoeur is thus interested in the limits of man and a theological notion of evil which had not been written into phenomenology prior to Ricoeur as phenomenology had been largely a-theological and without a concept of man’s fallen-ness or sin.
Ricoeur highlights fallibility as a theological concept much more than Derrida, who is interested not so much in a theological conception of man as the meta-conditions which enable metaphysical thinking. Where Ricoeur emphasizes the intertwining of good and evil in man to highlight the essential theological condition of man as Christian, Derrida’s expansion of Husserl’s notion of Verflechtung or the interweaving of the transcendental and empirical is an examination of iterability, or repetition, as the condition of possibility of metaphysics.
Conclusion
Ricoeur developed phenomenology in a theological direction and directed phenomenology’s emphasis towards intersubjectivity and an examination of how Otherness is constitutive of the self and the fundamental unit of phenomenology rather than ipseity or the ego. Derrida differs from this emphasis on Otherness in his discovery of the quasi-transcendental, or the differance between the transcendental and empirical which enables phenomenology. Derrida thus performs a meta-phenomenology in place of Ricoeur’s existential phenomenology and philosophical anthropology. Derrida inscribes phenomenology more powerfully by bringing it to terms with its condition of possibility.
The difference between the transcendental and empirical is paradoxically a non-difference, or a sameness. The impossibility of the distinction between the transcendental and empirical is its own possibility as these are separated by differance, an interval which is a nothingness. Hence, the transcendental and the empirical are the same. Derrida has thus democratized phenomenology in showing radical empiricisms such as Ricoeur’s are the same and repetitions of metaphysics rather than deviations or subversions of it.
Works Cited
- Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1976.
- Ricoeur, Paul. Fallible Man. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986.
- Ricoeur, Paul. Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology. Translated by Edward G. Ballard and Lester E. Embree. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967.
- Ricoeur, Paul. Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.