Das Selbst und die Gegenwart der Verantwortung. Über das Verantwortungskonzept in der hermeneutischen Phänomenologie von Paul Ricœur

Abstract

A peculiarity of Paul Ricoeur's philosophy is his effort to elaborate a hermeneutic phenomenology of the Self on the roots of reflexive philosophy. Thus, the problem of responsibility, which Ricoeur debated on different occasions, appears in the context of the Self as an acting, suffering and capable subject which is not only responsible for its own acts but has also duties in respect to others. Ricoeur's hermeneutics of "l’homme capable" (the capable human being) analyzes responsibility on different levels – historical, ethical, political, juridical etc. The main thesis of the author is, that this levels of responsibility constitute the different dimensions of the will of the Self "to engage itself with" which should be recomposed hermeneutically in order to capture responsibility as an integral phenomenon. At the difference of some authors who offer only a partial interpretation of the problem of responsibility in Ricoeur's work, the following article aims to give a holistic one by reconstructing it through the complex evolution of Ricoeur's philosophical writings.

Keywords

• Paul Ricoeur, phenomenology, hermeneutics, ethics, politics, responsibility, self, other