Ideology and Utopia in the Twenty-First Century: The Surplus of Meaning in Ricoeur's Dialectical Concept (Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur) 9781498577298, 9781498577304, 1498577296

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Ideology and Utopia in the Twenty-First Century

Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur Series Editors: Greg S. Johnson, Pacific Lutheran University/Oxford University (ELAC), and Dan R. Stiver, Hardin-Simmons University Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur, a series in conjunction with the Society for Ricoeur Studies, aims to generate research on Ricoeur, about whom interest is rapidly growing both nationally (United States and Canada) and internationally. Broadly construed, the series has three interrelated themes. First, we develop the historical connections to and in Ricoeur’s thought. Second, we extend Ricoeur’s dialogue with contemporary thinkers representing a variety of disciplines. Third, we utilize Ricoeur to address future prospects in philosophy and other fields that respond to emerging issues of importance. The series approaches these themes from the belief that Ricoeur’s thought is not just suited to theoretical exchanges, but can and does matter for how we actually engage in the many dimensions that constitute lived existence.

Titles in the Series Ideology and Utopia in the Twenty-First Century: The Surplus of Meaning in Ricoeur’s Dialectical Concept, edited by Stephanie N. Arel and Dan R. Stiver Ricoeur and the Third Discourse of the Person: From Philosophy and Neuroscience to Psychiatry and Theology, by Michael T. H. Wong A Companion to Ricoeur’s Freedom and Nature, Edited by Scott Davidson A Critical Study of Paul Ricœur’s Moral Anthropology: Singularity, Responsibility, and Justice, by Geoffrey Dierckxsens Ricoeur's Personalist Republicanism: On Personhood and Citizenship, by Dries Deweer Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutics and the Discourse of Mark 13: Appropriating the Apocalyptic, by Peter C. de Vries Ricoeur, Culture, and Recognition: A Hermeneutic of Cultural Subjectivity, by Timo Helenius

Ideology and Utopia in the Twenty-First Century The Surplus of Meaning in Ricoeur’s Dialectical Concept

Edited by Stephanie N. Arel and Dan R. Stiver

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 6 Tinworth Street, London SE11 5AL, United Kingdom Copyright © 2019 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-4985-7729-8 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-4985-7730-4 (electronic) ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

To George Taylor, whose insightful scholarship and unflagging support for Ricoeur studies remains unmatched. In Ricoeur’s term, we would call his contributions “superabundant.”

Contents

Acknowledgmentsix Introduction 

xiii

PART I: RE-ENCOUNTERING RICOEUR  1 Ricoeur and the Political  John Arthos

1 3

2 Surplus Value, Superabundance of Meaning: Ideology, the Political Paradox, and the Structure of Action Roger W. H. Savage

31

3 Renewing the “Period of Effervescence”: Utopia as Ideology Critique Dan R. Stiver

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PART II: RICOEUR IN DIALOGUE

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4 Metaphor and Imagination: A Comparative Study of Ricoeur and Ibn ‘Arabi through “Seeing As” Recep Alpyağil

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5 “Holding Open a Place for Possibility”: Paul Ricoeur, Fredric Jameson, and the Language of Utopia Linda Lee Cox

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Contents

PART III: RICOEUR AND EMBODIED SOCIAL CRITIQUE 6 Social Imagination, Materiality, and Political Discourse Nel van den Haak 7 Embodied Extremist Rhetoric: The Circulation of Power in Ideology and Utopia Stephanie N. Arel PART IV: EXPANDING RICOEUR  8 Rethinking Migratory Phenomena: Between Critique of Ideology and Utopia of Hospitality Annalisa Caputo 9 Real Utopian Politics Greg S. Johnson 10 Why Ideology and Utopia Today? George H. Taylor

111 113

135 161 163 187 217

Index237 About the Contributors

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Acknowledgments

The genesis of this book for me, Dan, occurred with the chance to speak at a Ricoeur conference in Moscow in 2010. For some time, I had been intrigued with Ricoeur’s Lectures on Ideology and Utopia for a couple of reasons. One was that they expanded Ricoeur’s thought, otherwise largely on hermeneutics and anthropology, into a new arena. Second, they deal with some of the same issues that he was dealing with elsewhere such as the limits of epistemology, a hermeneutic of suspicion, the nature of the self, and of narrative from quite a different angle. Even more intriguing was that he did not particularly spell out these implications, leaving as it were a grand project for others. A major acknowledgment then has to do with the years that passed from 2010 to this book. I wanted to do an edited book on Ricoeur’s Lectures on Ideology and Utopia but did not want to do it alone, frankly desiring a good co-editor. That wish was fulfilled beyond my expectations when Stephanie Arel agreed enthusiastically to be the co-editor, even though she was very busy with her career and also as an officer with the Society for Ricoeur Studies. She is also just the co-editor that one wants, always willing to do more. Personally, I am always grateful to the fulfilling work environment that I have at Hardin-Simmons University in the Logsdon School of Theology. Besides the opportunity to teach a wide range of subjects and students, they are incredibly supportive of my work. My family, also, especially my wife, Beth, puts up with my disappearing into the study or running over to the office with nary a complaint but actually with encouragement and interest. The genesis of this book for me, Stephanie, started with an immersion into Ricoeur’s Lectures when organizing the first summer workshop hosted at the Fonds Ricoeur with Azadeh Thiriez-Arjangi, to whom I owe a debt of gratitude. Entitled “Rethinking Ideology and Utopia: 30 Years Later,” the workshop included scholars across the globe exploring this text, its current ix

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relevancy, and how its themes inform and expand into other disciplines. My involvement in the Society for Ricoeur Studies also plays a role in the choice to edit this text. I was first introduced to the Society in 2009 in Canterbury, England where, after presenting a paper that would lay the foundation for my work integrating Ricoeur’s thought with psychoanalysis and discourse about the body, I was impressed by both the congeniality of the group and the way that they recognized Ricoeur as a philosopher contributing to the flourishing of the human community. Further, while the scholars maintained a rigorous philosophical dialogue, they also supported interdisciplinary discourse, something that is a value to me. Ultimately though, and I echo Dan here, Ricoeur did not, in this text, delineate the precise outcomes, for epistemology for instance, but rather provided the foundation from which others could expand his work and enrich their own. I was honored when Dan asked me to edit this book with him so as to continue to produce texts that show the significance of Ricoeur’s thought in contemporary society. Dan’s invitation allowed me to experience, to a greater degree, his own generosity of spirit and his willingness to pick up when I was not able to as we worked on this project. His enthusiasm and positive attitude as a colleague and a Ricoeurian were and continue to be infectious. I must also thank the staff, employees, and stakeholders at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum who afforded me many stimulating conversations and provided resources to enrich the writing of my chapter included in this volume. The Society for Ricoeur Studies that began just two years after Ricoeur’s death in 2005 has been an enormous source of fruitful and provocative reflection upon Ricoeur’s work for both of us. The Society per se is anchored in North America but has a strong international presence. Similar societies represent Europe and Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, as well as a burgeoning group in Asia. It is hardly possible to imagine the ideas explored here without the many rich conversations and papers in these many international sites. Moreover, just as Ricoeur’s thought has ranged across many fields, so these societies have stimulated an unusually broad cross-disciplinary engagement, again funding a kind of surplus of meaning that one can see in these chapters even while concentrating on this one work of Ricoeur’s. Dan was president during the years 2010–2012, and it afforded him the chance to explore these ideas not only in Moscow but also in Mexico and Philadelphia, not to mention conversations in Taiwan and Rio de Janeiro. Stephanie is the current vice president and president-elect, and involved in continuing the relationship between the Society and the Fonds Ricoeur. Major acknowledgment goes to Lexington Books with their willingness a few years to begin the series on the Thought of Paul Ricoeur, of which this book is one of about nine at this point, with several more on the way.

Acknowledgments

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The same acknowledgment extends to Dan’s co-editor of the series, Greg Johnson, who has been the ideal person to work with as a co-editor but also as a friend for many years. Jana Hodges-Kluck has been our contact person at Lexington Books, and, again, it is difficult to imagine a better person to work with on an unusual project like this, one of the only series on the thought of a more or less contemporary philosopher. Even beyond this book, we owe a debt to her and the others at Lexington Books who have been unfailingly responsive and supportive. On a personal and professional note, we both owe a great debt to George H. Taylor. This book would not have been possible without his assiduous work as a student to make these rich Ricoeur lectures available. He was a moving force and first president of the Society for Ricoeur Studies and has continued to nurture the Society and interest in Ricoeur around the world with amazing skill and deftness, not to mention doing the same for both of us. In fact, he is currently working on publishing another set of lectures, given around the same time as these, on a matter of deep interest, Ricoeur’s lectures on the imagination, for which many are waiting with great eagerness. With that debt to George over many years, we dedicate this book to him. In the end, one cannot fail to acknowledge also the incredible range of thought and stimulus of thought that continues apace coming from the life and work of Paul Ricoeur.

Introduction Stephanie N. Arel and Dan R. Stiver

In the fall of 1975, Paul Ricoeur delivered his lectures on ideology and utopia. A decade later, they were gathered into book form by George Taylor and published in 1986.1 Apart from students, the lectures were not widely known for some time. They were also overshadowed by other publications by Ricoeur in the areas of hermeneutics, metaphor, and narrative; his Gifford Lectures on anthropology and ethics; and his major earlier publications on a philosophy of the will. Yet, toward the end of Ricoeur’s life, his work on political philosophy began to emerge as a major matter of interest. Some of this attention was due to Ricoeur’s involvement in important political issues in France; some was due to the vigor and diversity of political philosophy especially after the end of the Cold War. The changing paradigm in politics led to a reassessment of entrenched polarities between Marxist ideology critique and western liberal democracies. French poststructuralist critiques also questioned the role of grand theory in general. Analytical assessment of prevailing political structures opened up a search for new models. This search found that Ricoeur’s work was situated in a surprisingly and impressively nuanced position, allowing for both ideology critique and utopian aspirations while eschewing grand theory. Ricoeur’s characteristic dialectical complexity already pointed beyond the polarities of the past. Contrary to most Marxist thought, he argued that ideology has a positive role to play; in fact, any large movement or group has a narrative, to use another term often used more positively, that helps constitute and protect their identity. At the same time and for a number of reasons, he agreed with Marxist thought that ideology has a gravitational downwards pull toward dissimulation and ossification. On the other side, contrary to many critiques of utopian thought, he saw the utopian imagination as immensely important, offering alternatives and providing grounds for protest against the status quo. Yet, he agreed that xiii

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utopia, too, has a tendency to be fanciful and even dangerous in its unreality. As was his wont, he put them into a dialectical relationship where the utopian imagination is a privileged standpoint for criticizing the abuses of ideology and ideology in its positive function constrains the excesses of utopia. Rather than finding some dialectical endpoint, a grand theory, however, Ricoeur emphasizes a continuing critical dialectic. Ricoeur deals with what he calls Mannheim’s Paradox, namely, the uncomfortable realization for Marxists that their own view, and every other view, is subject to ideology critique and cannot escape its distortive tendencies. No one has an independent standpoint. Ricoeur says of this precarious situation: My own conviction is that we are always caught in this oscillation between ideology and utopia. There is no answer to Mannheim’s paradox except to say that we must try to cure the illnesses of utopia by what is wholesome in ideology . . . and try to cure the rigidity, the petrification, of ideologies by the utopian element. It is too simple a response, though, to say that we must keep the dialectic running. My more ultimate answer is that we must let ourselves be drawn into the circle and then must try to make the circle a spiral. We cannot eliminate from a social ethics the element of risk. We wager on a certain set of values and then try to be consistent with them; verification is therefore a question of our whole life. No one can escape this.2

As one can see, Ricoeur offers a much more sophisticated approach to both ideology and utopia than most, especially in the way he brings them together. He offers three advantages. One is his complexity and nuance itself, moving away from more simplistic perspectives. A second, pointed out by George Taylor, the editor of the original lectures, is that a signal contribution by Ricoeur was the important role of the imagination in both ideology and utopia and especially the role of the productive imagination that has been neglected in relation to the reproductive imagination.3 One can see here the interrelationship between Ricoeur’s work at that time on metaphor as not being reducible to literal language but offering irreducible creativity, a “semantic innovation.”4 His later work in the eighties on narrative as reconfiguring reality points in a similar direction. To this, one could even add his “little ethics” in Oneself as Another, where an imaginative vision of the Good allows for the “sieve” of the deontological Right within it.5 Ricoeur himself did not explicitly connect these dots, but they have been a spur to ongoing productive—and imaginative—reflection, some of which is reflected in this book. A third point is that Ricoeur creatively brings into dialogue on ideology the Marxist tradition, including a critical theorist such as Jürgen Habermas, and approaches to legitimation and ideology such as those presented by Max Weber and Clifford Geertz.

Introduction

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Ricoeur loved the Kantian phrase, “the symbol gives rise to thought,” which he emphasized in his early The Symbolism of Evil.6 About forty years after the initial lectures, the authors in this book have continued to be prompted by Ricoeur’s Lectures to further thought. Despite Ricoeur’s own complexity, there are helpful nuances and many more implications than what Ricoeur was able to accomplish even in his long life. The essays that follow demonstrate many of these implications. In a first section, “Re-Encountering Ricoeur,” John Arthos examines the Lectures in the context of Ricoeur’s life. He outlines the shift in Ricoeur’s political orientation from radical activist to liberal progressive over the course of his life and concludes that it is precisely the model of ideology and utopia that can serve as a springboard for a progressive hermeneutic theory of the political. Roger W. H. Savage places Ricoeur’s emphasis on the surplus of meaning in his hermeneutics in relationship to the distortive surplus of meaning that Ricoeur indicates is at work in ideology. As mentioned, Ricoeur did not himself connect his thought in the Lectures to any great extent with his larger projects, so this is an important creative connection to make. Savage also shows how the ambiguity of power that both enables action and can create abuse through ideology allows for protest and hope. The superabundance of meaning fuels imaginative hope and action. Dan R. Stiver fastens upon a small acknowledgment in Ricoeur that ideology in its positive meaning can help preserve the “period of effervescence” that helps constitute any movement. While Ricoeur sees utopia as the view from outside or nowhere as the key to ideology critique, Stiver points out how sometimes critique can stem from a return to the original vision, noting also Ricoeur’s comment at one point that all ideologies arise from an original utopia. In this sense, critique can arise from stirring the fading embers of the “original effervescence,” much as the Civil Rights Movement in the United States called upon American ideals of equality to be true to the original vision. A second section does what Ricoeur often did, namely, the essays put Ricoeur in dialogue with key figures. Recep Alpyağil places Ricoeur in conversation with the thirteenth-century Muslim theologian Ibn ‘Arabi. Alpyağil shows how Ricoeur’s views on metaphor compare to ‘Arabi’s views on the imagination. He then explores how Ricoeur’s view of the “criss-crossing” of ideology and utopia is resonant with ‘Arabi’s sense of the interrelationship between the knowability and unknowability of God. Linda Lee Cox connects Ricoeur with the Marxist theorist Fredrick Jameson, showing that both emphasize a dialectical approach and that the utopic imagination does not however manifest itself in a conclusive utopia. Cox employs Jameson, along with others such as Emmanuel Levinas, Joan Tronto, and Martha Nussbaum, to expand Ricoeur’s view of the social imagination in the midst of ambiguity.

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She shows that Ricoeur’s emphasis on the acting-suffering agent points toward concretizing utopia in practical action. With the help of a case study of a transgender student, her analysis contributes concrete guidance in seeing how suffering is an unbridgeable gap yet also a summons to traverse the gap. The third section turns to the more recent emphasis on embodied social critique to bring together two phases of Ricoeur’s own thought: his earlier major work on embodiment in Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary and his later work in the Lectures and on hermeneutics.7 Nel van den Haak notes that Ricoeur’s work on metaphor is more developed than his work on imagination, although it presupposes imagination, and then points out how Ricoeur’s work as a whole is opposed to “body-hostile” philosophies, making space for political critique that is corporeal and concrete. With a close look at political gender questions, she also explores how Ricoeur’s attention to tensions in discourse is important for dealing with the conflicts and plurality in any attempt to materialize the utopian imagination. To ignore these tensions is to fall into political evil. Stephanie N. Arel examines primary documents of extremist political rhetoric and actions such as those of 9/11 to show how power is concretized in human bodies where they become weapons, prepared through ritual action. As we have seen, Ricoeur saw utopia as a corrective for ideology, and vice versa. Arel notes how in these cases, the utopian imagination, such as the promise of bliss on the other side of martyrdom, can support and become part of the ideologies as affects deeply shaped for self-destruction. All of the essays augment Ricoeur in some ways, but the final section explicitly expands on Ricoeur’s thought in the Lectures. George H. Taylor, the editor of the Lectures, reflects on their ongoing vitality in the way they resonate with recent movements such as embodiment in behavioral economics, arising out of cognitive psychology; the way in which cognitive linguistics shows that the mind works extensively in terms of embodied metaphors; and the way that ideology has come to be seen in terms of a more holistic “social imaginary.” Ricoeur’s work continues to stimulate understanding of the way that political action is symbolic, embodied action. Taylor, moreover, indicates that the more traditional term of ideology is important to keep as well as the phrase “social imaginary” to maintain focus on the critique of power and its distortions. Annalisa Caputo in her essay translated by Lisa Adams turns to the burning issue of immigration and how it “gives rise to thought.” She expands on Ricoeur’s anthropology of “oneself as another” to draw out the ideology and fragility of the “foreign,” noting that we are foreign even to ourselves. In response, she asserts that we need the utopian imagination to reconsider our relations to others such as immigrants. Mature relations, she points out, also involve the work of mourning, a Freudian phrase much used by Ricoeur. She draws on Ricoeur’s essays on translation

Introduction

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as a way of imagining, utopically, a new and different hospitality and ways of narrating tales to each other. Greg S. Johnson asks if there can be a commitment to the “real politics” of Raymond Guess and the utopian thinking of Ricoeur. He gives an affirmative answer that involves fleshing out the intricacies of both, offering a way that ideology and utopia do not have to be seen as contradictory. Johnson draws attention to the way that Ricoeur’s early political essays show how the utopian can be immersed in history, therefore not turning away from it, illustrating how utopias can be seen as embodied interruptions in concrete life rather than perceived as a theory about another life. He creatively applies his integration of the two to the beginnings of the Arab Spring in 2011 and, alternatively, John Ford’s film Stagecoach. One can see in all of these essays an appreciation of the way that themes in Ricoeur come together to construct new meaning, illustrating the value in re-reading the Lectures today. The authors reveal that imagination, symbolic action, suffering, and embodiment intertwine, uncovering how the crisscrossing of ideology and utopia is even more complex than Ricoeur brought out. Ricoeur gave the Lectures right after the convulsions of the sixties with assassinations and worldwide uprisings. We re-read them now after the end of the Cold War yet with still tangled relations between Russia and the Euro-American alliance, with troubling challenges to democracies and leanings toward ideologies of the right, and with the dramatic rise of the global south and immigration in the global north. The dominant neoliberal Rawlsian consensus is waning. Racism and sexism of various kinds abound. In short, the challenge of ideology critique, and utopia-critique, remains as sharp as ever. Thus, the need continues for a utopian imagination that is grounded in embodied political realities, for a nuanced critique like Ricoeur’s that allows for the positives of both ideology and utopia to put brakes upon the dissimulations of both. Notwithstanding the value of Ricoeur’s own thought, from all accounts, Ricoeur’s hope was not that people would simply take up his views but that they would do what these writers have done, namely, to use their imaginations to appropriate his thought in creative ways to respond to new challenges.

NOTES 1. Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). 2. Ibid., 312. 3. George H. Taylor, “Ricoeur’s Philosophy of Imagination,” Journal of French Philosophy 16 (Spring/Fall 2006): 96.

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4. Paul Ricoeur, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” Semeia 4 (1975): 78–79. 5. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 6. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan, Religious Perspectives (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 347–57. 7. Paul Ricoeur, Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. Erazim Kohák, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Ricoeur, Paul. “Biblical Hermeneutics.” Semeia 4 (1975): 27–138. ———. Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary. Translated by Erazim Kohák. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966. ———. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Edited by George H. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. ———. Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ———. The Symbolism of Evil. Translated by Emerson Buchanan. Religious Perspectives. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. Taylor, George H. “Ricoeur’s Philosophy of Imagination.” Journal of French Philosophy 16 (Spring/Fall 2006): 93–104.

Part I

RE-ENCOUNTERING RICOEUR

Chapter 1

Ricoeur and the Political John Arthos

Philosophical hermeneutics in its German variants had by the most charitable interpretation an insufficiently developed, if not credulous, political identity, a weakness that Ricoeur attempted to correct by extending the hermeneutic franchise to a theory of the state, of just institutions and of the responsible citizen. For him the heart of the political question was the relationship of government to violence: “What is the meaning of this fact, manifest to whomever considers history and daily life, that man is political? The political existence of man is watched over and guided by violence, the violence of the state which has the characteristics of legitimate violence.”1 He took the concept of “legitimate violence” (Weber) as a starting point for his political theory, which he conceptualized as a tension between the compulsion inherent to hierarchy and the democratic impulse for equality. Hierarchy and democracy constitute the double axis of a realistic description of the challenge for governance. In creating this heuristic, Ricoeur was attempting to engage the critique of power that was missing in Heidegger and Gadamer, who had theorized only one side of the tension, the legitimation of authority. But this engagement brought a host of vexing problems for Ricoeur, whose instinct for discursive mediation did not sit comfortably within the politics that developed in the mid-twentieth-century French intellectual culture of the left. If Gramsci was right that the historical process elaborates the intellectuals it needs, Ricoeur was out of place.2 The story I want to explore in this chapter is how Ricoeur attempted to reconcile himself to his place within a progressive politics and how this affects the profile of hermeneutics. The shift in Ricoeur’s political orientation from radical activist to liberal progressive over the course of his life, and the way his philosophy reflected this turn, is a clarifying test for the relationship of hermeneutics to power. 3

4

John Arthos

Part of the story of this development is of course Ricoeur’s relationship to his famous intellectual peers on the left, the conversation partners with whom his developing views were always to one degree or another in tension. Ricoeur tended to sail against the winds of fashion, and it is to his great credit that he resisted the pull of the crowd, yet put up no dogmatic barriers to these currents either.3 We should not mistake him for an apologist of the liberal consensus. At times he could sound very much like Foucault: We can call this function of signification ideological to the degree that it tends to conceal the dysfunctions of our social life in the name of the preservation of the industrial system and its expansion . . . this functioning escapes the consciousness of individuals and groups and develops a whole set of repressive measures with regard to anything that might call into question, either theoretically or practically, the perpetuation of the system.4

In league with Habermas, critique obliged him to put his own political commitments to the test: “It is this interest in emancipation which introduces what I call ‘ethical distance’ in our relation to any heritage.”5 I want to emphasize that Ricoeur’s changing profile on the political landscape over the course of his life nevertheless worked within a generally progressive set of motivations. Johann Michel notes correctly that “the pregnance of a progressivist presupposition. . . . never ceases to nourish his theory.”6 Ricoeur was an activist who cultivated a public voice as a public intellectual, and when his activism turned more toward establishment politics, he retained his passion for the alleviation of suffering and social equity. The question of the political in Ricoeur does not regard Ricoeur’s passionate commitment to justice but how this commitment shaped the hermeneutics he has left us. Ricoeur made a remarkable programmatic statement in Fallible Man about the new hybrid phenomenology he had set out to develop, and what he called for in this statement to correct for the Husserlian over-emphasis on perception is also what Gadamer’s hermeneutics lacks in its absence of a political dimension: The feelings that gravitate around power, having, and worth . . . ought to manifest our attachment to things and to aspects of things that are no longer of a natural order but of a cultural one. A reflection that would end the intersubjective constitution of the thing at the level of the mutuality of seeing would remain abstract. We must add the economic, political, and cultural dimensions to objectivity. . . . Strictly speaking, the mutuality of seeing is a very poor intersubjective relation. The “difference” of a Self from others is constituted only in connection with things that themselves belong to the economic, political, and cultural dimensions. Consequently, we must specify and articulate the

Ricoeur and the Political

5

relationship of the Self to another Self by means of the objectivity that is built on the themes of having, power, and worth.7

Ricoeur is even more specific about the economic dimensions of this profile: A direct reflection on need cannot furnish the key to the economic sphere; on the contrary, it is the prior constitution of the economic object that can differentiate the truly human needs from animal needs. The structure of human desire is too plastic and too undefined to provide political economy with a solid structure. . . . This radical transformation of the animal “environment” into a human “world” is obviously related to the fundamental fact of work. . . . And because he works he establishes a new relation to things, the economic relation.8

This thought on economics leads Ricoeur to a synoptic reflection on the role of work and labor, which he attaches systematically to the state, but also to affect, culture, and institutions. This is the “reconstructive” voice of Ricoeur, prefiguring the political writing of the ensuing decades. Ricoeur would fill out these themes and expand into a granular consideration of legal justice in the last period, so the question I am asking is not whether Ricoeur responded to his own early programmatic demand but how, and how helpful the results of that effort are for a general hermeneutics that is responsive to the demand for a democratic politics. The search for reform within establishment institutions that preoccupied Ricoeur’s last work kept its distance from most then-current theories of radical democracy, and I want to know why. RICOEUR’S EARLY POLITICAL THINKING I am going to outline the path of Ricoeur’s political thought in parallel with his biography, because there is a strong impetus coming from the life he lived and the tenor and direction of his political writing. The trajectory moves from a more radical, encompassing, and future-oriented engagement with the political in his youth to a more reformist, backward-looking concern with the legitimacy of legal-ethical conventions and established juridical institutions in his last works. One of Ricoeur’s few late attempts to grasp the world-shaking phenomenon of globalization happening all around him in later life, as we will see, was only a mild effort. In the middle period, he gave a lecture course that represented his most sustained thinking on the subject of the political, but that he did not develop these lectures into one of his great monographs is both a great pity and an indication that his attentions had turned elsewhere. Dosse characterizes Ricoeur’s early political thinking as unabashedly radical: “From his first post at Saint-Brieuc, in 1933-34, Ricoeur became a

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militant activist in the movement of socialist youth.”9 Along with the many young progressive intellectuals of his generation his commitments expressed “a general contestation of the dominant values” (33). He condemned capitalism as “a confrontation of egoism and interest, a jungle in which man is the enemy of man,”10 and was horrified by “the obsessive quest for economic profit that was taking humanity inexorably into a depersonalized existence.”11 His critique of the U.S. consumer culture was vehement, and in a strong echo of Adorno and Horkheimer, he characterized “the American way of life” as “a sort of prefascism” (“Pour une coexistence pacifique des civilisations.”)12 As a militant activist he was fearless and outspoken. By his early twenties he was publishing regularly in radical leftist revues and journals. The context for his writings was the traumatic period of the 1930s in France, Europe’s Great Depression in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash after the fateful results of Versailles had begun to settle in, and the portentous political climate of crisis leading to the Second World War. Despite his youthful naiveté, which he later acknowledged, his radicalism does not seem to be merely a passing experiment or even a unique response to a moment of crisis. His grounding in tenets of social justice and his passionate commitment to ending suffering and violence were commitments carried through to the end of his life. A sign of the character of Ricoeur’s early progressivism was his willingness to acknowledge a role for what he called in 1949 “progressivist violence.”13 While he had professed a strict pacifism informed by the death of his father in the First World War, his perspective altered under the pressure of circumstance before the unfolding spectacle of Hitler’s march. He struggled to find a legitimate philosophical position for warranting the violence of the state in the context of war and the anti-colonialist revolutions to follow.14 We can see this struggle in the style of his approach. His discursive strategy in introducing progressivist violence in the 1949 essay “Non-Violent Man and History” is maximally elliptical, with the threat of violence serving as a kind of anti-gravity to counterbalance the embrace of non-violent protest as the principle modality of political confrontation. Rather than speaking directly of the contours of this violence, the essay probes the limits of the efficacity of non-violent protest for political change. The limitations of Gandhian strategy outside of a particular political context suggest a graduated continuum between material confrontation and the symbolic gesture. The limitations of nonviolence then suggest that progressivist violence—as expressed in limit cases such as the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the French Resistance, “the politics of national fronts,”—need to serve as the reluctant but ever-present alternative looming behind the limits of its more visible partner.15 If nonviolence operates under “certain favorable circumstances, under the pressure of exceptional personalities,” it “ought to be the prophetic nucleus of strictly political movements, that is to say, movements centered

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on a technique of revolution, of reform or power.”16 Ricoeur’s strategy of ellipsis leaves a significant gap, however, because it identifies the tripwire that signals the passage to a justifiable progressive violence but leaves out an explication of its mechanisms and modalities. We are left in no doubt that violence should be bounded in limit conditions, but this is the only indication he provides. Does progressivist violence operate by a law of immanence that history dictates? What separates the justification for bloody or peaceful revolution? The 1960s would serve as a potent test of Ricoeur’s ellipsis. To be sure, even during this more radical phase, the signs of Ricoeur’s constitutional moderation were plainly in evidence. Despite his militant socialism, he abhorred dogma of any stripe, and he was opposed “just as much to the collectivist materialism [of orthodox Marxism] as the individualist materialism” of capitalism.17 He attached himself to the Christian socialist movement inspired by Karl Barth, who spoke out against the rigidity of party Marxists on one side and the establishment complicity of the Catholic hierarchy on the other. With Mounier he cultivated “a strongly dialogic sensibility, a practice of thinking-along-with” (35). What he would eventually call a “productive socialism” was informed by a belief in “human fallibility, the perfectability of man, the refusal to absolutize man’s deeds, and a recognition of the incompleteness and openness of human action” (48). He would place into dialectic the interaction between utopian dreams and the practical responsibilities of citizenship. His profound ambivalence toward political violence was expressed in response to the Spanish Civil War of 1937, when he affirmed a “double position in favor of the spiritual refusal of violence, and the acceptance of violence for saving the Spanish Republic” (55). The category of the tragic is always the descriptor under which Ricoeur places his most conflicted ambivalences. Perhaps the most revealing text to indicate Ricoeur’s early leftist radicalism is the 1960 retrospective essay on the work of his long-time mentor and friend Emmanuel Mounier. From his early twenties, Ricoeur followed Mounier’s passionate and uncompromising commitment to social justice, as well as his critique of the orthodox Marxism of the time. As a prominent public intellectual, Mounier battled the depersonalizing currents of Marxist politics within the frame of a progressive Christian activism. Ricoeur collaborated closely with Mounier on the famous movement journal Esprit that served as the banner for a personalist politics, a journal that did not eschew the language of revolution. Ricoeur’s retrospective essay is epideictic in tone, so it is sometimes difficult to discriminate the line between description and affirmation; nevertheless, it is possible to discern general lines of agreement and disagreement with Mounier.18 In a fascinating anticipation of his own thought, Ricoeur structures his overview in two parts to reflect what he calls a shift in Mounier’s general

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political orientation from a more practical “pedagogy concerning the communal life” of the 1932–1935 pre-war period to a more philosophical postwar orientation.19 Mounier’s earlier “working values” are formed by “assents which are lived and acted more than reflected upon” that amount to a reform agenda (137). A combatant in a political crisis is one “who discerns so as to act and who acts so as to discern” (146). Such a direct action orientation, as we know, is somewhat foreign to Ricoeur’s lifelong insistence on the necessary distance of reflection, but the strong link between intellectual life and public responsibility pulses with the same well of passion in both thinkers.20 Mounier’s push for a “personalist and communal Revolution” promoted “individual initiative and spontaneity in mutual relations” rather than a “juridical, contractual society,” because he feared the latter contributed to the “massive depersonalization” that he feared most in the unfolding new world of technical rationalism (137-39). This is a concern that will be carefully modulated in Ricoeur’s work. Although certainly at one with Mounier’s fear of modern depersonalization, the suspicion of the juridical is clearly to be adjusted in Ricoeur’s dialectic of person and institution, and in his late absorption in the structures of institutional justice. But perhaps most interesting and significant is Ricoeur’s characterization of “concrete ethics” in Mounier’s disagreement with Marxism. The following passage is worth quoting at length because of the degree of its identification with a revolutionary commitment. The main subject of the passage is the excess of the collectivist utopianism, but what I want to point out is the radical coloring of the discourse: What is in question is the meaning of revolutionary action. The real question is the following: what is ultimately the actual basis for the Marxist’s new man? The answer is that they base themselves on the future effect of economic and political changes, not on the attraction exercised here and now by personal values over revolutionary men. Only a material revolution enrooted in a personalist awakening would have meaning and chance for success. Marxism is not an education but a training. This explains why it is “an optimism of collective man covering a radical pessimism of the person.” Here is the core of the debate: the conviction of personalism is that one does not progress toward the person if the person is not in the beginning what demands, what presses on in the midst of the revolt of the famished and afflicted. The danger in a revolution which does not take its own end as its source and proper means is to debase man under the pretext of berating him, and merely to alter the form of his alienations.21

In this passage, Ricoeur is clearly thinking-along-with Mounier. Breaking up the dehumanizing machinery of mass society needs a revolutionary awakening. That revolution is required is taken for granted, and the only question is what kind. To lend his support to Mounier’s view, Ricoeur places the personalist alternative (material revolution and personalist awakening) into his

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own dual frame of suspicion and faith: “It seems to me that the reason for our attachment to him is . . . the rare accord between two tonalities of thought and life; what he himself called strength [la force], following the ancient Christian moralists, or the virtue of confrontation, and generosity or abundance of heart, which rectifies the hardness of the virtue of strength by means of something forgiving and graceful.”22 If we see here Ricoeur’s familiar commitment to the open possibility of the human, what is less familiar is the language of force and confrontation in the service of a revolutionary imperative. Ricoeur will step back in significant ways from the radical profile of the personalist movement. The tone of revolutionary passion is Mounier’s more than Ricoeur’s, so one has to wonder what kind of derivative is yielded when that fullness of passion is subtracted. In 1985 Ricoeur would criticize his own earlier radicalism as impractical: “The idea of putting Marx in place of Aristotle in a new theological summa seems to me absolutely a non-starter.”23 Nevertheless, his political orientation to the demands of “the famished and the afflicted” remained central, and the question is what form that depth of commitment would take. In the conclusion of his overview of Mounier, Ricoeur returned to the need for a greater reflective distance to balance Mounier’s earlier orientation to political action: “The work which resulted from these extraordinary circumstances shows what the theoretical work of Mounier might have been had he not sacrificed it to the Esprit movement.”24 The phrase “extraordinary circumstances” is telling; it suggests that revolutionary fervor might have been appropriate to the moment. But beyond this concession Ricoeur worries that Mounier’s later shift around 1936 to a more philosophical intention did not fulfill its own promise: “At this point, the sketch of ‘freedom under conditions’ turns to a critique of the Utopian frame of mind which attempts to elaborate the plan for a society and rules for action based on principles, but without ever incorporating into its research the interpretation of events or the exegesis of historical forces” (146). Presumably Ricoeur would take on the task of that interpretation and exegesis. On the philosophical side, Ricoeur’s prodigious attempt to justify deontological “rules of action” as a way to correct for Hegelian idealism in Oneself as Another is an extension of Mounier’s incomplete project. On the political side, Mounier’s “freedom under conditions” is the germ of a concession to the need for the regulation of generosity and confrontation. It portends the dialectic of ideology and utopia that Ricoeur would flesh out in the 1970s in his political philosophy. In a telling development, the passage from the 1930s and 1940s to the 1950s involves a shift in Ricoeur’s thinking from revolutionary theory to a critical analysis of political power in established systems. One idea that he articulated in a famous 1957 Esprit essay became a kind of root theory that helped Ricoeur calibrate his conflicted relationship to political authority and

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violence from that point on. It is what he called in the 1950s the political paradox,25 the simultaneous desire for freedom and order that is embodied in the laws that protect citizens and the institutions that govern them, the respect for plurality and the need for unity. Ricoeur was highly sensitive to both the claims of individual freedom embodied in liberalism and the Marxist commitment to the material security that makes freedom meaningful.26 Here it seems to me some grounds for agreement might exist with both Mouffe and Laclau, who express in their later thought strong components of pragmatism.27 The necessity of hierarchical structures in the ordering of a complex society means that domination will creep in, since concentrated power will seek to dominate just as water seeks its level. But Ricoeur placed this danger in tension with another. The tendency of aggregation to insular control and its “monopoly of orthodoxy” is an imbalance rather than the propulsive direction of institutional life.28 The happiness that unity creates “is the occasion of the passions of power” (176), yet “an absolute pluralism is unthinkable” (175). On the one hand, each “time we sense deep affinities between realities, points of view, or disparate personages, we are happy” (176); on the other hand, “as soon as the exigency for a single truth enters into history as a goal of civilization, it is immediately affected with a mark of violence” (177). With the excesses of the French Revolution (and its modern echoes) in mind, Ricoeur was wary of the counter-reaction to the hegemony of the establishment—“when freedom becomes mad” (181). Because of the double danger, Ricoeur came to the conclusion that the “ultimate meaning of man’s perilous adventures and the values which they unfold is condemned to remain ambiguous” (182). This equivocity allows him to affirm what Claude Lefort called “the revolutionary imaginary,” while seeking to preserve and bolster uncorrupted norms and structures. That freedoms are guaranteed by structures that require hierarchy is the paradox of the political condition. The embrace of a dialectical relation between freedom and order lead Ricoeur to a controversial cross-roads. Like Gadamer, he believed that authority is legitimated by the recognition of those who submit to it: “Recognizing superiority is the act of a disciple who accepts being taught by a master. And I think that this relation of mastery is interesting to the very extent to which this is not the master/slave relation.”29 Ricoeur saw democratic systems as “regimes possessing hierarchical structures,” and that it is in “wishing to live together that one must look, rather toward the vertical structure” of hierarchical relation.30 In 1960 he wrote, “Power establishes between men an unequal, non-reciprocal, hierarchical, and non-fraternal form of communication. And yet this relationship is fundamental and constitutes the very foundation of human history.”31 Ricoeur’s effort to understand the basis for a system of justice responsive to the hermeneutic recuperation of

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phronesis surpasses by orders of magnitude the minimal gestures of German hermeneutics to cope with the central dilemma of power. His theorization of democratic governance as a tension between the horizontal principle of democracy and vertical principle of hierarchy is a clarifying and perhaps even durable heuristic. On the other hand, his siding with Gadamer in his willingness to look at the positive as well as the negative dimensions of authority is not unproblematic. He accepted the “violence of the magistrate” as legitimate “within the limits of respect for the life and dignity of the guilty who are punished.”32 He held a Calvinist belief in the inherency of “murderous violence” as a necessity of the constitution of the state (246). He adopted too easily Arendt’s thesis that society constitutes a “desire to live together” (vouloir-vivre-ensemble) as an extension of an ethic of love. Theorizing the dialectic of violence and love in “The State and Violence,” he overlooked the refinements of order that confuse the distinction between coercion and persuasion. Ricoeur’s intellectual integrity forced him to stare the tragic dilemma of political violence in the face, but in his political thinking, he may have been caught too much within the dialectical impulse. THE 1960s Ricoeur’s appointment to the presidency of Nanterre University in 1969 and the subsequent events of his tenure are perhaps the perfect practical litmus test for his evolving political commitments. This work was no longer theory; this was how Ricoeur as a public intellectual chose to act. The “extraordinary circumstances” of the great wars had given way to another kind of crisis, the breakdown of social order in the 1960s that included the widespread questioning of the legitimacy of structures of authority, including those of Catholic and Protestant church hierarchies, state government at all levels, and the creaking university system centered around the Sorbonne. France was seized by radical explosions of unrest, the Algerian War and the Vietnam War being only the most salient irritants. Universities had become hotbeds of political agitation, with the occupation of buildings, physical destruction, and violence becoming commonplace modes of protest. Into this tinder box stepped Ricoeur. He was in a peculiar position because he straddled so many of the divides that separated the protestors from the establishment. In his political posture he was still militantly progressive. He vociferously opposed the Vietnam War, fought against the government’s role in Algeria, was part of a delegation to China during the revolutionary period, and spoke out on the Israeli-Arab conflicts and on German re-armament. In short, he involved himself in the great major national and international political issues of his

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life. To say that he was an engaged intellectual would be an understatement. His approach to these issues was usually two-pronged: fiercely progressive in orientation but mediating and discriminating in approach. (The rare exception to his progressivism was his remonstrance against the free sexual mores of the 1960s, and here his devout Christian roots were in evidence.) He was for many years the president of the progressive Christianisme social, but his relationship to the most radical incarnations of Protestant movement politics in France was conflicted; he was held in suspicion by many of the younger generation, and he often would separate himself from them either substantively or tactically. The general posture he took in the face of the contending claims on his commitment to justice—and this is really the telling point in understanding where Ricoeur’s politics come to rest—shaped itself in the form of a dialectical tension: “We have entered into a time in which we must be reformist and remain revolutionary [faire du réformisme et rester révolutionnaire].33 All the skills of the legislator in the ensuing period will be needed to put in place pliant, revocable, reparable institutions, open to an internal process of revision and to an external process of contestation.”34 In other words, Ricoeur was trying to graft the revolutionary spirit of his youth as a radical progressive onto his commitment to the idea of just institutions. He wanted to take part “in changing the hierarchical relation in the industrial world, and in opening up a new world which could change life itself.”35 Within this double allegiance, Ricoeur became a defender of the traditional institution as a place of mediation. The university in particular, he thought, should serve the purpose of mediation between education and contestation. We are here worlds apart from the Foucaultian suspicion of governmentality and Bourdieu’s sociology of institutions. No doubt Ricoeur would have been regarded as a bourgeois meliorist or a credulous reformist by many of his progressive colleagues. Johann Michel attempts to mount the case that Ricoeur was substantively not so very far from Bourdieu’s “critical intellectual” or Foucault’s “specific intellectual” in a number of fundamental respects.36 Certainly, Ricoeur had more faith in political institutions. A rational polity “is not abolished but presupposed by a meditation on political evil.”37 “The state,” he says in another place, “is precisely what resists the domination of that technology that has no memory.”38 The heart of the division, in my view, is whether institutional reform at the level of the state is a doomed project inevitably devoured by greed and folly, or whether progress is a constant battle with ebbs and flows that periodically wins worthwhile concessions and meaningful respites. In the United States, for instance, was the Roosevelt era of institutional reforms an anomaly, a pause before the onslaught and return to normalcy? Or was it a step forward that can be built on after this period of hegemonic retrenchment? How much of all of this progress is historically contingent? Perhaps the best

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approach for those committed to the fight for progress is to grant the unknowability of this question, and to practice both resistance and vigilance where it applies. Here Ricoeur is decisive. For him, state violence “is not the whole of the political, but its dark side. It implies a constant threat of resurgence, but it is not, in my opinion, constitutive of the state.”39 The statements from Le Monde above appeared in an essay-length article appearing in three issues in June of 1968, written in the midst of the tumultuous student protests at the Sorbonne. It is an extraordinary document that somewhat served as a kind of job application to Ricoeur’s administrative adventure in 1969. Ricoeur himself felt stifled by the anachronistic and ossified system of teaching and promotion that the French university had become. The Sorbonne was the gravitational epicenter of a privilege system of spoils for professors referred to by Ricoeur as “a coopted oligarchy.”40 Students were an afterthought, a peonage class “whose transcriptions of the grand monologue of the master served as the criterion of their aptitude before a tribunal on the day of the exams” (383-84). In his role as administrator, Ricoeur made extraordinary efforts, unusual for an administrator, to engage his students in genuine dialogue, a desire that can be traced directly to his personalist commitments that had targeted the dehumanization of modern social systems, here in the form of mass education. From his point of view, the chickens had come home to roost. The form of Ricoeur’s argument in this essay is what he himself would later characterize as abrupt, because it does not take account of the history of what at the outset he proclaims as axiomatic for the institution of the university.41 His strong thesis is that the institution “from the beginning lay under a sort of tension between, on the one hand, a reformist project, regulated by the possible and the reasonable, and, on the other hand, a revolutionary project that was total and inexhaustible” (380). By definition, the revolutionary passions unleashed in May 1968 had no anchorage in the reality of the university system itself. The essay describes the “Université napoléonienne” as a sclerotic, top-down hierarchical system that revolutionary passions had now brought into question in a way that the establishment could no longer quash or ignore. It is only in the third installment of the article that the dialectic of reform and revolution is described as a local manifestation of a larger historical process: Its “creative agitation . . . will continue or will become a revolutionary ferment at the heart of global society” (397). The dialectic of reform and revolution must therefore be a natural product of a kind of Hegelian reaction. The thesis is remarkable in another way. At this critical juncture in Ricoeur’s life, it marks a kind of admission—an explicit acknowledgment of a moderation that was always intrinsic to his personality and reflexive in his being, but that is here transferred to a political program more pragmatic than the idealistic calls of his youthful political philosophy. The opening

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paragraph is fascinating rhetorically, because it reads as a kind of blazing manifesto that could have been written by Ricoeur as a young militant socialist, as though to foreclose the charge of timidity that, in the context, his moderating proposal might excite: The signs are now quite eloquent. The West has entered a period of cultural revolution which is really and truly its revolution, the revolution of advanced industrial societies, even if it echoes or borrows from the example of China. It is a cultural revolution because it rebukes the division of the world that creates a life that is inferior economically, politically, in the whole sphere of human relationships. This revolution attacks capitalism not simply because capitalism fails to achieve social justice, but also because it succeeds too well in seducing people by its inhuman project of quantitative well-being; the revolution attacks bureaucracy not simply because it is cumbersome and ineffective, but because it makes human slaves to the powers, structures and hierarchical relations they have become estranged from; finally, it attacks the nihilism of a society that, like a cancerous tissue, has no other goal but its own increase. In the face of a society of “non-sense,” it attempts to set us on the path toward the creation of good, of ideas and of values. The enterprise is gigantic; it will take years, decades, a century.42

The sanctioning of revolution and the denunciation of capitalism are together a potent combination. Yet the phrase “cultural revolution,” despite its Maoist overtones, also creates a distance from the more direct destructive modalities of political revolution (insurrection, political violence, etc.). Into this buffer Ricoeur then inserts the interplay of reformist action and revolutionary pressure, and for the university, this means a system that insures a more egalitarian relationship between teacher and student: “The contract that ties the teacher and the learner carries an essential reciprocity which is the basis of a collaboration.”43 The bulk of Ricoeur’s essay is a meticulous outline of the kinds of structural adjustments to be made in the governance of the university that would facilitate the transformation of the system by “successive mutations” into a more humane institutional culture, and in this regard, it is similar to an extensive and concrete proposal he had made in 1964 for a series of radical reforms to the state university system (397). The university would then exemplify an environment of equity, respect, and genuine learning. When Ricoeur accepted the presidency of Nanterre, he would test his own theory. His iconoclastic behavior as an administrator embodied the thesis that he proclaimed in 1968 was the basis for the transformation of the university: “The contract that ties teaching and learning together involves an essential reciprocity, and this at its base is the principle of collaboration.”44 Campus unrest was a reaction to the system’s failure to express the necessary role of students as collaborators. The student revolts were forcing a

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necessary reconstruction of the teaching-learning relationship in the university system in what Ricoeur would call a reciprocity. The reconstruction did not mean dismantling the research function of the university but rather the recognition of the central place of student learning. The imperative to learn that students bring to the campus, their “aptitudes and tastes, previous and parallel knowledge, and above all the project of personal accomplishment” is the engine of the campus compact in which the institution “is granted the occasion and permission to accomplish its own knowledge project (projet de connaissance et de savoir) (382). This meant that education was a two-way process. In the never-finished project of the accomplishment of teaching, the institution “continues to learn; it is truly taught by its students” (382). This “institutional learning” is what Ricoeur wanted to initiate at Nanterre, and so even at the most alarmingly threatening stage of the campus protests, he made himself available to students: “The incursions into his office were all the more frequent, particularly as Ricoeur refused any protection in order to be able to discuss freely all contentious questions at any moment.”45 It was this availability that, ironically, was his downfall. His openness was what allowed the incident in the cafeteria in which a student in a flash mob dumped the contents of a garbage can on his head. It should be said that Ricoeur’s profile of moderation was a signal reason for his recruitment to the post at Nanterre, being engineered from above as “a simple manoeuver to marginalize avant-garde revolutionaries,” as some radical student groups suspected.46 He accepted the position with what seemed like reluctance, because he knew what he was in for, but he had laid out his reformist agenda for the university very publicly, and this was an opportunity to do as well as say. It is possible to argue that the system had selected him out for this role as a self-protective hegemonic move, since he was understood to be a moderating force, sympathetic to institutional prerogatives. But even if we allow this interpretation, there is space for considering Ricoeur’s actual conduct in the position. His attempt to practice dialogic openness in service of an idea of the university as a site of social conflict and mediation was a practical test of his own theory of the institution. Despite his extraordinary efforts as an administrator in open dialogue with the students, the more militant students regarded him simply as part of the establishment, and he too became an active target of their disruptive tactics of confrontation, subversion, and ridicule. The incident with the poubelle took on iconic significance and made Ricoeur a figure of sympathy but also a national butt of jokes as the symbol of the impotence of university authority to address student concerns. He quietly resigned his position after the episode, and his experiment in university administration was seen as a failure. This was a contributing factor to the eclipse of his reputation in France as a leading intellectual for at least the next decade.

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It is possible Ricoeur might have been naïve in his assumptions about the possibility of dialogue in a time of massive social upheaval; nevertheless, as an administrator, he always conducted himself according to his convictions—with generosity of spirit, dialogic openness, and passionate commitment to justice. His public failure as an administrator was due in large part to his integrity as a person. Now, the famous outcome of the Nanterre adventure—Ricoeur’s resignation after the humiliating encounter with student protestors—has a kind of prototypical hermeneutic indeterminacy. Some have argued that he would have survived the incident by just quietly persisting with the kind of Gandhian imperturbability that he had mastered.47 Ricoeur’s own delayed reaction to the episode lends itself to a multiplicity of social and psychological interpretations. The coarse public reaction to the scandal fed through the maw of a scandal-hungry mass media might have ultimately rendered his mediation impotent or negligible, or his administration may simply have been swept up in currents that no well-meaning individual could have overcome. What is decisive about the episode for our purposes has already been reached, because it regards the choice to accept the appointment at Nanterre in the first place: In the face of a concrete call to action, in a radical moment that stopped short of nihilation, Ricoeur’s attempt to preserve institutional prerogatives, to make hierarchy open to contestation and serve as an alembic of conflict and mediation was a decisive choice vis-à-vis the philosophical positions that spring from suspicion and faith. In his lifetime, Ricoeur had faced the most extreme forms of social crisis in which the very existence of democratic institutions was at stake, and in this situation he saw the prerogative of state violence in a limit situation. With this less cataclysmic unraveling of the social fabric he stood with the establishment, trying to bring about its own change from within. That he made himself vulnerable to physical attack and laid his professional career on the line gives this choice an integrity, whether it was the right choice or not. The difference of response to these radical moments may serve as a benchmark for understanding Ricoeur’s orientation to the relation of dialogue and power. A prescient sentence that Ricoeur had written four years previously in describing what he thought was the task of the educator as citizen captures his political outlook and comportment as well as anything he had ever written. Because human beings “wish themselves to be the agent of their destiny,” then education “will never simply be a protestation, as though it had been this once or ought ever to be, in the face of injustice and inequality, in the face of age-old poverties and those created newly by industrial economies; it must also prepare humans for the responsibility of collective decision.”48 In other words, critique is not enough. We must critique the status quo from the outside but also try to change it responsibly from within. His leadership role as a social critic on the left was not enough; he needed in concrete ways

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to help change the structures that reproduced privilege, poverty, and injustice. If Ricoeur opted for an establishment role in his experiment as administrator at Nanterre, he was trying to redefine his own activism by practicing suspicion and faith as an institutional actor. Whether he had the right balance then is hard to know, but he acted on the belief that one has a responsibility to construct as well as critique institutional life, and that seems to me to be an example worth emulating. THE 1970s AND 1980s After these tempestuous times, Ricoeur retreated first to work in the Husserl Center in the Sorbonne, then in some seminar space on the rue Parmentier run by the CNRS. This quiet post-Nanterre interlude is characterized by Dosse as a period of obscurity brought on by the triple assault on Ricoeur’s reputation of the vitriolic attack of the Lacanians after his Freud book, the very public loss to Foucault in the competition for the post at the Collège de France, and the debacle as an administrator at Nanterre. From a period in the 1960s when he occupied “a central place in the French philosophical world,” this was “a period in which he was not recognized in France.”49 Ricoeur’s retreat from the public eye was, however, a period of intense research activity, and it is perhaps not a coincidence that the themes Ricoeur turned to during this time focused on the imaginary—theories of metaphor, narrative, fiction, and utopia. This period also signaled a subtle distancing from aspects of his earlier more radical political commitments. Although he remained “one of the rare elderly statesmen of the original group” at the journal Esprit, he “was somewhat removed from the political preoccupations” of the group. He was described by one of the younger members as “un pur esprit. Il n’est pas la révolution permanente, mais la pensée permanente.”50 Likewise, Ricoeur distanced himself from the Christian socialist movement that he had been so active in since 1958. His resignation of the presidency of the movement in 1970 was more than a symbolic gesture. Its youthful members were a significant part of the student movement that had brought about his mortifying exit from Nanterre. It seems likely that his harsh public experience consolidated, solidified, and informed the more establishment political orientation of his mature thinking. During this period, Ricoeur also began teaching regularly at the University of Chicago, an adventure his biographers also agree to have been consequent on his disaffection from the French scene. The lecture theme that Ricoeur gave at Chicago in 1975 was the dialectic of ideology and utopia, the crystallization of his instinct that the progressive impulse toward revolution was as susceptible to distortion as the ideologies of domination, and that the two

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were essentially related, acting as counterweights to hold each other in check. During this same period, Ricoeur wrote his well-known interventions in the Gadamer/Habermas debates, and this thought was quite naturally intermixed with his theory of ideology and utopia. Ricoeur’s life as I have just related it had taught him the dangers of dogmatism on either side of political passions. The need for coming to terms with institutional authority acted as a constraining mechanism to discipline his idealistic commitments to the poor and disenfranchised, even as Ricoeur asserted the power of resistance against institutional and material hegemony.51 Since the “political paradox” posits the necessary role of institutional hierarchy, the question is only how its pathological tendencies are to be disciplined. Ricoeur did not theorize his way out of his youthful radicalism in any explicit apologia or course correction, but we see the usefulness of his mediating inclination for this new theoretical framework. He did not stop talking boldly about abuse of power and hegemonic violence, but this for him was only one form of abuse. The dialectic of ideology and utopia runs parallel to Ricoeur’s more famous and encompassing dialectic of suspicion and faith, and it is crucial to note that the structure of the lectures is an expression of the more basic dialectic. Ricoeur always described himself as a Christian socialist, the Christian dimension in a sense softening the hard edges of the socialist commitment, insofar as the Christian belief in the individual and in human frailty tempers the collectivist ideal of social equity, but the underlying footing of his political theory, as manifest in the first eight lectures on Marx and Althusser (of a total of eighteen), is a reading of socialist doctrine as it had evolved up to his time. What Ricoeur did by pulling this theory in the direction of Mannheim, Weber, Habermas, and Geertz was to attempt an amendment of Marxism that sailed against the more vehement anti-authoritarianism that the period had stirred.52 Ricoeur’s characteristic independence is expressed in his assertion that enthrallment to dogma must be avoided, whether it is “by Marxists or by anti-Marxists,” and this dictated his own method: “We take the good where we find it.”53 Ricoeur’s alignment with an underlying class critique of power is manifest. He believed that ideologies prop up domination and “comfort the collective ego of these dominant groups.”54 He echoed Marx’s insight “that the ruling ideas of an epoch are the ideas of a ruling class” (181). He understood hegemony as the cultivation of illusion: “Ideology occurs in the gap between a system of authority’s claim to legitimacy and our response in terms of belief” (183). The determination of social ideals “depends on who in society is speaking” and in the end serves mainly as “the legitimation of a certain system of authority” (192). Ricoeur believed that ideology has led us to “a time when everything is blocked by systems which have failed but which cannot be beaten” (300). He saw the media as an accessory and accomplice to

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hegemony: “To whatever extent that media inform us about the real nature of power in society, this knowledge is useless in itself because it has no impact on the distribution of power. The liberal system of information is neutralized by the real system of power” (241). From the distance of time, these standard-issue planks of ideology critique resident in Ricoeur’s theory feel somewhat dated given the complex transmutations that political theory has wrought on the notion of power. A relevant hermeneutics will have to do quite a bit of catching up to speak to significantly more complex and layered discourses on political agency. Žižek’s effort to recuperate ideology critique, for instance, takes up the need to theorize repressed antagonisms and conflictual desires contaminating and traumatizing the impulse toward freedom.55 But the point of my summary exercise here is to establish how far Ricoeur got in carrying a political hermeneutics forward, and to know if that place is a viable foundation from which to build. Ricoeur was conscious of the dangers of idealizing reason in a Habermasian vein, since “the most rational system has an irrationality of its own.”56 Where in the world, he asks, can there be, as Habermas would propose, “communication free from domination?”57 Ricoeur never suffered any blindness to the inherence of power in institutional structures. The inflection point was how to intervene in these structures. One standard-issue hermeneutic principle allowed Ricoeur to remain current in an important respect. Being quite allergic to any assumption of a privileged position, he understood the vulnerability of leftist critique that did not interrogate in turn its own position. The suspicion of metanarratives should be “applied not to one specific group or class but to the entire theoretical frame of reference in a chain reaction that cannot be stopped.”58 Because “our speech is itself caught up in ideology,” we ourselves have to be conscious of the history of effect (160): “When we denounce something as ideological, we are ourselves caught in a certain process of power, a claim to power, a claim to be powerful” (161). This assessment led Ricoeur to a claim aimed directly at the left: “Virtually no one is cured by the process of ideology-critique. Many are wounded but very few are cured. Ideology-critique is part of a process of struggle and not one of recognition” (249). Ricoeur extended this criticism even to Habermas: “The critique of ideology always presupposes a reflective act that is itself not part of the ideological process.”59 For Ricoeur there is no “position outside this whirlwind” that allows us to look dispassionately at someone else’s ideology (172). It is because of the pervasive power of ideological illusion that Ricoeur turns for a solution to the hermeneutic circle: “This is my conviction: the only way to get out of the circularity in which ideologies engulf us it to assume a utopia, declare it and judge an ideology on this basis” (172). This solution

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is the hopeful turn in his analysis: “We cannot remove ourselves from the ideological circle, but we are also not entirely conditioned by our place in the circle” (313). But again this hope functions to temporize his embrace of critique: “Utopias are wholesome only to the extent that they contribute to the interiorization of changes” (314). The interplay between ideology and utopia operates for Ricoeur as “a significant pair of opposite terms” that can help us escape from the pretension of the “transcendent onlooker” (173). The two function as essentially motivational roles that modulate each other in contest. The preservation of status quo interest against an interest in a fairer distribution of power are different perspectives. Here, Ricoeur comes closer to Laclau and Mouffe respecting the concept of agonism than is generally recognized: “We are always caught in the conflict not only between ideologies but also between rising and dominant groups” (178). Politics “is an art of orienting oneself among conflicting groups” (179). Ricoeur’s dialectic of ideology and utopia places the authority of the state in the balance: “The judgment on an ideology is always the judgment from a utopia.”60 Just as hegemony will turn into domination as a kind of iron law of the human condition, so utopian idealism will become at a certain point irresponsible by virtue of its detachment from power. To be sure, the dialectic is not some kind of perfect homeostatic system that keeps each side in check but a crude exchange prone to external contingencies, intransigent imbalances, and abrupt or violent corrections. Nevertheless, Ricoeur’s Kantian formula creates a balanced polarity: “Hermeneutics without a project of liberation is bind, but a project of emancipation without historical experience is empty” (237). Ricoeur attacked the anti-humanist tendency of left theory as he found it in thinkers such as Louis Althusser: “My question is whether Althusser’s orientation has not dreadful consequences for the theory of meaning, because what is meant in a field if it is meant by nobody?”61 Ricoeur did not disagree that “ideology is not something that is thought, but rather something within which we think,” but he believed “it makes more sense to use the language of The German Ideology and say that a thinker is within circumstances, in a situation, which he or she does not master, which is not transparent for him or her. In other words, does not the concept of a field belong in a more useful and helpful way to a motivational rather than to a causal relation?” (121). The resolution of the struggle between ideology (the masking of interests to gain power) and utopia (the dogmatic pursuit of a perfect society) remained stalled before the unhappy alternatives of totalizing system or inescapable suspicion. The way out of this set of bad choices was for Ricoeur an attention to the hermeneutic structure of pre-understanding and consciousness of effect. He wanted to follow the lead of Heidegger and Gadamer in locating the path out of the vicious circle of critique on an ontological footing.

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Ricoeur was not sanguine that the hermeneutic response could accomplish the mediation unaided, and the contributions of Habermas allowed him to find the proper registration for his dialectical tension. What Habermas did at a meta-level was to subsume the various parties in the theory debates of the 1960s (and that includes critical theorists and hermeneuts) into the frame of a contest of interests. It was a powerful move, because, in a stroke it linked every position in continental theory to a stake that carried its own presumption. So, for instance, hermeneutics is tied to a normative interest, and ideology theory to an interest in emancipation. (This shift of framing level is crucial in the debate.) Gadamer thought he had saved hermeneutics from the infinite regress of relativism by situating it in the social contest of voices, a civic dissoi logoi, but Habermas asserted that this perspective focused exclusively on the dimension of language to the neglect of the power relations behind it. Such interests were not inherently sinister, but they did not escape the need for some kind of distanced arbitration. We get here to the nut of the hermeneutic quandary. Is this the distance of another point of view, or of an instrument that mitigates point of view? Before he tackled this problem, Ricoeur underlined Habermas’s concession that ideology critique often made the error of exempting itself from the harsh light of criticism, as though it somehow could speak from an unquestioned position of moral superiority. Ricoeur was actually quite pointed about this weakness in the critical project, accusing Althusser of what he labeled “a ‘partisan’ science,” which commits the fallacy of the non-ideological standpoint.62 He went so far as to call this position dogmatic. Ricoeur affirmed the “hierarchical principle” by which the interest in emancipation supersedes the interest in communication. A “system of preferences which, in turn, appeals to a discernment of the rank of values” is formed by a cultural acquisition of values that are tested by reason.63 We do not get out of the co-dependency of tradition and critique, but this co-dependency is not a vicious circle. This view would be compatible with Gadamer’s notion of dialogue, except that reason in Ricoeur’s formulation is not the priority of the question and the openness to the other but rather a procedure of “desymbolization” and “resymbolization” that occupies “a particular critical moment” (159, 157). The concept of testing, like Ricoeur’s deference to the Kantian rule, carries within it an alliance to the social sciences via a hermeneutics of the text. Although there is an inherent distance in the hermeneutic concept of history of effect, it is an incipient distance that needed, according to Ricoeur, a full “objectification,” a wringing out of the socio-cultural conditioning of the initial expression so that language achieves a full autonomy.64 Only when discourse is uprooted and effaced from “the intentions of those who pronounced and professed it” is it able to be reactualized before the claims

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of reason (161). Ricoeur conceded that this is necessarily a relative and unfinished process, the results of which are only ever improvements. But he thought this procedure avoids the danger of putting “abstract idealism back in business” (161). Thus, Ricoeur agreed with Habermas, at this crucial juncture, that the interpreter is powerless to recognize the distortions of ideology because those distortions are implanted at a deeper level than what conversation partners or combatants have access to. Ideology “is an effect of meaning for which the subject lacks the key.”65 The conclusion he drew was that this incapacity “decides the kind of strategy capable of being applied to it,” which is to say “properly explanatory procedures . . . capable of leading to a reconstruction of” meaning, following a process of desymbolization (159). Ricoeur associated “the complementary character of these two orders” with two “sciences and the two modalities of interests which govern the corresponding methodologies” (163). Texts are the artifacts that render this procedure possible, because they are extricated from the situational interests that produced the original expression, and therefore susceptible to the transcendental work of analysis that can purify them of their distortions (161). The re-regionalization of hermeneutics accomplished by an objectifying process of desymbolization and resymbolization would then take advantage of the space of difference that inscription provides, a move about which I have already expressed reservations. More congenial to a hermeneutic perspective is the rhetorical principle of agonistic democracy that calls upon contention to continually lay bare the multiplicity of interests that operate in any situation. No method exempts the partners in a conversation from the responsibility of sorting out their various interests. Empirical and logical methods of all kinds are useful, but ultimately they are put to use, subordinated to the necessity of parties coming to terms with each other. The hierarchy of levels ultimately returns us (as citizens) to the level of dialogue and contestation, even if that dialogue is between the citizens in the square and the leader of a corrupt state. So the move Ricoeur makes here stalls at precisely the point at which I think hermeneutics must (and can) advance to participate in a robust democratic rhetoric of the political. AFTER THE CHICAGO LECTURES George Taylor also finds enormous heuristic value in the prospects laid out by the Chicago lectures, and regrets Ricoeur’s not following through on the project: “As I have argued elsewhere, it appears that over time Ricoeur did not only redirect his attention away some of his more provocative theses regarding productive imagination—including the utopia—but retreated from

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them.”66 In particular, Ricoeur’s idea of the power of the utopian imagination to shatter normative complacency would have special value for current political theory, yet “there is much also that needs further refinement and discrimination” (47). The backward-looking orientation of Ricoeur’s work in the last stage of his thinking is quite noticeable. In the public realm, owing in part to a return to the topic of the Holocaust, Ricoeur thought and wrote a great deal about violence, punishment, judgment, and forgiveness, and on the other hand, memory, history, conscience, responsibility, and forgetting. His interest in public institutions focused on the forensic and judicial realm. His few brief forays into political institutions were occasional essays or interviews.67 His attention to the themes of history, memory, and forgetting, his focus on the courts and juridical theory, and his reflections on death, as splendid as they are, meant that the last decades of his life were not spent on deepening and expanding the thesis of ideology and utopia, and therefore not giving the imprimatur to that line of thinking that he might have done. We can see this turning happen in the textual record.68 It is in the ninth study of Oneself as Another, when he treats the problem of political representation. There he entertains the question of how non-utopian just institutions ought to function. Principles of legitimation are directly derived from and answerable to the polity’s rules of deliberation.69 Good deliberative practice, eubolia (a term used by the chorus in the Antigone), is understood by Ricoeur hermeneutically, which in this case means that it focuses on the issue at hand, the Sache, and the Sache is inherently plural (undecidable, contingent, particular), so that political judgment is always what Ricoeur dubs judgmentin-situation. (That this is actually firstly a rhetorical principle Ricoeur does not credit—judgment-in-situation is the essence of rhetorical reasoning, and hermeneutics learned this at the lap of rhetoric.) Where Ricoeur departs from—or rather advances beyond—Gadamer, is to establish clearly that judgment-in-situation is very often what he terms “tragic judgment.” The surprising meditation on the Antigone in the middle of the ninth study is motivated by Ricoeur’s idea that a “critical” (as distinct from “naïve”) phronesis, having first rubbed up against the touchstones of Kantian universals, will give itself over to practical decision as a necessity of public life that can never square itself perfectly with the plurality of needs and interests in a democracy. Thus the act of decision, the locus of authority vested in judgment, is an acknowledgment of an unavoidable hierarchy that stalls the descent into anarchy, but that risks the ascent into domination. This middle position must maintain its tragic balance, leaving the parties unsatisfied (“the conflict of convictions”) but preserving the form of democratic practice (290): “It is the system that accepts its contradictions to the point of institutionalizing conflict” (260). Ricoeur, thus, is attempting to mediate the radical critique of progressive

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resistance, while placing it in tension with the inevitability of some kind of system, “defective owing to its universality” (262). At the end of the study, he gathers up the results of his reflection in a splendid synopsis of the zoon politikon in “the relations between responsibility and temporality in the three directions that temporality implies,” past, present, and future (294). But instead of turning this reflection in the direction of the Chicago lectures, he turns it toward the themes of one’s body, the face of the other, conscience, and personal ethics. CONCLUSION Marc Crépon reads a consistency in Ricoeur’s political thought without any particular periodization, “a constant recurrence” that emerges throughout his philosophical itinerary.70 What I have tried to show in this chronology is that there was a significant shift of emphasis in the arc of his thinking, a kind of oblique turn, from early to late, moving away from the future tense of the political imaginary. I have suggested that this was neither a sea-change in Ricoeur’s outlook nor a situational response to political circumstance, but something more complicated. Brian Treanor and Henry Venema see a decline or loss in the later perspective which they attribute to the dropping away of Ricoeur’s early preoccupation with what he called the excess of the foundation: “What has been missing, or left aside, from Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology is not the problem of human fallibility, but the ‘founding dialectic’ or disproportion that is constitutive of the ‘power to fail . . . that makes man capable of failing.’”71 This may be—I do not know—but it is important to mark the change and what it entails for hermeneutics. The first thing to say is that the last work should not fall under any indictment. The turn from the prospective to the retrospective exemplified by Ricoeur’s close interrogations of the themes of punishment, forgiveness, forgetting, juridical judgment, and the institutions of the court, and the compendium of rehabilitated political terms, such as responsibility, sanction, pardon, rehabilitation, initiative, and so on, will have to be a part of any theorization of the political. Progressive theorists now (Butler, Mouffe, Connelly, etc.) are struggling to imagine how radical democratic forms might gather, crystallize, and sustain themselves in the face of globalization and revolution, but we have to think on many fronts. We must regret, however, that Ricoeur had not refined the lectures on ideology and utopia into one of his great monographs of the period, for the selfish reason that such a contribution would have attracted and cultivated a larger energy of secondary scholarship to build on a principal work of

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political theory. An entire conclave of secondary scholarship developed around the narrative theory of Time and Narrative, the ethics of Oneself as Another, and we could use a similar passion of interest in hermeneutics devoted to the prospective theory of the political imaginary. As generative as his sketch of a dialectic of ideology and utopia may be, it does not have the density of a full-blown political theory. So how would we pick up from there? My overview has isolated two durable theoretical constructs that materialized over the course of Ricoeur’s career. The first was his early formulation of the political paradox as the simultaneous desire for freedom and order, a conception robust enough to assimilate his deep concerns about authority and violence in a framework of democratic practice. The second notable construct was the political dialectic from his Chicago lectures of 1975. Stepping back, these two dialectics are in fact closely related. The institutional excesses of authoritarianism and anarchy run parallel to the intellectual pathologies of entrenched interests and victimhood or conspiracy. Such symmetries may have been surpassed by our insights into radical heterogeneity and contingency, but that should be tested. The tension between the horizontal (democratic) impulse for equality and the vertical (hierarchical) need for organization in a complex society still identifies one of the most riddling cruces of the progressive impulse. Though I tend to be more dubious of the capacity to address the problematic of sovereignty than Ricoeur, his frank confrontation with the tragedy of authority is an important testimony. The exploding landscape of globalized terror, mass migrations, and ecological crisis may make current preoccupations with bourgeois justice seem like niceties. When systemic inequities reach the breaking point on a mass scale, the political is not only a project of procedure and mediation; it is a fight for the very legitimacy of institutions. We will have to have vocabularies of strategic calculation, mass organizing, and even revolution. The question is whether hermeneutics has the flexibility to comprehend a prudence operating within such registers. Is its openness to the challenge of the other relevant to the limit conditions we are now approaching? Ricoeur wrestled with these problems profoundly for a time, but he has left still much of the heavy lifting for us. NOTES 1. Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 234. Hereinafter HT. 2. “Every social group . . . creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields.” Antonio Gramsci,

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Selections from the Prison Notebooks, trans. Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey N. Smith (New York: International Publishers, 1971), 5. 3. His was a spirit of ecumenism; to approach one person’s “ideas with the same critical attention that we give any other thinker. . . . We take the good where we find it.” Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 198. Hereinafter LIU. 4. Paul Ricoeur, “Ethics and Culture: Habermas and Gadamer in Dialogue.” Philosophy Today 17 (1973): 154. 5. Ibid., 165. 6. Johann Michel, Paul Ricoeur: Une Philosophie de l’Agir Humain (Paris: Cerf, 2006), 265. 7. Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986), 112. Hereinafter FM. 8. Ibid., 113. 9. François Dosse, Paul Ricoeur: Les Sens d’une Vie (1913–2005), rev. and augumented ed. (Paris: La Découverte Poche, 2008), 42. 10. Paul Ricoeur, Être 4 (March 10, 1937): 4, quoted in Dosse 49. 11. Dosse, 36. 12. Paul Ricoeur quoted in Dosse, 194. 13. Ricoeur, HT 231. 14. See Dosse, “Le Pacifisme et Ses Limites,” Paul Ricoeur: Les Sense d’une Vie, 58–67. See also Ricoeur, Critique and Conviction, 16. 15. HT, 145. 16. Ibid., 229, 232. 17. Dosse, 33. 18. “If Mounier’s influence was very important for Ricoeur, one must nevertheless not regard him as a follower” Dosse, 40. 19. HT, 136. 20. Ricoeur will distance himself from Mounier’s commitment to the “combatant who . . . discerns so as to act and who acts so as to discern” (HT, 146). If the personalist promotes action “over the tendency to elucidate significations,” Ricoeur’s hermeneutic turn would be oriented to a second-order discourse on the role of signification itself (157). 21. HT, 144. 22. Ibid., 161. 23. Paul Ricoeur in the preface to Agnès Rochefort-Turquin, Socialistes parce que Chrétiens (Paris: Cerfs, 1986), quoted in Dosse, 57. 24. HT, 152. 25. “It is true that my subsequent reflections in political philosophy have stemmed from this initial text.” Paul Ricoeur, Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 95. 26. “Instead of thinking about liberty in terms of control the political philosophy of Marxism thinks about freedom in terms of power.” Paul Ricoeur “Le Paradoxe de la

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Liberté Politique,” La Liberté (Montreal: Institute Canadien des Affaires Publiques, 1959), 53. 27. Mouffe’s “agonism” project acknowledges that relations “of authority and power cannot completely disappear, and it is important to abandon the myth of a transparent society. . . . A project of radical and plural democracy, on the contrary, requires the existence of multiplicity, of plurality, and of conflict, and sees in them the raison d’être of politics.” Chantal Mouffe, “Radical Democracy: Modern or Postmodern?,” trans. Paul Holdengräber, Social Text 21 (1989): 41. Laclau berates Žižek for authorizing “only a violent, head-on confrontation with the enemy as it is conceived as a legitimate action.” Ernesto Laclau, “Why Constructing a People Is the Main Task of Radical Politics,” Critical Inquiry 32 (2006), 679. 28. HT, 184. 29. Ibid., 176; Ricoeur, Critique and Conviction, 101. 30. Ricoeur, Critique and Conviction, 105. 31. HT, 116. 32. Ibid., 243. 33. Paul Ricoeur, “Réforme et Révolution dans l’Université,” Le Monde, June 9, 11, and 12 (1968) 9; republished in Ricoeur, Lectures I (Paris: Seuil, 1989), 381. 34. Ibid., 9, 11. 35. Ibid., 397. 36. Johann Michel, Ricoeur et Ses Contemporains (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2013), 16, 117. 37. HT, 261. 38. Ricoeur, Critique and Conviction, 97. 39. Ibid., 105. 40. Ricoeur, “Réforme et Révolution dans l’Université,” 381. 41. He will later characterize the introduction of this thesis as “abrupt,” and indeed it feels this way. Ibid., 394. 42. Ibid., 380. 43. Paul Ricoeur, “Faire l’Université,” Lectures I, 382. 44. Ricoeur, “Réforme et Révolution dans l’Université,” 382. 45. Dosse, 477–78. 46. Ibid., 475. 47. See Charles E. Reagan, Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 38. 48. Ricoeur, “Tâches de l’Éducateur Politique,” Lectures I (Paris: Seuil, 1989), 248–49. 49. Dosse, 500, 517. 50. Michel Winock quoted by Dosse, 519. 51. Ricoeur develops a schematism to describe this homeostasis in “Ideology and Utopia.” Paul Ricoeur, From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 308–24. Hereinafter FTTA. George Taylor discerns this balancing act in Ricoeur’s interpretation of Marx: “Ricoeur argues that Marx’s position is a challenge

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not only to the idealism of the Young Hegelians but also to another extreme prominent in later Marxism that sees anonymous structural forces—class, capital—as the active agents in history . . . a more comprehensive interpretation discerns that Marx mediates between objectivist and idealist perspectives. Marx’s great discovery in The German Ideology, says Ricoeur, is the complex notion of individuals in their material conditions.” Taylor in LIU, xii. 52. For a description of this environment, see François Dosse, History of Structuralism: The Sign Sets, 1967 Present, trans. Deborah Glassman, vol. 2, 2 vols. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 107–40. 53. LIU, 198. 54. Ibid., 273. 55. For an account of the state of ideology critique, see Fabio Vighi and Heiko Feldner, “Ideology Critique or Discourse Analysis? Zizek against Foucault?,” European Journal of Political Theory 6, no. 2 (2007): 141–59. 56. LIU, 207. 57. Habermas from Knowledge and Human Interests, quoted in LIU, 227. 58. Ibid., 162. 59. Ibid., 171. 60. Ibid., 172. 61. Ibid., 119. 62. FTTA, 259. 63. Ricoeur, “Ethics and Culture,” 161. 64. Ibid., 160. 65. Ibid., 161. 66. George Taylor, “Delineating Ricoeur’s Concept of Utopia,” Social Imaginaries 3, no. 1 (2017): 59. 67. “Quel Éthos Nouveau Pour l’Europe?,” Imaginer l’Europe, ed. Peter Koslowski, 107–16 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1992); “Cultures, du Deuil à la Traduction,” Le Monde, May 24, 2004; Entretien, “Paul Ricoeur. Agir, Dit-Il,” Politis, October 7, 1988, accessed May 21, 2018 http:​//www​.fond​srico​eur.f​r/upl​oads/​media​s/ art​icles​_pr/p​aul-r​icoeu​r-agi​r-dit​-il.p​df. 68. David Pellauer traces the emerging theme of justice through Ricoeur’s later work in “Looking for the Just,” Études Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies 3, no. 1 (2012): 132–43. 69. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 259. Hereinafter OA. 70. “Dans l’oeuvre de Paul Ricoeur, les travaux qui relevant d’une réflexion politique n’appartiennent pas à une période déterminé de son parcours philosophique. Ils apparaissent bien advantage comme une constant récurrente de l’exercise de la pensée.” Marc Crépon, “Du ‘Paradoxe Politique’ à la Question des Appartenances,” L’Herne Ricoeur (Paris: Éditions de l’Herne, 2004), 307. 71. Brian Treanor and Henry Isaac Venema, “Introduction,” A Passion for the Possible: Thinking with Paul Ricoeur, eds. Brian Treanor and Henry Isaac Venema (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 5–6.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Crépon, Marc. “Du ‘Paradoxe Politique’ à la Question des Appartenances.” L’Herne Ricoeur. Paris: Éditions de l’Herne, 2004. Dosse, François. History of Structuralism: The Sign Sets, 1967 Present. Translated by Deborah Glassman. Vol. 2. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998. ———. Paul Ricoeur: Les Sens d’une Vie (1913–2005). Revised and augmented ed. Paris: La Découverte Poche, 2008. Laclau, Ernesto. “Why Constructing a People Is the Main Task of Radical Politics.” Critical Inquiry 32 (2006): 646–80. Michel, Johann. Paul Ricoeur: Une Philosophie de l’Agir Humain. Paris: Cerf, 2006. Mouffe, Chantal. “Radical Democracy: Modern or Postmodern?” Translated by Paul Holdengräber. Social Text 21 (1989): 31–45. Pellauer, David. “Looking for the Just.” Études Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies 3, no. 1 (2012): 132–43. Reagan, Charles E. Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Ricoeur, Paul. “Cultures, du Deuil à la Traduction.” Le Monde, May 24 (2004): 18–19. ———. Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. ———. “Ethics and Culture: Habermas and Gadamer in Dialogue.” Philosophy Today 17 (1973): 153–65. ———. Fallible Man. Translated by Charles A. Kelbley. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986. ———. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991. ———. History and Truth. Translated by Charles A. Kelbley. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965. ———. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Edited by George H. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. ———. Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ———. “Le Paradoxe de la Liberté Politique.” 51–55. La Liberté. Montreal: Institute Canadien des Affaires Publiques, 1959. ———. “Quel Éthos Nouveau Pour l’Europe?” In Imaginer l’Europe, edited by Peter Koslowski, 107–16. Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1992. ———. “Réforme et Révolution dans l’Université.” Le Monde, June 9, 11, and 12 (1968) 9, 11. ———. “Tâches de l’Éducateur Politique.” Lectures I. Paris: Seuil, 1989, 248–49. Ricoeur, Paul, and Plouvier, Eric. Interview. “Paul Ricoeur. Agir, Dit-Il.” Politis. October 7, 1988. Accessed May 21, 2018. http:​//www​.fond​srico​eur.f​r/upl​oads/​ media​s/art​icles​_pr/p​aul-r​icoeu​r-agi​r-dit​-il.p​df.

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Rochefort-Turquin, Agnès. Socialistes parce que Chrétiens. Paris: Cerfs, 1986. Taylor, George. “Delineating Ricoeur’s Concept of Utopia.” Social Imaginaries 3, no. 1 (2017): 41–60. Treanor, Brian, and Venema, Henry I. “Introduction.” In A Passion for the Possible: Thinking with Paul Ricoeur. Edited by Brian Treanor and Henry Isaac Venema. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. Vighi, Fabio, and Heiko Feldner. “Ideology Critique or Discourse Analysis? Zizek against Foucault?” European Journal of Political Theory 6, no. 2 (2007): 141–59.

Chapter 2

Surplus Value, Superabundance of Meaning Ideology, the Political Paradox, and the Structure of Action Roger W. H. Savage

The surplus value that inheres in all structures of power constitutes the site of a major challenge in light of the capacity historical actors exercise when, in acting in concert, they seek to alter the course of the world’s affairs. In his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Paul Ricoeur emphasizes that the difference between the claim to authority and the belief credited to this claim on the part of those subject to another’s rule is central to an ideological system’s justificatory function. Accordingly, he highlights how the justification of the right to rule is at the same time the source of the legitimate exercise of violence. How then, should we distinguish between the domination of one individual, group, or groups by another and the power exercised by the State, for example, in enforcing the rule of law in view of this ideological recourse to a justificatory system that lays the ground for corrupting the relation among political actors? The critical task of distinguishing between instances of domination and the legitimate exercise of power by some over others in the name of the State becomes even more pressing when systemic injustices that deprive members of various groups of the rights, opportunities, and basic securities guaranteed by access to common social goods—education, health care, nutrition, and housing, for example—are woven into the fabric of a prevailing system of thought. The difference between one class or group’s domination of another and the legitimate authority exercised by those in power can even be erased, as when plutocratic rule supplants democratic principles of self-governance. This difference clearly safeguards the superabundance of meaning that, in contrast to the surplus value of an ideological system that justifies the 31

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structure of authority in the name of which those in power rule, is the spring of initiatives that contest, subvert, and countermand policies and practices instituted by a governing body and its representatives. The surplus value of an ideological system and the superabundance of meaning inhering in possibilities that shatter stratagems designed to preclude, obstruct, or impede our intervention in the world’s affairs thus constitute the two foci of a broader confrontation between ideology’s dissimulating force and the power and freedom that we exercise in taking the initiative to act. By setting a superabundance of meaning against the weaponization of the ideological phenomenon’s justificatory function, I intend to highlight how imagination figures in the structure of action. Ricoeur sets in relief the social and cultural imagination’s constitutive and bewitching roles through placing the phenomena of ideology and utopia within the same framework. Ideology’s and utopia’s temporal noncongruence opens a space for transactions between congealed practices and habits of thought and possible alternatives projected by literary fictions, music, and works of art, for example. The superabundance of meaning that Ricoeur sets against the profusion of senseless destruction in the world acquires its concrete expression in actions, policies, and practices that seek to redress the moral and political failures that are the cause of the myriad forms of violence—social, religious, ethnic, political, sexual, and economic—perpetrated against vulnerable individuals and groups. The authority of the State to exercise the necessary means of force in upholding the law encounters its limit when the credibility of the claim to authority no longer holds sway. That the power of the State to enforce the rule of law is irreducible to naked violence, as when one individual or group imposes its will on another by force, thus has as its vis-à-vis the capacity to surpass the real from within through the power of imagination at work in the initiatives we take. THE IDEOLOGICAL PHENOMENON The wager that Ricoeur makes when, as opposed to social critiques that claim to be absolutely radical, he draws a connection between the task of making freedom a reality and an eschatology of nonviolence highlights how imagination is operative within the framework in which ideology and utopia are dialectically related. Setting the power of imagination against a combative social science that falls prey to the quasi-pathological condition it condemns by succumbing to the temptation of a totalizing reflection underscores how, within this framework, the social and cultural imagination is the mediating term. Ricoeur begins his analysis of the ideological phenomenon by inquiring into the way in which the illness of ideology works. He points out that

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by importing the model drawn from Ludwig Feuerbach’s critique of religion, the concept of ideology first employed by Marx is based on the paradigm of the reversal that inverts the relation between reality and images of it, as in a camera obscura. The “Feuerbachian paradigm of inversion . . . results in the substitution of a divine subject having human predicates for a human subject.”1 By transferring the problem that takes hold in projecting human attributes onto the Divine (to which human beings subsequently become subject) from the sphere of representation to the sphere of production, Marx sets ideology’s dissimulating function against the material conditions that affect, limit, and constrain praxis. Asking how a social interest can be expressed in “a thought, an image, or a concept of life”2 initiates the regressive analysis that uncovers the most basic or primitive function of ideology onto which the pathological role identified by Marx is grafted. With Clifford Geertz, Ricoeur insists that no group could provide an image of itself apart from the system of symbolic mediations by means of which social interests can be expressed in thoughts, representations, and concepts of life.3 Since no group can exist without representing itself and realizing itself in its cultural signs and works, the ideological phenomenon plays an indispensable and inescapable role in constituting the network of symbolic mediations that furnish the structured character of a cultural system with its evaluative texture. This system provides the descriptive context in which the meaning of a ritual act, for example, can be situated “within a cultic system, and by degrees within the whole set of conventions, beliefs, and institutions, that make up the symbolic framework of a culture.”4 Consequently, no human being exists apart from the ideological phenomenon’s constitutive role, by means of which we not only articulate our experiences but also inscribe our lives in the web of social and political life. Ricoeur identifies a third function of ideology that stands mid-way, so to speak, between the “surface” phenomenon of dissimulation and the “deep structure” of a cultural system. Drawing on Max Weber’s notions of order (Ordnung) and domination (Herrschaft), he attributes the ideological phenomenon’s legitimating function to the supplement of belief that the ideological system provides in order to satisfy the motivational requirements of individuals whose actions are mutually oriented toward others. The deficit between the claim to authority and the credit offered in return delineates the gap between them. Ricoeur stresses that Ordnung, which gives form and shape to a group, involves the question of belief from the outset. The ideological phenomenon thus fulfills its justificatory role by supplying the supplement of belief that fills the gap created by the discrepancy between a ruling authority’s claim to legitimacy and the belief in it on the part of those subject to her, his, or its rule. As such, this supplement is the emblem of the surplus value that, following Weber’s typology, places its stamp on claims

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to legitimacy based on: (1) rational grounds, (2) traditional grounds, and (3) charismatic grounds. In each case, the validity of the claim rests on a belief: (1) “a belief in the legality of patterns of enacted rules and the right of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands (legal authority)”5; (2) “an established belief in the sanctity of immemorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them (traditional authority)”6; and (3) a belief “resting on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism, or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns or order revealed or ordained by him (charismatic authority).”7 Ricoeur notes that, with regard to legal authority, members of the group “do not owe obedience to authorities as individuals but as representatives of the impersonal order.”8 Moreover, for him, this legal type of authority can scarcely operate independently of the other two types of authority, with which it remains entwined.9 Ideological thinking consequently assumes its privileged place in relation to the problems of authority, domination, asymmetrical relations of power, and the resulting hierarchical organization of social life. Hannah Arendt’s condemnation of the way that racism trades on the political weaponization of ideology’s mobilizing force underscores the magnitude of some of the challenges confronting us in this regard.10 Anti-Islamic and anti-Semitic hate crimes, police shootings of African American men, and the scandal of Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election are representative of the kind of existential threats to constitutional forms of democracy and their administrative authority. Violations of different groups’ civil rights and, in the case of the United States, the widely acknowledged interference in the election by a hostile foreign power undermine the legitimacy of a system of governance that purports to defend and uphold the liberties and freedoms of all. Such controversies and crises are indicative of how the specific question of legitimation arises in politics. Ricoeur accordingly emphasizes that the role played by ideology with respect to its legitimating function makes an autonomous politics possible “by providing the needed authoritative concepts that make it meaningful.”11 TEMPORAL NONCONGRUENCES Situating ideology and utopia within the same framework brings to the fore the connection between the social and cultural imagination’s constitutive and bewitching roles and ideology’s and utopia’s temporal noncongruence with reality. Imagination is constitutive with regard to the network of symbolic mediations that comprise a cultural system that is itself rooted in, and hence predicated on, a culture’s mythopoetic core. This constitutive function has as

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its dialectical corollary utopian alternatives projected in literary fictions, for example, that bear out the imagination’s productive power by augmenting the practical field of our everyday experiences through breaking new paths into the heart of the real. Conversely, imagination is also bewitching in at least two ways: first, when the fascination with dreams of fulfilled desires loses its anchorages in the practical order of everyday life; and second, when dissimulating images mask systemic deformations that distort relations among human beings. Utopia’s interrelated functions counterpoint the ideological phenomenon’s integrative, legitimating, and dissimulating ones. Where symbolic systems tend to congeal, fictive explorations of possible ways of thinking, feeling, and conducting our lives contest and subvert ideologically frozen outlooks, habits, and practices. Similarly, experimenting with alternative ways of sharing power challenges the legitimacy of existing systems of rule. Finally, correlative to ideologically dissimulating representations, fanciful flights from reality are a pathological form of escape.12 In order to draw out the temporal features of ideology’s and utopia’s noncongruence with reality, I propose to focus on one of the key roles of ideology, namely, the role that ideology plays as the “guardian of identity.”13 Ricoeur’s reprisal of his analysis of the ideological phenomenon’s constitutive, legitimating, and dissimulating functions in the context of his investigations into the abuses of memory underscores how strategic manipulations of public memories and the images through which a group represents itself capitalize on the fragility of identity. Ricoeur attributes the fragility of identity to three main causes. The first cause inheres in the equivocal notion of the same in relation to time, which leads to the split in the concept of identity between idem identity and ipseity. The “recourse to memory as the temporal component of identity, in conjunction with the evaluation of the present and the projection of the future,”14 highlights how the compact between selective processes of remembering and forgetting leads by degree to the ideologization of memory in the service of an “official” history authorized by those in power. The adverse consequences of this first cause of the fragility of identity is compounded by those of the second and the third, namely, cultural anxieties fueled by fears of others’ ways of leading their lives and enduring injustices and humiliations that too often are the unspoken and unacknowledged heritage of founding acts of violence, which “official” histories legitimate after the fact by narrative justifications of the victor’s right to rule.15 The ideologization of memory, however, could scarcely operate independently of the network of motivations that are fundamental to the evaluative texture of a cultural system. Ideology, accordingly Ricoeur emphasizes, “falls within what could be called a theory of social motivation: it is to social praxis what a motive is to an individual project.”16 As a function of the distance separating the inaugural event that founds a historical community from this

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event’s ritual or commemorative repetition, ideology plays a crucial role in disseminating convictions and beliefs that vest the creed of a social group or political body with its cognitive and affective force. The ideological phenomenon thus takes hold almost from the outset, domesticating social memory while promoting public consensus by rationalizing conventions, values, and beliefs. Ideology only continues to be a mobilizing force insofar as it fulfills the justificatory function that was credited earlier to ideology’s legitimating role. The doxic character of ideology—which Ricoeur attributes to the schematization, idealization, and codification of the image of the group—is accordingly the price to be paid for the social efficacy of the ideas that first animated the convictions of groups of individuals (America’s “founding fathers,” for example) who took the initiative to create new nations based on constitutional, democratic, and republican ideals. A SUPPLEMENT OF BELIEF In view of the State’s right to enforce the rule of law, how are we to differentiate between the phenomenon of domination and the “privilege of legitimate violence”17 granted to the State? Power, Ricoeur and Arendt remind us, is irreducible to violence. How, then, can we define violence by power and at the same time distinguish political power from the instances of domination that violate the rights of individuals and groups to share equitably in social goods and to pursue their own destinies in accordance with their own heritages, convictions, and beliefs? The violence that ensues when one individual or group exercises its power over another is all the more insidious for the fact that it deprives those subject to another’s will of their own capacities and powers. The exploitation and neglect of the world’s most vulnerable populations is a measure of the evil of systemic injustices within the global order in this regard. The denial of basic human rights of stateless persons, refugees, and economic migrants is a staging ground for the rise of authoritarian rule, as Arendt’s prescient diagnosis of the origins of totalitarianism makes clear. The twin tyrannies of corruption and deception that it has been suggested have replaced sheer violence as the modus operandi of authoritarianism in the world today (and that we might say are stripping away the thin veneer of civilization) supplant the rational need for legitimation by promoting the quasi-religious fervor of nationalist, patriotic sentiments fueled by mythologies of exceptionalism that justify ideologically one group’s domination of others by reason of their alleged religious, cultural, or racial superiority.18 The paradox that inheres in the claim to the legitimate use of force by a ruling body or authority is indicative of how the supplement of belief provided by an ideological system covers the gap between this claim to the right to rule

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and the credence extended to it. Crediting the “source of what Marx called surplus-value”19 to the difference between the claim to legitimacy of a leader or system of rule and the belief in this leader’s or system’s legitimacy on the part of the citizenry frees the concept of surplus value from its rigidly economic determination. Ricoeur points out that Marxism failed to grant politics either a genuinely distinct finality or a specific pathology by “over-estimating the role of the modes of production in the evolution of society.”20 The lack of interest of Marxist thinkers in problems rooted in the exercise of power— problems that Ricoeur emphasizes are eminently political—stems from reducing the political origins of the surplus value to the economic sphere, where “[a]ll the evil of life in society can [be regarded] only [as] result[ing] from surplus value, itself interpreted as the exploitation of labor from the perspective of profit alone.”21 Similarly, Arendt maintains that Marx attributed to labor a “productivity it never possesses.”22 Her critique of the victory of labor’s preeminence with respect to the individual’s social condition thus ratifies how, for orthodox Marxism, political alienation is a reflection of an exploitative economic system. The supplement of belief provided by an ideological system marks a critical threshold separating the legitimacy of the State’s use of force from the violence of various forms of domination. By summoning our cooperation and consent, this supplement proves to be necessary to the functioning of the state and its civil institutions. No authority rules only by force. The power to command thus not only structures the hierarchical dissymmetry that separates those who obey from those who lead, but it also indicates that the claim to legitimacy implied in this power is supported to some degree by a belief in the right to exercise it. The structure of authority institutes the vertical dissymmetry that separates those who obey from those who hold power; the recognition of an authority’s superiority tempers the impulse to dominate by distinguishing the right to impose obedience from naked violence.23 Pairing the credibility of the claim with the credit or credence extended to it, which for Ricoeur are “constitutive of the recognition or nonrecognition of the power of [ruling] authorities,”24 thus brings to the fore the troubling question of the fiduciary relation between them. The legitimacy both of a system of rule and of its representatives in whom the authority to govern is invested depends on the trust of those who are subject to another’s rule. Conversely, the complicity of the phenomenon of domination’s particular function in promoting one group’s interests and ideals at the cost of those of others—even at the expense of truth—is the ideological soil in which the hegemony of one group’s ability to exercise its will over another takes root. Dissembling the disproportion between the claim to authority and the nonrecognition, even the refusal of recognition, of it—manifestly evident, for example, in protests against Trump’s presidency and his executive-order travel bans against

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Muslim-majority countries—trades on the supplement of belief to suppress the lack of credence given to the claim to legitimacy on the part of a ruling authority. The weaponization of this supplement is thus the instrument par excellence of politicians whose web of lies that, organized with a view to the systemic perpetration of social, moral, and politics deceits, rearranges the factual texture of reality by creating another reality into which these lies and deceptions seamlessly fit.25 This weaponization of the ideological phenomenon’s justificatory function highlights the stakes that the political paradox lays open to critical scrutiny. Through expropriating the surplus value of the belief in a system of authority, those who traffic in this surplus value maintain their hold on power by exploiting the credibility of a form of governance that purports to defend and advance the constitutional rights, liberties, and economic prosperity of all. Every group’s patriotic belief in the group’s just and necessary existence resonates with the tradition of authority rooted in the Roman experience of the sacred character of the founding of the Eternal City. It may even be that the entire history of sovereignty, which for Ricoeur attests to the distinct root of political authority, rests on the triadic relation of authority, tradition, and religion.26 To the degree that the State’s claim to the lawful use of force prolongs this history of sovereignty, the paradox that inheres in the claim of legitimate violence is the staging ground both for one group’s or class’s domination of another and for the demand for rights, opportunities, and a just share of social goods such as education, health care, housing, and food security that give the struggles for recognition of marginalized, oppressed, and subaltern groups their political and social specificity. For, in contrast to the ideological supplement that fills the gap between the claim to, and the belief in, the legitimacy of political representatives or of a system of rule, the discrepancy between claim and belief safeguards the capacity to challenge, contest, and subvert ideologically congealed conventions and habits of thought by reserving a place for different claims regarding the sharing of power through which we make common cause by exercising our will to live together. THE POLITICAL PARADOX By suggesting that the deficit of credibility intrinsic to hierarchical power structures opens a space for contesting and challenging the validity of assertions and claims on the part of those in positions of authority, I am clearly drawing out the attendant implications of the political paradox. This paradox, which the confrontation between the constitutional rule of law that characterizes the State’s reasonable form and the privilege granted to the State to impose this rule of law by force brings sharply into focus, sets the demand on

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the part of a ruling authority for the recognition of its legitimacy against this deficit of belief. As such, the political paradox is intimately bound up with the paradox of authority. This latter paradox, Ricoeur explains, could equally be regarded as an enigma or an aporia: an enigma, because even following the analysis of the phenomenon of authority, the idea of authority harbors something that remains opaque; an aporia, “because there is a kind of unresolved contradiction tied to the difficulty, even the impossibility, of legitimating authority in the final instance.”27 The right of a ruling authority to command rests on a strange power. As a species of power, the power to command indicates that the claim to legitimacy implied in this power is supported to some degree by a belief in the right to exercise it, as I indicated previously. Consequently, the authority of those in power rests in part on the credit extended to them vis-à-vis the recognition of their right to rule. As such, the exercise of authority differs from the use of brute force. At the same time, the power to command structures the hierarchical dissymmetry that separates those who obey from those who lead. Authority here borders on violence “as the power to impose obedience,”28 since the structure of authority institutes the vertical dissymmetry that separates those who obey from those who command. At the same time, the recognition of an authority’s superiority tempers the impulse to dominate by distinguishing this right to impose obedience from naked violence. As previously indicated, the ideological value of the supplement of belief thus fills the gap between the claim to legitimacy on the part of one who commands and the credit extended to that claim on the part of those who are subject to another’s rule. The social efficacy of this ideological supplement is invariably challenged when members of the body politic capitalize on the deficit of belief to contest the legitimacy of programs, policies, and agendas shaping the social, economic, and political terrain of the body politics’ local, regional, and national landscape. The place that Ricoeur insists must be reserved for dissensus has a fecund source in the lack of credibility on the part of members of the citizenry in its leaders and their policy agendas. It is difficult to imagine that protest movements could unite individuals in making common cause if not for the fact that the passion ignited by the possibilities of other and more equitable ways of sharing social goods and of living together fuels the will and desire to act in concert. This power to act in concert is the engine of social and political change. Conversely, images and representations of a group’s or people’s alleged inadequacy and inferiority clearly serve as instruments of violence deployed by one people or one group to dominate another. Ideology’s dissimulating function prevails wherever these instances of domination perpetuate systemic injustices that deform relations among human beings. Demands concerning the appropriate redress of social, political, and economic harms consequently aim as much at achieving recognition for the

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victims as at securing material reparations, including rights and opportunities that were previously withheld and denied. Animated by the prospect of a different future, dissensus therefore can also give rise to the exercise of power in concert, which Arendt contrasts to the terror of violence and its anti-political principle of fear. By setting the power to act in concert against the politics of fear that has come to play a major role in promoting distrust and hatred of immigrants, refugees, and religious minorities in Western democracies, I by no means want to underestimate the extent to which this politics of fear trades on cultural anxieties fueled by suspicions and the mistrust of others to promote reactionary impulses among its base supporters. At the same time, I would not want to equate the mobilization of reactionary forces with the power to act in concert that Arendt credits to the human condition of plurality, the specifically political character of which rests on the guarantee of each individual’s absolute equality despite their differences. The hierarchical dissymmetry instituted by the structure of authority places its distinct stamp on ways that we live together. Hence, when all is said and done, politics revolves around the problem of the distributions that comprise a system of power. Dissensus is therefore as critical to the legitimacy of a system of rule in which public will formation relies on the exchange of views of a plurality of citizens freed from their private perspectives by the deliberations in which they engage as is consensus. If the recognition of the superior experience, wisdom, and judgment of those in authority distinguishes the legitimacy of the right to command from violence, the place reserved for dissensus plays an equally critical role in tempering and attenuating the vertical dissymmetry of all structures of power by preserving the principle of equality authorizing members of the body politic to participate fully and freely within the public sphere. IMAGINATION AND THE STRUCTURE OF ACTION In order to show how initiatives arising from the challenges to an existing authority or system of rule figure in the structure of action, I first want to recall some earlier remarks on ideology’s and utopia’s temporal noncongruence with reality. By opening a space for productive transactions between congealed practices and habits of thought and imaginative alternatives aesthetically prefigured by literary fictions, music, and works of art, for example, ideology’s and utopia’s noncongruence with the real distinguishes the force of the present from the mere slippage of time. The confrontation between cosmological time and phenomenological time, the history of which Ricoeur credits to the thought of Augustine, Aristotle, Kant, Husserl, and Heidegger, prompts Ricoeur to ask whether renouncing the Hegelian temptation leads to

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an impasse. For Ricoeur, the Hegelian temptation rests on a style of thinking that dares to “elevate itself to grasping history as the totalization of time in the eternal present.”29 For the speculative philosopher, the authority of the system vis-à-vis its self-presentation (Selbstdarstellung) justifies the act of faith that is consubstantial with the philosopher’s apprehension of Spirit’s rationally necessary plan. The cunning of reason is the “apologetic doublet”30 of this philosophical credo. The Hegelian thesis regarding the cunning of reason thus takes the place that “theodicy assigns to evil when it protests that evil is not in vain.”31 If a critique that is worthy of the challenge posed by Hegel must confront the temptation of thought to elevate itself to the level of the absolute, it can succumb to the fascination with deconstructing the hubris of “grand historical narratives” only at the cost of its self-surrender. For Ricoeur, the event in thinking brought about by the Hegelian philosophy of history’s loss of credibility underscores the challenge posed by the idea of the oneness of time. How, following the destruction of totalizing pretensions, can we then think of the unity of time when the course of human affairs is threatened from within by the failure of thought to master time and by the violence that punctuates the histories of our collective destinies? How, moreover, can we have any confidence in a future that, driven by the storm of historical catastrophes that continue to pile up as Walter Benjamin says of Klee’s Angelus Novus, seems inevitably to lead to further disasters? In cautioning against “succumbing to the fascination of the absolutely unformed and to the plea for that radical intellectual honesty Nietzsche called Redlichkeit,”32 Ricoeur draws our attention to the necessity of preserving the tension between the space of our experiences and the horizons of our expectations. If, with Ricoeur, we admit that “there is no history that is not constituted by the experiences and expectations of those who act and suffer,”33 we must resist the allure of purely utopian alternatives that prove to be incapable of guiding our actions. Conversely, we must also “struggle against the tendency to consider the past only from the angle of what is done, unchangeable, and past,”34 since the narrowing of the space of experience to which this tendency contributes leads to the ideological calcification of systems of thought that for Ricoeur, as for Jacques Ellul, ushers in the reign of -isms.35 Placing ideology and utopia in the same framework is the staging ground for a critique that could reasonably be regarded as worthy of the Hegelian challenge. Earlier, I suggested that we focus on ideology’s role as the guardian of identity to draw out the temporal features of ideology’s and utopia’s noncongruence with the real. The ideologization of memory exploits the compact between selective processes of remembering and forgetting to seize and control evaluations of the present and projections of the future. Enlisted in the service of an “official” history authorized by those in power, memory’s

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ideologization preempts the force of the present by placing under erasure the temporal component of identity that Ricoeur credits to the capacity of individuals and groups to maintain themselves. The slippage to idem identity, which occludes the dimension of ipse identity, clothes the identities of the victors with the prestige of these identities’ seemingly inviolate immutability through removing the bite of time. The grip on memory of commemorative acts, Ricoeur therefore reminds us, is the “apanage of all those enamored of glory”36 who take refuge in the celebrated accomplishments of a group or nation at the expense of marginalized groups who bear the costs of their social, political, and economic execration. The dialectical crisscrossing of ideology’s and utopia’s respective functions brings to the fore the significance of their temporal noncongruence. Where ideology lags behind our experiences when it comes to the practical order of our everyday lives, utopia runs ahead of the real by virtue of the hopes, dreams, and expectations that orient and guide the projects that we undertake. Setting ideology’s integrative, legitimating, and dissimulating functions against utopian explorations of the “possible,” including alternative forms of living together that challenge existing structures of rule by modeling other ways of sharing power and pathological forms of escape, place ideology’s and utopia’s temporal noncongruence in relief. It may be that we can “cure the folly of utopia . . . [only by] call[ing] upon the ‘healthy’ function of ideology, and [conversely] the critique of ideologies [can] . . . only be conducted by a consciousness capable of looking at itself from the perspective of ‘nowhere,’”37 as Ricoeur suggests. In all events, the dialectical structure of ideology and utopia proves to be insurmountable. The forces of attrition that block the way to new ways of thinking, of sharing power, and of evaluating our actions, and the eccentric function of imaginative alternatives that shatter the real in order to refashion it from within mark out the borderlines delimiting the space within which we exercise our power to act. Transactions between a past that has already been surpassed and a future that has yet to be made thus take place across the historical interval between them. The “odd, in-between period”38 that, according to Arendt, turned the minds of historical actors back toward thought in the twentieth century is indicative of this interval’s significance with respect to the force of the present. From the vantage point of acting and suffering human beings, time is not a fixed continuum but is instead broken at the point at which we stand. Furthermore, our insertion in the world is the “beginning of a beginning”39 by virtue of the miracle of our birth. For Arendt, the impulse to speak and act “springs from the beginning which came into the world when we were born and to which we respond by beginning something new.”40 Ideology’s and utopia’s temporal noncongruence marks out the space across which the transactions between received heritages and as yet unrealized aspirations take place. The multiple

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itineraries followed or pursued by historical actors in traversing this space are indicative of these actors’ efforts to effect the mediations between the space of their experiences and their horizons of expectation. Opposing this imperfect mediation to totalizing pretensions thus places on stage the task that practical reason adopts as its own in response to the Hegelian temptation. Accordingly, the enduring ethical and political implications of the categories “space of experience” and “horizon of expectation” take hold in the necessity of preserving the tension between them if there is to be any hope of fulfilling the demand for freedom within humanity’s historical reality. Resistance to the presumed legitimacy of a governing authority or system of rule and laws, which I related to dissensus, obviously draws on the capacity of social actors to advocate for, and to act in accordance with, demands for a fuller recognition of the rights of all together with their claims to a fairer share of basic human goods that too often are the purview of privileged groups and nations. Demands animated by prospects for a better and more just world attest to the ways that expectations regarding the destiny of a group, community, or humanity as a whole subvert ideologically sedimented conventions and mores. The expansion of groups to which rights have been extended, such as the right to vote which in the United States the 15th Amendment in principle extended to African Americans in 1869 (ratified in 1870) and the 19th Amendment extended to women in 1920, and the extension of the sphere of rights in recognizing legally gay marriage, for example, stand as witness to the efficacy of demands and expectations that ignite the passion for the possible. Possibilities that take hold in the hope of the future bear the stamp of utopia’s eccentric function in shattering frozen practices and habits of thought. The capacity that we have to surpass the real from within by virtue of the power of imagination bears out the fact that action makes “reality incapable of being totalized.”41 Consequently, the freedom and spontaneity that inheres in our capacity to begin something new not only vests the present with the force Ricoeur credits to it as the time of initiative, but it also wrests the power to act from the conceit of a philosophical style of thought that dares to master time by elevating the thought of the whole to the level of the absolute. Acts that we admire ethically and politically give a figure and a body to the superabundance of meaning that Ricoeur opposes to the profusion of senseless destruction and failure that bear the stamp of the contagion of evil. As such, exemplary acts provide handholds for hope inasmuch as they offer models that we could follow after. What place, then, does imagination have in the structure of action? By insisting that a “horizon of unfulfilled claim belongs to the most genuine experience of action,”42 Ricoeur sets realized accomplishments against unfulfilled expectations and demands. Unfilled demands and realized accomplishments thus constitute the structure of action’s two dimensions. As for

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the intermediary interval between them, the freedom and spontaneity that we exercise in setting in motion a new course of action bind the force of the present to the imagination’s productive power when, in answer to the demands of the situations in which we find ourselves, we take the initiative to act. The kinship between a work of art’s power to refashion the real in accordance with the world projected by it and the injunction issuing from an exemplary moral or political act rests on the way that, in reflective judgment, the singular case summons its rule. By accounting for the difference between determinate judgment and reflective judgment through allowing for a split within the idea of subsumption, Kant ties the rule summoned by the individual case to the imagination’s operative force. Individual works and acts express this rule by exemplifying it.43 The normative value of injunctions issuing from acts that we admire takes root in the fittingness of the act in response to the demands of the situation calling for it. As such, the normative value of exemplary acts has its source in practical judgments in which the imagination’s operative power is in play.44 That the exemplary value of moral and political acts is indicative more generally of our capacity to intervene in the world’s affairs in accordance with our hopes and aspirations highlights how the superabundance of meaning that Ricoeur identifies with the logic of hope figures in the structure of action. This logic is the logic of “much more” and “not yet.” The superabundance of meaning of works and acts that shatter ideologically entrenched conventions and practices flows from these works’ and acts’ exemplary value. For, like works that refashion the real in accordance with the worlds projected by them, exemplary moral and political acts renew our ways of conducting our lives in accordance with the models they set. As such, exemplary works and acts provide handholds for hope. The surfeit of meaning that ignites the passion for the possible inscribes itself in the structure of action by fueling as yet unfulfilled aspirations and demands. The leap motivated by the prospects to which works, acts, and lives that we admire attest throws a bridge across the gap between fulfilled accomplishments and unfulfilled demands. By anchoring hopes and expectations inspired by these works, acts, and lives in the examples set by them, this leap consummates itself in the initiatives taken by us in making our own new ways of feeling, thinking, and acting. SURPLUS VALUE, SUPERABUNDANCE OF MEANING, AND THE FORCE OF THE PRESENT The excess of meaning issuing from exemplary works, acts, and lives stands as a testament to the vitality of the imagination’s subversive role. When, in my preceding remarks, I asked what place imagination has in the structure of

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action, I credited the rule summoned by a work or an act to the work or act’s fittingness in answer to a problem, question, or crisis. Inasmuch as works or acts hold out prospects for different ways of inscribing our lives in the web of social and political relations, the excess of meaning that I attributed to a work’s or act’s power to refashion the real from within by renewing our ways of thinking, feeling, and acting is bound to the imagination’s operative role. Our inability to master reality through some totalizing pretension is proof, so to speak, of the imagination’s productive power. This productively subversive power inheres in every initiative that, breaking with routinized conventions and mores, opens a different path. Set between past accomplishments and a horizon illuminated by these aspirations and demands, the courses of action set in motion through the initiatives we take mark out our chosen itineraries for traversing the interval between the horizon of a past that has already been surpassed and the future that we aim to bring about by inserting ourselves in the world through the projects we undertake. Tying the force of the present to the structure of action by way of our capacity to begin something new sets in relief the confrontation between ideological justifications of one class or group’s domination of another and the freedom we exercise when, in taking the initiative to act in concert with others, we seek better and more just ways of living together. When the claim to the right to rule falls prey to authoritarian impulses, the social efficacy of this claim’s ideological justification turns against the body politic on which the legitimacy of such a claim depends. The twin tyrannies of authoritarianism today exploit the supplement of belief intrinsic to the ideological phenomenon’s justificatory function to spin the web of corruption and deceit that supplant the factual texture of reality. If these twin tyrannies were ever to succeed in perfecting the seamless illusion of this dissembling fabrication, the phantasmagoric reality constructed from the web of deceptions, distractions, and lies would obviate in advance any possibility of escaping or transcending the ruination of the body politic that these twin tyrannies lay to waste. Conversely, the superabundance of meaning that kindles the hope of as yet unrealized aspirations is the wellspring of the power we have to reform, revalue, and reshape the social and political order. This power, I have indicated, is one in which imagination is at work. Imagination at work is the condition, so to speak, of our ability to surpass the real from within. Ideology’s and utopia’s temporal noncongruence opens the interval across which the transactions between inherited values, mores, and practices and new aspirations and demand take place. That the dialectic of ideology and utopia is unsurpassable is indicative of the fact that their temporal noncongruence with the real delimits the operative space of the social and cultural imagination. Hence, like the temporal interval between the past and the future, this space is one in which the force of the present makes itself felt. In contrast to the

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surplus value of an ideological system, the excess—the superabundance—of meaning overflows exemplary works and acts as promissory signs of a future that is yet to be made. As “expressions of the freedom that we desire to be,”45 these promissory signs of the grace, goodness, generosity, and justice to which we aspire bring about an increase in being. For Ricoeur, only expressions of the good gather themselves together.46 Like the energy of a founding event perpetuated ideologically by a group or nation’s idealized image, works and acts that surpass the real in ways that we can follow augment the field of everyday possibilities and experiences. Hence, similar but also in counterpoint to the structure of authority, which acquires its legitimacy only through the recognition of its rightful claim, the augmentation of the real flows from the recognition of the exemplary value of works, acts, and lives in which the powers of judgment and imagination at work bear witness to the logic of superabundance in the face of senseless violence and destruction. The present acquires its force when, in opposition to strategic exploitations of an ideological system’s surplus value, the initiatives we take by inserting ourselves in the world through our words and deeds renew the real in accordance with this logic. Utopian aspirations militate against ideological calcifications of outlooks and practices in this regard. As guides to action, these aspirations shatter congealed systems and habits of thought that perpetuate entrenched systems and structures of power. Experiences of injustice and humiliations give the lie to the way that the supplement of belief that inheres in every ideological system covers over the gap between claims to authority and the credit extended to them. In return, the lack of credit given to those in power or to a system of rule dominated by special interests and authoritarian impulses is the engine of the initiatives that we take when, in response to systemic inequities and injustices, through the power of reason and imagination we pursue a different and better path. NOTES 1. Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 4; see also Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, trans. John B. Thompson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). Ricoeur identifies five features of ideology: (1) the primitive feature evidenced by the “mutually oriented and socially integrated character of action” (225); (2) the fact that ideology is more than a reflection but is also a justification and a project, hence the “belief in the just and necessary character of the instituted action” (226); (3) its simplifying and schematic (doxic) character; (4) since ideology is “operative and not thematic” (227), we think and act within an ideology, making a totalizing reflection impossible; and (5) ideology’s temporal lag, and hence its noncongruence with reality.

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2. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 10. 3. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Ricoeur stresses that the structure of social life can be distorted only because it is symbolic. He explains that for Geertz, Marxist and non-Marxist sociologists alike “do not ask how ideology functions, they do not question how a social interest, for example, can be expressed in a thought, an image or a concept of life . . . . These sociologies may offer good diagnoses of social illness. But the question of function, that is, how an illness really works, is finally the most important issue” (10); see Clifford Geertz, “Ideology as a Cultural System,” in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973). 4. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1., trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 58. 5. Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, ed. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 215; cited in Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 202–203. 6. Weber, Economy and Society, 215; cited in Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 203. 7. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 203. 8. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 204. 9. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Ricoeur points out that the word “‘sanctity’ . . . indicates that a quasi-religious element appears not only in the charismatic type but in the traditional type as well. In broad terms we may call it an ideological element. People believe that this order has a kind of sanctity; even if it does not deserve to be obeyed, even if it is not loved, at least it is revered” (209). 10. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973), 158 ff. 11. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 12; see Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Ideology’s constitutive function “can scarcely operate outside of the connection to its second function—the justification of a system of power—nor can it operate even potentially apart from the function of distortion that is grafted onto the preceding one. At the limit, it would only be in societies without a hierarchical political structure—and, in this sense, societies without power—that we might have a chance of encountering the naked phenomenon of ideology as an integrative structure in its, so to speak, innocent form. Ideology, when all is said and done, revolves around power” (83). See also Paul Ricoeur, From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991). Ricoeur stresses that every discourse that claims to be free of ideology is already caught up in the phenomenon that it claims to supersede or transcend. Hence, not only does a “nonideological discourse on ideology . . . come up against the impossibility of reaching a social reality prior to symbolization” (261), but the attempt to assign all partial ideologies a relative meaning by situating each within a total view also gives rise to an impossible demand. Ricoeur therefore stresses that relationism and relativism are forever divided by a disgraced Hegelianism. For, “[o]nce again we are led back to the impossible request for total knowledge” (265).

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12. The schema of ideology and utopia thus looks something like this: Ideology ← Dissimulation ↑ Legitimation claim←→belief ↓ Integration

→ Utopia Escape Contestation (challenges/alternatives to an existing authority or system of rule) Explorations of the “possible”

13. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 83. 14. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 81. The abuses of memory are grafted onto ideology’s legitimating and integrative functions. On the deepest level—that of action’s symbolic mediation—memory is “incorporated into the formation of identity” (84–85) through the narrative function. Distortions that feed on the symbolic systems that Ricoeur identifies with ideology’s constitutive function multiply the abuses that turn collective memories into instruments of power and control. Ideology’s legitimating and dissimulating functions are implicated in this twofold operation of selective remembering and forgetting. The surplus value—the supplement—that ideology adds to the belief in a ruling authority in response to that authority’s claim to legitimacy masks the discrepancy between them. This surplus value’s narrative texture thus lends itself to ideological discourses that justify the power exercised by one group over another. Armed with a “history that is itself ‘authorized’” (85) by those in power, the commemoration of events deemed to belong to a common history and identity promotes a selective social memory. 15. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 80 ff.; see my “Fragile Identities, Capable Selves,” Études Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies 4, no. 2 (2013). 16. Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, trans. John B. Thompson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 225–226. 17. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, 332; see Paul Ricoeur, “The Political Paradox,” in History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1965). 18. This strategy is reminiscent of colonialist justifications of the right to rule. See Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism; see also my “Colonialist Ruinations and the Logic of Hope,” in Paul Ricoeur and the Task of Political Philosophy, eds. Dan Stiver and Greg Johnson. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012): 201–220. 19. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 14. 20. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, 327. 21. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, 327: “If one can show that this exploitation is tied to the private appropriation of the means of production, then any political regime is legitimate that proposes to suppress economic alienation resulting from the private appropriation of the means of production and finally, the expropriation of labor by the extortion of surplus value.”

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22. Hannah Arendt, The Promise of Politics, ed. Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), 80. 23. Paul Ricoeur, Reflections on the Just, trans. David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 93. Authority borders “on violence as the power to impose obedience, that is, as domination. But what distinguishes it from violence is precisely the credibility attached to its character of legitimacy. . . . The nuance is more delicate concerning the role of persuasion, for there is persuasion in the communicability of credibility, hence also rhetoric. But, as Arendt observes, persuasion ‘presupposes equality and works through a process of argumentation’” (89). 24. Ricoeur, Reflections on the Just, 93. 25. See Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future (New York: Penguin Books, 1977), 251 ff. By abusing and perverting the freedom to change the circumstances under which a group or a nation lives, the systemic deceptions of the lie aim at destroying that which the lie intends to negate—namely, the factual fabric of reality. Although only totalitarian governments, Arendt adds, “have consciously adopted lying as the first step to murder” (252). 26. Ricoeur, Reflections on the Just, 98. 27. Ricoeur, Reflections on the Just, 91. 28. Ricoeur, Reflections on the Just, 93. 29. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 193. 30. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, 202. 31. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, 198. 32. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 1, 72. 33. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, 221. 34. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, 216. 35. Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Ricoeur stresses that the “‘codified’ character of ideology is inherent in its justificatory function; its transformative capacity is preserved only on condition that the ideas which it conveys become opinions, that thought loses rigor in order to enhance its social efficacy, as if ideology alone could mediate not only the memory of founding acts, but systems of thought themselves. Hence anything can become ideological: ethics, religion, philosophy. ‘This mutation of a system of thought into a system of belief,’ says Ellul, is the ideological phenomenon” (226). 36. Ricoeur, History, Memory, Forgetting, 85–86. 37. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, 187. 38. Arendt, Between Past and Future, 9. 39. Arendt, Between Past and Future, 11. 40. Arendt, The Human Condition, 177. 41. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, 216; see Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, vol. 3, 231. 42. Paul Ricoeur, Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination, trans. David Pellauer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 211; see my “The Wager of Imagination and the Logic of Hope,” in Paul Ricoeur in the Age of Hermeneutical Reason: Poetics, Praxis, and Critique, ed. Roger W. H. Savage (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015).

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43. See my Music, Time, and Its Other: Aesthetic Reflections on Finitude, Temporality, and Alterity (London: Routledge, 2018). 44. See my “Reason, Action, and the Creative Imagination,” Varieties of Creative Imagination: Special Issue of Social Imaginaries (forthcoming). 45. Paul Ricoeur, Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. Lewis S. Mudge (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 151. 46. Paul Ricoeur, François Azouvi, and Marc de Launay, Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay, trans. Kathleen Blamey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 184.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Arendt, Hannah. Between Past and Future. Penguin Classics edition. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. ———. The Origins of Totalitarianism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1973. ———. The Promise of Politics. New York: Schocken Books, 2005. Paul Ricoeur, François Azouvi, and Marc de Launay, Critique and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay, trans. Kathleen Blamey (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). ———. Essays on Biblical Interpretation. Edited by Lewis Mudge. Translated by David Stewart and Charles Reagan. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980. ———. Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination. Edited by Mark I. Wallace. Translated by David Pellauer. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. ———. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II. Translated by John B. Thompson and Kathleen Blamey. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991. ———. Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation. Translated by John B. Thompson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. ———. History and Truth. Edited by Charles A. Kelbley. 2nd ed. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965. ———. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Edited by George H. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. ———. Memory, History, Forgetting. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ———. Reflections on the Just. Translated by David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007. ———. Time and Narrative. Translated by David Pellauer and Kathleen McLaughlin. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. ———. Time and Narrative. Translated by David Pellauer and Kathleen Blamey. Vol. 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

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Savage, Roger W. H. “Colonialist Ruinations and the Logic of Hope.” In Paul Ricœur and the Task of Political Philosophy, edited by Gregory R. Johnson and Dan R. Stiver, 201–20. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. ———. “Fragile Identities, Capable Selves.” Études Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies 4, no. 2 (2013): 63–78. ———. “Reason, Action, and the Creative Imagination.” Varieties of Creative Imagination: Special Issue of Social Imaginaries (forthcoming). ———. “The Wager of Imagination and the Logic of Hope.” In Paul Ricoeur in the Age of Hermeneutical Reason: Poetics, Praxis, and Critique, edited by Roger W. H. Savage, 139–58. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. Weber, Max. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.

Chapter 3

Renewing the “Period of Effervescence” Utopia as Ideology Critique Dan R. Stiver

Ricoeur stresses in his work on ideology that it is utopia that is the key to ideology critique.1 As the view from nowhere, utopia stands outside the confining restraints and dissimulation of ideology to offer a fresh perspective. It thus offers an alternative that is difficult to see within the blinders of ideology. Utopia also calls upon the productive and creative imagination, with Ricoeur’s view on utopia being developed at the same time he was crafting his philosophy of “live” metaphor as expressing creative new perspectives on reality.2 By imagining a creative alternative, utopia then provides another place to stand, so to speak, outside of the distorting and blinding confines of ideology. Ricoeur expresses this view in many places, indicating that such utopia is that vantage point par excellence for ideology critique. Such a move is unusual, as he himself points out, indicating that while ideology critique has been a bull market in the twentieth century, utopia has suffered from anemic treatment. In fact, utopia has been widely criticized in the Marxist tradition as being actually counterproductive, as in Marx's own acerbic observation that the utopian longings in religion are “the opiate of the people.” Ricoeur draws on Karl Mannheim's provocative suggestion, however, to propose that ideology's deception can be countered by utopia's subversion. In so doing, Ricoeur reflects his own pivotal turn in hermeneutical philosophy that answers one of its most common criticisms, namely, he moves, as John Thompson pointed out, to a “critical hermeneutics.”3 This is in fact not a minor point in Ricoeur's contributions but one of his most significant. Ricoeur's reflections on ideology critique, however, languished for some time and have not been well-integrated into his wider work, even by him. 53

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There is much tantalizing insight here but also some puzzlement as to how his work on ideology critique connects with his larger hermeneutical reflections. The renewed interest in his political philosophy makes it all the more important to consider the issue of integrating his ideology critique but also to amplify this relatively undeveloped territory in his thought. UTOPIA AS IDEOLOGY CRITIQUE It is at this point that we can briefly indicate what one might call Ricoeur's utopian calculus. Ricoeur sees the typical Marxist understanding of ideology as negatively distortive as too simplistic. He then extends it to three different dimensions of ideology, drawing on the work of Max Weber, Karl Mannheim, and Clifford Geertz. He delineates therefore an integrative, legitimative, and a distortive function of ideology.4 Any society, he argues, drawing here on Clifford Geertz, has a symbolic, cultural dimension that integrates and legitimates it. He actually suggests in a note that will be important for us that this initial function of ideology is usually idealistic and even utopian. Ideology thus has a dialectical relationship with utopia, where utopia functions as criticism of ideology. A new society or new regime often begins as a utopian criticism of the old. As the new movement gains ascendancy, the utopia is transmuted into ideology. In this first sense, ideology has a necessary constitutive and potentially healthy function. Ricoeur points out, “Logically if not temporally the constitutive function of ideology must precede its distortive function. We could not understand what distortion meant if there were not something to be distorted, something that was of the same symbolic nature.”5 It is important to realize here that the constitutive function implicitly tempers the main role of ideology that he identifies as “conserving.” To see that this energetic element is actually in Ricoeur, he says of ideology in another essay, “Its role is not only to diffuse the conviction beyond the circle of founding fathers, so as to make it the creed of the entire group, but also to perpetuate the initial energy beyond the period of effervescence.”6 The “initial” energy, I would suggest, is a utopian moment that continues to linger even in the distortions of ideology. The problem, as Ricoeur indicates, is that ideology inevitably has to simplify complex realities; in the process, it tends to minimize convoluted and harsh realities. A gap therefore between reality and the ideology has to be filled in by belief in order to have legitimacy. “My argument,” he says, “is that ideology occurs in the gap between a system of authority's claim to legitimacy and our response in terms of belief.”7 In an innovative appropriation of a Marxist idea, he terms this “surplus value.” Here is where the

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destructive side of ideology typically arises.8 In order to defend legitimacy against challenge, ideology ossifies and is used as a weapon by those in power to suppress doubt. Ricoeur argues, “This feature appears to contradict the first function of ideology, which is to prolong the shock wave of the founding act. But the initial energy has a limited capacity; it obeys the law of attrition.”9 As we shall see, ideology inevitably loses this battle. Its ambiguity lies in this unstable tension between conserving something valuable but inevitably distorting it. The latter negative sense of ideology is familiar from the Marxist and neo-Marxist tradition. One can admire a vision of democracy and egalitarian freedom, for instance, along with courage and sacrifice on their behalf, without denying all of the ways that this vision falls short. Perhaps one can admire a Platonic vision of an efficient society led by a benevolent philosopher king or queen, without denying all the ways that such a vision has fallen short. Almost any venture begins with high ideals; it is difficult to imagine the effort and sacrifice that it takes to begin something directed towards an outcome that one anticipates being disappointing and destructive. Founding myths and dreams have a place, but eventually they always call for a degree of demythologization. The modern Marxist suspicion of ideology is the dominant perspective on ideology for a reason; the positive functions of ideology, due to their surplus value, all too easily slide over into their negative functions. In the fifties, Ricoeur’s significant essay on “the political paradox” pointed out this same dynamic of the state being necessary for humans to live together in peace, yet the state also being founded by violence and maintained by violence, inevitably slipping into great abuses of that power.10 In a similar essay at that time, Ricoeur referred to these tensions as giving rise to “an ethics of distress.”11 The question is, how does one gain a perspective in the midst of deception to see through distortions? What does one do in light of the political paradox and the distress it causes? Marx could appeal to science or to a particular class to see through the dissimulations, but even they are now seen as infected by ideology. In fact, Ricoeur says of Mannheim’s critique of Marx, “Mannheim’s contention, though, is that this discovery has escaped, has exploded the Marxist framework, because suspicion is now applied not to one specific group or class to both the entire theoretical frame of reference in a chain reaction that cannot be stopped. For me, the dramatic honesty of Mannheim lies in his courage to face this challenge.”12 Ricoeur concludes, “We are caught in a kind of tornado, we are literally engulfed in a process which is self-defeating.”13 This crisis is where utopia comes in. Ricoeur sees it also as having a threefold structure that correlates intimately with ideology.14 In fact, it is a dialectical correlate to ideology. As indicated, ideology usually begins with the

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aspirations of utopia. Utopia conversely arises as an alternative to an existing ideology. Ricoeur discusses at some length whether they can be totally separable and ultimately decides that they cannot. The problem is that utopia, too, can be destructive, and as Marx saw, fall into wishful and unrealistic thinking. It can be dangerous in the minds and hands of fanatics. Where ideology can be distortive, utopia can be illusory. Ricoeur concludes, “It is as though we have to call upon the ‘healthy’ function of ideology to cure the madness of utopia and as though the critique of ideologies can only be carried out by a conscience capable of regarding itself from the point of view of ‘nowhere.’”15 At best, utopia can provide either a genuine and better alternative to the status quo or serve as continual, constructive criticism. In this positive sense, where ideology legitimates, utopia provides an alternative. Utopia’s main contribution, as literally the view from nowhere, is to call into question the dissembling of ideology. Ricoeur says, “It is always from the point of view of the nascent utopia that we may speak of a dying ideology. It is the conflict and intersection of ideology and utopia that makes sense of each.”16 The third correlate then is that where ideology preserves identity, utopia explores possibilities. Ideology integrates, whereas utopia subverts through invention.17 Ricoeur states: Whether distorting, legitimating, or constituting, ideology always has the function of preserving an identity, whether of a group or individual. As we shall see, utopia has the opposite function: to open the possible. Even when an ideology is constitutive, when it returns us, for example, to the founding deeds of a community—religious, political, etc.—it acts to make us repeat our identity. Here the imagination has a mirroring or staging function. Utopia, on the other hand, is always the exterior, the nowhere, the possible. The contrast between ideology and utopia permits us to see the two sides of the imaginative function in social life.18

Ricoeur notably distinguishes between ideology and utopia in terms of both being works of the imagination. Utopia draws upon the productive imagination to transcend the situation, reminiscent of the way Ricoeur sees creative metaphor as involving a semantic shock that reconfigures reality.19 Ricoeur adds that narrative also can project an imaginative new world in which we can live. For Ricoeur, one of the best examples is Jesus' parables that reorient by disorientation.20 He hardly makes these connections himself between utopia and parables in the text,21 although George Taylor connected them in his introduction to the lectures.22 Ideology also in its more integrative sense is a work of the imagination itself, but now arising in a defensive, legitimizing mode rather than a contrary one. It draws upon the reproductive imagination. One can see here the more typical, domesticated version of the

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imagination as in Immanuel Kant. In an article on Ricoeur’s unpublished lectures on the imagination, given in 1975 at approximately the same period as the lectures on ideology and utopia, George Taylor says, “In the Lectures, Ricoeur challenges the history of Western thought not only in its general failure to comprehend the interrelation of imagination and seeing but also in its almost singular emphasis . . . on the reproductive imagination to the exclusion of the productive imagination.”23 Despite the aid, however, of utopia with all of these nuances, Ricoeur reiterates the problem of “Mannheim’s Paradox,” namely, that critics cannot escape the influence of ideology upon their own situation. In the end, there is no independent vantage point, no supreme epistemological platform on which to give a neutral, fully objective appraisal. Ricoeur concludes that, even with all of the help of utopian thinking, one must rely ultimately on the risk of personal, hermeneutical judgment, which he will later specify as practical wisdom (phronesis). Ricoeur in fact says of Mannheim’s attempt to find such a way, “I consider Mannheim's attempt to overcome this paradox one of the most honest and perhaps the most honest failure in theory.”24 He adds: My own conviction is that we are always caught in this oscillation between ideology and utopia. There is no answer to Mannheim's paradox except to say that we must try to cure the illnesses of utopia by what is wholesome in ideology . . . and try to cure the rigidity, the petrification, of ideologies by the utopian element. It is too simple a response, though, to say that we must keep the dialectic running. My more ultimate answer is that we must let ourselves be drawn into the circle and then must try to make the circle a spiral. We cannot eliminate from a social ethics the element of risk. We wager on a certain set of values and then try to be consistent with them; verification is therefore a question of our whole life. No one can escape this.25

Ricoeur’s rejection of an independent epistemological platform marks him as a post-Enlightenment thinker, even a postmodern thinker, but he is able to find in utopia a means nevertheless for ideology critique, albeit one that is more cautious, risky, and dynamic. It is thus more of a hope than a concrete intuition of the real, a testimony or attestation of what might be, on which one may risk one’s life. One might initially think of utopia as offering a rosy, heady solution. In general, Ricoeur understands it to arise out of suffering. Ricoeur’s early language about such imagination being hopeful is in the context of complex situations with competing values, expressed in the title of the article, “True and False Anguish.”26 Later such phronetic judgment about what one might do about a near impossible situation is posed in terms of tragedy, calling for a tragic wisdom.

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UTOPIA WITHIN IDEOLOGY The problem that immediately confronts one, however, in this single-minded focus upon utopia is that much ideology critique does not stem from the classical sense of utopian thinking as a vantage point from nowhere or outside. Rather, it often comes from criticism from within, of failing to live up to the promise of an ideological perspective. What is more, Ricoeur himself indicates other approaches to ideology critique besides the utopian in other contexts, such as the explanatory moment in his hermeneutical arc and in his dialogue with Habermas. In these works on ideology and utopia, he thus actually limits the range of utopian thinking. Some penetrating critique does not stem from such a total, revolutionary new perspective as Ricoeur envisages, such as in the US, Russian, and Maoist revolutions. Rather, some critiques are a matter of renewal or reform from within an ideology, often appealing back to the original utopian vision that engendered an ideology. In fact, Ricoeur himself in suggesting that ideology typically begins as a utopian venture implies that the interplay is more intertwined, more incestuous, than his programmatic calculus implies. With the subtle shift from the dreams and revolutions of utopia to the practical politics of ideology, the original utopian dimension is often buried—but can be resurrected. We can with Ricoeur call this beginning point a utopian “period of effervescence” because it continues to provide the imaginative stimulus for critique and also renewal. As Ricoeur indicates, ideology is obviously related to the past, usually an idealized one, and thus involves memory. Ricoeur mentions celebrations such as the Fourth of July in the United States, the fall of the Bastille in France, and Lenin's tomb in the Soviet Union.27 Such memory can be misused in a defensive way to appeal to American exceptionalism that covers for exploitation of weaker countries or an appeal to the Revolution to keep a small bureaucratic elite in power. Ricoeur prefers to speak of utopia as the basis of criticizing these abuses, but is it possible that sometimes it is the utopian element in the ideology that can be used against it? In the U.S. civil rights movement, Martin Luther King, Jr., in his “I Have a Dream” speech, was not speaking from outside of the American tradition but appealing from within it to its idealistic elements of equality. In the American Civil War, abolitionists appealed to the American idea of equality in resisting slavery. In the U.S. presidential campaigns, the candidates almost always look back to affirm or recover some aspect of the American tradition as a font of renewal, even though the parties may differ on which tradition such as equality for all on the one hand or individual freedom on the other.28 Such a vital source of critique and change can be missed in what seems on the surface a rather simplistic contrast, for all of its complexity, between ideology and utopia.

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Ricoeur does not explicitly bring out this creative potential within ideology because of his insistence that ideology preserves while utopia subverts. In these instances, though, one can see how an element of ideology that is preserved actually becomes a creative basis for continuing utopian critique. A few years, I went to see the movie, The Help, where African American women in the late fifties and early sixties in the United States gave voice to what it felt like to serve white households and raise white children while being regarded as virtual slaves and second-rate citizens. This situation is regarded with horror by scores of white movie goers today. Just a generation or two go, however, numerous white people saw this as normal and as the established order of things. They could not imagine anything different at the time. It is no surprise that it was the marginalized group that imagined an alternative. Yet the alternative was the result not so much of overturning the entire social order but an appeal to King's vision of a fulfillment of the American dream. It was utopian, especially to many in the south who saw it as an impossible dream, but it was ultimately a rekindling of the original “spirit of effervescence” of a society where all people are created equal that led to radical critique and change. Similarly, the campaign for the right of women to vote in the United States a century ago was a dream that was fulfilled by appealing to foundations of equality. I would argue that such critique is still a function of the utopian imagination, not just from outside but inside an ideology. It is creative, involving the productive imagination, in that it sees much more than was dreamed possible in the original vision and extends it in a novel way. Another example is Jürgen Habermas of the Frankfurt School moving to a more positive view of the Enlightenment in terms of the goal being the “unfinished project” of the Enlightenment.29 His own tradition is Marxist critical theory in the background, but the critique he brings is from within the ongoing utopian tradition of the Enlightenment, which undergirds his later normative ideal of the “ideal speech situation.” As Ricoeur reminded him, however, “critique is also a tradition” and does not escape the bounds of hermeneutics.30 Moreover, in connection with Ricoeur's treatment of Habermas in the Gadamer-Habermas debate, Ricoeur applauded Habermas' concern with ideology critique but not specifically in terms of utopia. Ricoeur recognized that there is a place for deeper criticism of “systematically distorted communication” in hermeneutics, but he believed in a way that Habermas does not that hermeneutics can take account of such ideology critique. He did not regard Habermas as escaping the hermeneutical circle, but he did see how Habermas' methodology can be useful, though limited, for ideology critique.31 In this respect, he incorporated critical methodology as a means of “explanation” in his hermeneutical arc more clearly than does Gadamer.32 What is interesting, though, is that Ricoeur developed his hermeneutical arc with its critical moment of explanation, which can include various critical

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methods beyond the structuralism on which he focused at the time, without mention of utopia as key to ideology critique. He thought that these explanatory techniques could lead to a greater, post-critical understanding, that is, understanding better by explaining more.33 Later, in his treatment of Habermas in Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Ricoeur (as well as Seyla Benhabib) points out that Habermas' move to an ideal speech situation is utopian, but again, this is not a move outside the Enlightenment but an elaboration of it.34 It is thus not altogether clear in Ricoeur's work how the hermeneutical arc relates to ideology critique, but one can see how critical explanation could relate both to his affirmation of ideology critique in his dialogue with Habermas and his hermeneutic of suspicion in dialogue with Freud. In connection with Freud, the archaeology that plumbs beneath the surface provides a hermeneutic of suspicion of ideology. Ricoeur balances the critical archaeology, however, with an imaginative teleology that is able to restore meaning, which we could identify with the postcritical understanding on his hermeneutical arc.35 What is clear is that the postcritical teleology is the work of the productive imagination that takes into consideration critical explanation or archaeology. Is it too far-fetched to suggest that the critical productive imagination in utopia is also at work in this postcritical understanding? If so, it brings them together even as it broadens utopia, for his hermeneutical arc and the teleology in the Freud work are not necessarily seen as views from nowhere as in utopia but are correctives or reforms, or re-figurations, as in Ricoeur’s narrative arc. They are not necessarily offering the vantage point of the revolutionary new but a critical appropriation of what is at hand. Pulling together these various strands in Ricoeur is complicated. Even Ricoeur suggested it was not easy for him.36 Doing so, however, has the advantage of helping to see how they can fit together and also broaden his approach to ideology critique beyond his affirmation that the singular way to critique ideology is by means of classical utopia. In so doing, it actually preserves the emphasis on the creative, productive imagination such that we can still see this as “utopian imagination.” Reform also takes imagination just as does revolution. What is missing, therefore, from Riceour's explicit work on ideology and utopia in the seventies, however, apart from tantalizing hints, is this possibility of utopian disturbance of the past-oriented, conservative elements of ideology. This dimension allows for renewal from within rather than standing on the outside. Ricoeur actually hints in this direction at times. Ricoeur notes of Henri de Saint-Simon concerning utopia, “The spiritual location of utopia is between two religions, between an institutionalized religion in decline and a more fundamental religion that remains to be uncovered.”37 One can argue that the latter is a return or renewal of the first utopian vision, thus uncovering a

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dialectical way that utopia emerges from within ideology. In his discussion of Charles Fourier and utopia, Ricoeur comments, “The religious overtone of Fourier’s proclamations raises an issue about utopia as a whole: to what extent is utopias’ futurism fundamentally a return? Fourier comments quite often that what he advocates is not a reform but a return, a return to the root. He has many pages on the topic of forgetfulness.”38 He virtually states here the thesis that utopia is nourished by the original impulse of a congealed ideology. Ricoeur’s last major work, Memory, History, Forgetting emphasizes the significance of memory of the past for moving forward to the future.39 Thus, it is crucial to remember and forget rightly. Ricoeur stresses here “the abuses of memory, which are also abuses of forgetting.”40 Ricoeur later connects this problem to narrative, “It was due to the mediating function of the narrative that the abuses of memory were made into abuses of forgetting. In fact, before the use, there was the abuse, that is the unavoidably selective nature of narrative. If one cannot recall everything, neither can one recount everything.”41 Ricoeur speaks here of “a devious form of forgetting.”42 It is a willing of bad faith. His example: “Western Europe and indeed all of Europe, after the dismal years of the middle of the twentieth century, has furnished the painful spectacle of this stubborn will.”43 He thus adds another dimension to such narrative, “It is justice that turns memory into a project.”44 Memory becomes then an ethical duty. It is justice, one might say, that calls for fulfilling original idealistic aspirations that have become distorted and deceiving in ideology. Fulfilling them requires critical, imaginative, and shall we say, utopian, memory. When Ricoeur turns in his “little ethic” in a creative way to root the deontological right in the teleological good, the appeal to the good is usually to the good in a tradition—which in turn can haunt and critique that tradition as it falls into destructive forms of ideology.45 As he says in The Just, “The deontological intention, and even the historical dimension, of our sense of justice are not simply intuitive; they result from a long Bildung stemming from the Jewish and Christian as well as from the Greek and the Roman traditions.”46 The sense of the good and the right, whose renewal points to reform, are thus also developed and preserved in a tradition, an ideology in this sense. “In a sense,” he says, “all founders of philosophies, religions, and cultures say that they are bringing forth something that already existed.”47 The utopian imagination thus can gain purchase, one could say, from ideology even as it grounds ever new traditions. In some cases, one could debate whether a particular reform is a utopian revolution from outside or radical reform from inside. For instance, how does one distinguish between Hinduism and Buddhism, between Judaism and Christianity, between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam? Was the American revolution utopian in the classical sense or a refiguration of previous tradition?

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Although Ricoeur does not develop these fleeting ruminations in the direction I am going, they open the door to a much more complex relationship of ideology and utopia. Utopia may not always be “the exterior, the nowhere.” It is not always a view from nowhere but a view from somewhere, perhaps the somewhere of a return to an original utopia or ideal of the good buried within an ideology. Just like ideology, this type of utopia conserves an identity—but only through renewal and transformation.48 Lewis Mumford similarly noted in his classic work on utopia, “Almost every utopia is an implicit criticism of the civilization that served as its background; likewise, it is an attempt to uncover potentialities that the existing institutions either ignored or buried beneath an ancient crust of custom and habit.”49 There are several more hints in Ricoeur's treatment that allow one to pry open a broader view of the utopian critical imagination. One can appeal to Mannheim's idea that both ideology and utopia are noncongruent with reality.50 Ricoeur agrees with Mannheim in seeing the noncongruence in ideology as deforming, but the noncongruence can also be seen, especially by the marginalized, as “unfinished business” of the original vision. Ricoeur relates ideology mainly to dominant groups and utopias to marginalized groups, but at times we can see how the marginalized can take hold of aspects of ideology for the sake of change.51 The surplus value that Ricoeur sees in ideology, to be sure, lends itself to deceit and deformation, but it can also make room for internal critique, especially when appealing to the way a distortive ideological vision undermines an original, constitutive ideological vision. Here, surplus value becomes a surplus of meaning that catalyzes the utopian imagination. At another point, Ricoeur recognizes with Mannheim how concepts change in a fluid fashion. They refer to the concept of freedom, which was utopian until the end of the eighteenth century. Then it was used by the ruling class to resist extensions that they feared.52 A more recent example is how the religious additions to the pledge allegiance and motto in the fifties in the US involved an explicit, well-funded program of business barons who wanted to reject the New Deal that crimped their style in making more money.53 The idea of corporate America was that they should be free to keep “their money” from the restrictions brought about by labor unions, a minimum wage, Social Security, and other benefits to labor. Their support of the public display of the Ten Commandments was that the prohibition against stealing was code for others not to take their money. Other groups, however, can then pick up the idea of freedom as liberating and utopian. Ricoeur says, “The same concept was alternatively utopian, conservative, and utopian once more. Characterization depends on which group is advocating the concept.”54 Does this not suggest that use of a concept within an ideology such as “freedom” can have its utopian potential released

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by critique?55 In criticism of Mannheim, Ricoeur says, “If we call ideology false consciousness of our real situation, we can imagine a society without ideology. We cannot imagine, however, a society without utopia, because this would be a society without goals.”56 Yet it is not that difficult to imagine challenging goals arising from the unrealized utopian dreams of the constitutive aspect of an ideology, such as equality and “liberty and justice for all.” The productive imagination can be seen as alive in this way in reworking a constitutive ideological vision through creative refiguration that goes beyond the original, for example, in the United States in applying the vision of equality first to slaves and then to women. For some, equality and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness imply a right to basic health care and job opportunities, even a more equal redistribution of wealth. All of these go far beyond the initial vision. Ricoeur's work in the seventies is applicable here concerning the creative semantic innovations of metaphor and then soon after the way that narrative can project and refigure a possible new world in which to live. The point is that the metaphorical and narrative imagination can easily apply to utopias, especially as Ricoeur emphasizes the way that utopias are written in story form as compared to ideology. On broadly Ricoeurian terms, therefore, they can also be applied to creative refiguration of constitutive ideologies.57 Such a dynamic can be seen perhaps more easily in religion than in politics, which however are often intermingled in history. Religions such as Judaism, Islam, and Christianity consistently appeal to their roots in reform movements. Being true to Jesus the Christ or to the Prophet underscore a call for change that is usually more powerful than an appeal to leave them behind. The Exodus and the Law function similarly in Judaism. The utopian experiments of the sixteenth century apocalypticists much mentioned by Lenin, Mannheim, Bloch, and Ricoeur were religious and political reforms. The point that can often be seen more easily in religion is that major changes that are deep critiques of previous ideologies are often not views from elsewhere but rather reforms of an ongoing tradition. These are usually seen not as turns to something altogether new but instead as returns to the roots, of renewal of the original vision, the latent utopian vision, we might say, that engenders most ideologies.58 Hans Küng, for instance, mentions seven paradigms in Christianity, all of which were major reforms, but they all claim to be true to the Christian roots.59 Similarly, major political changes are often seen as being more faithful to a tradition, as much as they are being completely new. And the religious and political continue to be intertwined in these aspects. For instance, how much does the Egyptian uprising of 2011 pertain to political democratic impulses or to democratic reforms of Islam? And if the democratic alternative is already widely available, even if mostly now in ideological forms, how can it be de novo, a view from nowhere?

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A supple ideology critique needs to do justice both to the utopian and reformist dimensions. In his writings on ideology in Lectures, Ricoeur explicitly deals with the former and appears actually to rule out the latter, although he leaves some hints for a broader construal of the way that the utopian critical imagination can function in ideology critique. In these various ways, a form of ideology critique that is not per se utopian (while involving elements of the productive and creative imagination) is implicit in Ricoeur's work as a complement to his utopian emphasis. This allows for one also to integrate the utopian critical imagination with other strands of ideology critique in his writings in his dialogue with Habermas, in the hermeneutic of suspicion in his hermeneutical arc, in metaphor's power to redescribe, in refiguration in his narrative arc, in his later treatment of the abuses of memory, and in the sieve of deontology that works upon the originary imagination of the good in his ethics. If one makes this move with Ricoeur, it provides an opportunity to connect his work to the rich discussion of “immanent criticism” in the Marxist tradition, especially with Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. The goal of this criticism was to analyze the tensions within an ideology so as to bring out the emancipatory potential buried within. Sometimes such criticism was mainly destructive, or better, deconstructive, by focusing upon the negative failures. At other times, it could analytically point to correctives. Later thinkers in the tradition began to see this latent potential as more explicitly utopian and imaginative in nature.60 As mentioned, Habermas looked for the “unfinished business of modernity.” In a key essay in 1981 dealing with the challenges at the time of the Frankfurt School, Seyla Benhabib summarizes the thrust of Critical Theory, “Critical theory redeems past hope in the name of the future by revealing the as yet unrealized potentials of the present.”61 She later explicitly ties such hope to utopia in her book Critique, Norm, and Utopia.62 Looking at all of these forms of critique from the perspective of Ricoeur’s work on utopian critique of ideology helps us see that they are aspects of the productive imagination. As these forms of criticism draw upon the hidden utopian potential within an ideology, they show that ideologies are not simply captured within the net of the reproductive imagination, as Ricoeur suggests.63 Their latent utopian potential can stimulate the productive imagination as well. Utopia thus cannot be understood apart from metaphorical semantic innovation or narrative refiguration. Even critical “explanation” is in a dialectical relationship with a postcritical, imaginative appropriation. In terms of the hermeneutical arc, the critical moment of explanation works upon the more imaginative first understanding, which assumes a capacity to grasp holistic, imaginative meaning—an exercise in the reproductive imagination. Then the critical moment points forward to a second, holistic,

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imaginative understanding, which actually calls upon the reader’s productive imaginative capacities. Once one notices the imaginative dimension even in criticism from within, Ricoeur’s element of discernment or practical wisdom has to be seen as also a crucial element, perhaps even more in terms of reform than of revolution. How does one distinguish between ideological distortion and recovery of original utopian inspiration? How does one know what to remember and what to forget, or to discern between memories? The problems and aporias of an ideology may be disclosed by a method, as in Ricoeur’s hermeneutical arc, but how does one move beyond just deconstruction to recovery of what is valid in the role of ideology as constituting and instituting an emancipatory vision? This calls for Ricoeur’s notion of practical wisdom or phronetic judgment.64 In Oneself as Another, he terms it a tragic wisdom because it often has to deal with dissonant, competing values as in the classical case of Antigone.65 Such practical wisdom may not seem tied to the utopian imagination, but the capacity to forge a way forward may hardly be possible without the capacity to spark a new way of recovering an initial vision out of the ashes of the later petrification of ideology. It involves not only imaginative recovery of a vision but imaginative, creative re-visioning on the yon side of ideology critique. Tying these strands together through the lens of the critical imagination at work in utopia helps us note a much broader and multi-faceted ideology critique than Ricoeur denotes in his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. In other words, we are using Ricoeur to go beyond the Ricoeur of those lectures. Sometimes ideology critique can take the form of a vantage point from outside, a true revolutionary alternative. It truly helps us see the weaknesses of distortive and oppressive ideology. On the other hand, considering Ricoeur's ideology critique in this wider way shows how ideology can be criticized sometimes not just from without but from within, still drawing on utopian stirrings within ideology, as a way “to perpetuate the initial energy beyond the period of effervescence.”66 NOTES 1. Earlier versions of this thesis were presented in papers in Ricoeur conferences in Mexico, Moscow, and the United States (Philadelphia). Appreciation is given to those groups and the notable hermeneutical spirit of support and criticism. I also want to express appreciation for T & T Clark International, publishers of my book, Ricoeur and Theology, for permission to expand on ideas expressed in briefer form and in relation to theology in a subsection of chapter 6 in Dan R. Stiver, Ricoeur and Theology, (New York: T & T Clark International, 2012).

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2. Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny, Kathleen McLaughlin, and John Costello (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977). The French title was La métaphore vive. 3. John B. Thompson, Critical Hermeneutics: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur and Jurgen Habermas (Cambridge, [Eng.]: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 4. Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 254–55. 5. Ibid., 182. 6. Paul Ricoeur, “Science and Ideology,” in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation, ed. John B. Thompson, trans. John B. Thompson (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 225. 7. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 183. 8. Ibid., 183, 200–2. 9. Ricoeur, “Science and Ideology,” 227. 10. Paul Ricoeur, “The Political Paradox,” in History and Truth, ed. Charles A. Kelbley, 2nd ed., Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 247–70. The previous essay, “State and Violence,” also brings out the notion of an “ethics of distress” that cannot fully reconcile clashing ethical imperatives such as loyalty to the state and refusal to kill. Paul Ricoeur, “State and Violence,” in History and Truth, ed. Charles A. Kelbley, 2nd ed., Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 234–46. 11. This is the previous essay, “State and Violence,” before “The Political Paradox,” referred to in the previous note. An “ethics of distress” especially refers to clashing ethical imperatives such as loyalty to the state and refusal to kill. 12. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 162. 13. Ibid., 172. 14. Ibid., 310. 15. Paul Ricoeur, “Ideology and Utopia,” in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 324. See also the following: “What we must assume is that the judgment on an ideology is always the judgment from a utopia. This is my conviction: the only way to get out of the circularity in which ideologies engulf us is to assume a utopia, declare it, and judge an ideology on this basis.” Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 172. 16. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 181. 17. Ibid., 319–20. 18. Ibid., 182; Ricoeur, “Ideology and Utopia,” 318. 19. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, 299. 20. Paul Ricoeur, “Biblical Hermeneutics,” Semeia 4 (1975): 27–138. 21. One brief place is Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 309, where he mentioned in passing a connection between the imaginative power of utopia that is like fiction.

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22. Ibid., xxiii–xxxv. 23. George H. Taylor, “Ricoeur’s Philosophy of Imagination,” Journal of French Philosophy 16 (Spring/Fall 2006): 96. Cf. also Mark Johnson, The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987). 24. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 166. 25. Ibid., 312. 26. Paul Ricoeur, “True and False Anguish,” in History and Truth, ed. Charles A. Kelbley, 2nd ed., Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 287–304. 27. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 261. 28. See for the complexity of this issue Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (Penguin Books, 2012). He makes a strong argument that north America involves not just two but eleven “nations” or cultures that go back to the geographical origins of the nations and continue, even getting stronger, based on history, voting patterns, accents, poverty, and so on. While there is overlap, it implies that there are eleven utopian visions of what north America should be. The social psychologist Jonathan Haidt also indicates how people reflect very basic, even evolutionary, ethical impulses but draw on them in different ways such as the complex differences between liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012). 29. See Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993). Seyla Benhabib develops his thought especially in terms of utopia in Seyla Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), chap. 8. 30. Paul Ricoeur, “The Task of Hermeneutics,” in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation, ed. John B. Thompson, trans. John B. Thompson (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 97. 31. It is notable that Ricoeur, known for his work on language and hermeneutics, criticizes Saint-Simon’s utopianism for “its overestimation of the power of persuasion by discussion.” He adds, “This is the same difficulty that I have with Habermas.” Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 298. 32. George Taylor makes the connection between explanation and ideology critique in Ricoeur in his introduction to ibid., xviii. 33. Ricoeur does indicate what he thinks is a limit of Habermas’ earlier ideology critique, namely, lack of a positive alternative. This is where utopia can come in, which it begins to do for Habermas when he turns to an ideal speech situation. Ricoeur says in this context, “The function of therapy is to cure, but virtually no one is cured by the process of ideology critique. Many are wounded but few are cured.” Ibid., 249. Such sobering words give us pause concerning Ricoeur’s own notion of ideology critique. Is utopia integrated within it, or does it transcend it? 34. Ibid., 247, 251. See Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, 342. 35. Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage, Terry Lectures (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 459 ff.

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36. Paul Ricoeur, Essays on Biblical Interpretation, ed. Lewis Mudge, trans. David Stewart and Charles Reagan (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 41. 37. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 305. 38. Ibid., 307. 39. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 40. Ibid., 80. 41. Ibid., 448. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid., 449. 44. Ibid., 88. 45. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), chaps. 7–9. 46. Paul Ricoeur, The Just, trans. David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 56 Also see Paul Ricoeur, Reflections on the Just, trans. David Pellauer (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2007), 60–62. 47. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 307. 48. Ricoeur, “Ideology and Utopia,” 318. 49. Lewis Mumford, The Story of Utopias (New York: Viking Press, 1962), 2. 50. See Karl Mannheim, Ideology and Utopia (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960), 173–77, and Ricoeur on Mannheim, Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 158. 51. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 273. 52. A more recent example is how the addition to the flag and motto in the fifties in the US was in service of business barons who wanted to reject the New Deal that crimped their style in making more money. The idea of corporate America was that they should be free to keep “their money” from the restrictions brought about by labor unions, a minimum wage, Social Security, and other benefits to labor. Their support of the public display of the Ten Commandments was that the prohibition against stealing was code for others not to take their money. Kevin M. Kruse, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, Kindle ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2016). 53. In a history of this effort, Kevin Kruse summarizes, “But as this book argues, the postwar revolution in America’s religious identity had its roots not in the foreign policy panic of the 1950s but rather in the domestic politics of the 1930s and early 1940s. Decades before Eisenhower’s inaugural prayers, corporate titans enlisted conservative clergymen in an effort to promote new political arguments embodied in the phrase ‘freedom under God.’ As the private correspondence and public claims of the men leading this charge make clear, this new ideology was designed to defeat the state power its architects feared most—not the Soviet regime in Moscow, but Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal administration in Washington.” Ibid., Kindle location 251. 54. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 177. 55. Ricoeur refers to Mannheim’s “strange” description of “conservatism” as a utopia. Ibid., 278. Nevertheless, the description here of a reformist utopian imagination that looks for the ideal as a source of reform of the ideologically distorted present

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could make more sense of Mannheim’s idea of conservatism as a reforming force. For good or ill, this seems often to be its function in the United States, where its dreams that are appeals to “conserve America” often seem utopian in the context of a large and complex nation as they call for small government, states rights, little taxation, and meager social benefits. 56. Ibid., 283. 57. This broader understanding of the utopian imagination makes room also for Greg Johnson’s concept of “the utopian,” which he sees as a more embodied gesture or interruption, a form of visceral protest as well as hope, that occurs at a more primordial level than the full-fledged classical utopia. Greg S. Johnson, Elements of the Utopian (Aurora, CO: Davies Group, 2011). One could see such a utopian interruption gesturing towards either revolution or reform. 58. In the light of the eschatological turn in theology with Wolfhart Pannenberg and Jürgen Moltmann, I should mention that they see reform as coming from the future, not just from the past. Their idea is complex, however, for the future eschaton is rooted in the Kingdom of God vision of Jesus, to which they return. The vision of the future is in part rooted in the utopian beginnings of Christianity. 59. Hans Küng, Christianity: Essence, History, and Future, trans. John Bowden (New York: Continuum, 1998). 60. Raymond Guess, “Critical Theory,” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York: Taylor & Francis, 1998), accessed February 5, 2018, https​://ww​w.rep​.rout​ ledge​.com/​artic​les/t​hemat​ic/cr​itica​l-the​ory/v​-1/se​ction​s/int​ernal​-or-i​mmane​nt-cr​itici​sm. 61. Seyla Benhabib, “Modernity and the Aporias of Critical Theory,” in The Frankfurt School: Critical Assessments, ed. Jay M. Bernstein, Critical Assessments of Leading Sociologists (New York: Routledge, 1994), 131. 62. Benhabib, Critique, Norm, and Utopia, 331, 333. 63. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 266. 64. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, chap. 9; Ricoeur, The Just, 22. 65. Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 244. 66. Ricoeur, “Science and Ideology,” 225. This is an emphasis that Ricoeur makes with regard to human beings also, against Heidegger, which corresponds to the theological affirmation that human beings were created good and not evil.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Benhabib, Seyla. Critique, Norm, and Utopia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. ———. “Modernity and the Aporias of Critical Theory.” In The Frankfurt School: Critical Assessments, edited by Jay M. Bernstein, 115–35. Critical Assessments of Leading Sociologists. New York: Routledge, 1994. Guess, Raymond. “Critical Theory.” Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: Taylor & Francis, 1998. Accessed February 5, 2018. https​://ww​w.rep​.rout​ ledge​.com/​artic​les/t​hemat​ic/cr​itica​l-the​ory/v​-1/se​ction​s/int​ernal​-or-i​mmane​nt-cr​ itici​sm.

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Habermas, Jurgen. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993. Haidt, Jonathan. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon Books, 2012. Johnson, Greg S. Elements of the Utopian. Aurora, CO: Davies Group, 2011. Johnson, Mark. The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Kruse, Kevin M. One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America. Kindle ed. New York: Basic Books, 2016. Küng, Hans. Christianity: Essence, History, and Future. Translated by John Bowden. New York: Continuum, 1998. Mannheim, Karl. Ideology and Utopia. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960. Mumford, Lewis. The Story of Utopias. New York: Viking Press, 1962. Ricoeur, Paul. “Biblical Hermeneutics.” Semeia 4 (1975): 27–138. ———. Essays on Biblical Interpretation. Edited by Lewis Mudge. Translated by David Stewart and Charles Reagan. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980. ———. Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation. Translated by Denis Savage. Terry Lectures. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970. ———. “Ideology and Utopia.” In From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, translated by Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson, 308–24. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991. ———. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Edited by George H. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. ———. Memory, History, Forgetting. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ———. Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ———. Reflections on the Just. Translated by David Pellauer. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2007. ———. “Science and Ideology.” In Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation, edited by John B. Thompson, translated by John B. Thompson, 222–46. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981. ———. “State and Violence.” In History and Truth, edited by Charles A. Kelbley, 234–46. 2nd ed. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965. ———. The Just. Translated by David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. ———. “The Political Paradox.” In History and Truth, edited by Charles A. Kelbley, 247–70. 2nd ed. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965. ———. The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. Translated by Robert Czerny, Kathleen McLaughlin, and John Costello. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977.

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———. “The Task of Hermeneutics.” In Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation, edited by John B. Thompson, translated by John B. Thompson, 43–62. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981. ———. “True and False Anguish.” In History and Truth, edited by Charles A. Kelbley, 287–304. 2nd ed. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965. Stiver, Dan R. Ricoeur and Theology. Philosophy and Theology. New York: T & T Clark International, 2012. Taylor, George H. “Ricoeur’s Philosophy of Imagination.” Journal of French Philosophy 16 (Spring/Fall 2006): 93–104. Thompson, John B. Critical Hermeneutics: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur and Jurgen Habermas. Cambridge, [Eng.]: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Woodard, Colin. American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America. Penguin Books, 2012.

Part II

RICOEUR IN DIALOGUE

Chapter 4

Metaphor and Imagination A Comparative Study of Ricoeur and Ibn ‘Arabi through “Seeing As” Recep Alpyağil

Paul Ricoeur was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. His works have cut across the subjects of religion, history, literary criticism, legal studies, and politics, as well as having implications for sociology, psychology, and linguistics. His philosophy provides responses to contemporary problems relating to the social sciences and humanities. In this regard, I will investigate the transportable scope of the Ricoeurian legacy for other philosophical traditions, especially for the Islamic one. Metaphor, in a Ricoeurian sense, is a very productive concept for this kind of comparative study. Meta/phor is itself a metaphor of trans/fer. As a calculated error, metaphor brings things together that do not go together normally. For a living metaphor, first of all we need two different entities. Secondly, we have to bring them together or use them within a sentence, with a copula. If we can see the sentence as metaphor, we can see the metaphoric sense of reference. A parallel way, I will try to bring Ricoeur and Ibn ‘Arabi together on metaphor and imagination in this chapter. From a multi-disciplinary perspective, “seeing as” seems to be a meeting point for the different philosophical traditions to carry their legacy into new fields. And also, through the grafting of the traditions,1 the exact aspect of metaphor can be seen that is otherwise unable to be seen. It seems to me that Ricoeur’s understanding of metaphor and imagination is similar to Islamic Philosophy: “They proceed in opposite directions, and their paths cross.”2 I will make some Ricoeurian detours to show the intersections between the two thinkers: Firstly, I will focus on the concept of “seeing as . . .” in Ricoeur because it sums up the power of metaphor and also as he himself proposes, “Imagining is above all restructuring semantic fields”. It is, to use Wittgenstein’s expression in the Philosophical 75

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Investigations, “seeing as.”3 In the second stage, I will analyze the concept of imagination in Ibn ‘Arabi. According to him, the outstanding feature of imagination is its intrinsic ambiguity, and it needs to be described as “neither/nor” or as “both/and.” In the same way, metaphor is a peculiar way of thinking, a mode of cognition, for it is a means of discovering some subtle features in the metaphysical structure of reality. Finally, it seems to me that both thinkers address the creative power of metaphor and imagination. RICOEUR’S THEORY OF METAPHOR, “SEEING AS,” AND THE FUNCTION OF IMAGINATION It is well known that The Rule of Metaphor consists of eight studies, which together constitute a progressive examination of metaphor within three entities: word, sentence, and discourse. According to Ricoeur, metaphor at the level of the word is the domain of rhetoric; metaphor at the level of the sentence is the domain of semantics; and metaphor at the level of discourse is the domain of hermeneutics. In the traditional accounts, metaphor consists of a substitution of words. Resemblance exists prior to the metaphor. For Ricoeur by contrast, resemblance is fashioned by the metaphorical statement. It is an attribution of predicates and not the substitution of words. The metaphor is the result of the tension between two terms in a metaphorical utterance.4 In this regard, metaphor is a calculated error, which brings together things that do not go together. By means of this apparent misunderstanding, it causes a new relation of meaning to spring up between the terms.5 But how is it possible to create a tension between two terms? Does it produce a tension just to bring together any two terms? If it does not, what is the reason for holding together two different terms where there is a tension? These questions are crucial to understand Ricoeur’s contribution to theory of metaphor. We can find the answer in “seeing as.” In the sixth study of The Rule of Metaphor, Ricoeur re-reads Wittgenstein’s remarks about seeing as through Marcus Hester.6 He proposes to examine the problem in the light of the interesting contribution of Hester: The most satisfying explanation, and in any case the only one that can be reconciled with semantic theory, is the one that Hester links to the notion of “seeing as” (which is Wittgensteinian in origin). This theme constitutes Hester’s positive contribution to the iconic theory of metaphor. It is because he expressly brings resemblance into play.7

What is “seeing as,” and how does it bring resemblance into play? Wittgenstein draws our attention to the fact that we use the word “see” in two senses

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that have categorically different “objects” of sight. We say, “I see this,” and also, “I see a likeness.” He calls the latter seeing “noticing an aspect.”8 “Seeing as” is an experience and an act at one and the same time. On the one hand, the mass of images is beyond all voluntary control; the image arises, occurs, and there is no rule to be learned for “having images.” One sees, or one does not see. The intuitive talent for “seeing as” cannot be taught; at most, it can be assisted, as when one is helped to see the rabbit’s eye in the ambiguous figure of the duck/rabbit. On the other hand, “seeing as” is an act. To understand is to do something. The image is not free but tied, and, in effect, “seeing as” orders the flux and governs iconic deployment. In this way, the experienceact of “seeing as” ensures that imagery is implicated in metaphorical signification: “The same imagery which occurs also means.”9 “Seeing as” activated in reading ensures the joining of verbal meaning with imagistic fullness. This conjunction is no longer something outside language since it can be reflected as a relationship. “Seeing as” contains a ground, a foundation, that is, precisely, resemblance—no longer the resemblance between two ideas but that very resemblance the “seeing as” establishes. Hester claims emphatically that similarity is what results from the experience-act of “seeing as.” “Seeing as” defines the resemblance, and not the reverse.10 At this stage, there is a necessary connection between the phenomenon of imagination and the theory of metaphor. What new access is offered to the phenomenon of imagination by the theory of metaphor? In this way, we can put the problem a new way: Instead of approaching the problem through perception and asking if and how one passes from perception to images, the theory of metaphor invites us to relate imagination to a certain use of language.11 Ricoeur applies the same concept of “seeing as” to metaphors. For him, metaphorical seeing is a “seeing as.”12 The “seeing as” is the intuitive relationship that makes the sense and image hold together.13 Imagination is the apperception, the sudden glimpse, of a new predicative pertinence, namely, a way of constructing pertinence in impertinence. Imagining is above all restructuring semantic fields. It is, to use Wittgenstein’s expression in the Philosophical Investigations, seeing as.14

For Ricoeur, in new metaphors the birth of a new semantic pertinence marvelously demonstrates what an imagination can be that produces things according to rules: “being good at making metaphors,” said Aristotle, “is equivalent to being perceptive of resemblances.”15 But what is it to be perceptive of resemblance if not to inaugurate the similarity by bringing together terms that at first seem “distant,” then suddenly “close?” It is this change of distance in logical space that is the work of the productive imagination. This consists of schematizing the synthetic operation, of figuring the predicative assimilation from whence results the semantic innovation. The productive

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imagination at work in the metaphorical process is thus our competence for producing new logical species by “predicative assimilation,” in spite of the resistance of our current categorizations of language.16 On the other hand, for Ricoeur, metaphor is not an instrument that is restricted to literature; on the contrary it redescribes reality, and it has ontological statue. He even suggested that “seeing as,” which sums up the power of metaphor, could be the revealer of a “being-as” on the deepest ontological level.17 It seems to me that the key to the problem lies in the functioning, which is not merely rhetorical but also ontological, of the “as,” as I analyzed it in the seventh and eighth studies of my Rule of Metaphor. What gives metaphor a referential import, I said, itself has an ontological claim, and this is the intending of a “being-as . . .” correlative to the “seeing-as . . .” in which the work of metaphor on the plane of language may be summed up. In other words, being itself has to be metaphorized in terms of the kinds of being-as, if we are to be able to attribute to metaphor an ontological function that does not contradict the vivid character of metaphor on the linguistic plane; that is, its power of augmenting the initial polysemy of our words. The correspondence between seeing-as and being as satisfies this requirement.18

His main problem is not the form of metaphor as a word-focused figure of speech, nor even just the sense of metaphor as a founding of a new semantic pertinence, but the reference of the metaphorical statement as the power to “redescribe” reality. Metaphor presents itself as a strategy of discourse that, while preserving and developing the creative power of language, preserves and develops the heuristic power wielded by fiction. In this regard, the “place” of metaphor is neither the name, nor the sentence, nor even discourse, but the copula of the verb to be. The metaphorical “is” at once signifies both “is not” and “is like.”19 It is important to note that metaphor emerges in Ricoeur’s theory only when the reference of literal meaning is suspended. Thus, metaphor depends on reference to ordinary experience, and yet the abolition of this reference is the strategy of metaphor. What allows for metaphorical reference is a process of seeing the similar in the dissimilar. The tension between same and other is marked no longer in the relational sense of the copula of the verb to be, but in its existential sense. In a nutshell, I have tried to emphasize that “seeing as . . .” expresses the main point in Ricoeur’s discussion of metaphor: The place of metaphor is the copula of the verb to be. The metaphorical “is” at once signifies both “is not” and “is like,” just like in “seeing as”. What makes this act possible is only imagination.

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Here, I am going to return to Islamic philosophy to show how we can see Ricoeur and Ibn ‘Arabi as together on metaphor and imagination. IBN ‘ARABI AND ONTOLOGICAL NATURE OF IMAGINATION In 1969, just before La métaphore vive (1975), Japanese Islamolog Toshihiko Izutsu in his groundbreaking article, “The Basic Structure of Metaphysical Thinking in Islam,” writes: The frequent use of metaphors in metaphysics is one of the characteristic marks of Islamic philosophy, or indeed we might say of Eastern philosophy in general. It must not be taken as a poetic ornament. A cognitive function is definitely assigned to the use of metaphors. This may rightly remind us of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s understanding of the concept of “seeing as.” . . . In the same way, to discover an appropriate metaphor in the high domain of metaphysics is for Muslim philosophers a peculiar way of thinking, a mode of cognition, for it means discovering some subtle features in the metaphysical structure of Reality.20

What we understand from the quotation is that both Izutsu and Ricoeur are pointing to the same issue from nearly almost the same resources. I think this historical encounter between the sources and conclusions needs to be detailed to see Ricoeur and Muslim philosophers as together on metaphor and imagination. But, it will be appreciated that it is very difficult to handle all aspects of issue in Islamic philosophy. There are already very profound English studies on the concept of metaphor in Islam and also on reception of Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics in the Arabic World. In this regard, it might be helpful to exemplify the subject with a particular name. I will refer to a Medieval Muslim mystic, Ibn ‘Arabi (1165–1239). Interest in his writings and teachings has increased in the last few decades, particularly in the West. There are comparative studies between him and deconstruction, quantum mechanics, Chaos theory, Taoism, New Age mysticism, and Kant, etc.21 In terms of this essay, Henri Corbin “has been able to present Ibn al-ʻArabi as a thinker worthy of our most serious consideration because of the contributions he can make to the philosophical and hermeneutical concerns of the continental tradition.”22 As a part of this kind of interdisciplinary work, it is easier to make an engagement with Ibn ‘Arabi and Ricoeur. Ibn ‘Arabi, known as Muhyiddin (the Revivifier of Religion) and the Shaykh al-Akbar (the Greatest Master), was born in the Moorish culture of Andalusian Spain, the center of an extraordinary flourishing and cross-fertilization

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of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thought, through which the major scientific and philosophical works of antiquity were transmitted to Northern Europe. He wrote over 350 works including the Fusûs al-Hikam, an exposition of the inner meaning of the wisdom of the prophets in the Judaic/ Christian/ Islamic line, and the Futûhât al-Makkiyya, a vast encyclopedia of spiritual knowledge that unites and distinguishes the three strands of tradition, reason, and mystical insight. According to Ibn ‘Arabi, the outstanding feature of imagination is its intrinsic ambiguity, deriving from the fact that it dwells in an intermediary situation; it is an “interworld” or a reality standing between two other realities and needing to be defined in terms of both. Imagination is the intermediate world between the two fundamental created worlds, that is, the spiritual world and the corporeal world. The contrast between spirits and bodies is expressed in terms of many pairs of opposites, such as luminous and dark, unseen and visible, inward and outward, non-manifest and manifest, high and low, subtle and dense. In every case, imagination is an intermediary reality between the two sides, possessing attributes of both. Hence the “World of Imagination” needs to be described as “neither/nor” or as “both/and.” It is neither luminous nor dark, or both luminous and dark. It is neither unseen nor visible, or both unseen and visible.23 No one will find true knowledge of the nature of things by seeking explanations in “either/or.” The real situation will have to be sought in “both/and” or “neither/nor.” Ambiguity does not grow up simply from our ignorance: it is an ontological fact, inherent in the nature of the cosmos.24 Imagination is neither existent nor nonexistent, neither known nor unknown, neither affirmed nor denied. For example, a person perceives his own form in a mirror. He knows for certain that he has perceived his form in one respect, and he knows for certain that he has not perceived his form in another respect. . . . He cannot deny that he has seen his form, and he knows that his form is not in the mirror, nor is it between himself and the mirror. . . . Hence he is neither a truth-teller nor a liar in his words, “I saw my form, I did not see my form.”25

In short, wherever we meet imagination, we are faced with ambiguity. If someone affirms something about it, he will probably have to deny the same thing with only a slight shift in point of view. Imagination brings opposites together, like coincidentia oppositorum. According to Ibn ʻArabi, “all existence is an imagination within an imagination.”26 For him, imagination has epistemological and ontological importance. Imagination is such an essential cognitive instrument that “he who does not know the status of imagination is totally devoid of knowledge.”27 For example, a dream image needs to be described in terms of both subjective

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experience and objective content. We affirm the image as both true and untrue, since in one sense a specific thing is seen, and in another sense it is not.28 Ibn ʻArabi says, If you say concerning it that it is existent, you will have spoken the truth, and if you say it is nonexistent, you will have spoken the truth. If you say that it is neither existent nor nonexistent, you will have spoken the truth. It is imagination, and it has two states: a state of contiguity, which it possesses through man and certain animals, and a state of discontiguity.29

Imagination is very important part of this process. In his life, he saw imagination as a productive heuristic. It could be said that for imagination, and productivity also, we need to “able to see as.” That is, to able see one thing as a thing other than something; it should have in itself two different structures. This chapter is, hence, trying to bring the different structures together for productivity such as the religious and the imaginary. As is well known, Ricoeur expands the conception of imagination outside the sphere of discourse to which it is originally belonged. And he makes a transition from the theoretical sphere to the practical sphere through the social imaginary, involving imaginative practices such as ideology and utopia. IBN ‘ARABI AND RICOEUR: BETWEEN IDEOLOGY AND UTOPIA Readers of Ricoeur are familiar with the fact that one of the main characteristics of his philosophy is an ellipse with two foci that mediation tends to conflate but which can never be reduced to a unified central point. Ricoeur himself emphasizes of these two undertakings, “It seems to me that how far back I go in the past I have always walked on with two legs. It is not only for methodological reasons that I do not mix genres, it is because I insist on affirming twofold reference, which is absolutely primary for me.”30 In the case of utopia and ideology, his philosophical attitude is not different. For him, there is an insuperable tension between utopia and ideology such that it is even impossible to decide whether this or that mode of thinking is ideological or utopian: criss-crossing of utopia and ideology appears as the play of two fundamental directions of the social imagination. The first tends towards integration, repetition, reflection. The second, because it is eccentric, tends towards wandering. But neither exists without the other. The most repetitive, the most reduplicative

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ideology—to the extent that it mediates immediate social ties— . . . introduces a gap, a distance, and consequently something which is potentially eccentric. On the other hand, the most errant form of utopia to the extent that it moves “inside a sphere directed towards the human” remains a hopeless attempt to show what man basically is in the clarity of utopia.31

I am sure that these matters are well known to Ricoeurian scholars, but I just wanted to reference this crisscrossing of utopia and ideology to show a similar crisscrossing in Ibn ‘Arabi. Ibn ‘Arabi reconceptualizes two modes of understanding on God in religious tradition. The first tends towards integration, repetition, reflection. The second, because it is eccentric, tends towards wandering. One is the rational understanding of God; it asserts that he is absolutely other than all things. The point of view of the incomparability of God is supported by all Muslim thinkers, especially the authorities in philosophical theology. Second is that imaginal understanding has the power to see God present in all things. This mode is sometimes called tashbih, seeing God as similar to things. For Ibn Arabi and his followers, to see God from the point of view of reason alone, or to see Him from the point of view of imagination alone, is to see with one eye. True knowledge of God demands that people see God with both eyes. Then they will be able to understand that God is both distant and near, both absent and present. Perfect knowledge, if there is any, involves both knowing God through intellect and perceiving Him through imagination. We cannot understand God as both transcendent and immanent unless we employ the two faculties at once. Either faculty employed alone provides us with a distorted picture of reality. Exclusive stress upon incomparability cuts God off from the cosmos, while exclusive stress on similarity makes a person lose sight of the unity of the Real and leads to polytheism.32 It thus seems to me that we can translate Ricoeurian insights about the crisscrossing of ideology and utopia into Ibn ‘Arabi’s corpus. The latter is eccentric, tending toward wandering, but it also tends toward integration. CONCLUSION What are the implications of a comparative study of Ricoeur and Ibn ʻArabi for metaphor and imagination, ideology and utopia? In Ricoeur’s case on metaphor, two important points can be drawn, the first one is related with the structure of The Rule of Metaphor. As said by Ricoeur, there are some aspects that must be completed in this book:

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With respect to their origins, some of the decisive doctrines are taken from English-language literature and some from the French. This is an expression of the double allegiance of my research as well as my teaching in recent years; . . . I propose to rectify the injustice this seems to do to German-language authors in another book on which I am working currently.33

In this regard, this work could be seen as an Arabic contribution for Ricoeur studies, a kind of crisscrossing, as it were. If we look at the subtitle of the English translation of The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, this argument may seem more reasonable. (Unfortunately, in the second edition of this book, the most important part of its subtitle is omitted, that is Multi-disciplinary Studies.34) Secondly, this is an applied work. In other words, to see Ricoeur and Ibn ‘Arabi as together on metaphor and imagination is itself metaphorical seeing. “We are always taking something as something,”35 as Han-Georg Gadamer said in an article written for Ricoeur. But saying that this is “like” means that the assimilation does not reach the level of an identity. The “similar” is not the “same.” To see the similar is to apprehend the “same” within and in spite of “difference.”36 On the other hand, in case of Ibn ʻArabi, we can more adequately conceptualize his views on imagination with Ricoeur. In European languages, profound studies of Ibn ʻArabi’s philosophy are available. Henry Corbin (1903–1978), the translator of M. Heidegger’s Sein und Zeit into French, especially presents creative imagination as one of the most characteristic themes of Ibn ʻArabi37 to the non-Arabic reader. Ricoeur himself refers to Corbin, “To use an expression of Henri Corbin, we could say that the sacred unfolds a space of manifestations that must be called imaginary (imaginal) rather than logical in nature.”38 But in spite of these studies, there is no comparative work on imagination.39 Lastly, remarks on ideology and utopia in Ricoeur give rise to see a similar crisscrossing of their interplay in the relationship of God’s incomparability and yet imaginative similarity to things. This allows for Ibn ‘Arabi to be understood beyond the current construction of secular mystic or religious universalist, which emphasizes too much the incomparability side and not enough the metaphorical. Also, in a direct way, the similarity between the two thinkers on the metaphorical imagination allow one to appropriate Ricoeur’s insights into the productive relationship between ideology and utopia into the Muslim world and political philosophy. One can “see” a utopian image “as” a way of productive critique and even a return to an original idealistic vision.

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NOTES 1. Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, ed. Don Ihde (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974), 3. 2. Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language (Toronto; Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 68. 3. See Marcus B. Hester, The Meaning of Poetic Metaphor: An Analysis in the Light of Wittgenstein’s Claim that Meaning is Use (The Hague: Mouton, 1967). 4. Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), 50. 5. Ibid., 51. 6. Hester, The Meaning of Poetic Metaphor. 7. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, 212. 8. Hester, The Meaning of Poetic Metaphor, 170. To illustrate “seeing as” or “noticing an aspect,” Wittgenstein introduces Jastrow’s duck-rabbit drawing. The question then is: If one viewer sees a duck while another sees a rabbit, or the same person sees both at different times is their or his perception changed or is it the same? Wittgenstein says yes and no. “‘Seeing as . . .’ is not part of perception. And for that reason it is like seeing and again not like. According to him, the concept of an aspect is akin to the concept of an image. In other words: the concept ‘I am now seeing it as . . .’ is akin to ‘I am now having this image.’” Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigation, trans. G. E. M Anscombe, 3rd ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1958), 213. Cf. Stephen Mulhall, On Being in the World: Wittgenstein and Heidegger on Seeing Aspects (London: Routledge, 2015). 9. Hester, The Meaning of Poetic Metaphor, 188. 10. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, 213. 11. Paul Ricoeur, “Imagination in Discourse and in Action,” in From Text to Action, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2007), 167. 12. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, 231. 13. Ibid., 212. 14. Ricoeur, “Imagination in Discourse and in Action,” 168–69. 15. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. S. H. Butcher, Section 3, Part XXII, accessed April 1, 2018, http:​//cla​ssics​.mit.​edu/A​risto​tle/p​oetic​s.htm​l. 16. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), ix–x. 17. Ibid., xi. 18. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 155. 19. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, 6–7. 20. Toshihiko Izutsu, “The Basic Structure of Metaphysical Thinking in Islam,” in The Concept and Reality of Existence (Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1971), 16. 21. See for more information: Stephen Hirtenstein, The Unlimited Mercifier: The Spiritual Life and Thought of Ibn ‘Arabī (Oxford: Anqa, 1999).

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22. William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn ‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State University of New York, 1989), xix. 23. William C. Chittick, “The World of Imagination and Poetic Imagery: Thoughts on the Tarjumān al-Ashwāq,” Temeno 10 (1989): 104. 24. Chittick, “The World of Imagination and Poetic Imagery,” 112. 25. Ibn ‘Arabi, quoted in William C. Chittick, “The World of Imagination and Poetic Imagery,” 112. 26. Ibn ‘Arabi, The Bezels of Wisdom, trans. Ralph Austin (New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1980), 125. 27. Ibn ‘Arabi, quoted in Samer Akkach, “The World of Imagination in Ibn ʻArabi’s Ontology,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 24, no. 1 (May 1997): 98. 28. William C. Chittick, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-’Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 70. 29. Ibn ‘Arabi, quoted in William C. Chittick, The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn ‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination (Albany: State University of New York, 1989), 117. 30. Paul Ricoeur, “Biblical Readings and Meditations,” Critique and Conviction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 139. 31. Paul Ricoeur, “Imagination in Discourse and in Action,” in Rethinking Imagination: Culture and Creativity, eds. G. Robinson and J. Rundell (New York: Routledge, 1994), 133. 32. Chittick, “The World of Imagination and Poetic Imagery,” 108. 33. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, 8. 34. See ibid. 35. Hans-Georg Gadamer, “Hermeneutics of Suspicion,” Hermeneutics: Questions and Prospects, ed. Gary Shapiro and Alan Sica (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984), 58. 36. Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, 296. 37. Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Ṣūfism of Ibn ʻArabī, trans. Ralph Manheim (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969). 38. Paul Ricoeur, “Manifestation and Proclamation,” trans. David Pellauer, in Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative and Imagination, ed. Mark I. Wallace (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 50. 39. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 11th Annual Society for Ricoeur Studies Conference. I would like to thank George H. Taylor and Dan R. Stiver for their comments. Finally, I must thank BAP (2016-22717 Istanbul University) and TUBITAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey) for their financial support.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aristotle. Poetics. Translated by S. H. Butcher. http:​//cla​ssics​.mit.​edu/A​risto​tle/ p​oetic​s.htm​l.

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Chittick, William C. Imaginal Worlds: Ibn Al-’Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1994. ———. The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn Al-Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1989. ———. “The World of Imagination and Poetic Imagery: Thoughts on the Tarjumān al-Ashwāq,” 99–119. Temeno 10 (1989). Corbin, Henry. Creative Imagination in the Ṣūfism of Ibn ʻarabī. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. “Hermeneutics of Suspicion.” In Hermeneutics: Questions and Prospects, edited by Gary Shapiro and Alan Sica. 54–65. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1984. Hester, Marcus B. Meaning of Poetic Metaphor: An Analysis in the Light of Wittgenstein’s Claim That Meaning Is Use. The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1967. Izutsu, Toshihiko. The Concept and Reality of Existence. Tokyo: Keio Institute of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, 1971. Mulhall, Stephen. On Being in the World: Wittgenstein and Heidegger on Seeing Aspects. London: Routledge, 2015. Ricoeur, Paul. Critique and Conviction. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. ———. Figuring the Sacred: Religion, Narrative, and Imagination. Edited by Mark I. Wallace. Translated by David Pellauer. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995. ———. From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II. Translated by John B. Thompson and Kathleen Blamey. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991. ———. “Imagination in Discourse and in Action.” In Rethinking Imagination, edited by Gillian Robinson and John F. Rundell, 118–35. New York: Routledge, 1994. ———. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976. ———. The Conflict of Interpretations. Edited by Don Ihde. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1974. ———. The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. Translated by Robert Czerny, Kathleen McLaughlin, and John Costello. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977. ———. Time and Narrative. Translated by David Pellauer and Kathleen McLaughlin. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. ———. Time and Narrative. Translated by David Pellauer and Kathleen Blamey. Vol. 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Philosophical Investigations. Translated by G. E. M Anscombe. 3rd ed. New York: Macmillan, 1958.

Chapter 5

“Holding Open a Place for Possibility” Paul Ricoeur, Fredric Jameson, and the Language of Utopia Linda Lee Cox

In Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Paul Ricoeur traces a genealogy of the dialectic between ideology and utopia through social philosophy with the hypothesis that placing these terms together dialectically will shed light on the meaning of the social imagination.1 He begins by examining the pathological, distorting dimension of each term and works toward an understanding of the dialectic between the terms. But rather than beginning with the terms, we might also enter the discussion by considering the language of “dialectic” itself, the ostensible mediating structure through which the poles of “ideology” and “utopia” are said to be grasped together, passed through, and/or reversed. Fredric Jameson, in Valences of the Dialectic, seeks to elucidate the social imagination in this manner by considering the history of the “presentations” of the dialectic itself. He offers a new configuration appropriate for the present late capitalist era and suggests a method for moving utopically into more productive and expansive future social realities. While coming from different philosophical traditions, the work of both Fredric Jameson and Paul Ricoeur shares a commitment to understanding the relationship of temporality to dialectical thinking and a sustained interest in the aporias of understanding. Both theorists seek to “mediate” the poles without creating an absolute mediation, to engage in ideological analysis that resists becoming fixed ideology, and to find a means of transforming social structures throughout utopic imagination without mapping out a conclusive utopia. A primary difference between the two is that Ricoeur remains committed to humanism, while Jameson believes an immanent critique of our age must accept the existence of irresolvable differences over against the value of universal communication.2 Like other readers of Ricoeur, Jameson believes 87

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that Ricouer is unwilling to embrace his own method as the very essence—as, in fact, a “stunning example”—of the dialectic,3 and is unwilling to use the term “contradiction” in relation to his own conceptual paradoxes.4 Jameson also notes that Ricoeur rarely refers to the Marxist tradition,5 so he undertakes a project to complement Ricoeur’s narrative work with salient insights from the Marxist and socialist tradition. Despite these shortcomings, Jameson calls on the Left to view Ricoeur as a resource. While there are good reasons Ricoeur is unwilling to abandon humanist values in his conception of aporia (as I will discuss below), I believe several of Jameson’s insights prove valuable to Ricoeur’s goal of shedding light on the philosophical imagination, beginning with Jameson’s historicization and revision of the concept of dialectic itself. Ultimately, I find that the fundamental impulse behind their projects is the same—the epistemological goal of expansion of our social structure beyond what we can imagine, whether that expansion is to be evaluated through a normatively humanist or social critical lens. I will argue that Jameson’s revision of the dialectic as ambivalence as well as his reframing of utopia as a “holding open of the place of possibility” are useful expansions of Ricoeur’s work on the social imagination After exploring the genealogies of Ricoeur’s and Jameson’s accounts of ideology, utopia, and the dialectic itself, as well as the epistemological limitations the configuration exposes, I will suggest notes toward a practical method, based on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Joan Tronto, and Martha Nussbaum, for expanding the social imagination in the midst of ambiguity. This method for utopic imagination, I will argue, requires us to recognize the unique aporia of individual suffering, to suspend our configurations of the present, to listen to and for the suffering of others, and then to take responsibility by promoting the individual’s capability to flourish. THE AMBIGUITY OF IDEOLOGY In Ideology and Utopia, Ricoeur traces a genealogy of the dialectic between ideology and utopia through the discipline of social philosophy in order to put these opposing terms under a single conceptual framework. His hypothesis is that “the dialectic between ideology and utopia may shed some light on the unsolved general question of imagination as a philosophical problem, the means by which they constitute social reality.”6 In the dialectic between ideology and utopia, each side of the polarity has positive (constructive, constitutive) as well as negative (destructive, pathological) traits, but both poles share the trait of ambiguity.7 His hope is that, while the negative side of each pole reveals itself first, an understanding of the structural nature of this dialectic will answer the philosophical question of imagination by

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moving in a positive direction. Briefly, he begins by tracing a genealogy of ideology, pointing first to Marx’s initial insight that ideology can be considered a distortion of the real. Marx, in The German Ideology, viewed “the real” as praxis or productive individual human activity which could be distorted and opposed by the unreal, or ideology.8 Marx’s great discovery, according to Ricoeur, was the conception of the individual in his or her material conditions. He notes that Louis Althusser later replaced the individual-focused praxis model of reality with an impersonal scientific model.9 Althusser considered ideology to be a false cultural, religious, and legal superstructure distorting the impersonal infrastructural base, and he viewed the philosophical conception of the individual subject as itself an ideological distortion. Ricoeur’s critique of Althusser therefore begins by rejecting his scientific conception of history driven by impersonal forces in favor of a return to Marx’s individual-focused praxis model. “Scientific” claims concerning ideology as distortion seem to get caught up in a set of problems regarding how one is to evaluate distortion when the individual subject is seen as ideological. Who is making the evaluation, and by what measure is it deemed a distortion? Karl Mannheim’s achievement in Ideology and Utopia (1929), Ricoeur argues, is to critique the notion of an “absolute onlooker” and to expand the conception of ideology to encompass the one asserting it. As Ricoeur notes, “We speak about ideology, but our speech itself is caught up in ideology. My own claim is that we must struggle with this paradox in order to proceed any further.”10 To avoid charges of relativism, Mannheim argues that we should maintain a nonevaluative ideology through “relationism.”11 Ideology and its onlookers (including himself) are part of a vast empirical system, and the distortions or “false consciousness” which previous systems proposed become here not evaluations against a presumed standard but noncongruence in the sense that they may lag behind or stand ahead of a given situation.12 Yet Ricoeur calls attention to Mannheim’s “embarrassed” footnote where he mentions that the evaluative takes the form of the nonevaluative with the intention, nonetheless, of an evaluative solution, the way out of a multiplicity of conflicting viewpoints.13 In the absence of an impersonal onlooker to evaluate ideology, the solution is sought in the structure of relations. But again, Ricoeur asks, who is charged with making the correlations if not another absolute onlooker? Without a symbolic order in which to understand ideological relations, Mannheim’s relationism seems an unsatisfactory solution. In Ricoeur’s genealogy of ideology, a shift occurred in the negative conception of the function of ideology from a distortion of “the real” to a legitimation of existing power held by authority. Weber argued that action is already intersubjective, so that the meaning of an action is interpreted according to the motivations of the subject and the others with whom the subject is

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interacting. In this model, individual actions conform to types, but the notion of ideal types and adhering to types are still fraught with epistemological difficulties as well as problems of legitimacy. Ricoeur interprets Weber’s motivation model to mean that there is a gap between the claims made by the ruling class and the beliefs of the ruled, and that ideology fills this gap in order to legitimate that authority.14 In Ricoeur’s genealogy of the function of ideology, Weber’s work marks a transition to the correlation of ideology with power and the critique of ideology not as distortion but as a legitimation of order. Another shift occurs in the function of ideology, Ricoeur finds, through the question Jürgen Habermas addresses concerning ideology and particular interests. He claims that Habermas returns to Marx’s conception of praxis but “reorients” it as a symbolic mediation of action, distinguishing relations of production (symbolic institutional structures) from forces of production and moving away from an opposition of science and ideology.15 The impersonal infrastructural base is no longer seen as the cause of culture, religion, and law; they are different relations altogether. The symbolically structured relations of production are distorted, and there remain gaps within the relations, but Habermas proposes a critical social model akin to psychoanalysis to understand the self in the midst of the distortion. This critical social science is distinct from hermeneutic and instrumental sciences. In this reoriented scientific practice of the critical social science, distorted communication can come to understand itself, much in the same way that the distortions of experience are revealed through psychoanalysis. But, as Ricoeur notes, there are limits to how far a parallel with psychoanalysis may be drawn. First, since distortions are part of communicative action, they must be interpreted from within, and hence critique itself is not distinct from hermeneutic practice. Further, the critical theorist cannot transcend the situation as a psychoanalyst can—the understanding one seeks through the critical social must come not from a recognition of actual experience but from a utopian ideal, a regulative idea. Clifford Geertz contributes the positive reversal Ricoeur’s genealogy of ideology seeks: Geertz argues that all social action or praxis is already symbolically mediated through shared communication, so ideology is revealed to be not only distortion and legitimation, but also integration—it preserves social identity at its deepest level.16 Furthermore, it has an infrastructure that can be described and interpreted similar to the way that discourse can be interpreted through its rhetorical devices. Hence, ideology in Ricoeur’s theory functions not only as a distortion of the real and a legitimation of power held by authority, but also as a means of integrating people by forming the basis of shared communication.

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THE AMBIGUITY OF UTOPIA Not only is ideology ambiguous in having positive and negative traits, but utopia, through Ricoeur’s genealogy, also comes to be seen as ambiguous as well. He asks: I wonder whether we cannot structure the problem of Utopia exactly as we structured the problem of ideology. That is to say, can we not start from a quasi-pathological concept of Utopia and proceed downward to some function comparable precisely to the integrative function of ideology? To my mind, this function is achieved exactly by the notion of the nowhere. Perhaps a fundamental structure of the reflexivity we may apply to our social roles is the ability to conceive of an empty place from which to look at ourselves.17

In the early critical conceptions of ideology, utopia was viewed suspiciously as simply the literary or historical conceptualization of a distorting sociopolitical ideology. While Ricoeur agrees that utopias have the potential to be distortions insofar as they can become escapist fantasy disconnected with realizable aims, he points to a crucial turning point in understanding the ambiguous nature of utopias in Mannheim’s work: “I was attracted precisely by the paradox in Mannheim that what characterizes utopia is not an inability to be actualized but a claim to shatter . . . to break through the thickness of reality.”18 Mannheim’s work provides Ricoeur the framework for this move from the pathological to the integrative with regard to utopia in two important steps. First, as previously outlined, Mannheim rejected the impersonal onlooker model of ideology to argue for relationism, which he had somewhat embarrassingly noted made a claim to be nonevaluative but depended on evaluation after all. The multiplicity of viewpoints is a symptom of the proliferation of utopias, and, with no absolute onlooker or thematic unity, Ricoeur argues that we must “find unity in its functional structure.”19 Mannheim thus made a second important move toward understanding utopia by finding them to be forms of noncongruence. Ricoeur adopts Mannheim’s insight that ”utopias” are both critical structures that serve to unmask these legitimating ideologies and constitutive products of a social imagination, but Ricoeur’s genealogy of the dialectic considers this functional structure in terms of the symbolic. Far from being the mere literary counterparts of distorting ideologies, utopias are themselves integrative of social imagination and critical of ideology. Ricoeur argues that the ambiguity of utopias lies in their very structure, which configures a contradiction: “All Utopias have the ambiguity of claiming to be realizable but at the same time of being works of fancy, the impossible. Between the presently unrealizable and the impossible in principle lies

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an intermediary margin.”20 He draws on two theorists of utopia for evidence: Saint-Simon, who had unmasked the ostensible “Utopia” of industrial society and posited a rational utopia in its place, and Fourier, who looks beneath ”civilization” to locate the deepest source of utopic vision in that of the passions, and the alternative to civilization in the conception of harmony.21 Ricoeur’s argument is that in these specific instances of utopia, there is evidence of a broader symbolically configured functional utopia. In Ricoeur’s dialectic of ideology and utopia, many of the distinguishing traits of each term collapse and reverse. Since he finds that the distinctions between the roles of ideology and utopia are confounded—that ideology is inescapable and there is no “absolute onlooker” to guide us through—he claims we must therefore declare a utopia from within: “The judgment on an ideology is always the judgment from a Utopia. This is my conviction: The only way to get out of the circularity in which ideologies engulf us is to assume a Utopia, declare it, and judge an ideology on this basis. . . . [I]t is someone within the process itself who takes the responsibilities for judgment.”22 His hermeneutic approach in Ideology and Utopia provides a conceptual framework from which to declare a utopia but little guidance on how to discover and evaluate the utopia from within. Jameson’s configurations of dialectic and utopia, I believe, help provide a fuller account of the configuration of the dialectic as a symbolic, functional structure and the first step toward a practical guide for expanding the social imagination. JAMESON’S FIGURE OF THE DIALECTIC Fredric Jameson, in his expansive work, Valences of the Dialectic, traces a history of the presentation of the dialectic itself, offers a new figuration—ambiguity or ambivalence—appropriate for our current, late capitalist era, and suggests a method for moving utopically into more productive and expansive future social realities. His work addresses the struggle with the paradox of evaluation in which empirical systems find themselves, but he remains committed to the possibility of an historical, structural path through the morass. His method is, he notes, borrowed from Ricoeur in Time and Narrative and shares both Ricoeur’s concern for temporality as a subject and his method of incorporating interpretation by way of action, configuration, and refiguration. Reviewing the history of the configuration of the dialectic sets the stage for his reinterpretation of the figure—a new configuration of dialectical thinking itself in terms of the valence, which he argues contains within it the possibilities for alternative, more productive future social configurations. In the past, he argues, the dialectic had been “staged’ either as a unified system or as an instrumental method; but unified systems omit the temporal

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nature of the dialectic and allow us to be lulled into a sense of timeless certainly, clarity, and understanding (Verstand) through a reliance on commonsense.23 This omission of temporality came at a great cost, however, for our “all-too-human longing for timelessness . . . filtered out the glare of contradictions as such.”24 Dialectical thinking reversed the ostensible timelessness within universalist systems of thought (Kantian and Aristotelian) but, in doing so, of course, it risked becoming ossified into its own system, “the Dialectic.” Accounts of the dialectic as an instrumental method, on the other hand, focused on praxis, but they carried with them a need for an end or telos, which tended to conjoin them once again with non-dialectical approaches.25 His genealogy of the dialectic therefore reveals the need for a revision of its language and central metaphor. Rather than resolve the dilemma with another reversal, his project is to outline a structural account of dialectical thinking: “The age demands a politics of ambivalence or ambiguity (assuming the word ‘dialectical’ is still unfashionable); the emphasis on a great collective project whose focus must be on structural impossibilities . . . [such as] the mass democratization of the world market by world information technology on the very eve of mass starvation.”26 Like Ricoeur, Jameson finds the term “ambiguity” a better expression of the relationship of contradiction for our era and contains traces of its ideological history. He calls attention to the “three names of the dialectic”: the Dialectic, dialectics, and dialectical. “To speak of the dialectic, with a definite article or a capital letter,” Jameson writes, “. . . is to subsume all the varieties of dialectical thinking under a single philosophical system, and probably, in the process, to affirm that this system is the truth.”27 Adopting or performing this version risks engaging in the very form of absolute or common-sense, non-dialectical thinking that the dialectic claims to reverse. We must ask, of course, whether the very process of affirming the dialectic over resolution is not itself an example of an absolute system? Dialectical thinking does not escape history, but Jameson makes a distinction between deconstruction and dialectical thinking: while deconstruction is the paradigm of the process that becomes the very ahistorical system it seeks to deconstruct,28 the dialectic, on the contrary, can be considered from its own vantage point, as both useful and disadvantageous.29 The “unexpected” conclusion that the dialectic is both useful and disadvantageous opens the dialectic to its second formulation, that of the plural— dialectics, a multitude of dialectics. While the notion of local dialectics has the advantage of avoiding totalization, it raises new problems, one of which I might characterize as the problem Plato raises concerning Meno’s swarm: how are we to abstract a definition that persists through the multiplicity so as to be able to recognize it as a dialectic at all? One solution to this type of problem, he argues, was structuralism’s conception of the binary opposition,

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the most rudimentary form of the relationship in process-oriented thought.30 Like Ricoeur, he finds functional structure the answer to the proliferation of viewpoints. While early forms of dialectical opposition take the form of mythic dualisms (such as Manichaeanism), newer forms frame the relationship asymmetrically, as, for example, center and margin.31 The asymmetrical relationship among binaries leads him to consider a kind of dialectic that is not so much dualistic as it is “revelatory of some ontological rift or gap in the world itself, or, in other words, of incommensurables in Being itself,” with examples evident in physics in the tension between wave and particle, or event and structure, diachrony and synchrony, etc.32 This revision of the dialectic transforms its functional structure, then, not as the opposition of two poles, but rather as ambiguity—as both the gap keeping incommensurable terms apart and the relationship among incommensurable forms: “Mediation is not only the ‘black box’ through which one state passes, on its mysterious metamorphosis into a radically different one. It also names relationship itself . . . the equal sign which can signify either identity or difference, or indeed both at the same time. It is also a logical relationship which can itself be transformed into a temporal one.”33 In this model of dialectics, oppositions—base and superstructure, forces of production and relations of production, value and function—can only be described and not theorized under one umbrella, since their constituents employ different rules. He describes this relational mediation as a changing of valences, the state of electron transfer that is part of a structured system of potentiality and realizability and is also the name for the relationship itself. When we retain the noun, then, the critique of “ambiguity” or (better) of “ambivalence” captures this incommensurability more productively than previous languages of the dialectic. Since the state and the praxis of the dialectic (like particles and waves) have incommensurable sets of rules with no overarching system, or “third,” to encompass them both, a third adjectival form of the dialectic— “dialectical”—can be invoked to refer to the relationship indirectly. While the use of the adjectival form draws attention to the praxis and the effects it causes, Jameson illustrates the deployment of the term “dialectical” to clarify and rebuke moments of apparent clarity, to unmask one’s “lazy habits of common-sense.”34 We might note his partial answer to the charge of self-refutation raised by Mannheim’s paradox in arguing that the dialectic as mediation is itself historical in considering the dialectic, for speaking intentionally of “dialectical” instead of “the dialectic” is of course historical, as is a focus on the conception of mediation itself. While seeking a nonevaluative totality to think the relational nature of ideology, he recognizes with Ricoeur the need for this thinking to be symbolic and address temporality.

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JAMESON’S LANGUAGE OF UTOPIA In Archaelogies of the Future, Jameson had argued that “seemingly peaceful images [of Utopia] are also . . . violent ruptures with what is, breaks that destabilize our stereotypes of a future that is the same as our own,”35 a claim similar to Ricoeur’s own conclusion, drawn from Mannheim, that utopia shatters the existing order. Further, in Valences, Jameson seems to project a different way of speaking of utopia that is not only critical or deconstructive, but also interpretative—he hopes to propose a different function for a “utopian” transformation of reality. “The Utopian impulse,” he says, “calls for a hermeneutic: for the detective work of a decipherment and a reading of utopian clues and traces in the landscape of the real.”36 Jameson embraces Ricoeur’s own method from Time and Narrative to interpret utopia from within this landscape. Broadly speaking, he calls for an exploration of the configurational dimension of the aporias of utopia, reconfiguring the landscape of the real through the process of destabilizing existing layers of meaning. The language of socialism cannot be relied on to achieve its goals at the present time because this language is too outdated to be productive. He initially wonders whether abandoning the term “socialism” or transforming it into something new might be more productive. But, he says, “There is . . . yet a third possibility, and that is to deploy a language whose inner logic is precisely the suspension of the name and the holding open of the place for possibility, and that is the language of Utopia.”37 Just as we can productively revise our discussions of “the dialectic” using the language of ambiguity or ambivalence, so, too, can we consider Jameson’s deployment of the language of utopia as “the holding open of the place for possibility” to expand Ricoeur’s quest to illuminate the social imagination. First, we might begin this revision by referring not merely to utopia or utopias as nouns representing ontological or political states, but also, and perhaps primarily, as “utopic” figures, emphasizing the process of holding open of a place for possibility. The noun “Utopia” to which the adjective refers is thereby deferred grammatically, both mitigating concerns about its reification and at the same time configuring the absent noun in the meaning. In the case of Utopia, a non-place by definition, and a term often used as a proper noun, this move is especially interesting. Jameson finds that the utopic figure is both the gap or pregnant pause between states (the ”black box”) and the operation that unveils this gap. The change in valences within the figure of the dialectic may be thought as a form of potentiation, and utopia is thereby figured as an “unrealized although a conceptualized possibility,”38 a gap with the potential to be filled, like an electron state. There is certainly an Aristotelian teleological impulse here insofar as the telos is configured as potentiality within the figure, and in which the potentiality itself only makes

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sense in opposition to an actuality. Jameson retains Aristotle’s systems or process approach but rejects an ahistorical telos; instead, he focuses on the structure or dynamic itself, the inner logic of the language of utopia that aims to project into the future without a final cause. This inner logic will be discussed in more detail below. In its positive sense, Ricoeur argues that it is precisely the notion of utopia as no-place that gives us an empty place from which to look at ourselves.39 While Jameson finds Utopia to be an ”unrealized possibility,” it is also a process by which the limitations are revealed: “Utopia . . . is not a representation but an operation calculated to disclose the limits of our own imagination of the future, the lines beyond which we do not seem able to go in imagining changes in our own society and world.”40 Utopia is therefore both the (loaded) gap between states holding the potential for conceived possibilities and the process of holding open this gap, revealing the limits of our imagination. THE INNER LOGIC OF UTOPIA If we accept this reconstruction of utopic thinking in Jameson’s and Ricoeur’s work, then it seems we are faced with both an epistemological question as to how these utopic possibilities are to be known and a normative question of how they are to be judged. Ricoeur believes that hermeneutic processes reveal utopias which are then to be declared from within on the basis of ethical deliberations. Jameson finds this argument insufficient and makes the case instead that the language of utopia has its own inner logic, a nonevaluative totality that offers an alternative to Mannheim’s problematic theory of noncongruence as a lagging behind or standing ahead of a given situation. Using an expansive critique of the late capitalist phenomenon of the rise of Wal-Mart as an example, Jameson asks how it is that Wal-Mart’s business model can drive local businesses under, remove jobs, offer no benefits and low wages, destroy ecologies and communities—and yet be considered the epitome of democracy and efficiency?41 It is well known that Wal-Mart’s “capacity to . . . make life affordable for the poorest American is also the very source of their poverty and the prime mover in the dissolution of American industrial productivity.”42 Similarly, William Leuchtenberg argues in The Perils of Prosperity that during the 1920s, Henry Ford and the agrarian movement “sought . . . to turn back the clock and restore the pristine America of yesteryear,” yet the same architects of the agrarian ideal were also the source of its undoing: “Ford in his massive automobile factories was doing more than any man to destroy rural America beyond recall.”43 Likewise, this pattern of contradiction has been noted in Trump Administration policies such as the American Health Care Act of 2017,

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often considered to be least beneficial to the very rural working-class constituents who supported it. What are we to make of these contradictions? Dialectical thinking, Jameson notes, is precisely that type of thinking that can deal with these contradictions lucidly. He suggests that the logic of utopic thinking provides the possibility that valences of power could be reversed without structural change. In his example, several possibilities can be imagined: the Wal-Mart corporation could use its vast purchasing power to raise standards of living; a new set of categories could be imagined beyond production and distribution altogether; or the moral impulse of frugality that lies at the very heart of the rise of Wal-Mart could be reinvigorated.44 Just as any of those positive concepts could have traced a different genealogical path from the past to the present, so can we read some of the features of our current system as components in an alternative system “genealogically” into a more expansive future. Jameson uses the example of Wal-Mart as an illustration of a method— without declaring that Wal-Mart is good, he reveals the positive valences that could have resulted in alternative present, and hypothesizes that by changing the valences again we could “declare positive things that are clearly negative in our own world”—to open possibilities for transformation into a utopic future.45 For Jameson, while the utopian impulse is hermeneutic, its method is neither hermeneutic nor political but genealogical—a logical operation that sets out the preconditions of phenomena logically rather than causally.46 We can discover the inner logic of utopia by considering traits of the present as components of a future social formation. What he thinks of Wal-Mart personally is less important than how the social imagination can re-envision alternative futures. A future-oriented “utopology” would “reawaken” the imaginative formulation of possible futures, reversing their current valences.47 The difficulty of providing a logic of the future is evident when considering the temporal dimension of what is essentially a spatial metaphor for utopic thinking. While Jameson seeks a figure that can be read forward or backward, with possibilities changing valences and projecting productive futures on the basis of the present, the utopic potential seems nonetheless stubbornly causal and ontologically prior to political action. He writes, “Such a revival of futurity and of the positive of alternative futures is not itself a political program nor even a political practice: but it is hard to see how any durable or effective political action could come into being without it.”48 The revival of futurity (as a subject) parallels his call for a revival of (preexisting) alternative futures and is necessary for the formation of political action—they must somehow be read forward based on the present clues. The operation of utopia moves from unrealized to realized unidirectionally, but here Jameson compares it to a structural figure like a musical score, rather than a teleological model. If I am reading his argument correctly, then, a quasi-temporal telos could exist within

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a larger structure and become exposed by schisms or ruptures, much in the same way that Ricoeur argues narrative time exists within a much broader sense of History, or anthropomorphic time exists within the “longue duree” of Braudel’s geological time: “Ricoeur’s approach to Time—and our own parallel approach, superimposed on his but vaster in scope, to History—requires the existence of gaps . . . aporias that cannot be solved, and of multiple dimensions of Time and of History whose intersection and discordance alone allow the thing itself to appear.”49 Yet we always return to a stubborn challenge to this approach in the question of how “positive possibilities” and productivity are to be evaluated—either structurally or from within? Jameson and Ricoeur share the hermeneutic goal of finding a way to expand our current reach, to navigate into a more humane or productive possible future. For Ricoeur, the question is an ethical one informed by humanism—how do we find a measure within the current ideology by which to judge our utopic vision? For Jameson, the question stems from the critical social—how can we read into the future productively, without foreclosing possibilities but also without allowing our project to become a mere exhibition? To summarize so far, Jameson calls for a refigured dialectical language that configures ambiguity itself as a potentiation as well as the process of revealing the limits of our understanding. Ambiguity can be productively figured as a valence that can change direction without effecting structural change, but it can also be viewed as temporally unidirectional like a musical score. The language of utopia must also be refigured not as merely a fanciful or destabilizing dream but as the holding open of the place of possibility by which unrealized concepts and possibilities may be realized. The logic of utopic language is such that both positive and negative possibilities exist as potencies and can change places and direction according to social imagination. Future possibilities must (already) exist but must remain undisclosed until revived in the present and looked upon by the backward glance of history. This holding open is not only a violent schism or tension (the gap or locus of possibility for transformation), but also the operation by which this transformation is achieved. The key to the logic of utopic thinking is that it “holds open a place” for these future possibilities, which we must understand in terms of the process of holding open and the gap or no-place that the process exposes. As discussed above, on the one hand, Jameson’s primary concern is to keep open the dialectic, to find the dialectic that does not resolve or become reified, using the valence as metaphor.50 Ricoeur makes a similar claim: “The decisive trait of Utopia is then not realizability but the preservation of opposition . . . If we could imagine a society where everything is realized, there congruence would exist. This society, however, would also be dead, because there would

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be no distance, no ideals, no project at all.”51 The figure of utopic language as a holding open is thus meant to preserve this tension without resolution. Likewise, Ricoeur states that the decisive trait of utopias is that “they are not the realizability but the preservation of opposition.”52 Yet Jameson poses a dilemma: “On the face of it, nothing seems more Utopian than the dialectic,” since it unmasks our common-sense understanding of foundations and reveals them to be a process of constructions.53 But on the other hand, the moment we realize that utopia is destabilizing, a paradox lurks in this realization, for the very process of critique, of unmasking, will always depend on a normative standard—it will be reactive, or “parasitic on Verstand itself.”54 We know that we are holding something open that was previously closed and should be destabilized. The epistemological problem is interwoven with the normative one in both approaches: utopian thinking is defined at once by its unrealizability and by its necessity to be realized. It is dialectical in the sense of exposing this incommensurable gap at the same time that it becomes that gap through its potential. Contradiction for its own sake would be merely an exhibition of openness, and it is precisely the resolution of tension implicit within the current ideology that the utopic imagination seeks but can never achieve. Ricoeur believes this aporia summons our sense of humanity, while Jameson wants the aporia to be productive, calling for a future-oriented logic of utopia that can read the possibilities backward and forward. Jameson turns to Ricoeur’s Time and Narrative and adopts Ricoeur’s method to examine the dialectic from within: “In Ricoeur’s hands the aporia is neither to be resolved, nor to be exhibited . . . : it is to be made productive by expansion.”55 The key, he finds, lies in the intersection of psychological, structural, and phenomenological schools of interpretation which, together, “triangulate the ‘reality’ of time and temporality beyond a specific finite representation or figuration.”56 Using this approach, time appears only when the content of the event that is referred to (the prefigured, Mimesis I) intersects with the act of speaking it (the refiguration or reading, Mimesis III) in the configuration of the literary act (Mimesis II).57 As Ricoeur argues, “time becomes human to the extent that it is articulated through a narrative mode,”58 but, Jameson finds, Ricoeur is ahistorically applying an interpretation of Aristotelian eudemonics as an individual rather than what is more appropriately a social or class-based spectacle. But whether we agree with Ricoeur that a utopia must be declared from within, or with Jameson that we must socially uncover the genealogy of the future from the clues of the present, the present configuration of utopia itself provides little practical help in directing us toward a humane or productive possibility. We do not know from within what this utopia will look like. As Gonçalo Marcelo notes, hermeneutical methodology is an interesting

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place to begin understanding the social, although it is ultimately an insufficient way to transform social reality.59 There is, I believe, an important reason to retain an individual humanist focus for the utopic imagination, for there is a particular aporia that mediates the hermeneutic and the evaluative, as well as the individual and social—and that is Ricoeur’s insight on the radical incommensurability of suffering. Marcelo notes that for Ricoeur, suffering is a pre-linguistic layer of experience.60 Marcelo translates Ricoeur’s claim that suffering reveals a paradox in “La Souffrance n’est pas la douleur”: “I will say this much: suffering summons us. The paradox of the relation with the other is unveiled: on the one hand, it is I who suffer, and not the other; we cannot change places; . . . on the other hand, in spite of everything, in spite of the fact that we are apart, the suffering that shows in complaint summons the other person, calls for aid.”61 The individual experience of suffering is fundamentally incommensurable and reveals an uncrossable epistemic and discursive chasm which, as Marcelo notes, “allows [Ricoeur], in a critical turn against Kant’s practical philosophy . . . to consider that the value of persons is over and above the value of the law.”62 Moreover, I believe that the incommensurability of suffering can be understood as part of a structural logic of the figure of utopic expansion as well. Ricoeur writes that suffering as a phenomenon appears on two axes—that of a self-other relationship and that of an act-suffer gradation. If we place the incommensurable alienation of the suffering self on one end of the self-other axis, Ricoeur claims that even in its utter alienation, the self aims toward the other, for it depends paradoxically on having as its goal the erasure of the broader horizon of the world, the relationship with others.63 On the axis of acting-suffering we can then place the power the self has to act, from the mere ability to speak in the midst of suffering, to the power to act, to the power to narrate one’s life story, and finally to the power to esteem oneself as a moral agent.64 As one loses one’s ability to tell about oneself narratively in a way that is intelligible and acceptable, suffering appears as a rupture in our narrative thread, tearing and scrambling our inter-narrative tissue.65 It is at this point that I believe the rupture, like an open wound, can hold open current ideological social narratives and can allow for the fusing of narrative tissue in new ways. It can, of course, also open oneself to another’s “torture,” aimed at destroying the moral self-esteem of the sufferer. But when the esteem remains intact in the moral agent precisely by reaching across the (incommensurable) gap toward the other, and when this self narrates his or her own suffering and/or hears the summons toward the other created by the narration of others’ suffering, then a moral obligation is forged, and the moral agent is now capable of acting in ways that expand across the incommunicable gap of suffering’s solitude. Socially, these suffering selves may form as Ricoeur notes, a “solidarity of the shaken,” referring to Jan Patočka’s name for the optimism of hope through the perseverance

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of the sufferers.66 As an example of a productive or positive fusion arising from the rupture of suffering, we might point to the way that the individual students from Parkland High School in Florida joined together in their suffering to transform a horrific school shooting on February 14, 2018, into a national movement for action on sensible gun control. We may also note the attempts by gun interest groups to take advantage of the rupture by denying the moral agency of the suffering students, re-writing their narratives in ways that would deny their self-esteem. The particular aporia of suffering—which holds open the knowability and the incommensurability of embodied experience, the violence and potential for healing, the intersection of the problem of consciousness in traditional philosophy with dialectical thinking—may therefore provide the key to finding both a yardstick for declaring a utopia from within and a method for navigating and expanding the ideological terrain. “WHAT AILS THEE?” NOTES TOWARD A UTOPIC PRAXIS FOR SOCIAL EXPANSION When we look at the motivations behind Jameson’s and Ricoeur’s utopic projects, we will find the same impulse—expansions of our social structure beyond what we can imagine. We have encountered interrelated epistemological and normative questions of how to know where and how to expand the structure, and how to evaluate the expansions. I will argue for a praxis for utopic expansion that offers a promising solution both for the epistemological question of how to know where utopic expansion should occur and the normative question of how to evaluate these expansions. I will use an example from my own experience to illustrate and test the limits of the epistemological problem of utopian configuration I have been presenting here. In my courses, I work with students who identify as LGBTPQIA+. These students encounter an urgent need for a revision of ideology and a transformation of society on a daily basis. One transgender student had a particularly difficult time navigating the current social structure in Texas—in addition to the discrimination against and high suicide rate among LGBTPQIA+ students, the Texas legislature had recently passed a “bathroom bill” that sought to prohibit transgender students from using the bathroom of their gender identity. For this student, utopic thinking was not only a formal exercise, but also a necessary part of their identity and physical safety, for, due to physical and emotional threats, their very ability to theorize or envision social change was at considerable risk. As a cis-gendered, heterosexual white woman from Texas teaching in the feminist tradition, I have encountered implicit biases in my own ideology as well as in the political, cultural atmosphere in academia, from the pronouns I use to the legal forms

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and categories I uncritically encounter. Many feminists point out that while the phrase “gender neutral” often seems to describe a potentially productive social transformation, it has historically hidden an implicit male bias in an ostensibly ”neutral” framework. Should a gender utopia perhaps then be a genderless one in which gender is no longer socially constructed? While many theorists argue for this seemingly reasonable approach, I find that students have often appropriated or re-appropriated gender categories in radically individual ways, and they do not always envision the erasure of gendered categories in the same way that “second-wave” feminists often do. So as we begin to ”unmask” various forms of ideological bias, how do we envision a utopic social reality from within that system, with no conception of what is missing from our current social structure and with no yardstick by which to measure a utopic expansion?67 Radically plural and decentered approaches to the self are often proposed as alternatives, but, in addition to the political problematics of such conceptions, they also remain prone to numerous logical and metaphysical challenges. In my experience, students embrace pluralist accounts of gender but are highly resistant to decentered constructions both of the self and of gender. Even if my students were all to agree that the current reality of binary gender is ideologically distorted or illegitimate, which version of a utopic imagination should we pursue? Should it be gender neutral? Genderless? Gender plural? Or do these seemingly positive or productive answers belie their own bias—that of the dominant class/gender/race once again masquerading as neutral? While gender and racial biases are still being revealed, so are new and expanded areas of gender bias and other biases—ableism, ageism, etc.—and with the proliferation of these operations of unmasking of bias comes the need for transformed utopic imagination. My experience is that utopic paradigms are not always discursive or communicable, even by those with the most at stake in ideological legitimations, and hence utopias are not always present in a political sphere in ways in which individual subjects may choose and declare them from within as Ricoeurian hermeneutics requires, and yet they are too individualized to be read as a social figure as Jameson suggests. Many of my students, for example, do not have conceptions of utopia which they can articulate (and certainly nothing they would yet affirm or declare), and, even if they could, there is no perspective from which an onlooker could deem one of their utopic visions more ethical or productive than another, either individually or socially. Again—how do we envision a utopia, when even those most affected by its absence cannot articulate a positive vision? And when utopic visions do emerge, how do we engage in responsible representation of utopia? How do we unmask or transform ideology that we do not know we espouse? As Meno asks Socrates, “How will you inquire into that of which you know nothing at all? Where will you find a starting-point

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in the region of the unknown? Moreover, even if you happen to come full upon what you want, how will you ever know that this is the thing that you did not know?”68 We begin by acknowledging the incommensurable aporia of individual suffering at the same time that we reach across it—suspending our borders and listening to the other. Given Ricoeur’s insight that suffering is fundamentally incommensurable yet paradoxically a summons for moral obligation, we might interpret Jameson’s figure of utopic language as a “holding open” of possibility in the act of speaking and listening. In the following section, I will propose notes toward a utopic praxis for social transformation that draws on both Ricoeur’s and Jameson’s insights, and the theories of Emmanuel Levinas (and Katherine Kirby’s description of his method), Joan Tronto, and Martha Nussbaum. We begin by acknowledging with Ricoeur that our individual suffering is at once an unbridgeable gap and a summons to reach across the gap. I believe that being attentive to the voices of individuals who suffer is paramount to social transformation—it is the key to the Holy Grail, as Parcival discovers in asking the question, “What ails thee?”—both an expression of the incommensurability of suffering and of the willingness to acknowledge, listen to, and respond to suffering of the other. As philosophers like Levinas to Tronto have written, we must evaluate and act responsibly on the basis of this knowledge. We start with a descriptive understanding of epistemic position: acknowledging the relative marginalization of the other in comparison to our more central position and attending to them first as the first step in expanding our ideological boundaries. Feminist standpoint theory, for example, argues that marginalized standpoints have an epistemic advantage over central voices and should be attended to first (although this theory situates standpoints collectively rather than individually as I am suggesting).69 Ricoeur’s discussion of the summons of suffering also shares methodological ground with Levinas’s ethics. Levinas writes, “The face resists possession, resists my powers. In its epiphany, in expression, the sensible, still graspable, turns into total resistance to the grasp”70 and that to “manifest oneself as a face is to impose on[e]self above and beyond the manifested and purely phenomenal form, in one’s nudity, that is, in one’s destitution and hunger. . . . [P]reexisting the plane of ontology is the ethical plane.”71 For Levinas, an encounter with the Other reveals an incommensurable divide between myself and an unfathomable Other, viewed as the Divine, that which is outside my totality.72 Recognizing the other as such is the first step in utopic expansion. Joan Tronto similarly describes the first step of a care ethics as an attentiveness to the needs of others.73 In my example, I have found that while we may share language, culture, and ideology, when my students look for utopic clues within the current paradigm, many do not yet have “conceived possibilities” or declarations of utopia, but often only experiences of suffering and a

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struggle with how to act within this experience. As we suspend the ideology and methods of the present and listen to the suffering of the other, I have found that before we may decide which clues to attend to or to declare, the first practical step must be to recognize the other and the incommensurability of her suffering. This suffering is unique to this person alone—it can’t be transferred to me or anyone else, and I can’t even theorize or categorize it, since there are as yet no names or conceptions for all the intersecting strands of this pain. Each is radically unique, yet, I propose, the utopic imagination as “holding open” can, by accepting this aporia of suffering, reach through the incommensurability to recognize and care about this individual. After seeking marginalized perspectives and acknowledging the other as outside myself, the second step is to examine and loosen the borders of my conceptual horizon—if a utopic imagination is to hold open unknown possibilities, then I must make my own border temporarily permeable by suspending my knowledge, thereby making myself vulnerable to change by way of the Other. Kirby frames Levinas’s move toward sociality as a bracketing of the self in the second step in an ethical method: “Thus, in order to have a genuine encounter with the Other, I must suspend these activities of categorization, adequation, and assimilation. It is true that I cannot stop thinking and forming ideas, but I must bracket these, in a sense.”74 I believe that the concept of the temporary suspension of the self is structurally related to the figure of utopic “holding open,” so long as we add a consideration of (radically) individual suffering and vulnerability to this figure. In this sense, the holding open of a border is like holding open a wound—through this process we become vulnerable, exposed, and place our ego as well as our ideology at considerable risk. But whenever we open ourselves to expansion, we act with faith in the method, in that the ultimate benefit of the encounter with other will be to enlarge our own horizon of understanding—to help us grasp what we currently believe to be ungraspable. The third step is to listen to what the other says and to respond—to heed the face of the other, which issues a moral command. For Levinas, of course, the face commands us, “Thou shalt not kill.” He writes, “To kill is not to dominate but to annihilate; it is to renounce comprehension absolutely.”75 As Kirby notes, “When Levinas says that the Other commands me to refrain from killing her, this includes the murderous endeavor to snuff out that which is unknown—to rationally assimilate the Other into the Same. . . . At the same time that she commands me, she reveals her vulnerability”76 Just as the inescapable solitude of my own suffering already and paradoxically aims toward the other by seeking to eliminate the horizon of the world in Ricoeur’s sense, so too does the face of another’s suffering reach from the other direction into my own moral solitude. Tronto notes that being responsive to the other carries with it a risk of perpetuating unequal power relations, for caring for

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another, from one perspective, assumes the other is in need of care.77 But if we understand vulnerability and moral agency as interdependent (if we are not vulnerable now, then we certainly are at many other times in our lives), then, while we must remain alert to the potential for abuse, we can understand a separation between self and other and therefore open the possibility for true sharing of knowledge. The ethical call to responsibility is not the same as contractual obligation, as Tronto roots responsibility in terms of sociological or anthropological, rather than legal, obligation. Our symbolic system begins operating the moment we begin listening—as a wound naturally begins to attempt to close over and heal itself, snuffing out the Other by assimilating her into the Same. But without the vulnerability and exposure of the holding open of possibilities, utopic expansion seems nearly impossible. Finally, as our horizon of ideology, language, and culture is shared, by holding open our current ideology we can direct its transform it in both conscious and unconscious ways: there will be, therefore, at least some degree of individual choice and individual responsibility, as well as social responsibility, that we must accept regarding what to do about the moral claim of the Other, and, as Levinas points out, the multiple Others that make a claim on us. Part of the responsibility that we must take is deciding on the rules of evaluation. While some critics of Ricoeur have suggested a Rawlsian method or the social theory of Michael Walzer or Axel Honneth as a normative guide,78 I think that Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach79 provides a more promising alternative, for its basis is in the standard of the flourishing human life, a capability for wholeness that need not be fully understood or articulated, even by those who suffer from its absence the most. Simply put, she argues that humans have ten basic capabilities for functioning that a social structure should guarantee at least to a minimal degree: life; bodily health; bodily integrity; senses; imagination and thought; emotions; practical reason; affiliation; relationship with other species and with the world of nature; play; and material and political affiliation. This theory is compatible with both Ricoeur’s hermeneutic and Jameson’s reversed genealogical methods for utopic thinking, despite her argument for universal human capabilities—for the emphasis on capability, rather than functioning, captures the utopic conception of Aristotelian potential in a practical but not traditionally teleological way. Her notion of flourishing is structural, embodied, and material, without (necessarily) being ahistorical; measurable yet forgiving of some degree of revision. Returning to my example, I am arguing that (1) my students suffer as individuals because they are not permitted one or more of human capabilities they need to flourish, and I/we can never experience their individual suffering; (2) since I/we not only cannot experience but may also have an inability to recognize and/or conceive of this suffering in the first place, I/we must seek out marginalized voices and temporarily suspend

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my/our own conceptual systems or ideologies; (3) recognizing the existence of this unbridgeable gap paradoxically opens the possibility for transversing the (incommensurable) gap insofar as we listen to the narratives of others and the moral claims their suffering makes on us; (4) my own and our social obligation is to respond by ensuring the individual’s capability to flourish. In this sketched analysis, the utopic imagination is indeed at once a gap and a process, but it operates through the unique and individual aporia of suffering, which maintains a productive tension between the self and other while at the same time moving to fulfill the individual’s capacity to flourish. NOTES 1. Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). Hereafter referred to as Ricoeur, IU. 2. Fredric Jameson, Valences of the Dialectic (New York: Verso, 2009), 485. Hereafter referred to as Valences. 3. Ibid., 484. 4. Ibid., 487. 5. Note that Valences examines only Ricoeur’s Time and Narrative, Memory, History and Forgetting, and The Rule of Metaphor, and not Ideology and Utopia. 6. Ricoeur IU., 1, 3. 7. Ibid., 3. 8. Ibid., 68–70. 9. Ibid., 103–42. 10. Ibid., 160. 11. Ibid., 167. 12. Ibid., 170. 13. Ibid., 171. 14. Ricoeur IU., 183. 15. See Ricoeur IU, 216–53. 16. See Ricoeur IU, 258–66. 17. Ibid., 15. 18. Ibid., 309. 19. Ricoeur IU, 16. 20. Ibid., 301. 21. Ibid., 302. 22. Ibid., 172–73. 23. Jameson, Valences, 4. 24. Ibid., 3. 25. Ibid., 3–4. 26. Ibid., 408. 27. Ibid., 5. 28. Ibid., 9.

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29. Ibid., 15. 30. Ibid., 16–17. 31. Ibid., 19. 32. Ibid., 23. 33. Ibid., 35 34. Ibid., 5. 35. Ibid., 415. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid., 12, my emphasis. 38. Ibid., 49. 39. Ricoeur IU, 15. 40. Jameson, Valences, 413. 41. Ibid., 420–21. 42. Ibid., 421. 43. William E. Leuchtenburg, The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–1932, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 228–29. 44. Jameson, Valences, 424. 45. Ibid., 434. 46. Ibid., 433–33. 47. Ibid. 48. Ibid., 434. 49. Ibid., 54 50. Ibid., 48. 51. Ricoeur, IU, 180. 52. Ricoeur, IU, 180. 53. Jameson, Valences, 60. 54. Ibid., 61. 55. Ibid., 487. 56. Ibid., 497. 57. Ibid. 58. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, trans. David Pellauer and Kathleen McLaughlin, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 85, 52. 59. Gonçalo Marcelo, “Making Sense of the Social: Hermeneutics and Social Philosophy,” Études Riceourienne/Ricoeur Studies 3, no. 1 (2012): 68. 60. Ibid., 70. 61. Paul Ricoeur, “La Souffrance n’est pas la douleur,” Souffrance et douleur: autour de Paul Ricoeur, ed. Claire Marin and Nathalie Zaccai-Reyner (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), 4. Hereafter referred to as “La Souffrance.” 62. Marcelo, 71. 63. See Ricoeur, “La Souffrance,” 17: “Restant au plan phénoménologique, on peut dire ceci : ce qui est atteint dans le souffrir, c'est l'intentionnalité visant quelque chose, autre chose que soi; de là l'effacement du monde comme horizon de representation.” 64. Ibid., 19. There is also a parallel with Ricoeur’s notion, in the Fifth Study of Oneself as Another of the “double gaze” of narrative backwards toward broadening the

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descriptive and forwards anticipating the ethical. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 65. Ibid., 22. 66. Ibid., 3. 67. The genealogy of feminism has, of course, revealed its own set of distortions and congruences. For example, “second-wave” feminists were often sensitive to gender-based distortions in Marxist and humanist social structures and encouraged political organization on the basis of gender, but women of color pointed out that this was only possible if racial oppression was ignored or downplayed, revealing a deep racial bias in second-wave feminism itself. Conversations in contemporary feminism at once actively seek to unmask these and other distortions and at the same time revise the social imagination in utopic ways. 68. Plato, Meno, 80d–81a. 69. For example, see Sandra Harding, “Rethinking Standpoint Epistemology: What is Strong Objectivity?” in L. Alcoff and E. Potter, eds., Feminist Epistemologies (New York and London: Routledge, 1993); Bell Hooks, From Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1984); and Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and the Politics of Empowerment (New York and London: Routledge, 1990). 70. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), 197. 71. Ibid., 200–1. 72. My framework for Levinas’s ethics is indebted to Katherine Kirby’s “Encountering and Understanding Suffering: The Need for Service Learning in Ethical Education,” Teaching Philosophy 32, no. 2 (June 2009): 153–76. 73. Joan Tronto, “An Ethic of Care,” orig. published in Moral Boundaries. New York: Routledge, 1993), 255. Also printed in Feminist Theory: A Philosophical Anthology, ed. Ann E. Cudd and Robin O. Andreasen (Blackwell 2005). Tronto is, of course, well aware that theories of care raise epistemological problems with the status of “otherness” and the interrelationship of self and other. In a practice of care, the first step of attentiveness requires that we isolate an “other” as distinct from the “self,” but she points out that such recognition already depends upon the self’s own (potentially privileged) epistemological vantage point. She writes, “In order to recognize that others have needs that are not being met, one needs to be in a position to recognize others; or in the spirit of Marx’s argument in The German Ideology, it would mean that one’s own needs have been sufficiently met so that one is able to glance around and notice others at all” (Ibid. 253). Her point, however, is that these and other epistemological questions should not sidetrack the urgent substantive need to bring the practice of care into a more prominent position in moral decision-making. 74. Kirby, 160. 75. Ibid., 198. 76. Ibid. 77. Tronto, 255. 78. See Marcelo and Lymen Tower Sargent, “Ideology and Utopia: Karl Mannheim and Paul Ricoeur,” Journal of Political Ideologies 13, no. 3 (October 2008): 263–73.

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79. See Martha Nussbaum, Sex and Social Justice (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999), 29–54.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Kirby, Katherine. “Encountering and Understanding Suffering: The Need for Service Learning in Ethical Education.” Teaching Philosophy 32, no. 2 (June 2009): 153–76. Jameson, Fredric. Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions. New York: Verso, 2005. ———. Valences of the Dialectic. New York: Verso, 2009. Leuchtenburg, William E. The Perils of Prosperity, 1914–1932. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1961. Marcelo, Gonçalo. “Making Sense of the Social: Hermeneutics and Social Philosophy.” Etudes Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies 3, no. 1 (2012): 68–85. Nussbaum, Martha. Sex and Social Justice. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999. Plato. Meno. Trans. Benjamin Jowett. New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1949. Ricoeur, Paul. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. New York: Columbia, 1986. ———. Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ———. “La Souffrance n’est pas la douleur.” Souffrance et douleur: autour de Paul Ricoeur, Edited by Claire Marin and Nathalie Zaccai-Reyner. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992. ———. Time and Narrative. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Sargent, Lymen Tower. “Ideology and utopia: Karl Mannheim and Paul Ricoeur.” Journal of Political Ideologies 13, no. 3 (October 2008): 263–73. Tronto, Joan. “An Ethic of Care.” Orig. published in Moral Boundaries. New York: Routledge, 1993. Also printed in Feminist Theory: A Philosophical Anthology. Edited by Ann E. Cudd and Robin O. Andreasen. Blackwell 2005.

Part III

RICOEUR AND EMBODIED SOCIAL CRITIQUE

Chapter 6

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How does imagination in Ricoeur's work contribute to political philosophy? Concerning this question we do not find easy answers in Ricoeur, but we discover a sequence of implicit or explicit steps that uncover a connection between imagination and political philosophy or its possibility. In Ricoeur, the operations of imagination and of social imagination are narrowly connected to the operation of the metaphor. Ricoeur’s theory of metaphor (metaphor in discourse) has been more precisely elaborated than his theory of imagination. By connecting both of them, the theory of imagination can be elaborated further and deepened as social imagination. Further, such an elaboration can be mobilized to advance reflection on the relationship between utopia and politics. In his work on metaphor and on social imagination, ideology and utopia, La métaphore vive and Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Ricoeur focuses on a positive appreciation of metaphorical thinking and imagination by (language) philosophy and political philosophy. For this positive appreciation, he has to go a long way through philosophies that he wants to counter, to pass, and to leave behind. During this process, he indicates the necessity and reality of the symbolic order. However, just at the end of Lectures of Ideology and Utopia, he encounters approaches to utopias that he politically philosophically values but with which he still does not fully agree. He himself also indicates that a concept of politics must be broadened and changed although on this point he continues to be ambivalent as well. However, it is remarkable that Ricoeur emphasizes the necessity to connect utopias to practice and to materiality; on this point the link to his earlier work can be made. Attention to motivation is important to politics. In Ricoeur’s early work Le volontaire et l'involontaire, he connects body, motivation, and 113

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imagination. In corporeally fed motivation the imagination plays an important role. Opposed to body-hostile philosophy Ricoeur pleads for attention to bodily materiality that is also social. For Ricoeur, the imagination guarantees that corporeality is not approached as mechanical. However, the connection between motivation and politics needs still to be made concrete. I will elaborate that such utopias are already rising in groups focused on political gender questions. However, they are not uniting; that is often the aim of political ideologies. On the contrary, they are experiencing intense conflict. In this conflict, a dialectic of ideology and utopia emerges. Ricoeur’s reserve with regard to utopia’s function to unite often concerns the absence of questions of power and struggle. He himself has indicated that maybe we should not strive for unity but for a mosaic. Usually we see that the more concrete and material utopias are the more conflicts they deliver. SOCIAL IMAGINATION, IDEOLOGY, UTOPIA Each society is part of social-political imagination, that is, an ensemble of symbolic discourses. Ricoeur writes on social and cultural imagination. He agrees with Clifford Geertz that the symbolic has not been determined by social factors.1 Geertz emphasizes the autonomic process of symbolic formulation and symbolic action. Ricoeur also connects to Lévi-Straus: symbolism is not an effect of society; rather society is an effect of symbolism.2 Ricoeur connects to Karl Mannheim’s work Ideology and Utopia (1929) as well. Mannheim emphasizes the noncongruence between the historical and social reality. From this Ricoeur derives that individuals and collective unities are always already connected to social reality in other ways than by direct participation, “following figures of non-coincidence, which are, precisely, those of social imaginary.”3 Also in his later work on justice, Ricoeur probes the existence and the importance of the symbolic order. Social imagination takes several, practical forms. Ricoeur especially mentions ideology and utopia. Usually, both are separately treated. However, Ricoeur puts them in one conceptual frame. And he starts from the dialectic of both. By combining these complementary functions, the social and cultural imagination are precisely characterized. Ricoeur clarifies the concepts of ideology and utopia in view of Mannheim. At first, Mannheim approaches ideology and utopia as deviant attitudes with regard to reality, and he shows that they differ in their deviancy. Ricoeur argues for the deviant function of ideology in view of Marxist approaches to ideology, where ideology is conceived as a deviation of science and where the notion of distortion is central. Marxism also conceives utopias as ideologies—as preceding or as opposed to science. Ricoeur cannot ignore this

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criticism of ideology or, more broadly, on imagination. In fact, he does not ignore it. He sees this as one of the classic difficulties of the philosophy of imagination. SYMBOLIC DISCOURSE, METAPHOR, IMAGINATION, ONTOLOGY, AND TRUTH The question of the philosophical value of the symbolic discourse, the symbolic order, and the social imagination is important here. I will explore this question in view of Ricoeur’s approach to metaphorical discourse. Following Ricoeur’s placement of metaphor and ideology and utopia in the same vein, I will show a movement from epistemology to ontology. Would it not be good for politics if it is possible to return to truth? The symbolic order—the place of religious, mythological and traditional authority— is not a fixed order but more a metaphorical struggle of myth and truth, of tradition and rationality. I surely am aware of the differences between metaphor on the one hand and ideology and utopia on the other hand. All of them are characterized as imagination but metaphor also as linguistic. However, I think that emphasizing the resemblance between ideology, utopia, and metaphor is important. Metaphorical Reference and Truth In his theory of metaphor Ricoeur approaches the phenomenon of imagination in a manner different than what occurs in Marx’s theory of ideology. The central point in the metaphor is the semantic innovation.4 Ricoeur emphasizes the predicative impertinence of metaphor or metaphorical discourse that brings about a shock in semantic fields, followed by a new predicative pertinence. Precisely at the origin of this new predicative pertinence the imagination operates. Imagination is the sudden glimpse caught by a new pertinence. Ricoeur also calls this predicative assimilation. Imagination is thus the restructuring of semantic fields. This sudden glimpse of something new is similar to the role of imagination in utopia, which also involves the preceding suspension of the present image. Characteristic to the metaphor is the double operation—destructive and constructive, which we also find in ideology and utopia, although we may better speak about suspension than of destruction. This suspension happens by distanciation. Important to social imagination is Ricoeur’s elaboration of distanciation as distanciation with regard to the world: the world of the text distances itself from the daily world, suspends it, and offers the possibility to imagine the world anew. This suspension corresponds to the semantic

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impertinence of the literal reading of a metaphorical expression. A normal predication gives a description of reality. A metaphorical predication cannot be understood as a description of reality, but this suspension does not completely reject the reference function of language. This new, creative dimension of metaphor is based on or arises from the creative function of language. The world of fiction collects the world we live in and proposes new dimensions. The opening up of the world of fiction is the inventive dimension of distanciation in politics. Being inventive means both creation of the imaginative world and recovery of the world we live in as well. For this suspension is necessary indeed. Without suspension of our daily world the imagination would neither have a margin nor a playing place. Radicalizing this idea implies that to distance also means to open. A work of fiction opens up an imagining world, but distanciation preserves the playing space for imagination. By withdrawal of the immediate presence of the daily world distanciation inaugurates the space for imagination. Thus, besides distanciation or suspension, reappropriation of the new image is necessary. However, questions of “pureness” or “being proper” related to images or metaphors are not useful. Otherwise, in metaphorical reference and also in narrative refiguration, we find reference to reality but also a reference beyond that reality. Ricoeur identifies this reference to reality with Husserl’s notion of “Lebenswelt” and with Heidegger’s being-in-the-world. Ricoeur calls the fact that poetics have a reference the ontological postulate of poetics. This postulate means that poetical language is not closed in on itself but has a special form of reference. Ricoeur’s poetics and his metaphorical speaking form the privileged entrance to this domain of being. The lifeworld and being-in-the-world are a poetical reality. However, a new narrative or a fictive image of the world may not simply be false, conforming to Ricoeur’s attempt to not see utopia as a flight from reality. However, metaphorization of the image of the world, referring to the present world, does not imply that only one alternative image may exist that may be true or good. I prefer to start from a multitude, which is connected through metaphorical resemblance, a metaphorical network of alternative images of and for the world. A network is not a unity; between the alternative images tensions may exist. And sometimes the resemblance is not immediately clear or does not become clear at all. Utopia and Possibility of Being Metaphor and imagination suggest something strange, a difference. That is an important function of metaphor and imagination; they give birth to other than usual ways to handle reality. Metaphors recreate expressions for

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deeply sunken human experiences such as life and death, guilt and love, or, as Ricoeur writes, for the ontological depths of our existence.5 According to him, this is possible because on an ontological level, a “surplus of being” or “possibility of being” is the matter which is imagined by metaphor. In this metaphorical imagination a “surplus of meaning” arises. The philosophical indication for this seeing and being in another than usual way, evoked in metaphor and in utopia, is the relationship of identity and difference. In metaphor, identity and difference go together and are of same origin. In my view, we can see a parallel with ideology and utopia going together in social imagination. Ricoeur places this dynamic tension of identity and difference going together in the metaphor in his notion of “similarity.” Seeing similarity is seeing the same in spite of and through the difference. From this it appears that his point is not only sameness or identity6 but difference as well.7 In order to assert that identity and difference have the same origin, the interpretation of both these concepts has to comply with certain conditions. Identity may not be conceived as absolute identity. Ricoeur has developed a concept of dynamic identity that he also calls narrative identity.8 However, difference also may not be absolute or may not be unrelated to the existing identity. Otherwise nothing could be related to something other; that would end in indifference. In this vein we may state that utopia may not be unrelated to the existing ideology, preventing utopia from declining to a daydream or illusion. What does Ricoeur mean by the tension between identity and difference? The tension of identity and difference springs from the fact that identity is not more original than difference or the other way around. Difference is present in identity, and identity is not placed above difference. Identity could not arise without difference. Ricoeur says, “Metaphor, a figure of speech, presents in an open fashion, by means of a conflict between identity and difference, the process that, in a covert manner, generates semantics grids by fusion of differences into identity.”9 The metaphor puts into perspective the opposed character of both the poles of identity and difference. At an absolute opposition the tension would be negated. However, since the poles are not absolute—neither absolute identity nor absolute difference—the opposition itself is not privative, antagonistic, or absolute. The tension in the relationship of identity and difference is narrowly connected to the characterization of the metaphor as a process. The metaphor is a process of signification and development. The end of the process is never the same as the beginning. In this vein, social imagination is also a process in which meanings and symbols are formed by interaction of identity and difference, and by implication of ideology and utopia.

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Ricoeur still goes further. According to him, the tension between difference and identity is a dialectic. In La métaphore vive in his discussion of Aristotle,10 we find an initiative to argue for such a dialectic. Aristotle’s analogy of being is a non-poetic model of ambiguity in which one recognizes that being is expressed in different ways. Being as, Being as Possibility The dialectic of identity and difference is explicitly raised in Ricoeur’s discussion of “being as” and in his metaphorical discourse. In Ricoeur, metaphorical “seeing as” is connected to “being as.” That means that the metaphor is existential; it says something about being and expresses being. From this point, the philosophical value of the metaphor appears and, in my view, can be extended to social imagination or the symbolic order. Metaphors refer to the dynamic being-in-process of the world, which means that they correspond to the way in which the world is “actual” and also to “being as possibility.” Metaphors thus correspond to actuality and to the possibility to become other or something other; the latter renders actuality something quite dynamic. Similarly, in his later work, Ricoeur confirms that both metaphorical sense and reference are important for this same dynamism. The metaphorical “this is that” or “this is like that” can be interpreted as “being as” on ontological level. Because of the fact that the metaphor refers to possibilities in the world not seen until now and to a world in process the metaphorical operation is inexhaustible with regard to philosophical explanation. Metaphor and creative language in general correspond on the semantic level—as surplus of meaning—to the possibility of human beings on the existential level—as surplus of being. The surplus of being in human existence or passivity can only be expressed in a metaphorical discourse. The metaphor has an ontological function as well.11 The poetical metaphorical tension is an existential tension. “Being” is not only a copula but has an existential meaning as well. In this vein, the poetical is added to ontology. Poetry and ontology are connected. Metaphorical Discourse as SpeculativePhilosophical Discourse The interaction between several discourses (poetical, scientific, religious, speculative discourse etc.)12 is important especially. Are the several discourses mutually related and do they form a unity, or not? In spite of discursiveness as their common quality, Ricoeur emphasizes the discontinuity of the discourses with regard to each other. This offers him the possibility

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to maintain the autonomy of the philosophical or speculative discourse. He distinguishes between the philosophical discourse on the one hand and the poetic discourse on the other hand, arguing that the metaphorical discourse can be both philosophical and poetic. The core of this distinction of philosophical/speculative and poetic is his point of departure that something must be as a condition to be said, to be said metaphorically as well.13 Here Ricoeur follows Kant’s thesis, “Something must be as a condition to appear,”14 and John Searle’s expression, “Something must be as a condition to be identified.”15 However, this notion—something must be as a condition to be said—does not imply that reality exclusively founds language or that there would be one-way-street from reality to language. We also see a converse direction of discovery. It appears that something must also be said as a condition to being. The metaphor is directive for a possible new articulation of reality. Both foundation and discovery have the right to speak. Metaphor, Imagination, Ontology, and Reference I have indicated the interdependence in Ricoeur of imagination and “possibility.” Imagination imagines possibility; possibility—as an ontological category—is narrowly connected to the imagination that projects it. Metaphors refer to possibility beyond actuality. Also, human existence is not limited to what is here and now; it is both actuality and potentiality. By going beyond the facts, the metaphor inspires us to look to the world and to ourselves in terms of what could be. In the same vein, we could argue that the social imaginary, especially conceived as utopia, refers to social possibility as a social-ontological category. Ricoeur indicates potentiality as a “surplus of being” to human existence. We human beings are not who we could be. Thanks to this “surplus of being” or possibility, humankind may hope. That is Ricoeur’s founding idea. The metaphor is the irreplaceable expression of the passion of this possibility. And utopia can be conceived as the irreplaceable expression of the passion of the social possibility. In spite of his emphasis on the possibility of being, Ricoeur’s vocabulary shows an epistemological inspiration. Here the focus is on the term “reference.” What does Ricoeur mean when he uses “reference?” It appears that this rather epistemically colored notion of reference moves in an ontological or social-ontological direction. At the end, Ricoeur asserts that the usual epistemological frame is too narrow. His point is not the epistemological reference but the depth semantics of the text. “The text speaks of a possible world and of a possible way of orientating oneself within it. The dimensions of this world are properly opened up by and disclosed by

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the text.”16 Here “referring” coincides with linguistically creating a new way of being. Also, in view of Temps et Récit, we would be able to see the displacement step by step from reference to his threefold mimesis: prefiguration, configuration, refiguration. However, to elaborate further here would take us off course. IDEOLOGY, UTOPIA, AUTHORITY, AUTHORITY OF THE SYMBOLIC ORDER Completely in vein with what has been stated above, Ricoeur criticizes the Marxist approach to ideology as distortion. Ideology is surely not the opposite of rational science. Opposed to the Marxist concept of ideology, Ricoeur argues that ideology cannot be reduced to the function of distortion and dissimulation. Instead, he focuses on lesser negative functions of ideology. He indicates the legitimization-function and the identification-function of ideology. For any social group, a need exists to generate an image of itself. He also emphasizes the need to recognize the symbolic structure of social life. Without social life with a symbolic structure we cannot understand the way we live, we do things, how to project these activities in ideas, how reality can become an idea, and how real life can produce illusions. For this other concept of ideology, thus other than the Marxist approach, Ricoeur turns to Max Weber, who conceives ideology as meaningful behavior, plurally oriented and socially integrated.17 He connects to Weber’s special concept of “Herrschaft,” in which the legitimization-function of ideology is important. He also draws upon Clifford Geertz, who points out the integrationfunction of ideology. The legitimization-function and integration-function are more important than the distortion because each authority searches for legitimization. Each claim of legitimization correlates with an individual’s belief in this legitimization.18 Precisely on behalf of the legitimization-function and the integration-function, it is necessary to conceive ideology in the broader frame of social imagination. If people do not trust in legitimization anymore, they cannot overcome this with rational arguments only. The different individual perspectives in a collective identity are gathered in a narrating ideology; that is the integration-function of ideology, which is focused on practice. Ideology wants to conserve what is and especially has an integration-function. Social imagination works in two manners: on the one hand as identification and integration and on the other hand as interruption and suspension. This latter one occurs especially through utopia. Utopia is productive and imagines something new, something other, the otherness.19 According to Ricoeur, the integration process of ideology and the process of interruption and suspension of utopia are inseparable. He sees this

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confirmed in the fact that at the core of both is the problem of authority. While at the end each ideology aspires to legitimate a system of authority and each utopia the moment of otherness, they both seek to catch the problem of power itself. Because a gap of credibility exists in all legitimization systems, all authority, there is also space for utopias. It is the function of utopia to point out the gap of credibility. A utopia shows where the legitimization of ideology fails.20 In our century, the development of the modern world has been accompanied by a constant, broadening, and deepening crisis of authority. For many people authority of both persons and institutions are not trustworthy anymore. The crisis of authority is a crisis of legitimization and a crisis of trust as well. We see a decline of belief, of recognition, and of acknowledgment of superiority, whether it concerns the authority of individuals or of institutions. It is improbable that this crisis of authority can easily be overcome, even through the symbolic order. How is politics possible? In which way can people be involved in politics? What role do social imagination and the symbolic order have here? IMAGINATION, UTOPIA, MOTIVATION Ricoeur emphasizes that the—ideological—legitimization must be connected to a motivational model. For this reason, among others in Lectures of Ideology and Utopia, he devotes a lecture to the utopian Fourier. Fourier is important because his concept of imagination and utopia plays on the level of the system of the passions that control each kind of social system, the economic system and the political system as well. This is the utopia that must be connected to Hobbes “since Hobbes is the first to elaborate what he called a mechanics of passions and derived his political system from this insight.”21 Fourier shares with Rousseau the presupposition that passions are virtues and that civilization has transformed passions to vices. The problem is to liberate passions from vices, to extract vices from moral rejection and moral investigation, in order to recover the underlying passions. Ricoeur indicates his interest in Fourier’s notion of passion because Fourier in his attention to passions seems to ignore or to underestimate the power structure. For this reason, Fourier cannot be a model at the end. Utopia and imagination are involved in the process of motivation. It is imagination that preserves space in which we may compare and evaluate motives, as diverse as they are as desires and ethical obligations, themselves as disparate as professional rules, social habits, or intense personal values. It is in a form of imagination that the common “dispositional” element can be represented in practical terms, through which a distinction between a

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physical cause and a motive becomes possible on the one hand and a distinction between a motive and a logical reason on the other hand. Ricoeur writes, utopias “are for the most part micro societies, whether provisional or permanent, stretching from monastery to the kibbutz or the hippie commune. These efforts attest not only to the seriousness of the utopian spirit, its capacity to establish new modes of life, but also to its fundamental capacity to deal directly with the paradoxes of power.”22 Utopia is the mode in which we radically rethink the nature of family, consumption, government, religion, and so on. So emerges the most formidable challenge to what-is. This form of practical imagination meets its linguistic equivalent in expressions such as “I would do this or that if I would like that.” Here language is important in relation to imagining development of motives in what is metaphorically designed. The process runs from a simple schematizing of my projects, via the figurability of my desires, and ending in the imaginative variations of “I can.” This process refers to the idea of imagination as the general function of the development of practical possibilities. This function contrast with a grounding ideology. The utopia as part of the symbolic order is not in the first place grounding but regulating. Thoughts, ideas are ordered. In the symbolic order, values and norms are recognized, shared, and exchanged. It is this general function of development of practical possibilities Kant anticipated in Kritik der Urteilskraft under the heading of the “free play” of imagination. Such an approach is often thought to be too individualistic, and a theory of imagination has to go beyond the phenomenology of will that is about individual action. It must be possible to make the transference to another level. Via Husserl’s concept of imagination and of empathy (Einfühlung), we arrive at the intersubjective level.23 Ricoeur already pointed out the link between imagination and—corporeally fed—motivation in his early work Philosophie de la volonté I: Le volontaire et l'involontaire (1949). This work is aligned with the then usual traditional philosophy, exploring the topic of free will and determinism, mind and body, freedom and belief. However, Ricoeur takes a different approach than traditional philosophers. While traditional philosophy was inclined to accept a dualism of the voluntary and the involuntary, Ricoeur’s leading principle was reciprocity. He indicates the reciprocity of on the one hand the raw material of motivation such as desires, pleasure, pain, and challenge, often confused and contradictory, and on the other hand the definitive motives after being conceived by the voluntary. Ricoeur distinguishes reflexes and preformed skills. Reflexes are mechanical. But different than often thought, reflexes are not the most elementary components of human conduct. Ricoeur emphasizes the non-reflexive type of preformed skills and not instinctive skills. The study of reflexes must

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not be physiological or mechanical but psychological, focused on functions and more precisely the involuntary character of these functions. Hence, the preformed skills play the ultimate role in human action. It is the schemata of action in agreement with the presence of the world that will serve as the melodic cells of all the body’s habits. It revolves around the mental and physical Cogito, thought and movement, an undecipherable unity, beyond effort. This unity presents itself as the matter of possible effort. This is what distinguishes it radically from reflex. (Preformed) Skill differs from reflex by its greater integration in the actions of the total field. In Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Ricoeur emphasizes, along the same line, that the symbolic system is not determined from the biological or the organic. The biological plasticity or flexibility of human life offers us a guideline to meet different cultural models. For this we need a secondary system of symbols, cultural symbols.24 Ricoeur’s point is the interface or intersection of our will and our needs. Need indicates a lack. A lack demands its dissolution. However, a need is no automatism or reflex. Just for this reason it can become a motive. A need can only become a motive if the conduct, which assures the satisfaction of this need, is not an irresistible reflex. Ricoeur searches the intersections of need and will in the imagination—the imagination of the lacking thing and of the conduct focused on the absence thing. For this we have to understand that perception is not a blind mechanism, but imagination plays a role in the interpretation of what is perceived. Imagination forms need to a need of something, for example, of bread. But imagination is not only absence (absent bread); it activates action, is an anticipation to the future, to what can be actual, the absent actual as basis of the world. Through imagination pleasure also enters into motivation. Imagination of pleasure gives need the form of a value. Anticipating pleasure means the willingness to say, “This is good.” The anticipating imagination transforms the many sources of motives, from the body to value judgments. In this frame, Ricoeur also goes into emotion. Emotion supposes a more or less explicit motivation that precedes and sustains it. How does emotional anticipation affect voluntary and involuntary action? To explore this, we have to return to the dialectic of need and image; image heightens the tension of need. Emotion adds to the image a specific bodily element that specially concerns the voluntary movement. Reciprocity between the involuntary aspect of desire and the voluntary will appears. Desire refers to a willing that it inclines to act; this reference belongs to its essence and gives it its intelligibility. Emotion does not refer to the reflex-mechanism which functions between body and body, but to the mystery of the unity of body and soul.

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The majority of emotions as joy, sadness, fear, or anger arise from the ground in passion that introduces an involuntary factor other than wonder or shock. Here emotion appears as an ardent moment of passion. While emotion and passion are closely related, emotion remains a corporeal form of the involuntary. We are continually abstracting from the ferment of passions. According to Ricoeur, we need to learn about the world of passions by a method other than existential deepening of eidetic description: by daily life, novel, theatre, epic. This is because the world constitutes an obscuring of consciousness, which does not lend itself to being understood as an intelligible dialogue of the voluntary and involuntary. In Le volontaire et l'involontaire, the unconscious is very important, stressing unconscious desires of the body, which transfer to motives, motives that can be balanced and displaced, as human possibility. Here Ricoeur’s approach to the unconscious was strongly affected by Karl Jaspers’s and Roland Dalbiez’ interpretation of Freud. Eighteen years later, in De l’interprétation, Ricoeur himself examined Freud. Then his interpretation of Freud is much more profound and systematic than his earlier interpretation. He goes into Freud’s theory, which concretely criticizes the Cogito. That is the case in De l’interprétation and in Le conflit des interprétatons. In these works he expands Freud’s theory into his hermeneutics. In De l’interprétation and Le conflit des interprétations, Ricoeur is more hermeneutical too. For the hermeneutical, reflexive interpretation that he prefers here the unconscious—or its representations—provides the material. Hermeneutics refers to the discovery of latent meanings of symbolic and mythic expressions of experience. At the same time, Ricoeur has clearly landed in another discourse. Traditional philosophy was still rather body-hostile, and even though Ricoeur argued for bodily attention, concerning this attention, psychoanalysis surpassed him as it focused much more on the body than Ricoeur. In his hermeneutical discourse, his emphasis is nearly the converse; it is a counterbalance against too much emphasis on bodily urges. Freud conceived the mind energetically, which means subjected to several psychic streams of energy. He called these streams of energy “urges.” Ricoeur misses interpretation in Freud. He argues that he starts from the realism of the urges and the imaginary character of the representation of the urges. Here the hermeneutic interpretation is important. In Le conflit des interprétations, Ricoeur’s central thought is that the unconsciousness is something that must be deciphered by hermeneutical steps. Because of the fact that for the individual unconsciousness is a text that must be deciphered, the process of becoming a subject takes place in the dialectic of the archaeological urges and the teleological cultural values.25 In Freud, an energetic archaeology especially comes to the fore; Ricoeur places a hermeneutical teleology beside it, which is only implicit in Freud.26 Psychoanalysis in general is neither energetic nor

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hermeneutical. Here the ambivalence is characteristic of psychoanalysis.27 Sometimes Ricoeur calls this ambivalence in psychoanalysis a “semantic of desire”; we may also speak of a “hermeneutics of desire.” The language of speaking subjects shows this ambiguity—of working urges or powers and meanings. UTOPIA AND THE NECESSARY BROADENING OF POLITICS In which way can and must politics connect to these bodily motives, this hermeneutics of desire? How do we find an effect or influence of that semantic innovation by metaphor and/or the utopian imagination on the political level? In an interview in 1984, Ricoeur comments on the relationship of utopia and politics: The problem today is the apparent impossibility of unifying world politics, of mediating between the polycentricity of our everyday political practice and the utopian horizon of a universally liberated humanity. It is not that we are without utopia, but that we are without paths to utopia. And without a path toward it, without concrete and practical mediation on our field of experience, utopia becomes a sickness. Perhaps the deflation of utopian expectancies is not entirely a bad thing. Politics can so easily be injected with too much utopia; perhaps it should become more modest and realistic in its claims, more committed to our practical and immediate needs.28

On the question whether there would be a place for a genuine utopian discourse in contemporary politics, Ricoeur answers: Maybe not in politics itself but rather at the junction between politics and other cultural discourses. . . . We have tended to forget that beside the public realm of politics, there also exists a more private cultural realm (which includes literature, philosophy and religion, etc.) where the utopian horizon can express itself. Modern society seems hostile to this domain of private experience, but the suppression of the private entails the destruction of the public. The vanquishing of the private by the public is a Pyrrhic victory.29

In my view, Ricoeur already indicates the right direction for politics to give space for innovation. Politics has to keep in touch with what lives in cultural discourses. And in the last thirty years, something has indeed changed concerning the willingness of the society to be involved in what is called private. The question where we have to draw the line between the political and the private will always need to be considered. But the line turns around practical

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motivations to which politics can connect and that preserves the link to the broader public. Think about, for example, a strong need to change gender relations, to change the relationship of paid and unpaid labor, to provide day care centres, and to resist sexual violence within marriage; here we find practical motivations to which politics can connect. Ricoeur makes another distinction that is very relevant here. In the essay “Tâches de l'éducateur politique” (1965, 1991)30 and also, earlier, in the essay “Éthique et politique” (1959, 1991),31 he explicitly distinguishes between ethics and politics. As a working hypothesis, he uses Max Weber’s distinction between an “ethics of conviction” and an “ethics of responsibility.” The right relationship of those two ethics is important. With an “ethics of conviction,” he means the design and preaching of fundamental aims; an “ethics of responsibility” concerns action in the sign of the possible and reasonable using means of power. On the one hand, we have an ethics of conviction, supported by scientific and cultural associations under which we classify churches. On the other hand, we have an ethics of responsibility that is an ethics of regulated violence and also an ethics of misuse of power. If we let an ethics of conviction coincide with an ethics of responsibility, then we lapse into “Realpolitik,” as in Machiavellism, which originates from continuing to confuse means and ends. However, if an ethics of conviction assumes itself the right of immediate interference, then we lapse into the illusions of moralism and clericalism. An ethics of conviction can only indirectly operate by continuously putting pressure on the ethics of responsibility and power. The difference is that an ethics of conviction does not need to keep the rules of reality and reasonableness but may focus on what is desirable for human beings: what is the moral best. Later on, Ricoeur continues to use both these ethics, as in his “Postface au ‘Temps de la responsabilité’” (1991).32 At the end, he connects the ethics of conviction to utopia. “Je donnerai un exemple de cette pression de la morale de conviction sur la morale de responsabilité: celui de l’utopie.”33 In this essay, Ricoeur emphasizes that beside politics there must always be space for ethics because (representative) democracy must always be legitimated again and again. We may say that the tension between both ethics must be endured and held out. Conviction cannot be without responsibility, and responsibility cannot be without conviction. With increasing consciousness of uncertainties and dangers for the future in this technological time, he emphasizes that utopia is not the utopia of expectation so much but the responsibility for the future. Ricoeur often emphasizes that politics is about power. However, he also recognizes that politics is not only a struggle for power, but it is struggle for recognition as well. Struggle for recognition has guided the attention away from “class,” equality, and economy, which are the terrains where the struggle for power is mostly located. Identity and difference, ethnicity, gender, and

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culture come increasingly into view. These newer items also call attention to the exclusion that occurs in discourses, as a kind of symbolic violence. Utopias for recognition realize inclusion instead of exclusion. Utopias against symbolic violence contribute to the transformation of the symbolic order. Charles Taylor has also pointed out the importance of recognition in his book Multiculturalism and the Politics of Recognition (1992). And in The Struggle for Recognition (1996), Axel Honneth also emphasizes the importance of recognition. He emphasizes that recognition resists institutionalization. And he points out the motivation that recognition generates in this way. In several places, Ricoeur has underlined the important of recognition. In Ricoeur’s early work, he connects symbol and recognition; the symbol is a symbol of recognition. We meet recognition in Soi-même comme un autre and in Parcours de la Reconnaissance, especially in the latter along the lines of Taylor and Honneth. However, Ricoeur approaches recognition as a cultural concept and also as a juridical concept; he is ambivalent concerning its value on the political level. In my view, with his distinction between the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility, Ricoeur illuminates the relationship between utopia/ imagination and politics. However, concerning his concept of politics he is ambiguous. Through this ambiguity the relationship of utopia/imagination and politics continues to be obscure. On the one hand, he underlines firmly the paradoxical character of politics. He already did so in his early essay “Le paradox politique” (1955) but also in “Postface au ‘Temps de la responsabilité.’” According to him, the political existence of human generates its own rationality. Politics also develops own forms of evil: “des maux spécifiques, qui sont précisement maux politiques, maux du pouvoir politique. . . . Rationalité spécifique, mal spécifique, telle est la double et paradoxale originalité du politique.”34 He writes much on the evils of political power. Political evil, narrowly connected to the power structure of politics, is often associated with economical relationships—because politics often concerns this. Here, there seems to be no place for utopia/imagination. But on the other hand, he also indicates that politics must be conceived more broadly. This plea for broadening emerges in his concept of utopia much more expressly than in his concept of politics. In my view, Ricoeur rightly indicates that power is everywhere, that it is also in political areas not directly concerned with economics. However, in my view, in these political areas, more possibilities to resist political evil are present, precisely because of the space that can be given to utopian imagination. Through social imagination or utopias concerning broad political-cultural fields, political motivation may originate, which can resist political evil. In political-philosophical approaches from gender perspectives, much attention is given to such a broadening of politics. I will go into this and

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afterward I will return to Ricoeur’s work for points of connection for this broadening of politics through utopia and to points of connection for political motivation. POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY FROM A GENDER PERSPECTIVE In present political philosophy, justice is often at the center; while this seems broad, it is often too narrow. Democracy is often concerned with more than justice as it is usually approached. Democracy revolves around shared responsibility for each other, which includes care for vulnerable people. The usual idea of citizenship ignores the needs for care of citizens, ignores care as a normal part of humans living together. This leads to an incapacity to feel connection to other people. The political sensibilities that turn around this care cannot be converted to the liberal universalistic ethics of justice. Care should be conceived as an important building stone of a just democracy. This leads to new concepts of justice. Also significant in present political philosophy is the autonomy of citizens? So vulnerability and dependence are quickly split off from the “I-ideal” and localized in “needy” persons or projected on them. However, dependence and vulnerability are aspects of not only other people but of ourselves as well. By ascribing them to other people only, we make the acts of care in politics a handicap. Perhaps politics does not revolve around clashing rights or interests but around conflicting responsibilities. Emphasis on vulnerability of others and of ourselves and on responsibility is fully in Ricoeur’s thinking, but in his approach to politics it is not very elaborated. We have to say that crucial moral situations are those situations in which needs are communicated and interpreted. How are needs and human wellbeing handled? Care as a social, cultural, and moral activity requires the handling of emotions of love, empathy, and involvement, but also of emotions of sadness, angst, anger, refusal, shame, and aggression. For this reason, “care”ethical values as being attentive, being responsive, and being responsible must be admitted in concepts of citizenship. This has a doubly transforming effect: citizenship takes a more complete form and has a better capacity to handle diversity and plurality. As a result, a better possibility for more open forms of consideration on the question whether and how one may give shape to responsibilities originates. Politics pre-eminently focuses on the question about where a line must be drawn between personal and collective responsibilities. We need a reconceptualization of duties and responsibilities and a reflection on the question about

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how responsibility and duty can take shape in circumstances of uncertainty and instability. The central moral question should not be: to what, in general, am I obliged, but how do I handle dependence and responsibility? Politically, this leads to government policy creating conditions of thriving more than to enforcement. In gender studies and in the feminist movement, the motto that “the personal is political” has been used creatively to show that all kinds of “women problems” are not individually or psychologically characterized but rather must be conceived as social or political problems. In this sense, it became possible to put all kinds of new problems on the political agenda. The motto was also used as description to indicate that public life has branches in all aspects of intimate life. Furthermore, a broadening of the concept of politics is not particularly a guarantee on consensus or freedom from power. Political utopias are not immediately uniting. The imagination of another society can lead to very discordant designs. Utopias undermine the existing reality but in very different directions. From the beginning, feminist utopias have not been shared ideas but have been sources of conflict. However, during decades many practical proposals have been made, though not without conflicts. And in this way a certain consensus has been originated in the need of changed gender relationships. This is the same in processes from decolonialization to racial equality, in international relations between the north and the south of the world and between west and east. Utopias of equality, peace, and justice must be made politically practical, and this is a process of trying again and again. Governments may have nice ideas of multicultural living together, but in deprived parts of cities, people have to live difficult concrete lives. The broader public sometimes heavily protest against the challenges of such a beautiful utopia until the government understands that such a utopia has practical conditions that must be accommodated. CONCLUSION In closing, I again put forth the question: How does imagination in Ricoeur's work contribute to political philosophy? We have elaborated the operation of personal imagination and social imagination on the basis of Ricoeur’s theory of metaphor. With it we have indicated the displacement in Ricoeur from epistemology to ontology through a reflection on the philosophical value of the symbolic discourse. The symbolic discourse is not a distorting deviation of science but a metaphorical struggle between myth and truth, between tradition and rationality, in which reference moves to the reality and beyond it.

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However, what is beyond the reality is not univocal; rather, it is a metaphorical network of alternative images. The social imagination and utopia show other than usual ways to approach reality. The usual and differing ways of interaction form a tension between identity and difference. We have indicated that to Ricoeur this tension is a dialectic, about which he gives the initial arguments in his elaboration of Aristotle’s analogy of being. In Ricoeur, the metaphorical “seeing as” is linked to “Being as.” That means that the metaphor is existential; it expresses something about being and expresses being. From this the philosophical value of the metaphor appears, which we have extended to the social imagination of the symbolic order. We have seen that imagination and “possibility” are connected. Imagination offers possibility; possibility, as an ontological category, is narrowly connected to the imagination that produces it. Metaphors refer beyond actuality to what is possible. In the same vein, we may assert that the social imagination, especially utopia, refers to social possibility, as a social-ontological category. Utopia may be conceived as the irreplaceable expression of the passion for social possibility. So far, these are my conclusions about the ontological dimension of the social imagination. However, in which manner does this operate in politics? Ricoeur strongly emphasizes the integration-function of ideology, in which authority is important. However, in the current crisis of authority this is difficult as well. For this reason, we have looked for leads in Ricoeur to sketch the operation of social imagination and to indicate, in line with Ricoeur’s own opinion, that ideological legitimization must be connected to a motivational model by going into the link between body, motivation, and imagination in Ricoeur’s work Le volontaire et l'involontaire. Utopia and imagination are thus connected in the process of motivation. While his first reflection on this happened in the midst of body-hostile philosophy, Ricoeur later related it to Freud’s doctrines of urges. From a hermeneutical point of view then, Ricoeur emphasized a “semantic of desires.” The next question is how can or must politics connect to bodily motives. Politics must keep in touch with what lives in political discourses and may not make a distinction too easily between the personal and the political. Such a distinction often appears meandering. Here, Ricoeur’s distinction between an ethics of conviction, narrowly connected to desires and utopias, and an ethics of responsibility, narrowly connected to political responsibility and rationality, is important. To the ethics of conviction more importance must be attached, but the ethics of responsibility may not be neglected. Ricoeur often continues to be ambivalent concerning the relationship of both.

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At the end, on the basis of gender studies, we focused on a broadening of politics. A displacement of political accents may take place in order to keep connected to what lives in the cultural symbolic imagination. That also implies a broader concept of “justice” and of “citizenship.” However, with this displacement of political accents not all problems are resolved. Political utopias are not easily uniting. The imagination of another society may lead to conflicting accounts. Utopias undermine the existing reality but in very different directions. From the beginning, feminist utopias were not shared ideas but rather sources of conflict. However, over the decades many practical proposals have been made, not without conflict, and step by step, a certain consensus about the need to change gender relations has originated. The challenge is to lead the conflicts back to a political level on which decisions can be made. This is the only way to give meaning to the political discourse and to bring political discourse and political practice together and keep them together. Connecting to the felt needs and the motivations originating from imagination is the only way to move the society and to motivate it. And in my view, that is also an important way to resist what Ricoeur refers to as political evil. NOTES 1. Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 256. 2. Paul Ricoeur, From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, trans. John B. Thompson and Kathleen Blamey, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 164 ff. 3. Ibid., 177. 4. Ibid., 167. 5. Paul Ricoeur, La métaphore vive (Paris: Éditions Seuil, 1975), 272. 6. Following Ricoeur, here I use the terms identity at the one hand and sameness on the other hand as synonyms. Ricoeur himself says, for example, that there is hardly any difference in meaning, only concerning the context. See Paul Ricoeur, The Reality of the Historical Past (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1984), 17–18; Paul Ricoeur, Temps et récit III: Le temps raconté (Paris: Éditions Seuil,1985), 214. 7. This appears on many places as well; see, for example, Ricoeur, La métaphore vive, 147, 167, chapter 6 among others, 252, 253. 8. See also Paul Ricoeur, “The Human Experience of Time and Narrative,” in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J. Valdés (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), 115; Paul Ricoeur, “Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator,” Ricoeur Reader, 436; Paul Ricoeur, “Intellectual Autobiography of

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Paul Ricoeur,” in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, ed. Lewis Edwin Hahn (Chicago: Southern Illinois University, 1995), 48. 9. Ricoeur, La métaphore vive, 252: “La métaphore, figure de discours, présente de manière ouverte, par le moyen d’un conflict entre identité et différence, le procès qui, de manière couverte, engendre les aires sémantiques par fusion des différences dans l’identité.” See also B. Stevens, L’Apprentissage des signes. Lecture de Paul Ricoeur (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), 205. 10. Ricoeur, La métaphore vive, 325–44; Paul Ricoeur, “Between Rhetoric and Poetics,” in Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 355–68. 11. Ricoeur discusses this point in Ricoeur, La métaphore vive, chapter 8 and 9; later on he refers to this page in Ricoeur, Temps et récit III, 226; see also Paul Ricoeur, Paul, Temps et récit I: L’intrigue et le récit historique (Paris: Éditions Seuil, 1983), 151, and Ricoeur, “Intellectual Autobiography,” 28; see also Stevens, 205–08, 265 ff. 12. Ricoeur, La métaphore vive, 323. 13. Ibid., ch. VII; see also Mary Gerhart, “The Live Metaphor,” in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, ed. Lewis Edwin Hahn (Chicago: Southern Illinois University, 1995), 25. 14. Ricoeur, La métaphore vive, 386. 15. Ibid., 384. 16. Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976), 88. 17. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 182. 18. Ibid., 183. 19. Ibid., 265–66. 20. Ibid., 183, xxi, xxii. 21. Ibid., 301. 22. Ricoeur, From Text to Action, 185. 23. Ibid., 180. 24. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 256. 25. Paul Ricoeur, De l’interprétation. Essay sur Freud (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1965), 277–78, 297–304; Paul Ricoeur, Le conflict des interprétations: Essays d’herméneutique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1969), 101–211. 26. Ricoeur, De l’interprétation, 75–119, 413. 27. Ibid., 75, 352, 355, 384. 28. Paul Ricoeur, “The Creativity of Language,” in Ricoeur Reader, 476. 29. Ibid., 477. 30. Paul Ricoeur, “Tâches de l’éducateur politique,” in Lectures 1: Autour du politique (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1991), 239–55. 31. Paul Ricoeur, “Éthique et politique,” in Lectures 1. 233–38. 32. Paul Ricoeur, “Postface au ‘Temps de la responsabilité,’” in Lectures 1. 33. Paul Ricoeur, “Tâches de l’éducateur politique,” 252. 34. Paul Ricoeur, “Le paradoxe politique,” in Histoire et Vérité (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Gerhart, Mary. “The Live Metaphor.” In The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, edited by Lewis Edwin Hahn. Chicago: Southern Illinois University, 1995. Honneth, Axel. The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. Ricoeur, Paul. “Between Rhetoric and Poetics.” In Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric, edited by Amelie Oksenberg Rorty. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996. ———. De l’interprétation. Essay sur Freud. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1965. ———. “Éthique et politique.” In Lectures 1. Autour du politique. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1991. ———. From Text to Action. Essays in Hermeneutics II. Translated by John B. Thompson and Kathleen Blamey. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2008. ———. “Intellectual Autobiography of Paul Ricoeur.” In The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, edited by Lewis Edwin Hahn. Chicago: Southern Illinois University, 1995. ———. Interpretation Theory. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976. ———. La métaphore vive. Paris: Éditions Seuil, 1975. ———. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Edited by George H. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. ———. Le conflict des interprétations: Essays d’herméneutique. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1969. ———. “Le paradoxe politique.” In Histoire et Vérité. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967. ———. “Life: A Story in Search of a Narrator.” In A Ricoeur Reader. Reflection and Imagination, edited by Mario J. Valdés. New York/London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. ———. Parcours de la reconnaissance. Paris: Éd. Stock, 2004. ———. Philosophie de la volonté I: Le volontaire et l’involontaire. Paris: Aubier, 1949. ———. “Postface au ‘Temps de la responsabilité.’” In Lectures 1: Autour du politique. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1991. ———. Soi-même comme un autre. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1990. ———. “Tâches de l’éducateur politique.” In Lectures 1: Autour du politique. Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1991. ———. Temps et récit I: L’intrigue et le récit historique. Paris: Éditions Seuil, 1983. ———. Temps et récit III: Le temps raconté. Paris: Éditions Seuil,1985. ———. “The Creativity of Language” (interview with Richard Kearney). In A Ricoeur Reader Reflection and Imagination, edited by Mario J. Valdés. New York/ London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. ———. “The Human Experience of Time and Narrative.” In A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, edited by Mario J. Valdés. New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. ———. The Reality of the Historical Past. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1984.

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Stevens, B. L’Apprentissage des signe:. Lecture de Paul Ricoeur. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991. Taylor, Charles. Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition. Edited by Amy Gutmann. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.

Chapter 7

Embodied Extremist Rhetoric The Circulation of Power in Ideology and Utopia Stephanie N. Arel

Working at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum has provoked my concern about a phenomenon that has affected communities across the globe: jihadis who, bound together by a particular political and cultural ideology, are willing to engage in horrific acts of violence toward themselves and others in order to achieve a utopic vision. This vision promises rewards in the afterlife for those who die martyrs and unification under one Muslim Caliphate for those who remain. The rhetoric that pervades extremist groups develops a culture of inclusion and kinship in order to persuade behavior and action toward the end goal of unification. Relying upon propaganda, messages, and promises intended to bind members to one another in an opposition to other groups, extremists persuade individuals to behave in a particular way deemed valid by the group. Thus, founded on the group’s ideology and derivative utopic vision, such behavior, in the case of jihadi ideologies, degenerates into violence and destruction. Situating this dynamic within the context of 9/11, I question how the mechanisms which underlie and construct ideologies of extremist groups emerge in the interplay of ideology and utopia the way Paul Ricoeur envisions it. My inquiry led to an exploration of jihadi groups’ mobilizing bodies as weapons in the name of a cause and in the hope of glory in the afterlife. This essay attempts to offer a view into the way that jihadi movements increase participation by mobilizing rhetorical messages that make a promise to individuals, in order to secure their bodies for particular, usually violent, ends. I argue that extremist organizations exercise influence on bodies by offering outlets for affective urges such as humiliation and anger, often resulting from perceived wrongs inflicted on these groups by more dominant 135

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factions. Jihadi groups claim that a dominating and powerful western world threatens traditional Islamic values. They capitalize on the real oppression of Muslims across the globe using persuasive means that assure reprieve from earthly discomfort. Such persuasion operates by appealing to basic physical and psychological needs providing food and shelter, proffering economic resources, generating honor and thus perceived power for families whose sons and daughters sacrifice themselves for a cause, and accommodating the human need to belong. Appeals that guarantee justice for one group while isolating and othering outsiders is not exclusive to jihadi movements. Hitler promised an economically downtrodden Germany jobs, appealing to emotions while blaming the Jews, the communists, and “corrupt” politicians for deprivations the country experienced. He espoused a unified and prosperous Germany with these groups removed ensuring his people security through identification with the Aryan race. The Nazi propaganda slogan highlights Hitler’s claim: “One people. One Reich. One Leader.”1 Hitler’s affective appeal included provoking fear of and disgust for the Jews. While planning to unify Germany, Hitler also needed to eliminate the Jews to “purify” his country. Among jihadi groups a similar assurance of ascendancy and purity under one caliphate galvinizes. The additional promise of a utopic vision of the end time serves as a consistent motivating factor that bypasses the logic of action as Ricoeur would see it. Prevailing over logical thinking and activating affect, propaganda directed toward a future promise that will eliminate the wrongs of the present creates a sense of urgency, provoking interest, fear, disgust, and anger. These affective responses circumvent logic and evoke the demands to “fight,” or to protect one’s group from another outside group.2 But promises of protection and extreme demarcations that designate categories of “us” and “them” degenerate into aggressive, often murderous, behavior. Ricoeur’s assertion that ideology and utopia intertwine—that only from the ideal generated by utopia can we critique the ideology—grounds my analysis of the motivation and action of jihadi groups’ exertion of power and violence which underscore the negative, degenerative sides of each ideology and utopia. In light of the casualties that have ensued as a result of jihadi rhetoric and practice, I frame the integrative functions of jihadi ideology and utopic vision in this instance as similarly destructive. What I hope to show is that Ricoeur’s work on ideology and utopia, specifically his argument against causality and in support of a motivational model, highlights how affects are targeted to bolster recruitment into extremist groups and to ensure cohesion of the groups. Ricoeur’s motivational framework gives shape to how personal bias, affectivity, and belief intersect with social imagination to provide a platform from which extremism can crystalize to be an effective appeal to such solidarity.

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I argue, alongside Ricoeur, that the central thread that binds ideologies and utopias but which circulates as an aim for power actualizes in motivation, action, and body materiality. The body’s affects, the biological portion of emotions programmed in each of us, influence choice and propel behavior preceding thought. A pivotal question emerges: what kind of affective motivation, mobilized by rhetoric or propaganda, becomes effective under a particular set of circumstances fueling or making possible a particular ideology or utopic vision (since Ricoeur says that we cannot separate the two)? And further, how can we employ Ricoeur’s work on ideology and utopia to foster an understanding of how affects operate together in the recruitment of people to jihadi groups and impel the sacrifice of bodies to participate in mass murder? At the end, I aim to illustrate that ideology and utopia while capable of critiquing each other also support each other. In fact, in order for a utopia to critique an ideology in a way that is beneficial, in a way that refuses the sacrifice of lives, it must adhere to a higher transcendental than one that touts unification of a designated group upon the destruction of another group. In fact, it is incumbent on a utopic vision to see beyond humankind, for it to be “more than man,” in order to secure the utopia’s efficacy at critiquing a violent ideology. IDEOLOGIES AND AFFECT In his lectures on ideology and utopia, Paul Ricoeur asserts that power is not only central to the interplay between “ideology” and “utopia” but also repetitious. Regardless of the forms ideologies and utopias assume, Ricoeur maintains, “one power imitates another.”3 The challenge Ricoeur posits at the end of his text relates to how—if ever—we escape the circle of ideology, in its attempts to legitimate power, and utopia, in its attempts to replace power with something else. He suggests that “the judgement of appropriateness,” and perhaps the social imaginary, “may help us to understand how that circle becomes a spiral” that illustrates progress.4 This essay argues that ideologies5 purported by jihadi culture merely repeat, incessantly, with dire consequences. This repetition emerges in practices that both persuade and mobilize bodies often as weapons of destruction. In order to critique jihadi ideologies, I employ hermeneutics and a psychoanalytic lens following Ricoeur’s suggestion that the self-reflection inherent in psychoanalytic practice serves as a methodological model for the critique of ideology. In this vein, ideology critique contributes to society what psychoanalysis does for the individual, providing a method or means of overcoming resistance. Resistance viewed in the frame of jihadi culture, I argue, emerges as heightened affective charges (for instance, hate and disgust) manipulated

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by power contained within the ideology itself. Authority figures and the power they wield set the social norms inherent in a particular ideology adjudicating appropriate affective responses and the behavior such affects produce. Since affects are preverbal—they emerge prior to conscious awareness and before any means of verbal expression—they are not synonymous with feelings or emotions. Feelings constitute the words and metaphors employed to express affects. Emotions require narrative cohesion. Affects, on the other hand, rush through the body not relying on language development and memory and are, thus, easy to manipulate and difficult to control internally. In jihadi culture, affective responses such as anger toward the perceived enemy and subsequent enacted violence are mobilized. Ideological scripts reinforce hatred and rage on the one hand and joy in the hope of a utopic vision on the other. The central concern, as Ricoeur would posit, is not the validity or veracity of the communicated jihadi ideology but rather how it relates to and manifests into praxis? How does jihadi ideology motivate behavior? Silvan Tomkins’s work on affect helps to unveil the interplay between ideology, affect, and action. Tomkins argues that socialization is directed by systems of power personified in parents and society shaping individuals in that society to experience affect according to established social values. For instance, in many cultures, including jihadi culture, humiliation is bad, while joy is good. This socialization gives rise to specific ideological stances that incite action and behavior. In fact, Tomkins asserts that affects are the key to adherence to a particular ideology, and they induce actions that emanate from that ideology.6 Thus, ideologies and systems of authority effectively establish accepted affective responses to the social environment—contempt, disgust, and anger at an enemy who instills shame, and joy at the possibility of an ideal world devoid of outsiders. In order to be influential, ideologies instill social values, and affective life becomes programmed solidifying into what Tomkins calls a “script,” also understood as “sets of rules by which an individual predicts, interprets, responds to, and controls life’s events.”7 “Scripts” refer to a set of ordering principles that translate, evaluate, anticipate, and manage scenes, the smallest unit of life experience. Scenes, for Tomkins, resemble photographs or images of past experiences. Either habitual or transient, scenes connect to each other, resulting in magnification into scripts and then into the plot of one’s life.8 The scripts and scenes repeat and direct future behavior according to how these have been affectively shaped. Affects underlie scripts that have been reinforced over time—for jihadi ideology this includes, for instance, asserting that the West is the enemy, that the goal is a unified Caliphate, and that jihad can be used to achieve both. Such ideological scripts build from affective scripts. In fact, ideologies rely on affect to repeat. The belief in the West as an enemy must be motivated

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by affect such as anger at economic and social repression by Western forces, fear of the West’s power to disrupt the vision of unification, and interest in disabusing the West of its power. Repeated rhetoric within jihadi ideologies reinforce affects that keep the ideology circulating; such rhetoric communicates that members are either for the group or against it. Scripts employed enhance group solidarity in a discourse about belonging and opposition, which capitalizes on visceral rage and fear at both real and perceived injustices addressing “the full spectrum of good scenes and bad scenes, of heavens and hells”9 to become both self-validating and self-fulfilling. Such scripts both form and support systems of evaluation that lead to a consensus in belief among those sharing the scripts, highlighting Ricoeur’s motivational framework. Understanding the grounds of belief, which is simultaneously a ground and a motive affectively fueled, helps us understand how power becomes legitimate.10 Referring to Weber’s three types of legitimate domination, Ricoeur details three grounds for leadership of a prophet or chief: rational, traditional, and charismatic. The rational leader asserts behavior according to laws therefore ensuring order. The traditional leader establishes everyday conducts and norms—establishing what is shameful and what is not, therefore directing social and individual behavior and norms. The charismatic leader, in whom followers have total faith, assures followers that current experiences of frustration and shame will be met by pride in the new order. In such a way, individuals orient themselves to the behaviors of others. Ricoeur notes that all social action may be oriented in four ways; one of these is affectual. In order for behavior to be repetitive or for social actors to follow the pattern laid out by the authority, affects must be mobilized. Ricoeur’s motivational framework indicates how power circulates and controls affects and beliefs propagating practice that adheres to an ideology regardless of how logical or illogical the ideology. Thus, ideologies shape bodies “as a system of motivation that proceeds from the lack of a clear distinction between the real and the unreal.”11 Within this framework, we can begin to understand how personal bias and belief intersect with social imagination to provide a platform from which extreme affect engages with ideology stimulating a circular and practical worldview. UNIFICATION OF BODIES AND PROPAGANDA Structures of power lie behind an ideology’s capacity to “other” a particular group and constitute how the ideology works—through meaningful procedures which call for, Ricoeur states, the comprehension of the individuals involved. Comprehension is commensurate with cohesion which would equate to understanding social norms around affect. In jihadi culture, this

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could be extrapolated to anger and a desire to humiliate those who do not adhere to the rules of the group ideology. Structures of power therefore present the structure of society, not of an individual, to concretize a group identity. Working with Clifford Geertz’s notion of an ideology as a cultural system committed to the preservation of social identity, Ricoeur notes the first function of an ideological system: “to preserve a group’s identity over time.”12 The basis of jihadi ideologies, as all ideologies, emerges in this aim to preserve identity, to create a unified social body that follows affective rules and affective scripts. For instance, Sayyid Qutb, the figurehead of the Muslim Brotherhood and author of Social Justice in Islam who is generally considered to be the originator of extreme Islamist ideology, strove to solidify Islamic identity in his writing and life. He dedicated his work to the formation of the “identity of the national self,” which he believed was endangered by the steady influence of Western political and cultural power in Egypt.13 Qutb critiqued the American support for Zionist causes in Palestine which symbolized for him European imperialism and distinguished politically and disenfranchised Egyptians from the dominant order of Western culture providing “their quest for empowerment with a ‘cultural effect’ grounded in the self-validating sentiments of national pride and identity.”14 In Social Justice in Islam, Qutb established the importance of Mohammed’s assertion that “All Muslims are of one blood” (71), constructing with words directly related to the body the verbal grounds from which an embodied ideology could form. Undulating beneath jihadi rhetoric is this perception of being joined by blood, supported by the notion of body purification and ablution in preparation for killing or in the shedding of blood of another body of people. Qutb helps set the stage in Islamic culture for the process of preservation of a group’s identity as what Ricoeur names a political body, as “something that exists not only in the present but in the past and in the future, and its function is to connect past, present, and future.”15 Ricoeur continues, “The political body has more memory and more expectations or hope than a technological system.”16 Qutb’s aim for unification of all Muslims and the jihadi mission to include all Muslims under one Caliphate reflect this orientation of the political body, one that is connected throughout time. Extremists groups who claim a particular identity as jihadists, connected as Muslims in one blood or political body, participate in what they argue is religiously sanctioned warfare with the interpretation that death of the self and death to the other leads to martyrdom. Their actions display ideology as a cultural system, affectively adhered to. As Ricoeur would assert, evident in his close engagement with Geertz, culture forms its identity around affectively supported symbols—for Jihadis, Thomas Hegghammer argues, such symbols emerge in music and in dreams.17 Thus, he encourages scholars to

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look beyond the doctrinal aspect of ideology, “as a set of ideas transmitted through language and internalized through cognition,” to consider the cultural-aesthetic dimension of jihadi ideology.18 He presses the necessity of understanding jihadi culture and aesthetics. The definition of culture in Hegghammer’s work accounts for the “products and practices that do something other than fill the basic military needs of jihadi groups.”19 Meeting needs that go beyond that of military organization relates to the idea of superflousness or Ricoeur’s conception of “surplus value”; there is always more in claims of authority than what we first see. The claims of jihadi ideology and culture expand beyond a military missive, using song and prayer to mobilize affect that increases the desire to belong and to have contempt for the other. Critiquing the political ideology, examining it through a Ricoeurian lens, highlights the nature of the jihadi message, which intends, as do all political ideologies “to capture the individual’s capacity for loyalty for the sake of an actual system of power embodied in authoritative institutions. The system of power is then able to reap benefits from this human aptitude for loyalty to a cause, a willingness to sacrifice oneself to a cause.”20 This willingness emerges from a fierce fidelity to a cause and authority that appeals to the human desire for relationships, safety, comfort, and even artistic expression.21 A culture of belonging emerges situated at the center of jihadi culture. Belonging is not only an individual psychic phenomenon but also a conviction imposed by the group that requires belonging—whether that be the state or a particular organization. When belonging is situated and central to ideology, as attachment fundamental to human motivation, it has both personal and political implications. And while many different strains of extremist groups engage in jihadi culture, we must recognize Stig Jarle Hansen’s imperative about the “blurred ideological lines” among jihadi groups, arguing that clear distinctions regarding ideologies are difficult to identify.22 The messages among these groups are mixed and alter according to global and local audiences producing multiple ideologies; however, one consistency is the means of messaging: various cultural ideologies have spread over the globe through the internet. Gaining adherence and loyalty to an ideology, such as that of the jihads, requires mass appeal—the internet has provided an effective platform for the dissemination of propaganda and rhetoric (although as Hegghammer points out, internet access poses challenges to jihadi culture as it allows easier access to the West for Muslim youth).23 Terrorist groups use “emotional messaging”24 to recruit and retain members and advocate their own mission. Such propaganda is “known to use psychologically effective techniques such as visual imagery, repetition, massed crowds, and symbols of identification, to

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create a climate of acceptance for its message.”25 Acceptance ensues when the appropriate affects, such as anger, fear, joy, are modulated. Anger has an outlet in violence; promises of reward in the afterlife of a martyr and for the families left behind mollifies fear, and current and future perceptions of unification, encouraged by scripts professing “one blood,” elicit joy. Success in recruitment relies upon the mobilization of affects along with the feelings and emotions that build upon these. The mere fact that jihad requires bodies willing to die reinforces the idea that ideological scripts— eventually disrupted by the promise of utopia in the jihadi schema—must exercise an influence over affect. Ricoeur asserts that propaganda “achieves its psychological effects in the manner in which a machine draws an efficacious form from wrought material.”26 In the case of jihadi ideology, the wrought materials are bodies willing to die. The “body” is further motivated by a belief in the good end of martyrdom; here belief and affect intertwine. This imbrication can be expressed through the idea of a “feedback loop”; affect and belief influence each other: affect arousal and intensity influence belief content and conviction and vice versa.27 Thus, through affect individuals are subject to manipulation in magazines and internet messages dedicated to recruitment. In the Characteristics of Jihad magazine, Ayman Al-Zawahiri employs jihadi ideology detailing the benefits of martyrdom to the devout; the power exerted through the rhetoric gains force through the activation of affect: disgust and fear on the one hand, joy and interest on the other hand. Using quotes from the Qur’an, “to illustrate the prominence and honor bestowed by God on Mujahideen and martyrs,” the author assures the reader that he wants to persuade: [The jihadists] will feel safe when people are terrified; they will escape judgment when people are judged on the Day of Judgment; they will enter Paradise without any judgment or suffering; they will be able to intercede with God to be merciful to others, and God will grant their request as a way of honoring them; they will be prominent in Paradise; and above all, before they die they are given the good news about God’s forgiveness and the privileges they will receive. People should compete to carry out an act so honored and rewarded by God. Sincere people should prepare to carry it out; they should make the covenant with God. The buyer [of a martyr’s life] is God, and the price is Paradise and the joy of pleasing God. This covenant can only be made by those who would sacrifice their lives for God, those who do not love this temporary, worthless life so much.28

The websites also include stories of miraculous victorious battles, with speeches declaring the benefits of jihad and naming Baghdad “the greatest city in the world” with the promise of returning the Islamic States to this grandeur.29

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Hope and excitement generated with the image of paradise beyond and the conception of a great Muslim stronghold where Muslims are unified echo in an Inspire video production released May of 2017 entitled “A Lone Mujahid or an Army by Itself.” In the video, Sheikh Qassim Ar-Reimy formulates a vision of the one Muslim as a powerful figure capable of helping him wage a war on the “enemy.” Ar-Reimy speaks to his “Mujahid brothers” assuring them that they are not viewed as individuals but as “a group, a brigade, or even an army in itself.”30 His words intend to comfort, or ease affects of fear and anger quelling antipathy, by intensifying affects affiliated with belonging such as joy and excitement. The reassurance of belonging correlates with an impression of assumed power, emphasizing again the interplay of power in ideologies. He speaks to viewers: “you are a part of this Ummah, a part of this body, if any part of the body is not well then the whole body shares the sleeplessness and fever with it. We are a single united body and today this body is in pain in many places and you are situated in a place where you can harm our enemy.” Under his authority, now made legitimate through the claim that all are unified, it is incumbent upon the viewer to avenge his people who are attacked daily by the “enemy.” The “single united body” iteration applies to all Muslims in this ideological stance. The Sheikh promises a reward with sacrifice that will provide “a smile on the face of millions of Muslims.” The psychological and affective manipulation enacted by propaganda also emerges in an interview with Yasmin Mulbocus, who served as a point person for the recruitment of women and girls in the UK.31 Mulbocus reflects on her radicalization by the assurances of the Islamic State; she committed to working for its vision, which she asserted promised justice, specifically for women. Alongside the promise that racism and Islamophobia would be absent from this new visionary state, she was finally persuaded by the assertion that in this state the death penalty would be mandatory for rapists. As a victim of sexual abuse, such claims of justice appealed to her desire to hold her own perpetrator accountable. Over time she came to the realization that this universal justice cannot be met by the Islamic State. The propaganda that solicited her participation used what Ricoeur labels as the “art of deception . . . the soul of propaganda and which consists in congealing a set of beliefs.”32 Likened to manipulation,33 Ricoeur asserts that propaganda twists language—this “twisting” is not a phenomenon unique to extremist rhetoric, but instead an “absurd counterpart” to culture: “It seems as if mankind, by approaching en masse a basic consumer culture, were also stopped en masse at a subcultural level.”34 Mulbocus asserts that an additional benefit to women within the group who attempt, in this schema, to trade helplessness for power is the way that the media conveys these women as “Jihadi wives.” In the attempt to undermine jihadi extremist groups, such

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titles by media and government feed into the propaganda generated internally, empowering women who feel pride at being the wives of what they perceive as powerful men thereby supporting the desire to stay and work toward promulgation of the vision. Beginning with Qutb, propaganda for jihadi movements has always been cast against something—primarily the West—with an intent of solidifying identity and developing ideologies as social norms. While jihadis demonize and consider the West an enemy, the West itself has perpetuated a racism that has fueled the anger and resentment of Muslims across the globe. In his novel Radical, Maajid Nawaz—a spokesperson for Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamist group with global ties—discusses his recruitment by extremists who operated by inspiring youth through tales of jihad. Nawaz asserts that it was easier to recruit youth in Denmark than in England due to the incidences of racism in Scandinavia. His journey into violence and extremism as a Westerner, ironically, came through Western culture itself: through hip-hop and graffiti culture. According to Nawaz, music served as a unifying element among Muslims, setting them apart from white kids and helping them, together, resist racism. In this case, ideology provided a set of shared social norms that while answering an individual’s need to belong also determined behavior. The assurance of group belonging lies alongside a demand to be like one another, to make similar commitments and to execute similar actions. These behaviors establish social norms as ideological scripts which secure identity, telling group members who is in and who is out, and mobilizing a utopic vision of cohesion and purity. The consequences of persuading someone of their safety within the group—alongside the demand that this group be defended from pollution by the other– concretizes the newly created “enemy” as inherently flawed. In David Trimble’s Nobel Peace Prize lecture, he addresses—through the lens of Northern Ireland’s “Troubles”—the actions and motivations of a political fanatic whose aim is a “perfect” group.35 Using as his starting point an assertion of Amos Oz’s that “a political fanatic is someone who is more interested in you than in himself,” Trimble explains that an ideology transforms behavior and how this connects to an ideal utopic vision: At first that might seem as an altruist [the political fanatic], but look closer and you will see the terrorist. A political fanatic is not someone who wants to perfect himself. No, he wants to perfect you. He wants to perfect you personally, to perfect you politically, to perfect you religiously, or racially, or geographically. He wants you to change your mind, your government, your borders. He may not be able to change your race, so he will eliminate you from the perfect equation in his mind by eliminating you from the earth.36

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This perfectionism is bred from an ideology that cultivates affective disgust in the other. This other, considered an abomination, must be eliminated at the cost of what Trimble calls a “political fantasy” that seeks for perfection in what appears to be a legitimate claim at any cost. Through the lens of jihadi culture, the belief in a possibility of a more unified, pure race under the Caliphate comes into view. In jihadi culture, the unification of Islam and its dominance over the West creates the best possible equation. Persuading recruits to advocate this goal at the cost of others’ lives employs affect to promote, mobilize, and motivate particular and devastating actions. MOTIVATION AND ACTION A Real Stories Documentary, entitled “Inside the Minds of Suicide Bombers,” uncovers how what is at stake in the lives of the men who decide to use their bodies to kill others.37 The documentary shows interviews of five young recruits in an Israeli prison: three suicide bombers whose missions had failed and two men who built the bombs and recruited the bombers. The first interviewee is a 17 year-old-boy who suffered doubts on his mission and, failing to detonate his bomb, returned home. He was arrested several days later. In the interview for this documentary, he expresses a wish to escape present pain in the afterlife where rewards lie: “We are hollow bodies leading a pointless life.” The Paradise that is sought-after does not represent simply a reward in the afterlife, it also serves as a response to a need to ameliorate a feeling of worthlessness, or the shame affect, in the present life. But before the bombing, he became confused, wondering if detonating his bomb would kill Jews who wanted peace, including innocent people and children. He was, thus, caught between the imperative that God does everything and the assurance that the afterlife, full of joy and hope, is his if he kills. “If I had not gotten confused,” he laments, “I would have been a martyr now; thus, he would have shed his “hollow body.”” The expression of hollowness, of having a hole or an empty space inside, indicates a deep affective experience of shame, or of having no significance. The power of jihadi cultural ideologies lies in its promise to fill these “hollow bodies” with hope in an afterlife. In Ricoeur’s framework, motivation and action cannot be separated from an analysis of how ideologies and utopias intertwine. This young Palestinian wants to offer his body to further an extreme ideology that leads to his status as a martyr, where he and his family receive a much greater stature, socially dispensing pride in lieu of shame. The problem of meaninglessness is thus addressed, and his family’s repression avenged. His actions manifest the interplay of ideology and utopia by revealing the tension between them. In his case though, two ideologies compete. One asserts that “God does

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everything,” thus disabusing him of his right to commit suicide while killing others. The other declares that committing this act of death will lead to his glorification. Affective fear mobilized by the former ideology trumps his affective shame and anger, truncating the joy promised by the alternative ideology and utopic vision. The boy goes home and chooses to save innocent people. Ricoeur’s definition of motivation in Fallible Man—“I posit actions only by letting myself be influenced by motives”—and that “motivation is a structure of voluntary decision”—reflects the conundrum this youth faces but also highlights how his actions, motives, and affects are inextricably linked to ideology and utopia.38 His self-deprecation and shame evidence his adherence to jihadi ideology and the propounded vision of martyrdom’s reward in paradise, while his failure to detonate a bomb illustrates a competing religious ideology where God makes decisions about life and death, not individuals. The inner conflict that manifests sheds light on the inefficacy of the jihadi vision of utopia in the critique of ideology. The ideal achieved in the demand someone engage in the act of killing using their own body as the murder weapon reinforces the ideological and affective scripts in lieu of being critical. On a grander scale, the influence of motives, alongside the failure of a utopia at arresting the repetitive nature of an ideology, becomes especially cogent in The Last Night Document: Instructions for the September 11 Attack.39 Identical copies of this four-page document, handwritten in Arabic, were found among the hijackers’ belongings in Boston, in Washington, DC, and at the Flight 93 crash site in Western Pennsylvania. Containing instructions to the hijackers about how to conduct their behavior on the evening and morning of the attacks, the letter reveals a utopic vision alongside the violence that they are prepared to enact in order to perpetuate that vision. The document answers: Do not seem confused or show signs of nervous tension. Be happy, optimistic, calm because you are heading for a deed that God loves and will accept. It will be the day, God willing, you spend with the women of paradise. . . . Smile in the face of hardship young man/For you are heading toward eternal paradise. You must remember to make supplications wherever you go, and anytime you do anything, and God is with his faithful servants, He will protect them and make their tasks easier, and give them success and control, and victory, and everything.40

Motivation, inspired by the avowals that God loves, will protect, and will provide women in paradise, leads to action manifested in the following of specific behaviors, norms, rules, and affective dispositions. Thus, the material

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body responds to motivation as the conduit of the action. Like Freud’s Id, the unconscious motivational source that drives or impels psychic life in the structural mode of the psyche cannot be removed from an understanding of ideological scripts. The field of motivation is “behind us or under us” Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 121. energizing the ideology, eclipsing rational thought because of the stimulation of affective forces. The Id in Freudian terms constitutes the “dark inaccessible part of our personality,” somatically and affectively influenced without organization, so exceeding logic.41 Set alongside the ego—the primary subject, the “I”—and the super-ego— conscience—the id fails to know any judgments of value; in the quest for pleasure, the good, bad, and moral fall by the wayside under its assessments. In Freud’s conception, the Id rests in the unconscious and is often subject to repression by the Ego. The Id strives “to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs” seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. The id represents the basic motivating force in the human psyche that attempts to reduce tension. Ricoeur expands the notion of the id, asserting that a social Id exists.42 Ricoeur interprets Habermas’s analysis of Freud: The id is not a given but a product of expulsion. I think that this is an orthodox interpretation of Freud; repression is produced not by natural forces but by forces under certain cultural circumstances. Repression is not a mechanical phenomenon, it is the expression of causal language of what happens when we do not recognize ourselves, when we banish ourselves from our own company.43

The hijackers of 9/11 surrendered themselves to a larger economy, to the group ideology purported in jihadi messages. Their ability to repress a sense of themselves enabled them to experience an affective intensity for an extended amount of time. Affectively, they could endure the rush that enabled them to do the unthinkable. Motives survive and thus allow practices to prevail in the face of social change. Motives are also galvanized by those in power whether that be leaders of an extremist group or perceived power at the hand of opposing political or social leaders. Noting that power circulates amidst competing ideologies to those of the terrorists of 9/11 is an important activity when considering the instigating factors for joining extremist groups: affective anger at political and legal policies that create “double standards,” alienation, and perceived failures at integration (of religious and cultural beliefs).44 Thus, prompting actions that work as a corrective to perceived iniquities remains an aim of jihadi ideology. At the base of such action lies a motivating affect: anger or rage, sadness and shame, and intense interest or excitement combined with contempt-disgust. Motivation, and not causality, appeals to affects and transforms the interests of a group into larger society. Motivation lies between the claim and the

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belief, between the claims in the legitimacy of power and then belief in that power, driving behavior. Motivation therefore cannot be reduced to a cause. This assumption highlights that a particular faith claim is not the cause of jihadi behavior but rather reflects the complex relationship between an entire set of circumstances and a faith claim. In The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright alludes to this complexity, what he calls a “marriage” in his analysis about al-Qaeda’s evolution and the subsequent movements of the hijackers on 9/11. He writes, “Al-Qaeda was conceived in the marriage of these assumptions: Faith is stronger than weapons or nations, and the ticket to enter the sacred zone where such miracles occur is the willingness to die.”45 Faith in this sense becomes imbricated with belief in the claim of legitimacy of an authority. This authority possesses power and, through propaganda and rhetoric alongside the belief in the utopia where miracles and glory abound, secures the “willingness to die.” Sacrifice is the bodily offering for an ideological cause that leads to the utopic vision. Affects motivate this willingness to offer one’s body as a weapon, not religion or religious beliefs in and of themselves. Research shows that although religion remains a motivating factor for joining extremist groups, members often have limited or no understanding of religious texts. For instance, the UNDP Africa Journey to Extremism interviews former recruits to extremist groups showing that 51 percent of respondents identify religion as a reason for joining, but 57 percent reported little to limited knowledge of religious texts; in fact, higher than average amounts of religious schooling correlated with resilience against extremist rhetoric.46 The 51 percent that cited religious ideology as playing a part in their choice to join extremist groups included sharing the religious ideas of the group, being a part of something greater than oneself, and believing in the professions of a religious leader, thus illustrating that extremist ideology lies between the claim of legitimacy and the belief in authority.47 Among those who have abandoned extremist groups, “a clear shift away from the ideology, leadership, and actions of the extremist group was expressed.”48 Similarly, the top five reasons for not joining an extremist group related to not agreeing with a group’s objectives, fear of the group’s actions, not agreeing with a group’s political ideology, not seeing it worth the risk of being killed/captured, and not agreeing with a group’s religious ideology.49 The ability to resist efforts at recruitment can be understood in part as an ability to identify that the circulation of power in an ideology and the claims of authority fail to provide affective assurance. Contrarily, followers of leaders like Osama bin Laden believe in his claim to authority and are willing to sacrifice their bodies for him. Their bodies become his weapons and are broken under his power. Within extremist

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rhetoric and practice, power manifests as body materiality in the ideological script that communicates unification of all as “one blood” and in the shedding of blood as a symbol. The body is a “bleeding” murder weapon, and extremists aim to create “bleeding wars” to drain the enemy of its power. This rhetoric and the actions it produces (the mass killing through selfdestruction) evidence the Ricoeurean notion that the nature of ideology or its distortion emerges through the symbolic structure of action. Body materiality and blood thus become “interpretants” related to action that underlie and tie the concepts of ideology and utopia, where the body is regenerated and rewarded. UTOPIC VISION The utopic vision of jihadi culture, the aim to which the ideology is directed, is a starting point for critique as Ricoeur would have it. This promise of utopia—a unified Caliphate, for instance, or the reward of virgins in heaven— underlies the motivation to join, perform, and execute violence on multiple scales. Although we can interpret this as negative, the utopia does function in its imaginative capacities to offer a breakthrough—a view from “nowhere” that serves to “break through” the repetitive ideology,50 in this case a reality of what the jihadis see as an oppressed existence infected by a Western world that is inimical to Islamic society.51 However, a goal of unification at the expense of lives limits this utopia from its capacity to adequately arrest jihadi ideology. In an interview affiliated with the PBS Documentary, Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, Ann Ulanov observes the nature of the myopic utopic vision the jihadist attackers of 9/11 espoused. The attackers were not focused on this life, she observes, but they were gripped by something other than present reality which directed them to a future—an afterlife—an imaginary, the place, that is in Ricoeur a utopic “nowhere,” “no real place,” even as this place is deeply personal.52 According to Ulanov, the bombers’ beliefs prevail under the constraints of fundamentalism and extremism which cultivate ideologies that accentuate the future. Ulanov compounds her argument about the belief in an afterlife with an observation made during her visit to the Alhambra Palace in Grenada. As home for the sultan, this palace architecturally reflects a vision of the afterlife that attests to the conviction that seventy-two virgins await in heaven for those who offer their bodies in sacrifice for their cause to Allah. Her example succinctly echoes Ricoeur’s assertion that “the specific disease of utopia is its perpetual shift from picture to fiction. The utopia ends by giving a picture of the fiction through models.”53 In the case of the Sultan’s

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home, the picture of the afterlife emerges, reflected in the image of the hero sitting by a fountain, in the shape of the key to paradise, as he is surrounded and waited on by different groups of women.54 The struggle of life finds its amelioration in this utopic vision architecturally conveyed in the Alhambra Palace—where, as Ricoeur tells us, time stops. The promised utopia reflected in an ideological image signifies an inertia, a place of no change. Motivated by a promise, in this case virgins— but often for young bombers heroism, money, and therefore pride for their families—killing, with one’s own body, becomes an action through which a crucial element of utopia functions—the element of hope. Hope, the desire for something greater and more meaningful, is a motivating force that can be understood best in terms of affect through its antonym: hopelessness, evidenced by despair; apathy; and the absence of self-worth affectively interpreted as shame and self-contempt. This hope fills the hollow bodies of the Palestinian youth who could not detonate his bomb. To have hope, then, is to have the opposite of humiliation, to instead experience joy, contentment, energy, and self-confidence. Affectively this hope for a better future founded in the afterlife assures that shame be transposed to pride and joy, an agential direction that emerges frequently in jihadi rhetoric. Most profoundly, this assurance emerges in The Last Night Document.55 In the letter, discourses about purity and power embed themselves. The night before the attacks the hijackers perform ablutions, shaving and washing themselves: Purify your soul from all unclean things. Completely forget something called ‘this world’ [or ‘this life’]. . . . Afterwards begins the happy life, where God is satisfied with you, and eternal bliss “in the company of the prophets, the companions, the martyrs and the good people, who are all good company.”56

Then, at the outset of the attack, possible resistance is met by motivation to take revenge; anger thus responds to and instills fear: When the confrontation begins, strike like champions who do not want to go back to this world. Shout, “Allahu Akbar,” because this strikes fear in the hearts of the non-believers. God said: “Strike above the neck, and strike at all of their extremities.” Know that the gardens of paradise are waiting for you in all their beauty, and the women of paradise are waiting, calling out, “Come hither, friend of God.” They have dressed in their most beautiful clothing.57

The ideologies—actualized in scripts related to purification and memory— and utopias that foster the belief in the awaiting paradise are integral to the particular group to which they adhere and destructive to “the non-believers” who presumably do not participate 1) in the culture and 2) in the utopic

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vision. Jihadi rhetoric such as that in the letter functions to reinforce group solidarity through passion and affect which prayers facilitate: the directions are emphatic here and elsewhere in the letter: “Shout, ‘Allahu Akbar,’” in order to strike fear, and to reinforce the otherness of a perceived dangerous enemy. This otherness is compounded in the affiliation of the hijackers as “prophets and martyrs.” The gap between claim—of authority by the author of the letter—and the belief in the legitimacy of that authority encapsulated in the idea that life after murdering thousands and committing suicide will be happier is where jihadi cultural ideology flourishes. And this flourishing leads the imagination to a utopia that both binds and unravels in the words of beautifully clothed women welcoming “champions” to paradise, or home. Belief in this utopic vision of paradise integrates the hijackers and consolidates their mission, but in all other interpretations the vision is destructive. Utopic visions that promise the amelioration of suffering abound in religious ideologies. Such utopias warrant focus when they promulgate affectively motivated praxis that includes eradication of the other, raising the question of the effectiveness of the utopia to critique an ideology. The utopia simulated at the Alhambra and conveyed in the Last Night Document provokes concern because of the reality of the danger it produces. Middle East expert S. Abdallah S. Schleifer exposes this danger in a disturbing synopsis: “When people talk Utopia on Monday, there is a concentration camp waiting down the line on Friday. That’s the price of Utopia. Because the man who thinks he has the capacity to make Utopia for the millions is also ready to sacrifice millions for that vision.”58 Schleifer, a Jewish convert to Islam with a Sufi-orientation, shifts our focus to the embodied aspect of fulfilling the ideology and achieving the utopia: the sacrifice of bodies. The concept of sacrifice for glory—a bodily sacrifice of millions of perpetrators and victims—finds its roots in the relation between claims and beliefs, between which lies “a system of power embodied in an authoritative institution.”59 Ricoeur continues asserting that political ideologies or systems of power draw on the disposition to loyalty, manipulating affects and benefiting from obedience and therefore the “willingness to sacrifice oneself to a cause.”60 An added danger, which reflects the perpetuation of a political body, lies in the social reality that “long after perpetrators have vanished, their ideologies continue to prey on the minds of survivors.”61 Killing in the name of ideologies and utopic visions does not stop at the deaths of the thousands, in this case those who perished on 9/11. Richard Mollica uses an apt metaphor: the ideology that secures jihadi power “preys on” bodies of the survivors— his words echo Ricoeur’s interpretation of evil as an infection that eats away at the human soul.62 This infection begins with the promise of perfection and complete joy for one people at the expense of another regardless of the group or their ideology.

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The Last Night Document interprets perfection in the group as a willingness to pray but also to do these things after purifying the body—making that body perfect. The poignant and almost vulnerable expression of the letter, written as a kind of eulogy ushering these men to their deaths, proceeds according to precise body movements conducted during the last night, the ride in the taxi to the airport, exiting the taxi, and, last, riding in the airplane. The letter addresses the physical elements to which the hijackers should attend: they must shave their hair, wear cologne, take a shower, ensure that their clothing is secure over their genitalia, and perform a final ablution. The final wash purifies them to the extent that they can request forgiveness from the angels. These body rituals that operate within the symbolic logic of an ideology manifest in what is asked of the martyrs to do with their soul—to be pure and obey. The letter implies an understanding that the hijackers may feel persuaded to take another path and not obey; body purification, preparation for death, and iterated prayers equate to insurance that the jihadi movement to kill is executed. The prayers, supplications, and ritual create an affective reverberation, supported by the repetitive nature of the letter and the presumably repetitive nature of the behavior which follows the letter, that acts as a kind of hypnosis, simulating an embodied trance like state. The trance is fueled by anger, righteousness, and a desire to avenge perceived wrongdoings. In Mollica’s words, these perpetrators “believe that they are killing and injuring their enemies because of a just cause, and often justify their violent acts by partial truths and humanitarian dreams of creating a utopia or heaven on earth. This quest for utopia can also be found in documents outlining the perpetrator’s mission.”63 The Last Night Document illustrates the point: “Smile in the face of hardship young man/For you are heading toward eternal paradise.” CONCLUSION As we have seen, Ricoeur argues that motivation and action cannot be separated from an analysis of how ideologies and utopias intertwine. However, contrary to Ricoeur’s thinking, the way that ideology and utopia circulate in jihadi culture suggests the possibility that each functions not to critique each other but to support each other. The Ricoeurean dialectic operates more critically than Ricoeur seems to take into account initially. Ricoeur’s supposition that a utopia can correct ideology can work, when that utopia is oriented toward the transencendentals. In other words, not just any utopia will do. Jihadi culture’s paradise of virgins as reward for killing others as martyrs cannot correct jihadi ideology and the affective scripts that ensure cohesion

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and propagate violence; in this case, the ideology and utopic vision merely reflect each other. The affective stimuli and motivations of jihadi groups, who participate in a lifestyle that often includes extreme violence, emerge from solid and repeated ideological scripts, directing participants to the glorious afterlife after death of self and others. The violence evolves according to a host of affective aggregations that include ameliorating a sense of non-belonging, providing a means of wholeness, where affects play a central role, and offering the promise of joy or hope in the afterlife. Extreme positive affect emerges from what Ricoeur calls in Fallible Man “the consciousness of being already in . . . through that primordial inesse.”64 This inesse is a deep human need to be in [a group] and to belong to that group. Ricoeur continues, “Feeling is more than the identity of existence and reason in the person; it is the very belonging of existence to the being whose thinking is reason.”65 Ensuring belonging and appeasing the need to belong reverberate in the Last Night Document, where prayer and supplication bond the perpetrators of 9/11 to each other, to an ideology supported by prayer, chanting, and body purification, and to a utopic vision. To stay in this mindset, or the affective state of focused interest, they must continually remind themselves of both their otherness and the otherness of their victims—those who do not belong. This message is powerful and haunting. It reverberates in the actions of the 17-year-old Palestinian who could not detonate his bomb when he thought of innocent Israelis who wanted peace. His failure at othering disenabled him from killing. What John Protevi calls “the judgement machine” aligned with the conception of something done under the judgment of God66 faltered. In Protevi’s analysis of the Columbine Killers, he recognizes the ability to maintain “a subjective presence while enacting the bodily intensity necessary for the act of killing.”67 Both the Columbine killers and the 9/11 hijackers lost themselves in a rhetorical, ideological message to kill, to take revenge, to avenge perceived inequities. Evidenced by their willingness to fly jet planes into buildings, the hijackers of 9/11 tolerated affective intensity to achieve mass murder, and they tolerated the affective charges for an extended amount of time. They endured the rush that enabled them to do the unthinkable. I would argue that something aligned with elements of jihadi culture condensed in the hypnotic nature of repetitive prayer in the Last Night Document, along with the extreme bond that cultivates belonging, enabling the terrorists to allow the desire to kill to “reach paradise” preside over all other affective phenomenon, to withstand fear for instance. And their bodies became weapons directed at destroying other bodies. The hijackers’ ideologies as the symbolic form of action that informed their entire lives lead to a gross distortion. In Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, Ulanov speaks with certainty:

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I think the September 11th attacks have introduced something new in the discussion of evil. From the psychological side, there are a whole lot of theories that say that destructiveness comes from privation and deprivation. It isn’t something in itself. It’s from bad parenting or low self-esteem. What religion of any denomination, of any tradition, offers to depth psychology is the recognition that evil is a force. It is not something that is caused just by the blows of fate.68

Ulanov expresses the praxis of the ideological concepts inherent in jihadi culture as evil conceived of as a force, embodied by people and airplanes. Similarly, for Ricoeur, even if symbolic or mythological in its origin, evil constitutes a force conducted through the body.69 Both Ulanov and Ricoeur would argue that viewing evil as contrary to good is not enough; true evil intends to obliterate the good, eradicate virtue, and systematically, as Ricoeur states in Symbolism of Evil, takes possession of man/woman.70 In Living up To Death, Ricoeur addresses this force again, as an absolute Evil, manifested in the context of the prison camps which he experienced first-hand.71 The combined lenses—psychoanalytic, theological, and philosophical—join to view evil as something both powerful and corrosive. Trimble offers a political interpretation of evil, warning—in the critique of ideologies—of the danger of analysis and explanation in an effort to minimize the problem. He speaks emphatically, “Sometimes in our search for a solution, we go into denial about the darker side of the fanatic, the darker side of human nature. Not all may agree, but we cannot ignore the existence of evil. Particularly that form of ideological evil that wants to perfect a person, a border at any cost.”72 In What Makes Us Think, the lens broadens. With neurologist Jean-Pierre Changeux, Ricoeur discusses the opposition to evil, what he considers fraternity and the ethical project of solidarity which refuses denominational and ideological hegemony and, as a project or praxis, would push against jihadi solidarity according to its ends. Ricoeur states that we need to respond to evil with solidarity. He envisions the need of an “imaginary museum,” something that aims at “the aesthetic and beauty of the world”, making something that is “more than man.” Jean-Pierre Changeux and Paul Ricoeur, What Makes Us Think? A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain, trans. M. B. DeBevoise (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 308. This “more than man” for Ricoeur is not the utopic vision embodied in fundamentalism or extremist rhetoric but instead echoes the transcendentals and the commitment to the beautiful and the good. This aspect of “more than man” finally celebrates the beauty of the world, creating through symbolism the power, as Changeux chimes in, “to bring together,” and together they end the text in a kind of toast to “celebrate the beauty of the world.”73 Ricoeur presses us to resist the power in ideologies to assert a more critical, reflexive eye. He propounds a self-reflexive stance that fosters the ability to

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recognize how extremist ideologies of any kind affectively motivate individuals toward specific actions. A first response to jihadi culture might then be recognizing where ideologies and respective utopias lock us each into repetitive patterns of behavior and belief. Where behavior, motivation, and action come to the fore, our bodies need to be taken into account. Thus, our bodies must be involved in the constructive critique of a utopia as well. Further research and reflection might consider how affects can be employed as part of ideology critique, in a positive way. Deeper understanding about how bodies are manipulated will offer, perhaps by way of the imagination, possible avenues for how to respond to threat enacted upon us, but also inform ways of responding to such threats. NOTES 1. David Welch, “Nazi Propaganda,” BBC History, 2011, accessed March 15, 2018, http:​//www​.bbc.​co.uk​/hist​ory/w​orldw​ars/w​wtwo/​nazi_​propa​ganda​_gall​ery_ 0​3.sht​ml. 2. Douglas Walton, Media Argumentation: Dialectic, Persuasion, and Rhetoric (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 113. 3. Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 298. 4. Ibid., 314. 5. I use the plural here to indicate that not one, universal ideology but rather many circulate in jihadi culture. 6. Silvan Tomkins, Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, 4 vols. (1962; reprint, New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2008), 487. 7. Donald Nathanson, prologue to Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, vols. 3 and 4, by Silvan Tomkins (New York: Springer Publishing Company, 2008), xxii; see also Eve Sedgwick and Adam Frank, eds., Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader (Durham: Duke University Press, 1995), 179–88. 8. Silvan Tomkins, Exploring Affect: The Selected Writings of Silvan Tomkins, ed. E. Virginia Demos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 58 and 318–19. 9. Tomkins, Affect, Imagery, Consciousness, 679. 10. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 202. 11. Ibid., 137. 12. Ibid., 210. 13. Jean Calvert, “‘The World is an Undutiful Boy!’: Sayyid Qutb’s American Experience,” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 11, no. 1 (2000): 88. 14. Ibid., 88–89. 15. Ricoeur, Ideology and Utopia, 210. 16. Ibid. 17. Thomas Hegghammer, “Introduction,” Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists, ed. Thomas Heggehmmer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 3.

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18. Ibid., 2–3. 19. Ibid., 5. 20. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 187. 21. Hegghammer, Jihadi Culture, 1. 22. Stig Jarle Hansen, Al-Shabaab in Somalia: The History and Ideology of a Militant Islamist Group, 2005–2012 (London: Oxford University Press, 2014), 6. 23. Jonathan Pieslak, “A Musicological Perspective on Jihadi anashid,” in Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists, ed. Thomas Hegghammer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 74. 24. Paul R. Baines, Nicholas J. O’Shaughnessy, Kevin Moloney, Barry Richards, and Sara Butler, “The Dark Side of Political Marketing: Islamist Propaganda, Reversal Theory and British Muslims,” The European Journal of Marketing 44, nos. 3/4 (2010): 479. 25. Walton, Media Argumentation, 113. 26. Paul Ricoeur, History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley, 2nd ed., Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965), 206. 27. See Matthew Tyler Boden and Howard Berenbaum, “The Bidirectional Relations between Affect and Belief,” Review of General Psychology 14, no. 3 (2010): 227–39. 28. “Characteristics of Jihad,” Combatting Terrorism Center, 2002, accessed March 15, 2018, https​://ct​c.usm​a.edu​/app/​uploa​ds/20​13/10​/Char​acter​istic​s-of-​Jihad​ -Maga​zine-​Issue​-One-​March​-Tran​slati​on.pd​f. 29. “Imam Anwar Al Awlaki’s (RH) Speech about The Islamic State,” Peacels from Allah, December 8, 2015, accessed March 12, 2018, https​://ar​chive​.org/​detai​ls/ Th​eImam​sSpee​chAbo​utDaw​la. 30. “Inspire #17,” Jihadology, August 13, 2017, accessed March 20, 2018, https​:// ji​hadol​ogy.n​et/ca​tegor​y/ins​pire-​magaz​ine/.​ 31. Flora Bagenal, “One Woman’s Tale of Being Radicalized by ‘Utopian’ Promises,” United Press International, February 22, 2017, accessed on February 12, 2018, https​://ww​w.upi​.com/​One-w​omans​-tale​-of-b​eing-​radic​alize​d-by-​utopi​an-pr​omise​ s/284​14877​69772​/. 32. Ricoeur, History and Truth, 180. 33. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 259. 34. Ricoeur, History and Truth, 276–77. 35. “David Trimble: Nobel Lecture,” Nobel Prizes and Laureates, 1998, accessed February 13, 2018, https​://ww​w.nob​elpri​ze.or​g/nob​el_pr​izes/​peace​/laur​eates​/1998​/ trim​ble-l​ectur​e.htm​l. 36. Ibid. 37. “Inside the Mind of Suicide Bombers,” Real Stories, 2017, accessed March 21, 2018, https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=UpY​0zJtu​8Ts. 38. Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, trans. Charles A. Kelbley, 2nd ed. (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986), 52. 39. “The Last Night,” Frontline, 2001, accessed March 12, 2018, https​://ww​w.pbs​ .org/​wgbh/​pages​/fron​tline​/show​s/net​work/​perso​nal/i​nstru​ction​s.htm​l. 40. Ibid.

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41. Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, trans. James Strachey (1933. Reprint, New York: Liveright, 1989), 91–92. 42. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 121. 43. Ibid., 243. 44. Baines et al., “The Dark Side of Political Marketing,” 480. 45. Lawrence Wright, The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 138. 46. “Journey to Extremism in Africa: Drivers, Incentives, and the Tipping point for Recruitment,” United Nations Development Program, 2017, 5, accessed March 1, 2018, http://journey-to-extremism.undp.org. 47. Ibid., 46. 48. Ibid., 78. 49. Ibid., 77. 50. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 182, 309. 51. Sayyid Qutb, Social Justice in Islam, trans. Al-Ádalah al-ijtimaíyah fi l-Islam (Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 1953). 52. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 6. 53. Ibid., 295. 54. “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero: Interview Ann Ulanov,” Frontline, 2002, accessed December 5, 2017, https​://ww​w.pbs​.org/​wgbh/​pages​/fron​tline​/show​s/fai​th/ interviews/ulanov.html. 55. “The Last Night.” 56. Ibid. 57. Ibid. 58. “Portraits in Faith: Abdallah Schleifer, Cairo, Egypt,” Portraits in Faith, accessed January 7, 2018, http:​//por​trait​sinfa​ith.o​rg/ab​dalla​h-sch​leife​r/. 59. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 187. 60. Ibid. 61. Richard F. Mollica, Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006), 82. 62. See Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan, Religious Perspectives (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967). 63. Mollica, Healing Invisible Wounds, 82. 64. Ricoeur, Fallible Man, 103. 65. Ibid. 66. See John Protevi, Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic (Minneapolis: University of Michigan Press, 2009); “‘to be done in with the Judgement of God’ the profound Deleuzian wish,” 161. 67. Ibid., 161. 68. “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero: Interview Ann Ulanov.” 69. Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil, 183. 70. Ibid., 86. 71. Paul Ricoeur, Living up to Death, trans. David Pellauer (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2009), 260–28. 72. “David Trimble: Nobel Lecture.” 73. Ibid., 301–310.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bagenal, Flora. “One Woman’s Tale of Being Radicalized by ‘Utopian’ Promises.” United Press International, February 22, 2017. Accessed February 12, 2018. https​ ://ww​w.upi​.com/​One-w​omans​-tale​-of-b​eing-​radic​alize​d-by-​utopi​an-pr​omise​s/284​ 14877​69772​/. Baines, Paul R., Nicholas J. O’Shaughnessy, Kevin Moloney, Barry Richards, and Sara Butler, “The Dark Side of Political Marketing: Islamist Propaganda, Reversal Theory and British Muslims.” The European Journal of Marketing 44, no. 3/4 (2010): 478–495. Boden, Matthew Tyler, and Howard Berenbaum. “The Bidirectional Relations between Affect and Belief,” Review of General Psychology 14, no. 3 (2010): 227–239. Calvert, Jean. “‘The World is an Undutiful Boy!’: Sayyid Qutb’s American Experience.” Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations 11, no. 1 (2000): 87–103. Changeux, Jean-Pierre, and Paul Ricoeur. What Makes Us Think?: A Neuroscientist and a Philosopher Argue about Ethics, Human Nature, and the Brain. Translated by M. B. DeBevoise. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. “Characteristics of Jihad.” Combatting Terrorism Center, 2002. Accessed March 15, 2018. https​://ct​c.usm​a.edu​/app/​uploa​ds/20​13/10​/Char​acter​istic​s-of-​Jihad​-Maga​ zine-​Issue​-One-​March​-Tran​slati​on.pd​f. “David Trimble: Nobel Lecture.” Nobel Prizes and Laureates, 1998. Accessed February 13, 2018. https​://ww​w.nob​elpri​ze.or​g/nob​el_pr​izes/​peace​/laur​eates​/1998​/ trim​ble-l​ectur​e.htm​l. “Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero: Interview Ann Ulanov.” Frontline, 2002. Accessed December 5, 2017. https​://ww​w.pbs​.org/​wgbh/​pages​/fron​tline​/show​s/fai​th/interviews/ulanov.html. Freud, Sigmund. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Translated by James Strachey. 1933. Reprint, New York: Liveright, 1989. Hansen, Stig Jarle. Al-Shabaab in Somalia: The History and Ideology of a Militant Islamist Group, 2005–2012. London: Oxford University Press, 2014. Hegghammer, Thomas. “Introduction.” In Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists, 1–21. Edited by Thomas Hegghammer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. “Imam Anwar Al Awlaki’s (RH) Speech about The Islamic State.” Peacels from Allah, December 8, 2015. Accessed March 12, 2018. https​://ar​chive​.org/​detai​ls/Th​ eImam​sSpee​chAbo​utDaw​la. “Inside the Mind of Suicide Bombers.” Real Stories, 2017. Accessed March 21, 2018. https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=UpY​0zJtu​8Ts. ​ “Inspire #17.” Jihadology, August 13, 2017. Accessed March 20, 2018. https​://ji​hadol​ ogy.n​et/ca​tegor​y/ins​pire-​magaz​ine/.​ “Journey to Extremism in Africa: Drivers, Incentives, and the Tipping point for Recruitment.” United Nations Development Program, 2017. 1–113. Accessed March 1, 2018. http://journey-to-extremism.undp.org.

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“The Last Night.” Frontline, 2001. Accessed March 12, 2018. https​://ww​w.pbs​.org/​ wgbh/​pages​/fron​tline​/show​s/net​work/​perso​nal/i​nstru​ction​s.htm​l. Mollica, Richard F. Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2006. Pieslak, Jonathan. “A Musicological Perspective on Jihadi anashid.” In Jihadi Culture: The Art and Social Practices of Militant Islamists, 63–81. Edited by Thomas Hegghammer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. “Portraits in Faith: Abdallah Schleifer, Cairo, Egypt.” Portraits in Faith. Accessed January 7, 2018. http:​//por​trait​sinfa​ith.o​rg/ab​dalla​h-sch​leife​r/. Protevi, John. Political Affect: Connecting the Social and the Somatic. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Quṭb, Sayyid. Social Justice in Islam. Translated by Al-Ádalah al-ijtimaíyah fi l-Islam. Oneonta, NY: Islamic Publications International, 1953. Ricoeur, Paul. Fallible Man. Translated by Charles A. Kelbley. 2nd ed. New York: Fordham University Press, 1986. ———. History and Truth. Edited by Charles A. Kelbley. 2nd ed. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1965. ———. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Edited by George H. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. ———. Living up to Death. Translated by David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. ———. Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ———. The Symbolism of Evil. Translated by Emerson Buchanan. Religious Perspectives. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. Sedgwick, Eve, and Adam Frank, eds. Shame and Its Sisters: A Silvan Tomkins Reader. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Tomkins, Silvan. Affect, Imagery, Consciousness. 4 vols. New York: Springer Publishing Company, 1962–2008. ———. Exploring Affect: The Selected Writings of Silvan S Tomkins. Edited by E. Virginia Demos. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Walton, Douglas. Media Argumentation: Dialectic, Persuasion, and Rhetoric. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Welch, David. “Nazi Propaganda.” BBC History, 2011. Accessed March 15, 2018. http:​//www​.bbc.​co.uk​/hist​ory/w​orldw​ars/w​wtwo/​nazi_​propa​ganda​_gall​ery_ 0​3.sht​ml. Wright, Lawrence. The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11. New York: Knopf, 2006.

Part IV

EXPANDING RICOEUR

Chapter 8

Rethinking Migratory Phenomena Between Critique of Ideology and Utopia of Hospitality Annalisa Caputo English Translation by Lisa Adams

PREMISE: MIGRATIONS DONNE À PENSER Introducing the Proceedings of the Forum International Migrations et Errances, organized by the Académie universelle des cultures at UNESCO in Paris on June 7–8, 2000, Paul Ricoeur already understood that “le destin des migrations est intercontinental. C’est sur ce vaste arrière-plan qu’il faut replacer les migrations contemporaines.”1 And today, even more than twenty years ago, we can truly say that our epoch is one of migrations. We cannot understand our own individual, historical and social identity without reference to this phenomenon. “Pris à l’échelle mondiale de la globalisation, les phénomènes migratoires donnent à penser,”2 continues Ricoeur, applying what we might call one of his ‘mots’ (le symbole donne à penser) to the phenomenon of migrations. Well, yes, it’s difficult to think of this world of suffering as a “gift” (donner) for thought and for humanity in general. And yet the challenge is clear: only once we’re able to rethink and reimagine the phenomenon of migration as an opportunity, as a quest for new possibilities, along unexplored pathways toward new riches, only then will all this not be a problem or a threat. We know that Ricoeur never wrote a monograph on these issues, but he has left us numerous essays, article, and interviews—from the mid 1990s till his death—which deal with the themes of migration, placelessness, foreigners, cultural identities, intercultural dialogues, linguistic and ethical hospitality. We’ll use these texts as a framework and as food for thought; and so we shan’t deal with their content in chronological order, but we’ll use them to 163

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articulate our proposal. We’ll address two sections, two passages, which actually indicate two sides of the same question: a renewed critique of ideology in order to deconstruct the contraposition between Self and Other (in the specific case, the contraposition between a member of a nation-state and a foreigner); and a rethinking of a hermeneutical Utopia in terms of linguistic hospitality: sharing what one has and translating what is foreign. Deconstructing the Ideology of Hysterical Identity and Absolute Difference, Paul Ricoeur entitled the paper he gave in 1997 for the LXXII Session des Semaines Sociales de France: L’immigration. Défits et richesses « Étranger moi-même. »3 The foreigner-question is a mirror-question. We cannot address it without working on the foreignness in ourselves. Yet, on the other hand, we cannot rethink it without questioning ourselves on the resemblance to us (on the being-like-us) of the foreigner. In order to do so, Ricoeur astutely notes, we must deconstruct two seemingly opposed ideologies, which actually, paradoxically, coincide: that of absolute identity and that of absolute difference. In Soi-même comme un autre,4 Ricoeur speaks of the need to go beyond both the “exalted cogito” and the “shattered cogito”; hence, we could say, he presses the need to go beyond both the Modern and the Postmodern. In his 1997 lecture, he basically says the same thing in relation to the theme of the foreigner: taking up a position (between the lines) both with respect to those who reject the foreigner in the name of an absolute defense of their own, and with respect to his French colleagues (we might mention, not only Derrida, but also Deleuze and Guattari) who dissolve their “own” in the name of a vague, romantic (not genuinely U-topian) defense of foreignness and “placelessness”: Un romantisme populaire très important s’est développé autour de ce que j’appellerai le culte de l’errance, où l’on se glorifie de parler de nulle part, de venir de nulle part, de n’aller nulle part, d’être perpétuellement ailleurs. C’est l’inverse absolu du sentiment d’appartenance. Cela va jusqu’à la perte de l’identité personnelle de soi-même. Je vois chez beaucoup de mies jeunes collègues, dans ce qu’on appelle le postmodernisme, toute une idéologie de la différence qui me paraît constituer l’exact contraire de l’hystérie identitaire. Eh bien, ce qui doit pouvoir équilibrer le sentiment de la différence, c’est le sentiment de la similitude humaine, de l’autre mon semblable. C’est le fameux “comme” du Lévitique. “Tu aimeras ton prochain comme toi–même.” On risque de perdre le “comme” dans l’idéologie de la différence, Il y a un point extrême où les différences deviennent indifférentes. Il n’y a plus que l’autre de l’autre—indéfiniment.5

Taking up a position far from both the ideology of self-referential belonging (so overladen and risky as to be called “hysteria” more than “ideology”)

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and the ideology of difference as an end in itself, Ricoeur proposes to begin again from the nexus of belonging/foreignness with the awareness not only that there is an inevitable and indelible distance between the self and the other, but that there is also an inalienable “likeness” without which “the differences become indifferent.”6 Indeed, Ricoeur’s objective is not to convince us to say that we are all different, that we are all foreigners, since this would paradoxically negate the problem and hence the solution, but, instead, he aims to help us understand how to articulate the relation between “own” and “foreign.” Thus, Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of “likeness”7 finds its fulfillment and tragic topicality in its specular overturning: the other as a self, in a dialectic key.8 This means, specifically, that I too am a foreigner, a migrant. So, there is no identity that is not touched by foreignness and exile. But, on the contrary, it also means that the migrant/foreigner is not me; nor can I reduce his/her identity to mine, not even when—hypothetically—I do so for humanitarian purposes. And so, there is a double movement to grasp here, one which is articulated in the two parts of this first section. (1) First movement: who is the foreigner/ migrant? In what does his/her alterity consist? (2) Second movement: who am I, as a foreigner/migrant? In what does my foreignness consist? L’ÉTRANGER “CHEZ NOUS” In his essay, La condition d’étranger, published in the review Esprit,9 Ricoeur helps us construct a sort of “phenomenology” of the foreigner/ migrant, which is, in actual fact, a hermeneutical premise: an attempt at terminological/conceptual clarification. Migrant/migrations: the first emphasis is right here. We can no longer speak in simplistic terms of immigration and emigration, since these two concepts are always seen as an oppositional couple, one which gives us the illusion of facing two different problems: the problem of someone who leaves their own country and goes to a foreign country (emigration), and the problem of someone in their own country who sees foreigners arriving (immigration). Yet the issue is more complex precisely because these two aspects—as hinted at above—are not separable, but are two sides of the same coin (self/other; resident/migrant). So, who is the migrant/foreigner? Ricoeur comments: “quelques figures bien réelles. Celles–ci correspondent à trois situations que l’on peut classer dans un ordre de tragique croissant: . . . le visiteur de plein gré; . . . le travailleur étranger qui réside chez nous, plus ou moins contre son gré; . . . enfin le réfugié, demandeur d’asile, qui souhaite le plus souvent en vain d’être recueilli chez nous.”10

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The migrant is not a visitor. The visitor, the tourist, is the “figure pacifique” (“peaceful figure”) of the foreigner. Pacific not only because s/he comes in peace, not only because s/he engages in cultural and social exchanges (thereby multiplying the sense of peace), but also because s/he confirms our being at peace. No tourist visits a nation at war. The tourist is the sign of a harmonious relationship, possible between persons of different traditions and from different countries. The tourist thus enjoys a series of advantages in the foreign territory: s/he can circulate freely without any problems; s/he can share goods and resources, since, as Kant states in Perpetual Peace (1795), and Ricoeur reiterates, there is “un droit de visite, le droit qu’a tout homme de se proposer comme membre de la société, en vertu du droit de commune possession de la surface de la terre sur laquelle, en tant que sphérique, ils ne peuvent se disperser à l’infini; il faut qu’ils se supportent les uns à côté des autres.”11 For Kant, such a right resides in the notion of “universal hospitality.” Interestingly, even though at first glance it might seem like a joke, we must perforce tolerate one another, since the Earth is round and finite, and so, no matter how far we go, we’ll always find someone who is different from us but with whom we have to interact! And since the Earth belongs to all of us (we are all Earthlings) and all of us need a place to stay on it, well then, we must try to stay here in as comfortable a way as possible. Thus, hospitality is: “le droit qu’a l’étranger, à son arrivée dans le territoire d’autrui, de ne pas y être traité en ennemi.”12 Whence comes another inalienable human right: “le droit de circuler librement sur le territoire” (J.G. Fichte).13 Ricoeur notes, however, that this type of foreigner (the visitor) is completely different from that of the foreign worker (the second type of foreigner in our case), who is already basically an immigrant, or better a Gastarbeiter, a guest worker. S/he doesn’t come to us for a short period, to enjoy the beauties of our country, but rather, out of necessity. Of course, there is often a double need that intersects. Just think of the nannies in our homes: they come out of necessity, yet we welcome them with open arms because they are necessary to us too. This second category of foreigner is characterized by work, not by the desire for movement: “Nous ne sommes plus dans le cycle de la liberté de choisir, comme avec les visiteurs de plein gré, mais dans le royaume de la nécessité.”14 Of course, foreign workers also have rights and duties: they participate in our socio-economic system, yet we don’t consider them fellow citizens, especially since often, “ils sont censés retourner chez eux, leur contrat terminé et leur visa expiré.”15 It’s clear, however, that we are describing an ideal situation here, and one which is quite rare. Because we know perfectly well that foreign workers are

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numerous, while only a few have a proper job contract, and the majority are without any work permit. A situation that evidently derives from the need to find more than what their own country can offer. Yet, not having a work permit often makes them seem threatening in our eyes. Today, we are even more suspicious than when Ricoeur wrote the pages we are reading. So: “suspicion, méfiance, xénophobie tendent à imprégner la compréhension que les nationaux ont de leur appartenance au même espace politique . . . : l’exclusion transforme cette différence en rejet.”16 Even more problematic is the third typology of foreigner on our territory, which we could properly call the migrant, and whom Ricoeur calls “the foreigner as refugee.” We are no longer at the level of tourism, nor indeed that of work, nor even that of justice. The problem is not one of legalizing work for foreigners. The level of rights/duties is completely different, and is more closely linked to the “duty to help” in the age-old tradition of political exile. In 1625, Hugo Grotius wrote in De jure belli ac pacis (II, 11, 12) (and Ricoeur cites): “On ne doit pas refuser une demeure fixe à des étrangers qui, chassés de leur patrie, cherchent une retraite, pourvu qu’ils se soumettent au gouvernement établi et qu’ils observent toutes les prescriptions nécessaires pour prévenir les séditions.”17 Until the twentieth century, however, this right/duty was linked to isolated cases, and so was easy to apply. Slowly, however, we find ourselves facing mass migrations, with regard to which the host countries find themselves not only in serious difficulty, but also with enormous responsibilities. Difficulties that are made even more gargantuan, as we well know, by the fact that today it is really difficult to “check” the status of the refugee. Often foreigners arrive without any documents, and all they can count on is their own word, as Ricoeur says. But is it “right” to welcome them on their word alone? Derrida is unequivocal on this point. The right to classic hospitality is conceded to those who are known and recognized. Paradoxically, however, the “absolute” foreigner is neither known nor recognizable and obliges us to consider an absolute hospitality that goes “against” (or at least “beyond”) laws and rights.18 On the other hand, we might ask ourselves, is an (even violent) obliteration of what is “ours” to the advantage of the guest always desirable?19 Ricoeur doesn’t think so. As already mentioned, we are dealing with two equal and opposing ideologies. Indeed, for Ricoeur, the crux of the problem isn’t the conflict between the absolute Law of hospitality and the conditional laws of rights (as it is for Derrida), but what is at stake here are two needs, two concerns, two necessities: on the one hand, the protection and the rights of refugees, on the other, the protection and the rights of citizens. How can we hold them together?

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"CAR VOUS AVEZ ÉTÉ ÉTRANGERS AU PAYS D'ÉGYPTE"20 In order to reformulate the question, we need to go back to the roots, and hence we need to return to the anthropological problem, which is at the foundation (and precedes the juridical problem). Why are relations with foreigners so difficult? Because we are used to thinking (and living) in terms of dualisms: us/them, own/foreign, habitation/migration. These ideological dualisms make it difficult for us to think of migrations, since oppositions tend to increase distances and to become contrapositions. So what usually happens is that we move between two extremes: either we become entrenched in our own position, or we eliminate it. In other words, either we reinforce our own identity, in contraposition to the other (I am here, and you, foreigner, different, are over there), with barriers that are not only geographical and political, but also cultural and social; or else we create the goody-goody myth of we-are-all-equal. We are all citizens, and we are all foreigners, thereby deceiving ourselves that there is no problem; there is no diversity, and we are all One, a single people, a single humanity. But these are two equal and opposing ideologies: hardening the differences, turning them into contrapositions; or else eliminating the differences. The differences, instead, are to be maintained, radicalized and placed in reciprocal tension. On the one hand, the other is not me, not ever. Even if it’s my husband, my wife, my best friend, there is a difference, an unbridgeable gap between the alterities. Thus, even more so, there is an unbridgeable gap between someone who comes from another culture, with another religion, with other traditions and mentalities. The foreigner is other. Yet, on the other hand, as we said at the beginning (and here is the radicalization and duality of the question), the opposite is also true: even I am other to myself, even I am foreign to myself. We believe that we know who we are, that we are self-possessed, that we are the masters or mistresses of our bodies, our relations, our lives. This is not completely true, however. We, too, are foreigners in the land of Egypt, says Ricoeur, secularizing in a symbolic manner the well-known passage from Leviticus (19: 34).21 Within each one of us there is an Egypt; there are Egypts, from which we will never completely free ourselves, because this Egypt is ourselves. Yes, of course, we are also the Promised Land, the possibility of liberation, but never completely, never absolutely. Otherwise we wouldn’t be humans; we’d be gods. Instead, we are foreigners to ourselves. Consider all that Freud taught us about the unconscious (not by chance called das Un–heim–liche, the disquieting foreignness of the non-Home, of not being in charge of our own home).22

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Think of all our fragilities, of all the times we’d like to say something, but we can’t, of all the times we’d like to do something, but stop ourselves.23 Think of what happens when we get sick and feel our body as other, as not our own (in this sense, the experience of a tumour is highly symbolic: a foreign body inside our body, which invades us even to the point of killing us). Think of all the times when we don’t like ourselves, at all; think of the low self-esteem that assails us.24 Think of all the times life passes over us so violently that we no longer recognize ourselves, and we struggle to think that we are the same as we were a few years ago. Of all the times we don’t feel our past as our own, or our future either, and we no longer recognize ourselves in the dreams, the projects, we once had, even yesterday. Think of the fragility of our memories and our recollections, or of all the times we would like to forget something, but we can’t. Of how difficult the work of mourning is. On the other hand, think of all the extreme situations of Alzheimer’s, when we’d like to keep our memories, but instead we no longer even know who we are. We are foreigners to ourselves, even though we don’t want to admit it. We try not to see this part of ourselves. We always try to appear to ourselves, and to others, as strong, successful, self-possessed, in command of our own home. And so we begin to understand why the foreigner frightens us. It’s the same reason why a terminally ill person frightens us, or a completely insane person.25 It’s the same reason why we avoid those who are suffering. Because, like a mirror, they reflect our foreignness; they reflect the image of our fragile and broken selves. They serve as what Ricoeur would call our “infinitely close double.”26 The foreigner reminds me that I too am foreign. And that bothers me. Profoundly. What happens, then, consciously or unconsciously? We try to reinforce our own identity. We hide the wounds so that we don’t have to see them, so that we don’t have to reflect on our fragilities. We deceive ourselves that our vulnerability is propped up from the outside. And one of the most powerful masks (and props) is a sense of belonging. As Ricoeur says at the beginning of his essay, La condition d’étranger (and the reflection is an astute one), “if we don’t know who we are” we try “at least to know where we belong!” So we force ourselves to seek (or construct) an identity of belonging, since we can’t manage to have an identity of substance. The argument is more simple than it might at first appear. Think of our passport or ID card: an excellent external prop! Who am I? Annalisa Caputo, Comune di Bari, Repubblica Italiana. I’m Italian. This is a fact of my person, just like all the other features on my ID: the family I belong to (i.e., my surname), my name, date of birth, and so on. National belonging—nationality—is a fact; and it immediately becomes a certainty: “L’étranger est non seulement

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celui qui n’est pas des nôtres, mais qui n’est pas autorisé à devenir l’un de nous du seul fait qu’il le souhaite ou le demande. Il ne peut l’exiger,” notes Ricoeur. The host country “peut souverainement lui refuser l’admission.”27 The couple—member (of a nation) / foreigner (with respect to that nation)—is an asymmetrical one. I have something that you don’t have, and if ever you are to have it, that’s because I (I / the host country) might decide to grant you citizenship. It is in such a way that nationality, territorial borders, citizenship and belonging become the reassuring fortress of our Self. And, the more vulnerable we feel (as individuals and as nations), the more we shield ourselves. The Europe-Fortress—the World-Fortress of these times—with its walls and its barbed wire is the emblem of just how fragile our western identity is, just how much the other destabilizes us, frightens us, inevitably frightens us. It’s pointless to deny this fear, because it is intrinsic to us; it is us. In L’étrangeté de l’étranger. Dialogue par P. Ricoeur et Daniel, propos recueillis par M. Aranet,28 Ricoeur uses very strong and truthful language: Je comprends aussi qu’une bonne partie de nos concitoyens, qui se sentent eux– mêmes menacés dans leur vie quotidienne, dans leur logement, dans leur travail, ont un taux de tolérance bas. Il faut l’admettre. . . . Ils veulent expulser les étrangers, car ils se sentent eux–mêmes exclus de la discussion publique, c’est eux qui se sentent marginalisés. Alors il faut admettre ça, nous avons parmi nos concitoyens des gens qui pensent qu’ils ont été marginalisés.

So, here is the first element: rejecting the other, because I myself feel rejected. I cannot accept the logic of integration, because first and foremost I myself don’t feel integrated. Then, in the same dialogue, Ricoeur continues: “Je crois que la bienveillance à l’égard de nos concitoyens est de les considérer non pas comme des malades, mais comme ayant un jugement faussé, donc ayant des opinions fausses. . . . Il faut commencer par dire que la xénophobie est naturelle et spontanée. Il faut l’avouer, et la question est de savoir ce qu’on en fait, pas de la nier.”29

Again, in Étranger moi-même:30 “Les passions identitaires sont profondément enracinées en nous. Aucun peuple n’est plus atteint qu’un autre. L’important à cet égard n’est pas de refouler ce sentiment mauvais, mais de le porter à la lumière du langage.” And that is just what we are trying to do: speak it, write it, scrutinize it. We’re all a bit xenophobic, because we all tend inevitably to fear the other, the unknown, as Thomas Hobbes already noted. We all tend to defend ourselves. Why? Because we fear our own mortality. We fear our own fragility. We fear ourselves; we fear the foreigner that inhabits us. “The spectre of the foreigner”31 is in reality what awakens our own inner “spectre.”

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Who are you? Where do you belong? On what basis do you call yourself European, American? On what basis do you call me foreign, other, not belonging to either Europe or America? Are you Italian? Are you sure of the validity of your ID? But why are you Italian? Because you were born in Bari, on that small piece of land? And if you had been born in Syria? Or Nigeria? Would you still be “Annalisa?” What does our identity depend on, defended, as it is, by a mere piece of paper and by territorial borders (as fragile as only a scrap of paper and an invisible boundary can be). My identity is linked to chance, to the happenstance of my birth. Already Pascal noted that there is no reason why I was born here rather than elsewhere, why I am French rather than English, Italian rather than Syrian.32 The spectre of the foreigner is the spectre of the randomness of our existence and our historico-geographical identity. Nationality, Ricoeur astutely notes, is not a biological affiliation, but rather it is an “adoption symbolique.”33 I’m not the daughter of Italy because Italian blood runs in my veins, but because the happenstance of being born in Italy has been transformed into an identity by the Italian State, and this has made me an Italian. Nationality is not a right or a choice. It is a gift. And like all gifts, it must be given. “C’est donc l’idée d’un don révocable.”34 Herein lies the potential foundation for an ethics of hospitality, which is linked to the “remembrance” of once being foreigners ourselves, of still being foreigners, “like” all human beings. A U-topia that begins by not having the U-topian one place of belonging: we are all foreigners on the path toward an identity. Of course, for some, foreignness is more radical. My wounds and my fragilities are light compared with the wounds, losses, trauma and mourning of a foreigner who migrates from a war-torn territory. S/he is even more foreign to her/himself than I am to myself, since I have an official status that collocates me in an essentially peaceful nation. The roots of foreignness bind us, yet we are all different. And this memory can become both a prophesy and a gift: the hospitality of differences. THE U-TOPIA OF HOSPITALITY AS SHARING WHAT IS OURS AND TRANSLATING WHAT IS FOREIGN What is hospitality? Ricoeur comments: L’hospitalité peut se définir comme le partage du “chez–soi,” la mise en commun de l’acte et de l’art d’habiter. J’insiste sur le vocable habiter: c’est la façon d’occuper humainement la surface de la terre. C’est habiter ensemble.35

This passage from Étranger moi-même is very interesting. On the one hand, Ricoeur takes up what Kant had already said: hospitality is the right of the

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foreigner not to be treated like an enemy on his/her arrival in another territory (which is not his/her own). All this must be “reinvented” now, and with much higher stakes, to let us glimpse a different future. Moreover, it must be reinvented on a “human” basis, not just a legal one. Indeed, in order for the notion of hospitality to have meaning “the notion of humanity must have meaning.”36 Can we think of humanity in a truly universal-plural way? Can we rethink the “peace” conceived by Kant in a different, cosmopolitan key? “Peut–on penser une citoyenneté sans frontières? Autrement dit, peut–on sortir du rapport binaire national/étranger?”37 Here, in our view, it is a Utopian rethinking that comes into play, if it’s true for Ricoeur that Utopia is the way in which we radically rethink what is family, consumption, government, religion, and so on. Utopia thus appears as the function of social subversion. In other words, Utopias always imply alternative ways of using power, whether in family, political, economic, or religious life, and thus they call established systems of power into question.38 So it’s necessary to subvert the way in which we understand our relations with foreigners. To look for and imagine alternatives. How? Where? Ricoeur replies by proposing the model of translation. In this final section, we’ll follow above all the article entitled “Cultures, du deuil à la traduction,” published in Le Monde on May 25, 2004,39 a piece which reworks the lecture given a month earlier by Ricoeur at UNESCO. Almost like a valediction, since, as we know, Ricoeur would die the following year. Translation, for Ricouer, is, and can be, the model for rethinking hospitality, because every translation is actually an example of linguistic hospitality: La traduction, c’est la médiation entre la pluralité des cultures et l’unité de l’humanité. En ce sens, je parlerai du miracle de la traduction et de la valeur emblématique des traductions. Je dirai que la traduction constitue la réplique au phénomène irrécusable de la pluralité humaine avec ses aspects de dispersion et de confusion, résumés par le mythe de Babel. Nous sommes “après Babel.” La traduction est la réplique à la dispersion et à la confusion de Babel. 40

We are post-Babel, or rather we are Babel. The multiplicity of our languages is the sign and the root of the multiplicity of our identities, of our cultures: “D’emblée, semble–t–il, l’homme est autre que l’homme; la condition brisée des langues est le signe le plus visible de cette incohésion primitive.”41 There is, nevertheless, a fact in this dissemination, which in Ricoeur’s eyes is so paradoxical as to have the air of a miracle: it is “in spite of everything.” A fact (“c’est ainsi”), as if to say, “that’s how it is!”42 Humans aren’t resigned to not understanding one another, “translation is inscribed in the litany of in spite of everything. In spite of fratricides, we militate for universal fraternity. In spite of the heterogeneity of languages, there are bilinguists, polyglots, interpreters and translators.”43

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In spite of the fact that words aren’t things, that they don’t fully convey the “reality” of experiences (not even with the closest, most beloved person is there perfect transparency), we still speak to one another. Humanity speaks. In spite of the fact that we know no language will ever render perfectly another, we translate. Humanity translates: La traduction . . . constitue un paradigme pour tous les échanges, non seulement de langue à langue, mais aussi de culture à culture. . . . C’est la traduction qui produit non seulement des échanges mais aussi des équivalences: le phénomène étonnant de la traduction, c’est qu’elle transfère le sens d’une langue dans une autre ou d’une culture dans une autre, sans en donner cependant l’identité, mais en offrant seulement l’équivalent. La traduction est ce phénomène d’équivalence sans identité. En cela, elle sert le projet d’une humanité, sans briser la pluralité initiale. C’est là une figure de l’humanité engendrée par la traduction dans la chair même de la pluralité. La présupposition de la traduction est que les langues ne sont pas étrangères les unes aux autres au point d’être radicalement intraduisibles. . . . La traductibilité est un présupposé fondamental de l’échange des cultures.44

It is possible to inhabit the language of the other. A linguistic (cultural, relational) hospitality is possible. And this Utopia of a new ethos, a different way of inhabiting, is possible, for it is based on the premise that trans-lation is trans-ference of meaning, not identity of meaning. Translation is a bridge toward a unity that doesn’t exclude, but indeed implies, plurality. This is the possibility that precedes every relation, including the relation with migrants. But, in order to experience it, we must go through mourning. Thus, we come to the second key word in the article we’re perusing (Cultures, du deuil à la traduction). What is the relation between mourning, translation, and intercultural relations? The German word Trauer indicates suffering or grief linked to a loss. Mourning isn’t only linked to the experience of death, but more in general to the awareness of an unredeemable “not.” Mourning is also the loss of illusions, the clash with reality, the acceptance of everything that doesn’t correspond to our expectations. “Mature” relations necessarily pass through a processing of grieving. Even the closest, most beloved person is never formed according to our dreams or desires. Even the intimacy of love and eros is never an absolute Unity. This is the grief to be processed: mourning the perfect relation, “le deuil de la traduction parfaite.” But this is also the “reality” that will defeat mourning: the reality of our imperfect relations (yet they are still relations), of our imperfect translations (yet they are still translations). While it may be true that “il n’y a pas

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de traduction parfaite,” it is also true that precisely for this reason “on peut retraduire toujours, et la traduction est toujours en marche.”45 Every work is also the history of its translations. The same goes for our interpersonal relations: what are our friendships and our loves if not the sum of the interpretations we give to them over time? The same goes for the Classics: the more “ancient” they are, the more they speak to us. Nor do they cease to be retranslated (from Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic). Imperfection, limitation, far from being obstacles to relations and translations, become commitment and challenge . . . to continue the work: Le travail de deuil ne peut manquer d’affecter nos efforts pour raconter autrement nos histoires de vie, qu’elles soient individuelles ou collectives, et plus particulièrement les événements fondateurs d’une tradition. Car nous avons à faire le deuil du fondamental et de l’absolu de la fondation historique: nous laisser raconter par les autres dans leur propre culture, c’est faire le deuil du caractère absolu de notre propre tradition. . . . Quand on a admis cette part de deuil, on peut se confier à une mémoire apaisée, . . . et à la réinterprétation mutuelle de nos histoires et au travail à jamais inachevé de traduction d’une culture dans une autre.46

Just as, in order to learn a language, we need to “inhabit” it (and preferably also the place where it is spoken), so in order to understand the other we need to “dwell” in their alterity. Moreover, just as, in order to translate a foreign language, we need to try and think in that language, and not confine ourselves to a technical operation à la Google Translate, in order to enter into relation with an alterity, we need to try and see the world (and ourselves) from their perspective. It’s what Ricoeur calls the “exchange of tales”: when you speak to me of me, you narrate me, and you help me see in myself what I can’t see by myself; and vice versa. From mourning to processing. From this work, this action, come maturation and growth. The two foreign languages enrich one another. Hospitality becomes a gift, in recognizing our common foreignness (we are each foreign with respect to the other) and our common hospitality (we are both host and guest, one to the other). The possibility of welcome: between fact and ethics. U-topia. Now let’s shift all this to intercultural relations. On what basis is a frontier a frontier? When, why, and who has decided that here “ends” one State (one culture, one set of traditions), and there another begins. No one, if not history itself, which is never only the history of one State, but is always the history of that nation in relation to the adjacent ones, together with them. If nation-states are not an idem identity but an ipse identity, then no frontier is substantial, and every border is always and only narrated. Hence, it can be narrated differently.

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What is Europe? What is America? What is the West? Of course, they are the tales that “we” (Europeans, Americans, Westerners) tell of them. The borders of our countries coincide with the indefinable borders of our myths, our traditions, and the interpretations of the founding events of our nations. Of course. The paradigm of translation and exchange of narrations does not propose a rejection of one’s own language, a crushing or annihilating of the self in the other. This, too, is an illusion, springing from the fear of dialectics and comparisons. The other isn’t an absolute paradise in which to abandon oneself: C’est précisément de ce gain sans perte qu’il faut faire le deuil jusqu’à l’acceptation de la différence indépassable du propre et de l’étranger. L’universalité recouvrée voudrait supprimer la mémoire de l’étranger et peut– être l’amour de la langue propre, dans la haine du provincialisme de langue maternelle. Pareille universalité effaçant sa propre histoire ferait de tous des étrangers à soi–même, des apatrides du langage, des exilés qui auraient renoncé à la quête de l’asile d’une langue d’accueil. Bref, des nomades errants.47

Ricoeur’s proposal, metaphorically one might say, is U-topian thanks precisely to the hyphen which connects the topos of our own with the non-topos of the other. Neither losing oneself in the infinite “ou” (non-self) of the other’s alterity, nor dissolving the other in the absolute topos of the self. Instead, it’s a matter of recognizing the hyphen, the link that unites us; recognizing that none of us is alone at the center of our own history, since the meaning of my existence is also decided by the others’ narrations of me; by my relations with those I love (and with those I hate), and my willingness to let myself be narrated by others. The center of every personal history is an envelopment, not a point. And this is also true for nation-states as well as institutional and cultural realities. So, Europe is also, inevitably, (whether we like it or not, whether we are aware of it or not) the tale that others—nonEuropeans—tell of us: C’est la façon la plus efficace de raconter autrement: passer par le récit des autres pour nous comprendre nous–mêmes, lire notre histoire avec les yeux d’historiens appartenant à d’autres peuples que le nôtre, voire à d’autres grandes cultures que celles qui ont participé au tissage . . . entre les cultures fondatrices de l’Europe contemporaine, voilà la tâche immense à laquelle doit s’atteler une thérapie de la mémoire européenne. L’échange des mémoires dont nous venons de parler consiste en une véritable migration, et migration croisée: nous apprenons à nous transporter dans les mémoires des autres et à habiter leurs récits; nous accueillons comme des migrants les souvenirs qui nourrissent la conscience historique des hôtes que nous recevons chez nous.

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Thus writes Ricoeur in a wonderful essay published in 1998, “La crise de la conscience historique et l’Europe.”48 It is clearly his proposal and his hope for Europe; however, today—in the era of total migrations—we can say, it is a proposal that is useful for the whole world. The hermeneutics of migration is called upon to become a migrant hermeneutics, authentically migrant. It is called upon to adopt a “crisscrossing migration,” a reciprocal translation, and a mutual hospitality, given not only by the hosts, but also, paradoxically, by the guests. But the real question—which already underpinned the crisis in Europe when Ricoeur was writing, and which underpins our global crisis today—is: are we ready for this crisscrossing, this double exchange, this true hospitality? Are we ready to hear the narration that others (non-Europeans, non-Westerners) tell of us? What is Europe for non-Europeans? What is the West, more generally, for non-western migrants? What tales (even without words, but only with the movements of their bodies) will they send back of this our(?) piece of Earth, our history and culture?49 “Un nouvel ethos naît de la compréhension appliquée à l’intrication les uns dans les autres des récits nouveaux qui structurent et configurent ce croisement entre les mémoires. Il s’agit là d’une véritable tâche, d’un véritable travail, dans lequel on pourrait reconnaître l’Anerkennung de l’idéalisme allemand, à savoir la ‘reconnaissance’ considérée dans sa dimension narrative.”50

Hermeneutics teaches us that history, as a reciprocal recognizing and interweaving of identity and diversity, cannot be narrated in a self-centered manner. Even less so the history of migrations. To continue to narrate this history in a western-centric manner means not grasping its relational significance: “Une conception figée, arrogante, de l’identité culturelle empêche d’apercevoir les corollaires . . . de ce principe, à savoir la possibilité de réviser toute histoire transmise, et celle de faire place à plusieurs histoires portant sur le même passé. ”51 The migrant, the foreigner, forces us to rethink our self–interpretation and retranslate our language. The “original” question, then, is hermeneutical, even before being ethico–political: who are we for the migrants? What is someone fleeing from their own land looking for here? What kind of image of ourselves do they reflect back at us? Where should we begin in order to co–found a truly common history? As long as we believe that we are the ones who can “think” migrations and “manage” them (whether with thought or labor, with mental or political force), we’ll remain caught in the binary pattern of me/other, own/foreign, European/non–European, which is now exploding in our faces. Migrants, (together) foreign and our own, are the new thought that comes toward us. They ask us to think of them. Not in abstract and conceptual terms, but as a “given” (and a gift). A given before which even the most advanced

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theory of bodies demonstrates its bankruptcy. Because, while we are reflecting on “what a body can,” there are bodies that cannot . . . and they are knocking at our doors without even asking us why they cannot. And while we are reflecting on translation, there are bodies that make transitions and drown and are beached and are thankful if they reach ground, and they certainly do not reflect on what they are doing. And while we wonder how to understand (philosophically, culturally, socially, politically) what is happening, there are desperate people who question us about “our” hopes. And so the theme—always old and always new—of hope and of Utopia. CONCLUSION: AN UPSIDE-DOWN UTOPIA? Utopia: that is the real issue, as Ricoeur reminds us in his essay “La crise de la conscience historique et l’Europe”—“qui touche à la question de la migration en tant qu’aspect du changement culturel” (“which touches on the issue of migration as an aspect of cultural change”): L’invention majeure à laquelle nous sommes aujourd’hui invités concerne l’intégration les unes aux autres d’attitudes à l’égard du futur qui sont sans cesse menacées de se dissocier: . . . Je dis que ce problème d’intégration touche au phénomène de la migration, dans la mesure où les migrations réussies du passé ont consisté elles aussi dans une intégration progressive de valeurs hétérogènes, à un espace culturel d’accueil qui s’est lui–même enrichi des invasions qui ont d’abord menacé sa cohésion. J’aimerais ajouter à ces deux composantes . . . la dimension utopique. On peut se méfier des utopies, en raison de leur raideur doctrinale, de leur mépris à l’égard des premières mesures concrètes à prendre en direction de leur réalisation. Mais les peuples ne peuvent pas plus vivre sans utopie que les individus sans rêve.52

Integration is enrichment, in welcoming heterogeneous values and lived experiences different from our own. But integration requires an ability to plan the future together, to integrate our expectations along a single horizon of possibility; it requires a common Utopia, responsible,53 but also bold. Because what is at stake here—we know, even though we might not want to admit it—is the survival of all peoples (together) and not just the “others.” The Utopia is either shared by all or else it doesn’t exist. The dream is either shared by all or else it doesn’t exist. Ricoeur explains this by retrieving once again Kant’s idea in Perpetual Peace, whence his analysis of migrants and the phenomenon of migrations had begun: a space of “intégration des migrations passées, présentes et à venir.”54 A fragile Utopia and a fragile hope, certainly:

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Même si nous prenons au sérieux, comme Kant lui–même, la question: que nous est–il permis d’espérer?, l’espérance que nourrissent les promesses non tenues du passé, conjointement avec les projections utopiques de notre imagination, différera toujours d’une garantie dont nous pourrions nous emparer pour prétendre maîtriser le cours de l’histoire. En tant qu’elle reste un pari dénué de garantie.55

Yet, it seems to us, in conclusion, that we can take a step forward—with Ricoeur, and even beyond Ricoeur—in our quest. For, while this challenge, this hope, this Utopia must be integrated with truly “common” and intersecting migrations, the problem remains: where can, and where must, we start in order to rethink it “together?” As we hinted earlier, perhaps today we are called upon to overturn the logic of Utopia. Perhaps we westerners aren’t called upon to reinvent it and rethink it. Perhaps we’re called upon to welcome it . . . from the Other. And so, this is our duty (perhaps the only one that we can still recognize and assume, because “only for the sake of the hopeless are we given hope”):56 to give voice, to give voice to the voiceless, to say that there’s an “other” than the western logos who must be heard, to say that migrants are a gift to thought (donne à penser) and not proof of the impotence of thought. To call in doubt our self–centrality, which is, at heart, the real reason for the crises of imagination, hope, and Utopia that we are now experiencing in the West. The migrants certainly don’t experience it, however, either in their desperate hope, or in their Utopian quest for something new. And herein lies the paradox: for them, we are the hope and the Utopian dream come true. Are we really the unwitting answer? Or is the answer still on its way, since the real question still needs to be formulated? How should we listen to it? How should we let it resonate? Where? In what meeting places? With what words? In this sense, Derrida’s provocation still rings true: “Before being a question to be dealt with, before designating a concept, a theme, a problem, a program, the question of the foreigner is a question of the foreigner, addressed to the foreigner. As though the foreigner were first of all the one who puts the first question.”57 NOTES 1. “The fate of migrations is intercontinental. It is against this vast backdrop that contemporary migrations must be placed.” Paul Ricoeur, “Migrations et errances. Introduction,” in Migrations et errances, ed. F. Barret–Ducrocq (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2000), 15. [All translations in English, unless stated otherwise, are by Lisa Adams] 2. “Taken on the worldwide level of globalisation, migratory phenomena give rise to reflection.”

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3. Paul Ricoeur, “Étranger moi-même,” a paper he gave in 1997 for the LXXII Session des Semaines Sociales de France: L’immigration. Défits et richesses. The lecture was given in 1997 but published in 1998 in L’immigration. Défits et richesses (Paris: Bayard édition Centurion, 1998), 93–110 (the text is also onlin​e: htt​p://w​ ww.ss​f-fr.​org/o​ffres​/file​_inli​ne_sr​c/56/​56_P_​15501​_1.pd​f; we take the quotations from here). Actually, the lecture takes up a conference already held by Ricoeur in 1994 at Chatenay-Malabry and published in the dossier Identités of the review Réseaux des Parvis, 46 (1994). 4. Paul Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre (Paris: Seuil, 1990), trans. K. Blamey, Oneself as Another (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 5. “A widespread form of popular romanticism has developed around what I would call the cult of rootlessness, wherein one boasts of speaking without an accent, of coming from nowhere, of going nowhere, of being forever elsewhere. It is the absolute inversion of the sense of belonging, to the point that one even loses one’s sense of personal identity. I see it in many of my younger colleagues, in what is now called post–modernity; the idea of an ideology of difference that seems to me to be the exact opposite of identity hysteria. Well then, to counterbalance the sense of difference, there must be the sense of likeness among humans; with the other being like me: the famous ‘as’ in Leviticus: ‘thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’ One risks losing that ‘as’ in the ideology of difference. There is an extreme point at which differences become indifferent. There is only the other of the other of the other . . . ad infinitum.” Ricoeur, Étranger moi-même, 7. 6. Ibid. Ricoeur’s distance from what he calls (French) postmodernism is clear. 7. Even before appearing in the title of Ricoeur’s well-known work published in 1990 (Soi-même comme un autre), that comme (“like”) had already been at the center of Ricoeur’s attention. It’s sufficient to recall the linguistic devices of metaphor and simile, which can bring together different orders of discourse and meaning with that one word. 8. On the theme of Ricoeurian dialectic, may I refer the reader to my Io e tu. Una dialettica fragile e spezzata. Percorsi con P. Ricoeur (Bari: Stilo, 2009). 9. Paul Ricoeur, “La condition d’étranger,” published in the review Esprit (mars–avril 2006): 264–275. It is the final version of a text redacted by Ricoeur when he participated in the work of the Commission Hessel sur les étrangers, part of which was published with the title “Ouverture. La condition d’étranger,” in Accueillir l’étranger?, supplément au bulletin Information–et Evangélisation, Eglise en débat 2 (mai 1996): 1–14. 10. “We are referring to real types, which correspond to three situations of an increasingly tragic order: . . . the voluntary visitor; . . . the foreign worker who resides in our country, more or less against his/her will; . . . and finally the refugee, the asylum seeker, who hopes, often in vain, to be welcome in our country.” Paul Ricoeur, “La condition d’étranger,” in Esprit 323 (mars–avril 2006): 268–269. 11. “A right to visit, the right that every human has to become a member of a society in virtue of the right of shared possession of the Earth’s surface, on which, as a sphere, humans cannot disperse infinitely, but they must tolerate being near one another.” Ibid.

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12. “The foreigner’s right not to be treated like an enemy on his/her arrival in someone else’s territory.” Ibid. 13. “The right to circulate freely on the face of the Earth” (J.G. Fichte). Ricoeur quotes the passage in note 6 of the essay we’re examining: “Fichte devait développer ce thème dans Du Droit des gens et du Droit cosmopolite, deuxième annexe au Droit naturel, § 22.” 14. “We are no longer in the cycle of free choice, as in the case of voluntary visitors, but in the realm of necessity.” Ibid., 271. 15. “They are supposed to go home, once their contract terminates and their visa expires.” Ibid. 16. “Suspicion, mistrust, xenophobia tend to permeate the nationals’ understanding of their belonging to the same political space . . . exclusion transforms this difference into rejection.” Ibid. 17. “One mustn’t refuse a fixed abode to foreigners who have been exiled from their homeland and who now seek refuge, as long as they obey the established government and observe all the necessary rules and regulations in order to prevent insurrections.” Ibid., 272. 18. See J. Derrida, Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to respond, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000). 19. This seems to be Derrida’s proposal, clearly to be taken with a pinch of salt for its provocative nature. Think of the paradoxical Laws of Hospitality in the novel of the same name by Pierre Klossowski, in which Octave offers to the (awaited and desired) guest his bed . . . and also his wife; think of the reference to the story of Lot, who prefers to give his daughters to the rapists of Sodom rather than give them his guests; and the even more horrifying story in Judges (19: 23–26, quoted by Derrida in the closing pages), in which the master of the house offers his guest’s concubine, who will be raped and killed, to the thugs outside; then the man cuts her into twelve pieces and sends them to every part of Israel in memory of the terrible deed committed. But what is the actual terrible deed, we might ask ourselves: that of the rapists or that of the man who relinquishes his “own” to the violence of others in the name of a generic hospitality? 20. “For you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (KJV). 21. Ricoeur, Étranger moi-même, http:​//www​.ssf-​fr.or​g/off​res/f​i le_i​nline​_src/​ 56/56​_P_15​501_1​.pdf,​ 1. 22. In this section we’ll take up, in a concise and personal manner, the different forms of “foreignness” that inhabit the self, presented by Ricoeur in the essay “Multiple étrangeté,” in Fremdheit und Vertrautheit. Hermeneutik im europäischen Kontest, ed. H. J. Adriaanse—R. Enkat eds. (Leuven: Peeters, 2000), 11–23. The text is the result of the lecture given by Ricoeur at the international conference on this theme held at Halle from September 21 to September 24, 1994. Moreover, Freud’s centrality to Ricoeur’s intellectual development is well known. 23. It’s the theme of the relation between capability and incapability, present throughout the last phase of Ricoeur’s philosophy. May I refer the reader to my essay, “Paul Ricoeur, Martha Nussbaum, and the ‘Incapability Approach,’” in Paul Ricoeur in the Age of Hermeneutical Reason, ed. R. W. H. Savage (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 49–67.

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24. We know that, for Ricoeur, self-esteem is the first layer of the person, and is the basis for every form of care and relationship (see Soi-même comme un autre). 25. On this topic, we refer the reader once again to our “Paul Ricoeur, Martha Nussbaum, and the ‘Incapability Approach.’” 26. Paul Ricoeur, Reflection on the Just, trans. D. Pellauer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 195. The expression is used by Ricoeur to indicate persons with disabilities; but it seems quite easy to apply it to all persons who remind us of our fragility and foreignness. 27. “Not only is the foreigner not one of us, but s/he is someone who is not even authorised to become one of us simply because s/he wishes or requests it. They cannot demand it,” notes Ricoeur. The host country “can, with sovereign rights, refuse them admission.” Ricoeur, “La condition d’étranger,” 266. 28. “I can understand that a good many of our citizens, who themselves feel threatened in their daily lives, in their homes and their jobs, have a low level of tolerance. It has to be admitted . . . . They want to expel the foreigners, because they themselves feel excluded from the public discussion, they themselves feel marginalised. So, that has to be admitted: we have among our citizens persons who feel marginalised.” In Le Nouvel Observateur (1998, hors–serie), 8–13, http:​//lir​ephil​osoph​er.ca​nalbl​og.co​ m/arc​hives​/2016​/12/2​8/347​38875​.html​. 29. “I believe that we must show benevolence toward our citizens, not considering them as psychotic, but rather as having a misguided judgement, and so, as having false opinions. . . . We must begin by saying that xenophobia is natural and spontaneous. We must confess it. So now the problem becomes one of knowing what to do with it, rather than denying it.” Ibid. 30. “The feelings of identity are profoundly rooted in us. No group of people is more susceptible than any other. What’s important here isn’t to repress this negative sentiment, but to bring it into the light of language.” Ricoeur, Étranger moi-même, http:​//www​.ssf-​fr.or​g/off​res/f​i le_i​nline​_src/​56/56​_P_15​501_1​.pdf,​ 5. 31. Ibid. 32. We continue to follow some of the intuitions in Étranger moi-même. 33. Ibid., 6. 34. “And so [there is] the idea of a gift that can be taken back.” Ibid. 35. “Hospitality can be defined as sharing one’s home, as having in common the act and the art of inhabiting. I insist on the word ‘inhabiting’: it means the way of occupying the Earth’s surface humanly. It means living together.” Ibid., 7. 36. Ibid., 8. 37. “Can we think of a citizenship without borders? In other words, can we escape the binary relation national/foreigner?” Ibid. 38. Paul Ricoeur, “Ideology and Utopia,” in From Text to Action, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (London/New York: Continuum, 2008), 312. 39. Paul Ricoeur, “Cultures, du deuil à la traduction,” (“Cultures, Mourning the Perfect Translation”), Le Monde on May 25, 2004. The article is a revisitation of the lecture given at the Entretiens du XXI siècle on April 28, 2004 at UNESCO. See http:​ //pal​impse​stes.​fr/mo​rale/​livre​2/dia​lecti​que/c​rises​/rico​eur_c​ultur​e.htm​l. The​theme of translation clearly emerges for the first time in 1990, as a reflection within hermeneutical practices of interpretation and transference of meaning.

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See Paul Ricoeur “Rhétorique, poétique, herméneutique,” in Lectures 2. La contrée des philosophes (Paris: Points, “Essais,” 1999), 481–495. But it is undoubtedly the process of the constitution of Europe that prompts Ricoeur to take up the theme from an intercultural perspective. On this topic, see the essay (to which we’ll return): Paul Ricoeur, “Quel éthos nouveau pour l’Europe?,” in Imaginer l’Europe. Le marché intérieur européen, tâche culturelle et économique, ed. P. Koslowski (Paris: Cerf, 1992), 107–116. Here, for the first time, the expression “linguistic hospitality” appears. On this essay, see Richard Kearney, “Vers une herméneutique de la traduction,” in Paul Ricoeur. De l’homme faillible à l’homme capable, ed. G. Fiasse (Paris: PUF, 2008), 173–178. May I also draw the reader’s attention to the essay published in 1996, Paul Ricoeur, “L’universel et l’historique,” in Le Juste 2 (Paris: Esprit, 2001), 267–185. Last but not least, see the essays collected in Sur la traduction (Paris: Bayard, 2004). The first scholar to note the centrality of this theme was Domenico Jervolino. Among his many works, we can cite Domenico Iervolino, Per una filosofia della traduzione (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2008). 40. “Translation is the mediation between the plurality of cultures and the unity of humanity. It’s in this sense that I’ll speak of the miracle of translation and the emblematic value of translations. I’ll say that translation is the reply to the undeniable phenomenon of human plurality, with its dispersion and confusion, epitomised in the myth of Babel. We are ‘post Babel.’ Translation is the reply to the dispersion and confusion of Babel.” Ibid. 41. “Since the beginning [of time] man has always been ‘other’ with regard to himself; the fragmented condition of languages is the most visible sign of such primitive inchoateness.” Paul Ricoeur, “Civilisation universelle et cultures nationales,” in Historie et vérité (Paris: Seuil, 1964), 274–288. Michel Hénaff focuses on this text and on this quotation in particular: “La condition brisée des langues: diversité humaine, altérité et traduction,” Esprit 3 (mars/avril 2006) : 64–88. See also Jean–Luc Amalric, “L’expérience brisée et l’attestation dans l’herméneutique critique de Ricoeur,” in Expérience et Herméneutique (Paris: Le Cercle Herméneutique Editeur, 2006). 42. Ricoeur, Sur la traduction, 58. 43. Ibid. 44. “Translation . . . constitutes a paradigm for all [kinds of] exchange, not only from language to language, but also from culture to culture . . . Translation produces not only exchanges, but also equivalences: the astonishing fact about translation is that it transfers meaning from one language to another, or from one culture to another, without conferring identity, but offering only equivalence. Translation is therefore the phenomenon of equivalence without identity. In this way it serves the project of humanity without shattering its initial plurality: an image of humanity engendered by translation in the flesh itself of plurality. The presupposition of translation is that languages are not so foreign to each other as to be radically untranslatable . . . Translatability is a basic presupposition of cultural exchange.” Ricœur, Cultures, du deuil à la traduction, Le Monde, 25.05.04, http:​//pal​impse​stes.​fr/mo​rale/​livre​2/dia​lecti​que/ c​rises​/rico​eur_c​ultur​e.htm​l. 45. “There is no [such thing as] the perfect translation . . . one can always translate afresh; indeed, translation is an ongoing process.” Ibid.

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46. “The work of mourning always affects our efforts to narrate differently our life stories, whether individual or collective, and especially the founding events of a tradition. For we must mourn the fundamental and the absolute of historical foundation: letting ourselves be narrated by others, in their culture, means mourning the absolute character of our traditions. Once this aspect of mourning has been recognised, we can confide in a peaceful memory, in the mutual reinterpretation of our histories, and in the never–ending work of translation from one culture to another.” Ibid. 47. “It’s precisely such a gain without loss that must be mourned, until the insuperable difference between ‘own’ and foreign comes to be accepted. The regained universality would seek to suppress the memory of the foreigner and perhaps even the love of one’s own language, detesting the provincialism of one’s own mother tongue. Such a universality, in deleting one’s own history, would make everyone foreigners to themselves, bereft and homeless of a language, exiles who must give up the quest for the asylum of a welcoming language. In short, wandering nomads.” Ricoeur, Sur la traduction, 18–19. 48. “It’s the most efficient way of narrating differently: through the tales of others in order to understand ourselves; reading our history with the eyes of historians who belong to peoples other than our own, indeed, to great cultures other than those that participated in interweaving . . . the founding cultures of contemporary Europe. Here is the immense task to which a therapy of European memory must apply itself. The exchange of memories of which we are speaking consists in a veritable migration, a criss–crossing migration: we learn to transport ourselves in to the memories of others and to inhabit their tales; we welcome as migrants the recollections which nourish the historical consciousness of the guests we welcome in our home country.” Paul Ricoeur, “La crise de la conscience historique et l’Europe,” in Ética e o Futuro da Democracia (Lisboa: Ediçôes Colibri, 1998), 29–35​, (htt​p://w​ww.fo​ndsri​coeur​ .fr/u​pload​s/med​ias/a​rticl​es_pr​/la-c​rise-​de-la​-cons​cienc​e-his​toriq​ue-et​-l-eu​rope.​pdf).​ On the theme of the crisis of Europe, may I refer the reader to my own La malinconia epocale. Per un ripensamento ‘difficile,’ in “Archivio di filosofia,” 81, nos. 1–2 (2013): 303–311. 49. On this issue, see Francesca Brezzi, “Verso una cittadinanza compiuta: identità europea e differenze,” in Comunicazione filosofica, 31 (2013): 6–15. While, for a careful reconstruction of the link between the theme of translation and the theme of the past, see Paul Marinescu, “Traduire le passé. Enjeux et défis d’une opération historiographique,” in Études Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies 6, no. 1 (2015): 57–72. 50. “A new ethos arising from a comprehension applied to the interweaving of the new tales that structure and configure this criss–crossing of memories. It’s a veritable task . . . in which we can recognise the Anerkennung of German Idealism, and can know such ‘recognition’ in its narrative dimension.” Paul Ricoeur, “Quel éthos nouveau pour l’Europe?,” 111. 51. “A rigid, arrogant conception of cultural identity prevents us from perceiving the corollaries . . . of this principle, from knowing the possibility of revising all transmitted history in order to make room for more histories of the same past.” Ibid. 52. “The greatest invention that we are invited to consider today concerns the integration of the diverse attitudes toward the future, which constantly risk falling

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apart . . . I say the problem of integration touches the phenomenon of migration to the extent that successful migrations in the past also consisted in a progressive integration of heterogeneous values within a cultural space of welcome, which was itself enriched by the invasions that at first threatened its cohesion. I would like to add to these two components . . . the Utopian dimension. One can distrust Utopias because of their doctrinal rigidity, their disdain for the first concrete measures needed for their realization. But populations can no longer live without Utopias, any more than individuals can live without dreams.” Ricoeur, “La crise de la conscience historique et l’Europe,” http:​//www​.fond​srico​eur.f​r/upl​oads/​media​s/art​icles​_pr/l​a-cri​se-de​-la-c​ onsci​ence-​histo​rique​-et-l​-euro​pe.pd​f. 53. Ricoeur adds, “L’important est que nos utopies soient des utopies responsables, qui tiennent compte du faisable autant que du souhaitable, qui composent non seulement avec les résistances regrettables du réel, mais avec les voies praticables tenues ouvertes par l’expérience historique. C’st le lieu de rappeler avec Max Weber que la morale de conviction ne doit pas éclipser la morale de responsabilité. Intégrer une morale à l’autre reste une grande tâche, peut–être la plus grande utopie” (ibid.). On this topic, see Bernard P. Dauenhauer, “Ricoeur’s Model of Translation and Responsible Political Practice,” in Gadamer and Ricoeur: Critical Horizons for Contemporary Hermeneutics, ed. Francis J. Mootz III and George H. Taylor (London/ New York: Continuum, 2011), 181–202. 54. “integration of past, present and future migrations.” 55. “Even if we take the question seriously, like Kant himself: what are we allowed to hope? The hope that is kept alive by the broken promises of the past, together with the Utopian projections of our imagination, will always differ from a guarantee to which we may attempt to cling in order to claim mastery over the course of history. As such, it [hope] remains a wager without any guarantees.” Ibid. 56. “Nur um der Hoffnungslosen willen ist uns die Hoffnung gegeben.” Walter Benjamin, Goethes Wahlverwandtschaften, Gesammelte Schriften I.1 (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1991), 201. On this issue see Annalisa Caputo, “With Masts Sung Earthwards / the Sky–Wrecks Drive. And You are This Song,” in Logoi.ph (Thinking Migrations), 5 (2016): 1–7. 57. Derrida, Of Hospitality. Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond, 3 [my emphasis].

BIBLIOGRAPHY Amalric, Jean–Luc. “L’expérience brisée et l’attestation dans l’herméneutique critique de Ricoeur.” In Expérience et Herméneutique. Paris: Le Cercle Herméneutique Editeur, p. 1–13. 2006. Brezzi, Francesca. “Verso una cittadinanza compiuta: identità europea e differenze.” Comunicazione filosofica 31 (2013): 6–15. Caputo, Annalisa. “La malinconia epocale. Per un ripensamento ‘difficile.’” Archivio di filosofia 81, nos. 1–2 (2013): 303–311.

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———. “Paul Ricoeur, Martha Nussbaum, and the ‘Incapability Approach.’” In Paul Ricoeur in the Age of Hermeneutical Reason, edited by Roger W. H. Savage, 49–67. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. ———. “With Masts Sung Earthwards / the Sky–Wrecks Drive. And You are This Song.” Logoi.ph 5 (2016): 1–7. ———. Io e tu. Una dialettica fragile e spezzata. Percorsi con P. Ricoeur. Bari: Stilo, 2009. Dauenhauer, Bernard. “Ricoeur’s Model of Translation and Responsible Political Practice.” In Gadamer and Ricoeur: Critical Horizons for Contemporary Hermeneutics, edited by Francis J. Mootz III and George H. Taylor, 181–202. London and New York: Continuum, 2011. Derrida, Jacques. Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond. Translated by Rachel Bowlby. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000. Hénaff, Michel. “La condition brisée des langues: diversité humaine, altérité et traduction.” Esprit 3 (mars/avril 2006): 64–88. Iervolino, Domenico. Per una filosofia della traduzione. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2008. Kearney, Richard. “Vers une herméneutique de la traduction.” In Paul Ricoeur. De l’homme faillible à l’homme capable, edited by G. Fiasse, 173–178. Paris: PUF, 2008. Marinescu, Paul. “Traduire le passé. Enjeux et défis d’une opération historiographique.” Études Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies 6, no. 1 (2015): 57–72. Ricoeur, Paul. “Civilisation universelle et cultures nationales.” In Historie et vérité, 274–288. Paris: Seuil, 1964. ———. “Cultures, du deuil à la traduction.” Le Monde (May 25, 2004): p. 19. ———. “Étranger moi-même.” In L’immigration. Défis et richesses, edited by Bayard Editions, 93–110. Paris: Bayard édition Centurion, 1998. ———. “Ideology and Utopia.” In From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, translated by Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson, 308–24. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991. ———. “L’étrangeté de l’étranger. Dialogue par P. Ricoeur et Daniel, propos recueillis par M. Aranet.” In Le Nouvel Observateur (1998, hors–serie): 8–13. ———. “L’universel et l’historique.” In Le Juste 2, 267–185. Paris: Esprit, 2001. ———. “La condition d’étranger.” Esprit (mars–avril 2006): 264–275. ———. “La crise de la conscience historique et l’Europe.” In Ética e o Futuro da Democracia, edited by João Lopes Alves, 29–35. Lisboa: Ediçôes Colibri, 1998. ———. “Migrations et errances. Introduction.” In Migrations et errances, edited by F. Barret–Ducrocq, 15–16. Paris: Bernard Grasset, 2000. ———. “Multiple étrangeté.” In Fremdheit und Vertrautheit. Hermeneutik im europäischen Kontest, edited by H. J. Adriaanse— and R. Enkat, 11–23. Leuven: Peeters, 2000. ———. Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.

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———. “Quel éthos nouveau pour l’Europe?” In Imaginer l’Europe. Le marché intérieur européen, tâche culturelle et économique, edited by P. Koslowski, 107–116. Paris: Cerf, 1992. ———. Reflections on the Just. Translated by David Pellauer. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2007. ———. “Rhétorique, poétique, herméneutique.” In Lectures 2. La contrée des philosophes, 481–495. Paris: Points, “Essais,” 1999. ———. Sur la traduction. Paris: Bayard, 2004.

Chapter 9

Real Utopian Politics Greg S. Johnson

In recent years, the realist politics associated with the work of Raymond Geuss has garnered attention. His influential book, Real Politics and Philosophy, positions itself as an alternative to dominant forms of political philosophy associated in general with certain forms of political liberalism, and in particular those influenced by John Rawls. While proponents claim that realist politics offers a new set of coordinates by which political philosophy can be more faithful to lived experience, Geuss and other realists have nevertheless received their share of criticism for being long on the descriptive and short on the normative. One version of this criticism is familiar. This is the notion that realist and utopian politics are irreconcilable. David Estlund, one of the more recent vocal critics, claims that realists suffer from “utopophobia,” which causes it to be purely pessimistic, and ultimately ends in “hopeless realism.” I want to challenge this view and argue that one can be a utopian and still embrace the new realist politics. To accomplish this, I not only engage Geuss to show how criticisms of him are misguided, but I turn to the work of Paul Ricoeur to develop my understanding of real utopian politics. My aim is to offer a realist understanding of utopian thought. While realists share in the criticism of certain forms of political liberalism in general, and Rawlsian liberalism in particular, not all of them claim to be utopian. In fact, the opposite is more often true. Most recent realists explicitly reject the label “utopian,” and in doing so demonstrate two things. First, critics of realism are not entirely wrong in their assessment that to be a realist is not to be a utopian. Second, there is a significant difference between Geuss’s realism and many of those working in his wake. Accordingly, a fuller understanding of the utopian is needed, and one I contend that should be embraced by other realists so that 187

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the claim to be a realist is not to be a utopian does not apply to more recent forms of realist politics. To this, I now turn. THE RETURN OF REALISM The motivation for developing the connection between the utopian and realism is twofold. First, in a now famous essay, William Galston challenges realists to consider the place of the utopian.1 Second, as I note above, Geuss acknowledges the importance of the utopian for his own project, and has offered some initial thoughts on what this might entail.2 Let me therefore start with Galston.3 In “Realism in Political Theory” Galston begins his schematic discussion with the introduction “Realism as an Alternate to Ideal Theory,” and notes the following.4 First, historically there is a precarious relationship between the utopian and realism. Because of this, newer forms of realism should attend to the question of the utopian, but Galston remains doubtful that such a project is viable. His suspicion is apparent because, second, he believes that the utopian and realism fundamentally oppose one another, which is to say to be one is not to be the other because realists embrace skepticism and are oriented “toward fear of the worst case rather than hope for the best.”5 Accordingly, neo-realists are no different than past ones because both are too busy with the present conditions to be concerned with utopian flights of fancy and “principles cannot serve as standards for political life unless their implementation is feasible in the world as we know it” (395). In short, a realist, according to Galston, believes that despite our best intentions we just cannot achieve certain things because permanent realities affect both the application of principles to circumstances and also their content, “for the simple reason that taking an unattainable standard as the polestar is likely to produce, at best the frustration of political aims, at worst, destructive distortions of politics” (395). His conclusion brings back the force of the question whether or not one can be a realist and utopian. What emerges in Galston’s analysis is whether his understanding of realism, as well as the utopian, is the only view of these ideas. To be clear, if realism is the opposite of utopian where the latter means deluded, otherworldly thinking, then we might be better off adopting Galston’s version of realism over the utopian. If, however, realism is not a priori the rejection of the utopian itself, but rather the rejection of a particular understanding of the utopian, then the utopian can play an important role in realist politics. This is, at least, my claim and it depends on how we understand not only realism but also especially the utopian. Before I discuss approaches eligible for retaining the utopian in realist politics, I want to

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respond to Galston’s claims about the nature of the utopian and how he views it in realist politics. After setting up a rigid distinction between the realist and the utopian, Galston concludes the essay by stating that realists “do not ultimately disagree about the nature of misguided or irrelevant utopian thought,” but rather “the dispute comes down to competing ways of distinguishing between what is possible and what isn’t” (409). Galston is incorrect. It certainly might be the case that we agree on whether there is some place for deriving the ought of the utopian from the is of realism, but it is not the case that this kind of thinking would or should always be accepted as utopian. Realists are no different; in fact the opposite is the case. The tendency even among new realists is to embrace a kind of thinking that is characterized as critical, transformative, regulative, and so forth, yet that which is intentionally not utopian. Consider the recent essay “The New Realism: From Modus Vivendi to Justice” by Bonnie Honig and Marc Stears (2011) in the book Political Philosophy versus History? Contextualism and Real Politics in Contemporary Political Thought.6 While guardedly sympathetic to realists like Geuss, Williams, and James Tully, Honig and Stears, like Galston, believe the utopian is unsuited for realism.7 Though we do not get an extended discussion of what constitutes the utopian, we do get a clear sense that the utopian is something to be rejected. With regards to Williams and Tully we are told that their “political ideals are powerful and welcome elements in political life, not per se part of a threatening or foolishly unrealistic ‘idealism’ or utopianism in politics.”8 Careful to steer clear of the label “utopian,” Honig and Stears offer an alternative realism described as “agonistic” and one that maintains the “spirit of optimism, of aspiration and of justice,” and a view that takes nothing for granted, not even what it means to speak of “the real” in realism.9 My interest here is not to assess their version of realism, one I happen to agree with in large part, but instead to press the point that in both Anglo-American and Continental moral and political thought there is a conscious effort to demarcate one’s thinking as anything but utopian because it opposes the actual conditions of lived existence.10 To come back to Galston, this is not just about the nature of misguided utopian thinking. This is a dispute, instead, about both the nature and the proper place of the utopian in political life. If we take seriously Galston’s introductory remark that to embrace realism is not to embrace the utopian, then it is contradictory to say that realists and others “do not ultimately disagree about the nature of misguided or irrelevant utopian thought.” They do disagree about its fundamental place in political philosophy, which is why at least historically one cannot be a realist and a utopian and why proponents of realism make it a point to distance themselves from the utopian.11 If it were

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simply a matter of saying that we all embrace the utopian, and the difference is a matter of either misunderstanding of its relationship to our lives, or working out the misunderstandings, then this would not adequately explain why there is a concerted effort to distinguish one as a realist or one as a utopian. Remember, for Galston to be one is not to be the other, and I think he misses the mark in the latter discussion but identifies the problem exactly right in the introductory remarks. My initial question, then, can be stated more precisely: can one embrace realism and the utopian without falling victim to the criticisms that Galston and realists express? My answer is yes but this means rejecting a conventional understanding of the utopian that is presupposed by Galston and many others. There are three specific features of conventional utopian thought that I wish briefly to highlight and that I reject.12 First, traditional utopian thinking possesses a fixed horizon, and is best captured as a magnet that draws us toward complete actualization. Second, such thinking is most often (though certainly not always) preoccupied with the “what” of the utopian. That is to say, this view of the utopian is concerned primarily with that which lies “beyond the reach of necessity of change, since there is no progressing beyond the perfect.”13 When this persistence of the “what” of utopian thinking takes over, fixity and finality take precedent at the expense of becoming and movement. Fixity and finality, then, are posited so as to absorb and thereby erase all contentious particulars that threaten the worked out plan that the utopian blueprint (rational or otherwise) is claimed to ensure. For my purposes here, the conventional model of utopian is preoccupied with a present that exists “out there” and as such speaks more about the future present than the immediate present. Finally, in this light, effective utopian thinking must oppose the more historical and social dimensions of existence, those that constitute the horizon of real political conflicts, otherwise the utopian will become too particular and too located. It is no surprise to see why Galston and others claim that such thinking is opposed to realism because the utopian understood in this conventional way ignores difference, unrest, and heterogeneity. If the utopian is to be compatible with realist projects, then it will not violate realist commitments to questions of power, often violent contestations of political life, legitimacy, and thinking that seeks to uncover hidden assumptions in the service of making things better. Considering all of this, there are, I submit, at least three ways to understand the relationship between the utopian and the new realist political theory. The first response is more of the same. We could continue to insist that realism can allow for a conventional notion of the utopian, and realists have to generate utopian visions that may never become realized, have no relevance to lived conditions, but still serve the conceptual and practical purpose of a reminder that we can always do better. Here we might run the risk

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of appearing schizophrenic or delusional, but perhaps that would be a small price to pay not to be labeled complacent or normatively impotent. Such a view, however, is not going to be taken seriously by realists because it is fundamentally at odds with the dedication to questions about actual conditions. I am, therefore, not interested in simply retrieving a traditional notion of the utopian and will not focus on this view here. A second and more tempting response is associated with the recent trend in political theory to make the utopian a part of the ideal/non-ideal debate. David Estlund diagnoses contemporary political theory as suffering from “utopophobia,” of which realism is a particular offender. Before I discuss the third possible response, I want to explore this second alternative in Estlund’s essay “Utopophobia: Concession and Aspiration in Democratic Theory,” from his book Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework.14 For my purposes here, this chapter is the most relevant. DAVID ESTLUND AND UTOPOPHOBIA The context for initiating the ideal/non-ideal debate is the role of normative political theory. In Estlund’s case it is in the context of developing what he believes to be a particularly “realistic normative theory.”15 His notions of realism and normative are important. The normative is distinguished from “hopeless theory,” which is neither realistic and able to help to prescribe action in a certain way, nor capable of helping us evaluate what we should do. Both of these are central to the sense of the normative in Estlund’s proper ideal theory. As such, a hopeless normative theory is dangerous because, among other things, it takes a piecemeal approach to improvements. Such a normative theory might be collectively prescriptive, however, in the same way without being individually prescriptive at all. So, he tells us, “The fact that under the circumstances a theory doesn’t recommend any particular actions by the individual doesn’t show that it doesn’t counsel action. It remains aspirational: it sets sound standards that are not met, but could be met, and tells us to meet them” (266–267). I will return to the place of aspirational theory below. The clearest understanding of realism that he rejects is what he calls “complacent realism,” which is ultimately a “worthless constraint” (264). He describes it in the following ways. First, it is a theory that offers criticism of an existing structure or idea (e.g., existing legal regulations) in a way that is “either too strict or too lax” (263). Such an understanding is realistic in name only, and because it is untenable in its extremism, it engenders the complacency by appealing solely to the conditions that are instead of allowing for conditions that might be otherwise. Second, this kind of realism reminds

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us that somewhere else, especially as an alternative to what is the case, is not where we are and being anything other than where we are is ultimately irrelevant to politics. The constant appeal, therefore, to something like “the situation,” or, as he argues more recently, the appeal to the limits of human nature16 is ultimately an ineffectual realism because it is too preoccupied with the horizon of what people actually are or actually do and is an “inappropriate constraint on political theory.”17 Related to complacent realism is something I mentioned in the introduction. This is Estlund’s idea of “hopeless realism,” which means, “meeting the standards is possible, and yet there is good reason to believe it will never happen” (264). This view is that “people are unlikely to do what they should do, even where the standards are neither harsh nor impossible to meet. A standard might be unlikely without even being harsh, much less impossible” (268). In the end, these forms of realism fundamentally lack the kind of normative capacity important to Estlund and others that is thought to be essential to political thought. Equally important, caving in and clinging to realism that focuses solely on what we are results in a debilitating form of realism that in addition to being an inappropriate constraint reveals an unnecessary fear of the utopian, hence the persistence in new realism of “utopophobia.” To be sure, as a response to complacent realism, one can go to the other extreme and practice what he calls “moral utopianism.” Like complacent realism, Estlund rejects this form of utopian thought, which emerges “when a conception of society posits moral standards for people or institutions that it is impossible for them ever to live up to” (263). It is equally extreme because of its reliance on “nonmoral, or factual utopianism,” and that it falsely imposes those standards because it is finally not a moral failure when we fall short of impossible norms. He does, we should note, acknowledge the existence of other morally demanding theories, but he reserves the label “moral utopian” to mark those that are opposite of complacent realism in that they either ignore nonmoral facts about the world (factual utopianism) or assume certain moral standards that it would be impossible for moral agents to meet. Not rushing to embrace the label “utopian,” but neither wanting to perpetuate the utopophobia that he believes characterizes realists, Estlund places his own position between the extremes of complacent realism and moral utopianism that he defines as the “noncomplacent nonutopian range of normative political theories, the range in which most theorists would agree normative political theory should toil” (264). As indicated above, the term that best describes this kind of thinking is “aspirational,” which he wagers is a “hopeful realistic political theory” (267). There are two important traits of his aspirational theory worth underscoring:

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• It “sets sound standards that are not met, but could be met, and it tells us to meet them” (267). • Moreover, it “holds the real world to higher standards than it actually meets,” where those standards are possible to meet, and concedes that standards are not morally required if they are impossible to attain (cf. 263–265). As I read him, aspirational also covers “nonhopeless” theory, which is distinct from “concessive normative theory.” Even if he does not ultimately prefer it, nonhopeless theory has its place because it is “what we want when we want to know what we should do, in practice, given what people and institutions are actually likely to do” (268). Concessive normative theory supplements aspirational theory and is also different from non-concessive theory because concessive theory responds to the need to “concede the facts in practice, even if not in our moral conclusions” and sets it apart from the complacent realism he rejects (268). Hopeful realism holds that it is possible for people and institutions to meet appropriate standards along with the emphasis that there is no strong reason to think they will not be met (267). It is, therefore, aspirational and not concessive if people are likely to act ideally as they should. The central point in all of his many distinctions, and the one most important for my purposes here, is that aspirational theory differs from the complacent realism that disdains such thinking, and is preferred because aspirational theory is ultimately a “hopeful normative political theory,” which functions in the following manner: This is one that applies appropriate standards which are not only possible for people and institutions to meet, but which there is no strong reason to think they will not meet. . . . Things are better in one way, of course, if the best theory turns out to be hopeful (nonhopeless) rather than hopeless. We should be sad if people will not live up to appropriate standards, and so we are spared this sadness if the best theory is not hopeless. But this consideration is not a reason for choosing a less hopeless theory. That would be simply to adopt different, more easily satisfied moral standards simply for the reason that they are more likely to be satisfied (267).

This brings us back to the question of the utopian. How does the ideal/non-ideal debate help us with the utopian especially when Estlund, despite his criticisms of others being “utopophobes,” describes his own view as noncomplacent and nonutopian (264)? If we take Estlund as our guide, the utopian at its best is aspirational. Casting it as such presumably allows us to avoid altogether, on the one hand, the fear of the utopian that he thinks pervades complacent realism, and, on the other hand, moral

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utopianism that becomes completely unrealistic in its attempts to generate alternatives that are irrelevant. The utopian, then, becomes synonymous with aspirational theory in that both seek to hold people to standards that can reasonably expected to be met. To be sure, I want to applaud Estlund for pointing out the fear of the utopian that has historically and even more recently marked understandings of realism. I agree with him that this fear is unnecessary. I also believe that the utopian is a practical-moral imperative and to eliminate it, especially from those that are powerless, is to depoliticize it at a stroke and give in to the coordinates that have created dead ends.18 With this said, we have to ask just what kind of thought the utopian is, if it is no different than the kind of aspirational thinking proposed by Estlund? After all, aspirational ideas, at least in this context, are similar to regulative ideas that Kant defined as standards “with which we can compare ourselves, judging ourselves and thereby improving ourselves, even though we can never reach the standard.”19 What makes Estlund’s aspirational theory most like the Kantian regulative idea is that ideal theory is necessary for the work of political life (e.g., it is the place where political thinkers should toil), and not something that is arbitrary or chosen for situational convenience.20 Like Kant, Estlund’s aspirational ideal theory is more than a pragmatically justified set of principles. Even if we grant the role of aspiration in ideal theory, it still leaves open the question of the utopian. If the utopian becomes synonymous with aspirational/regulative ideas, the question is, perhaps naively, how does this distinguish the utopian at all? For example, in its pathological and extreme, unrealistic forms, the utopian might be rightly rejected. What is refused, however, is precisely a distinct kind of thinking that marks it as utopian, albeit in this case in a way that might be irrelevant or even dangerous. The utopian as aspirational loses its uniqueness and as such fails to differentiate the utopian from other types of aspirational thought. If we should not fear the utopian, and the way not to fear it is to domesticate it under the name “aspirational,” then what is the use of even retaining the label “utopian?” Would not all thought that is aspiring on Estlund’s account be utopian, if ultimately utopian equals aspirational? One problem, as I have already intimated, is that the label “aspirational” can be used to accommodate a range of positions from proponents of ideal theory like Estlund to those with more realist leanings like Honig and Stears. Recall, Honig and Stears employ this same term to describe their own agonistic realism. Even though their use of the term is different from Estlund’s, what is revealed is that renaming the utopian merely as aspirational diminishes the utopian. Whereas Estlund uses utopian/aspirational as ideal theory that is realistic and normative, Honig and Stears embrace the aspirational to fashion a realism that maintains “the spirit of optimism, of aspiration, and of

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justice . . . [and] seeks to prepare subjects more fully for the often violent contestations in political life.”21 Agonistic realism for them is aspirational, even if decidedly not utopian. For Estlund, however, the utopian is aspirational even if decidedly not complacently realistic. While these accounts might inevitably be made compatible (and there is no strong reason why they could not be), my point is that the term aspirational covers such a range of thought that incorporating the utopian into it in effect does away with the utopian. More importantly, despite Estlund’s verbal embrace of the utopian, the emphasis on the utopian as a “less eloquently” “noncomplacent nonutopian,” causes him to presuppose in practice what he denies verbally. That is, when Estlund positions his thought in between (moral) utopianism and (complacent) realism, and stresses that his is a “noncomplacent nonutopian,” this begs the question of whether or not Estlund ultimately suffers from the same “utopophobia” with which he diagnoses others, a condition that is revealed in the need to domesticate the utopian under the heading “ideal theory.” Though it is undoubtedly a better option than the “more of the same” view, Estlund’s understanding of the utopian as ideal theory is not sufficient for the new realism. PAUL RICOEUR AND THE UTOPIAN In the remainder of the essay, then, I draw on the thought of Paul Ricoeur to develop three key traits of my realist view of the utopian. First, in the following section I argue that the utopian is the imaginative capacity to interrupt our current ways of thinking and acting with new alternatives. Here the emphasis is on productive imagination. Second, the next section highlights the important role judgment plays in this view of utopian as the work of constructive imagination. It is here that I show how Geuss’s realism is equally utopian, something that distinguishes his version from Williams, Honig, Stears, and others. On this we see, following Geuss, that realists are not solely concerned with what is the case. Finally, in the last section, I argue that such a realist understanding of the utopian practices hope, which again reveals how opponents are mistaken. As I have claimed above, neither more of the same, nor making the utopian synonymous with ideal theory is the best way to understand the place of the utopian in realist politics. There is a third way to understand the compatibility of the utopian with neo-realist politics that begins with its relationship to imagination. More precisely, the view of the utopian I now want to develop is fundamentally the act of productive or constructive imagination (terms I will here use interchangeably), and not of reproductive imagination. I begin with a definition of imagination that orients my understanding, followed by a

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more specific explanation of imagination that I develop in terms of the work of the utopian. Imagination, as I use it generally, is an ingredient of perception and not an alternative to it. Imagining is not opposed to seeing but rather views seeing itself as a “way of imagining, interpreting, or thinking.”22 More specifically, and the definition that I want to use in reference to the work of the utopian throughout this section, imagination is “the ability to produce new kinds of assimilation and to produce them not above the differences, as in the concept, but in spite of and through the differences.”23 This is constructive work in that it reminds us that alternatives are available and yet to come. In an initial way, then, a key feature of the productive, utopian imagination as that which discloses hidden potential is the interruptive capacity to open the horizon of new potentiality. This is not the positing of some ideal (regulative or otherwise) that transcends situations to move them to another place that is external and disconnected from the lived existence of those whose lives depend on the very interruption that makes possible this new space. Rather, it is the region of something that is a genuine alternative to conditions that in political life often degrade, dehumanize, and so on. As disruptive, images open the potential for remaking, augmenting, and presenting another course of action and make known something not already known. The question that might be raised here is how does an understanding of the utopian as productive imagination retain its realism and avoid acquiescing to what Estlund calls “moral utopianism?” The answer to this question relies on the distinction between the imagination as productive rather than reproductive. More often than not, the way that the imagination has been understood historically is its reproductive role. This means, first, the central trait is that the image produced is a copy of an original, and at best the image is one that is derived from an original that is real and, at worst, it is our attempt to portray something different from the original in a way that might become another “flight of fancy.” In doing so, second, the image “produces nothingness,” which in this context refers to the unreal as that which escapes from the boundaries of current empirical reality. The unreal, then, is the original whereas the image that is generated is the analogue copy of this original. Third, and in an important related manner, the image of the unreal that determines a reproduced copy relies on an absent/present distinction where absence in the context of the nothingness produced is a copy of someone or something present elsewhere.24 Put in the language above, the ideal (present somewhere else) determines how the analogue copy in the absence of the ideal image (our non-ideal situations) becomes present. In opposition to this, a realist view of the utopian is the work of productive imagination.25 Let me begin with the notions of the nothingness and the unreal. These terms can be understood as something other than simply developing analogue

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copies. They also indicate the appearance or production of something new. That is to say, the “no-place” or “nowhere” suggested by the etymology of the utopian itself can be understood as something more than just a duplication of an original, and work that is determined by the original itself. Instead, as a part of the work of interruption, the utopian as productive imagination has the potential to expand our sense of reality, uncover those hidden possibilities, and importantly produce alternatives to concepts that are no longer tenable. It is the potential to form new situations with images in general and utopian images in particular not “bound by an original that precedes them” but are new ones altogether. Whether it is impressionism that creates a “new alphabet of colors,” science that generates new paradigms or language, a poem that releases reality to us in a new way, or an innovative and creative way of living together collectively, the “no where” (u-topos) of the images that govern this kind of work are informed by the conditions that produce them, or for that matter of what has gone before. In this way, the imaginative work engages actual conditions so that constructive distance can emerge. Unlike the work of reproductive imagination perhaps best characterized as the “logic of the already discovered,” productive imagination discloses a new potential of reality that is “both available and yet to come.”26 This is why in my initial and general definition I offered that imagination is ultimately the ability “to produce new kinds of assimilation and to produce them not above the differences, as in the concepts, but in spite of and through the differences.” Let me summarize what I have suggested this far. First, the utopian is or can be important to realist projects if nothing more than it is a practical-moral imperative that demands things be better. Second, in order for the utopian to be compatible with realist projects, it has to be reconfigured as something other than a conventional model that seeks irrelevant flights of fancy. Third, resituating the utopian as a part of ideal/non-ideal theory articulated by David Estlund is helpful in that it is critical of those that suffer from “utopophobia.” Nevertheless, making the utopian synonymous with this discourse subdues it in ways that make it indistinguishable from other forms of aspirational thought. The best way to retain the uniqueness of the utopian is to understand it as productive or constructive imagination instead of the more common reproductive function. The above detour is important for two reasons. First, it allows us to see that even if realists define their work as non- or anti-utopian their work is not a priori incompatible with the way I develop the utopian above. It does make their thought opposed to a conventional view of the utopian. This, however, says less about how their thought reveals a view of the utopian at odds with their own descriptions, and more about the hegemony of the conventional view itself. Second, with the above understanding of the utopian, we are in

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a better position to see how Geuss’s realism is distinct in that it shares in the view of the utopian as disruptive, but extends this in a particular way to judgment. RAYMOND GEUSS: REAL UTOPIAN POLITICS Geuss claims, rightly, that utopian thinking is compatible with his realist political philosophy, which rejects specific forms of unreflective illusion.27 Further, in the sequel to Philosophy and Real Politics, his Politics and the Imagination advances the idea that politics is best understood as the function of “constructive imagination,” a central task of which is to uncover “alternatives to present ways of doing things.”28 Because of this, I submit that Geuss reveals a realist utopian politics, modeled along the lines of the productive imagination discussed above. First, in line with the principal function of my view of the utopian discussed above, constructive imagination creates distance both collectively and individually from the beliefs, values, and attitudes of one’s surroundings that impede action. The skill of bridging what Geuss calls “activated imagination” with effective political engagement requires “not merely that we see how things really stand, but also that we understand, and perhaps even to some extent sympathize with, the way in which others see them, even if they are deluded, and we know that they are deluded.”29 Constructive imagination in this first sense unsettles by asking, among other things: How is it possible to be realistic without getting caught up in the web of powerful fantasies which our society spins around us? How can one get the appropriate imaginative distance from one's own society, its practices, norms, and conceptions? What is the “appropriate” distance? “Appropriate” in what sense; for what? What are the possibilities, and what the limits of criticism?30

The work here disturbs our most cherished beliefs in the way they have become solely reproductive forms of imagination that are determined by the ideas that were perhaps once operative in our situations but are now absent. To the degree these ideas are relevant, they are so in the way their presence (elsewhere) determines the situations in which they are now absent and invoked. Constructive imagination, to the contrary, shatters the coordinates of thought and makes thinkable new action. The uncovering of hidden potentiality I attribute to the productive work of the utopian best characterizes Geuss’s discussion of conceptual innovation in Philosophy and Real Politics.31 Conceptual innovation “is not much like simply introducing a new lexical item into speech to designate something that

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already exists, . . . When they were introduced, concepts  . . . did not exactly mirror any fully preexisting reality, because using these concepts represented as much an aspiration as a description” (44, 45). In this way, conceptual innovation parallels the work of productive imagination not by reproducing a corresponding copy of that which is present somewhere else but rather allowing for inventive openings to alternative ways of doing things with the goal of effecting change to the conditions in question. In this way, such work is original in that it aims to cultivate imaginative and new aspirations that improve political behavior, all which are at the center of utopian thought. Something more, however, emerges. The utopian as constructive imagination, then, is not just the acceptance of the disruptive power of invention. It requires the important idea of developing the skills of discrimination and judgment. The insistence on political judgment is the second element of a neo-realist view of the utopian, and raises the question of how we know that something is constructive and imaginatively excellent. Geuss does not use this exact language, but in a lengthy quotation worth repeating we get a clear sense that especially for political life it is not enough just to describe what is the case. Rather, politics is about how action requires the cultivation of judgment. He writes: [Politics] requires the deployment of skills and forms of judgment that cannot easily be imparted by simple speech, that cannot be reliably codified or routinised, and that do not come automatically with the mastery of certain theories. A skill is an ability to act in a flexible way that is responsive to features of the given environment with the result that action or interaction is enhanced or facilitated, or the environment is transformed in ways that are positively valued. Sometimes the result will be a distinct object or product: a shoe, a painting, a building, a boat; sometimes there will be no distinct object produced, as when a skillful marriage counselor changes the interaction between spouses in a positive way or a vocal coach helps a singer bring out some rather subtle aspects of an overplayed aria. One of the signs that I have acquired a skill, rather than that I have been simply mechanically repeating things I have seen others do, have been applying a handbook, or have just been lucky, is that I can attain interesting and positively valued results in a variety of different and unexpected circumstances (15–16).

We might have to give up on knowing in advance what might or might not count as imaginatively utopian in favor of developing skills essential to the craft of politics. This is not, as some might respond, an irresponsible shrug of the shoulders when it comes to making decisions about what is better or worse, and what should be done. The skill of judgment, cultivated as a craft, is essential in political life not so much for its descriptive ability, but precisely because it involves the ability to foresee or predict, to evaluate, and exercise

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resourcefulness, all of which contribute to what we can call the practical work of utopian imagination as inventiveness, creativity and “coming up with new possibilities or seeing new possibilities or constructiveness.”32 This may not be the hard normativity that exists in some political thinking, but one would be mistaken to say Geuss, despite his skepticism of this language, has no interest in anything but what is the case. To the contrary, the imaginative work of disruption is, as I suggest above and we see in Geuss, links the work of the descriptive with the analytic, normative, and, yes, aspirational in seeking “positive legitimacy,” which articulates the licit and permissible, and makes the case for the valuable nature of particular work.33 I would contend further that Geuss does not dispel with normativity, even though this may not be his term of choice. As I read him, he resituates the normative/descriptive discussion in the broader context of legitimacy opting to see the work of normativity as one possible way to deploy the skills of judgment and evaluation in the service of making better decisions about what is the case but what should be the case, and not the only or default position for answering the question “what should we do?” Political life, which demands something entirely different than the kind of evaluation or assessment that structures other activities, “takes place in an arena in which the standards for evaluating what is ‘success,’ what is a good idea, what is a desirable outcome, are themselves always changing and always in principle up for renegotiation.”34 Not surprisingly, constructive imagination like productive imagination above is still realist. This is not what Geuss refers to as the “hard realism” of Realpolitik, which he rejects because it eschews imaginative constructs and responds “in an instrumentally rational way to the facts alone” (x). Neither is the realism of constructive imagination to be confused with “wishful thinking,” which is the general incapacity to respond well to one’s situation and the particular failure of a political thought to be philosophically informed by the kind of reflexivity called for by realists. On this particular point, Geuss follows Bernard Williams and claims that wishful thinking is forgetting that whatever questions we put to our interlocutor’s claims must be put to ourselves with exactly the same or even greater rigor (xi). In the context of Geuss’s commitment to a particular kind of reflexivity, this is not just the lack of imagination on the part of someone else, or just the incapacity to face up to the challenges that the world presents; rather, it is stubbornly clinging “to a dreamlike fantasy as a way of wishfully avoiding those challenges.”35 What Ricoeur helps us to see is that constructive, imaginative utopian realism, then, is a particular kind of reflexivity mentioned at the beginning of this section that doggedly questions unreflective illusions, and rejects ex ante deliberation in political life that appeals to general maxims to give us knowledge and help resolve action. Accordingly, seen as a part of productive/ constructive imagination, reflexivity in this realist mode requires a “creative

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model of action” in that its attempt not to be self-deceptive is inventive, imaginative, and the truth of which can be known only after what is actually done.36 In the end, a view of the utopian based on productive imagination— Geuss’s constructive imagination—is neither a subset of ideal or non-ideal theory, nor simply more revision of the orthodox understanding that is associated with the term “utopian.” Instead, the utopian is the pursuit of imaginative excellence situated in the context of questions or power/powerlessness, legitimacy (and even normativity), rooted in the creative, self-reflective activity of unmasking assumptions that often cover and impede, the aim of which is to offer alternatives to current conditions that should be better. Toward this end, in addition to its interruptive capacity and insistence on cultivating the craft of judgment, the utopian in a realist politics relies on the practice of hope. One way to understand how real utopian thinking works seeing it in action. Before taking up a more recent example with the Arab Spring in 2011, I want to discuss the classic American Western, Stagecoach, directed by John Ford, to show how real utopian politics functions in founding a political order. INTERLUDE: THE AMERICAN WEST AND REAL UTOPIAN POLITICS Stagecoach not only illustrates the place of the utopian in the imagination of individuals collectively trying to negotiate political space, but the film pays special attention to the actual motivations of those involved in establishing a political order beyond mere descriptive finesse. As such, the film is a particularly good example of real utopian politics. Filmed in 1939, Stagecoach is set in 1880 in the town of Tonto, in the Arizona territory and the town of Lordship, in the New Mexico territory. It is a story about nine total passengers making the trip from Tonto to Lordship. While it might be anachronistic to say it is a multicultural group, they are nevertheless, a group of misfits thrown together on a common quest, moving from a variety of situations in Tonto to a common destination of Lordship. The characters in the film are essential to the film. They are: • Dallas (the prostitute); • Doc Boone, the town drunk; • Lucy Mallory, a sophisticated lady traveling to see her cavalry officer husband; • Samuel Peacocke, whose personality says reverend, but whose profession is whiskey salesman;

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• Hatfield, the Southern gentleman who, we find out, is not so gentlemanly, yet believes it is his responsibility to go and protect Lucy Mallory; • Henry Gatewood, the banker who we soon find out is a thief; • The bumbling stagecoach driver Buck; • Marshal Curly Wilcox who decides to go when Buck can’t find his regular shotgun man; • The Ringo Kidd (played wonderfully by John Wayne). Like many American Westerns, certainly those most often thought of as the best, Stagecoach articulates at times both explicit but also in an oblique way what constitutes the political actuality of those involved in the collective effort to make it to a new destination. Some of the more notable conditions important to the film are: • War (with varying Indian tribes, but equally the Civil War itself an incredible failure to establish anything like a founding of the United States); • Fractured pasts (again, the Civil War, but equally the loss associated with the emergence of a new world of law and order, and the loss of what Richard Slotkin has called the “Gunfighter Nation”); • Economic hardship (the prospect of a new way of organizing collective life often couched in terms of cattle barons vs. statehood); • Death. It is no understatement to say that death or the looming threat of it is a condition for the possibility of the emergence of America in the late nineteenth century, which is to say most strongly that death is the horizon against which the potential for new openings always occurs. There are, of course, ways to describe these elements that sound initially less threatening, but upon reflection they become ways to understand how individual lives are shaped by similar elements in the process of most if not all collective endeavors we label “political.” A question in Stagecoach, which is often a quintessential political question, is how will people live together knowing or attempting to know these conditions? These seemingly less threatening terms that define the condition of politics are often described as: • Loss or vulnerability • Transitions (from uncertainty to who-knows) • A new social ordering There could be many more added, but it is undoubtedly the case that if nothing else Stagecoach shows how these issues factor into and are the conditions for new political possibilities of being together, and in doing so embodies real utopian politics. This, at least, is what I want to argue.

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First, it is only in a particular kind of context, in this sense the American Western, that the importance of the utopian be understood for what it initially is: an essential function of the imaginative life to both individuals and collectives. Second, a film like Stagecoach articulates for us the principal function of the utopian as that mode of thought and action that interrupts and reveals emancipatory impulses that have become hidden. In a preliminary way, then, Stagecoach develops a twofold function of the utopian. First, it is the horizon of new potentiality. Second, it is the “what-if” of the imaginative work necessary to individual and collective life. Let me explore these elements closer. In Stagecoach this horizon is the myth of the developing West against which the film is set, but it is also the town of Lordship in some respect. This town functions, to be sure, as the end point of the journey, but an end that instead of revealing a fixed point against which the passengers are moving, becomes the opening for something altogether unexpected. I am referring here to the relationship of Dallas (the prostitute), and the Ringo Kid played by John Wayne. With references to what we now might call the “politics of gender,” The Kid—who is on the run from a prison break—and Dallas— a woman of disrepute (though it is never stated explicitly)—develop a relationship throughout the film. Neither allows their identity to define their potential for something other than who they are become, or who they might be in the context of constant threat. Put differently, over the course of the film there is a twisting free from identities that have come to define them, but now in the horizon of Lordship have experienced a glimpse of new potential.37 And even though Ringo is facing the possibility of returning to prison once they get to Lordship, along the way he makes sure that Dallas is given the chance to step further into the new potential the stagecoach journey has made possible by insuring she is taken to his land where she can live. Such an opening, like that of the West itself depicted in most if not all American Westerns, always takes place against the threat of destruction (in the film the possible attack of the Apaches), as well as the rigid determinations that often mark people in certain ways (Dallas and the drunk Doc Boone are, at the beginning of the film, being exiled to Lordship by a group of women known as the “Law and Order League”).38 What begins as an ending (people being kicked out of Tonto) eventually gives way to the space of imaginative invention (the stagecoach) in the service of a potential for something that could never have been thought (Dallas and Ringo overcoming gender identities, the overcoming to some degree of class distinctions inherent in the film, and so forth). Such moments are where we see the significance of the utopian as primarily that of interruption. To be sure, in the beginning of the film we do not think of this as a utopian moment. We can only perhaps suggest that what happens to Dallas, Ringo

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and even the others is a utopian moment after we learn the ending and then read it backwards (and even then we are left with the wager that Ringo, Dallas and the others are able to enter into the new horizons suggested). This, however, is a point central to real politics, namely, that we do not know, nor cannot know if something is utopian beforehand or a priori. What we do know, and the film articulates this point throughout, is that these moments call us to engage the utopian through the interpretive work of making sense of it, witnessing to it through thought and action, and remaining faithful to the event itself. In the words of Ricoeur, with whom I agree, “We wager on a certain set of values and then try to be consistent with them; verification is therefore a question of our whole life. No one escapes this.”39 In the film, there is an opening that first is characterized by darkness of threat, instability, uncertainty, and so forth. To put it more commonly, like the journey in Stagecoach there is light at the end of the tunnel, but one that is only reached, to the degree that it can be, by courageously entering into the vulnerable conditions of the unknown horizon created by the opening. But, second, these conditions and the attending motivations of the fellow travelers reveal a more direct relationship between the utopian and the political actualities that define those conditions. In the end, Stagecoach indicates two things about the way we might reconsider the utopian, as a part of real politics. First, the interruptive capacity of the utopian is not some ideal, perfect state at which it is aimed. This is, of course, despite the predominant way of reading the American Western as a utopian, mythological ideal that posits a vision of the world to be found “out there.” To be sure, this view is certainly at work in the way this genre is read as generating the ideal West over against the non-ideal or real conditions that folks in these stories find themselves. True, it is there, and as such Westerns become tales of ideal theory. This view however, is neither the best way to read films like Stagecoach, nor the best way to engage in political philosophy. The best way is developing an understanding of the utopian as a part of the actual conditions that must be psychologically adequate for its participants. Second, Stagecoach as articulating this alternate way of conceiving the utopian is, despite temptations, not about the process of the utopian coming into actuality. I reject both of these ways, traditional and process oriented, as ways of positing the utopian as a “regulative ideal,” for the following reason. Both of these positions, in some way, retain either conventional notions of the utopian that are no longer viable (the former), or they presuppose an oldstyle Aristotelian ontological framework where every possibility strives to become actualized (the latter). Instead of interruption referring to possibility becoming actualized through an emphasis on the process, it instead refers to the unearthing of unhidden potential that is brought by interruption, and relies on the productive imagination of those involved.

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ARAB SPRING The initial events in Egypt in the spring of 2011 reflect the kind of utopian realism discussed in the above sections and offers the resources for developing the third element of hope.40 In general, here we see the connection between the interruptive function of imagination, the productive work of generating something new, and the need to engage in political judgment. More particularly, these events expose the utopian not as a fixed point on the horizon toward which we are moving (regulative or constitutive), but instead the uncovering of alternatives to coordinates of thought and action that have become unlivable, options that rely on an element of hope. To orient what follows, I want to begin with description of the initial events in Egypt offered by Alain Badiou.41 A spark can set a field on fire. . . . As Jean-Marie Gleize poetically puts it: “a revolutionary movement does not expand by contamination. But by resonance. Something emerging here resonates with the shock wave emitted by something emerging out there.” This resonance, let's name it “event.” The event is the sudden creation, not of a new reality, but of a myriad of new possibilities. Neither of them is the reiteration of something we already know. This is why it is not to say “this movement is demanding democracy” (implying the one we enjoy in the West), or “this movement is demanding social improvements” (implying the median prosperity of the small-bourgeois in our countries). Born from almost nothing, resonating everywhere, the popular uprising creates unknown possibilities for the whole world. The word “democracy” is practically never mentioned in Egypt. There's talk of a “new Egypt,” of “the real Egyptian people,” of constituent assembly, of an absolute change of existence, of unprecedented possibilities. This is about the new field that will be there where the previous one, set on fire by the spark of uprising, will no longer be. It stands, this new field to come, between the declaration of overthrowing forces and the one of assuming new tasks.42

The original moment of the Arab Spring is the imaginative, utopian opening brought about by the disruption of the ideological deadlock created by the status quo. Moreover, the interruption is a demand to resist, at least to begin with, generating abstract, deliberative principles that will move the “old” Egypt to something “new,” a position that describes those interested in creating (North American) deliberative or constitutional democracies in the Middle East. Said differently, to be realistically utopian is to embrace and argue for the “truthful”43 elements where the questions of freedom, liberty, legitimacy, and so on now appear entirely different. It is an unfamiliar moment that cannot readily be made familiar by something like constitutional notions of justice. Part of the unfamiliarity that characterizes this uncovering

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is the overwhelming sense of vulnerability that has less to do with what might be the case one day, and more with the shattering fact that a new way of life might have to be lived. This shared vulnerability is not easily named. It is not, however, a position that views the lack of a correct outlook beforehand as necessarily delivering the collapse of the new potential outlook altogether. This is what makes the productive imagination of the utopian real: it is finite. The unfamiliar finite vulnerability of the utopian opening to new imaginative potential, then, is the recognition that there are “limitations that characterize the human condition: we are not all-powerful or all-knowing; our ability to create is limited; so is our ability to get what we want; our beliefs may be false; and even the concepts with which we understand the world are vulnerable.”44 The imaginative work of uncovering new alternatives is coupled to the actual conditions like “one square, one avenue, a few factories, a university” after which the whole world will be witness to this new form of courage, and the creations that accompany it. What occurs in these initial moments that reflect the productive imagination of realistic utopian thinking, then, is a turn toward and not away from the actual that define(d) this situation. Likewise, the courage displayed by actors is essential to implanting “new psychic needs in the hope of improving political behavior.”45 This event, to be sure, is a dream of something better, but a dream that is couched in the realities of questions concerning power and powerlessness, legitimacy, and the shattering work of interrupting long-held, unquestioned assumptions. One might respond that this is mere dreaming with no attention to the actual problems that are made even more acute because of the imagined alternatives. Such a view, however, is wrong and misses how a realistic utopian employees constructive imagination in the service of skills of discernment to engage precise problems in specific contexts. Again, Badiou is helpful. In the midst of an event, the people is made up of those who know how to solve the problems that the event imposes on them. It goes the same for the occupation of a square: food, sleeping arrangements, protection, banderols, prayers, defense, fight, all so that the place where everything is happening, the place that has become a symbol, may stay with its people at all costs. These problems, at a scale of hundreds of thousands of people who have come from all over the place, may seem impossible to solve, especially since the state has disappeared in that square. Solving unsolvable problems without the help of the state, that is the destiny of an event. And it is what determines a people, all of a sudden and for an indeterminate period, to exist, where there it has decided to gather. Whatever their future, the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings have a universal significance. They prescribe new possibilities whose value is international.46

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Notice the emphasis here on both the material conditions and the way actors go about engaging the powers that be out of fidelity to an “elsewhere,” to a society that is “not yet.” It is doing something in the form of making judgments about conditions and not clinging to a fantasy that turns us away from the very problems that are the conditions for the utopian moments.47 As such, the Arab Spring, at least initially, is realistically utopian in the following way. First, it was, in every way, an unsettling moment. Second, the Arab Spring was not just a reproduction of something already in existence. It uncovered something entirely new that empowered “forgotten people” and reverberated beyond the confines of the Arab world.48 In this way, third, their utopian politics displays not just hope, but what Jonathan Lear calls “radical hope,” which is thought and action “directed toward a future goodness that transcends the current ability to understand what it is. Radical hope anticipates a good for those who have it but as of yet lack the appropriate concepts with which to understand it.”49 Contrary to the charge that realists like Guess and others traffic in hopeless realism, then, the productive or constructive imaginative utopian thinking developed above exemplifies hope in a precise way. Radical hope is not succumbing to that which is critically engaged in the service of asking the question “How do we live after the disruptive moment that brings a loss?” Rather, the imaginative engagement with things that are seen as potentially destructive, cynical, and also desirous is “to establish what we might legitimately hope at a time when the sense of purpose and meaning that has been bequeathed to us by our culture has collapsed.”50 As realist politics, then, the first events of the Arab Spring reflect radical hope by calling on its participants to turn to the challenges that the world represents, instead of stubbornly clinging to a dreamlike fantasy of something that once might have worked but no longer does “as a way of wishfully avoiding those challenges.”51 This is what makes radical hope different from optimism. The latter ultimately fails to turn toward lived existence. As the work of productive imagination the Arab Spring is utopian in that it attempts to “facilitate a creative and appropriate response to the world’s challenges” in the service of asking the question “How will we go on?”52 Such capacity is essential to practical life not only because it possesses an image of what humanity might be, but it is also the ability to take seriously the anxiety and vulnerability that characterizes these radically altered circumstances. For all of its subsequent failure, the Arab Spring engages in utopian politics by inventing new concepts that potentially enable those most affected “to go forward hopefully into a future that they would be able to grasp retrospectively, when they could remerge with concepts with which to understand themselves and their experience.”53 To be certain, what follows from the utopian moment of an imaginative alternative can easily give way to the pathological tendency and directionless thought. Embracing constructive,

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realistic utopian thought does not guarantee anything, much less that the promise of the new potentiality will be manifest the day after. Assuming so collapses the power of utopian thinking with the work of the day after, or in the case of the Arab Spring, confusing the sustainability of the Arab Spring with the events that created its possibility. What I have tried to show in this essay is that realist political thought, as a way of thinking and acting, turns to the conditions that demand things be different, oriented primarily by concerns with power, legitimacy, and other elements as that can be said to be the first questions in political thinking. But, as I have also tried to show, this is a way of approaching political life that quickly admits that a—if not the—last (?) word on politics is the work of transformation not just for our own corners of the world, but for all of those that are the weakest and most powerless among us. Such work, as I have argued above, requires productive imagination and radical hope. Seen in this light, Raymond Geuss’s realism, whose emphasis on constructive imagination parallels my insistence on productive imagination, is unique among contemporary realist projects in its embrace of the utopian. Here I have offered, also with the aid of Ricoeur, one way to understand what it might mean to be a utopian realist in this sense. Accepting a view of politics that takes actual conditions seriously, and one that seeks productive, imaginative excellence means that one can be both utopian and realist, just not the kind perhaps originally imagined. NOTES 1. William Galston, “Realism in Political Theory,” European Journal of Political Philosophy 9, no. 4 (2010): 385–411. Even though I offer critical remarks about Galston’s essay, I want to acknowledge its significance. In many ways, his essay is not only responsible for mapping recent interest in realism, but also spawning many responses that have followed (including my own). 2. Raymond, Geuss, “Realismus, Wunschdenken, Utopie,” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 58, no. 3 (2010), 419–429; Raymond Guess, “Raymond Geuss on Realism and Utopianism in Political Philosophy,” (2010), http:​//phi​losop​hybit​es.co​ m/201​0/05/​raymo​nd-ge​uss-o​n-rea​lism-​in-po​litic​al-ph​iloso​phy.h​tml. 3. I would like to make it clear that while I disagree with Galston on some substantive issues, his paper is seminal for how I began to think about realist politics and the possibility of the utopian. 4. In the earlier version of this essay (2007), this section was titled “Realism as an Alternate to Utopian Theory.” 5. Galston, 210. All further references to this essay will be internal. 6. Bonnie Honig and Marc Stears, “The New Realism: From Modus Vivendi to Justice,” in Political Philosophy versus History? Contextualism and Real Politics in

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Contemporary Political Thought, ed. Jonathan Floyd and Marc Stears (Cambridge University Press, 2011), 177–205. 7. In the same volume Andrew Sable takes a similar position and sets up an either/or from the very outset of his essay writing that, “My topic in this chapter is realist or non-utopian political theory (151).” Andrew Sable, “History and Reality: Idealist Pathologies and ‘Harvard School’ Remedies,” in Political Philosophy versus History? Contextualism and Real Politics in Contemporary Political Thought, ed. Jonathan Floyd and Marc Stears (Cambridge University Press, 2011). See Sable, 151–176. 8. Honig and Stears, 185. 9. Ibid., 203. 10. See, for instance, Luce Irigaray, I Love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History, trans. Alison Martin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 10, and Thomas Hill, Jr., Respect, Pluralism and Justice: Kantian Perspectives (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 53. Both assume the orthodox view of the utopian that is opposed to our situations and as such must be avoided. 11. Williams, for example, aligns himself with the anti-utopian impulse of Judith Shklar’s “liberalism of fear.” See Bernard Williams, In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument, ed. Geoffrey Hawthorn (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 52 ff. In addition, John Gray positions his modus vivendi brand of realist politics against hopelessly utopian politics. John Gray, Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), and Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008). 12. My intent here is not to review the huge body of work on utopian thought. Others have done this better than I can, and recounting the specifics and long history of the traditional view of the utopian is not my aim. Instead, I am interested in arguing for a non-conventional view of the utopian that is consistent with neo-realist concerns, which will undoubtedly relate to the many variations of utopian thinking, but will necessarily have to be different given that I am locating it specifically to a recent development. I highlight the traits of a conventional view as a way to set up the nonconventional view for which I argue. For those interested in more detailed discussions of the history of utopian thought see Ruth Levitas, Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), and The Concept of Utopia (New York: Syracuse University Press, 1990); Michael Griffin and Tom Moylan, Exploring the Utopian Impulse (London: Peter Lang, 2008), and Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination (New York: Routledge, 1987); and Lyman Tower Sargent, Utopianism: A Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). For alternatives that resonate with the view I espouse here see Jameson (2010) Frederic Jameson, “Realism and Utopia in The Wire,” Criticism 52, nos. 3–4 (Summer/Fall 2010): 359–372; Patrick Parrinder, Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition, and the Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001); and especially Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986).

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13. Goodwin, Barbara, Social Science and Utopia: Nineteenth-Century Models of Social Harmony (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978). 14. David Estlund, Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008). 15. Ibid., 263. All other references to this chapter will be internal. Even though Estlund’s use of “utopophobia” makes him the more natural to engage, there are others worth mentioning. See Armartya Sen, The Idea of Justice (Belknap: Harvard University Press, 2009); Mark Philp, “Peacebuilding and Corruption,” International Peacekeeping 15, no. 3 (2008): 310–327; Ingrid Robeyns and Adam Swift (eds.), special issue of Social Justice: Ideal Theory, Nonideal Circumstances 34, no. 3 (July 2008); Zofia Stemplowska, “What’s Ideal About Ideal Theory?” Social Theory and Practice 34 (2008): 319–340; and especially Hamlin and Stemplowska (2011) Alan Hamlin and Zofia Stemplowska, “Theory, Ideal Theory and the Theory of Ideals,” Political Studies Review 10, no. 1 (January 2012): 48–62, for variations on the ideal/ non-ideal theme in contemporary political theory. 16. David Estlund, “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 39, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 207–237. 17. Estlund, Democratic Authority, 270. 18. I am thinking here of the work of Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self (New York: Routledge, 1992), and Toril Moi, “Beauvoir’s Utopia: The Politics of The Second Sex,” The South Atlantic Quarterly 92, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 210–242, both of whom claim that the utopian is essential to the work of feminism. 19. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 552, A569/B597. 20. For more on the sense of Kant’s regulative notion see Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Transcendentalism and Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). 21. Honig and Stears, 203. 22. George H. Taylor, “Ricoeur's Philosophy of Imagination,” Journal of French Philosophy 16 (Spring/Fall 2006): 94. My argument in this section is indebted to Paul Ricoeur, whose work shares the same trajectory of a realist like Geuss. In particular, Ricoeur, writing on politics in the 1950s foreshadows many of the concerns of Geuss and others. In particular, Ricoeur, inspired by Weber especially, had a robust notion of the political that began with questions of power/powerlessness, but also contended that the utopian as that which disrupts ideology is essential to what he called the “social imagination.” As such, Ricoeur is, I want to suggest, an important ally. Drawing out these connections further is beyond the scope of this paper. For further reading on many of these connections see Ricoeur, Lectures, and History and Truth (Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2007). I also want to acknowledge George Taylor who, in addition to making Ricoeur’s lectures on ideology and utopia available, has done the same for Ricoeur’s Lectures on Imagination. 23. Taylor, 99. 24. Cf. ibid., 96. The criticism offered by Ricoeur here is directed at Sartre who illustrates the ability to generate an image of the unreal on the basis of an image of someone, his friend Peter, who is absent, in Berlin.

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25. This of course invokes Kant (2000) who writes in the Critique of Judgment: For the imagination (as a productive cognitive power) is very mighty when it creates, as it were, another nature out of the material that actual nature gives it . . . In this process we feel our freedom from the law of association  . . . for although it is under that law that nature lends us material, yet we can process that material into something quite different, namely, into something that surpasses nature (5: 314).

My intent is not to enter into the debates around Kant’s view of productive imagination. Rather, I am interested in developing the connection between the productive/ constructive imagination that functions with a realist framework inspired here especially by Geuss (who, as we know, is no fan of Kant). 26. Ibid., 96–97. 27. Guess, “Realismus,” 419–429. 28. Raymond Guess, Politics and the Imagination (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 110. 29. Guess, Politics, x. Hereafter cited internally as PI. 30. Ibid. 31. Raymond Guess, Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2008). Hereafter cited internally as PRP. 32. PI, 14–16. 33. See PI, 112; PRP, 47–48. 34. PI, 12. 35. Jonathan Lear, Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation (Cambridge, MA:, Harvard University Press, 2006), 116. This is one way of understanding the importance of critical theory in Geuss’s realism. It is beyond the scope of this paper to address this important element in his thinking. 36. I borrow this idea from Robert Pippin, Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy (Charlottesville and London: The University of Virginia Press, 2012), who gets it from Hans Joas, The Creativity of Action (Cambridge, England: Polity Press., 1996). One might reply that such a position borders on the irresponsible in not being able to make a decision as to how we might best respond to a dilemma. This, however, would be to forget the above discussion about making judgments. The point here is that realist politics entails something different than an ex ante model of deliberation. 37. This is not to say that just because they have glimpsed the potential that I am here calling the utopian moment of interruption they will step into this new horizon. In fact, we are led to believe right up until the last scene that neither will be able to overcome their now somewhat predetermined identities, Dallas as a prostitute and Ringo as an escaped prisoner/gunfighter. 38. It’s important to note that even though I am reading the film as an instance of utopian potential for those in the stagecoach, the utopian exists against the backdrop of ideological tropes such as the threat of “the Indians,” the background role of women, and a view of masculinity that is still with us. While we can acknowledge these elements, they do not detract from understanding how the utopian functions in the way I am arguing.

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39. Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, 312. 40. I emphasize the initial events of the Arab Spring as the kind of utopian opening brought about by the interplay of imaginative alternatives and the actual condition to which they apply. This is neither a wholesale endorsement of the movement, nor awareness that in the aftermath of the initial events responses have run from excitement to disappointment, and encouragement to a sense of extreme failure. These assessments, however, have more to do with what occurs after the utopian disruption, and less about how disruption emerges from imaginative alternatives in real conditions. My interest is in the latter, and the former is a different question, albeit certainly interrelated. 41. Raymond Guess, “Alain Badiou’s Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil,” European Journal of Philosophy 9, no. 3 (December 2001): 408–412, has weighed in on the relevance and significance of Badiou’s work for ethics, which I am suggesting extends to realist politics. It is beyond the scope of this paper to develop this particular connection further. 42. Alain Badiou, “Tunisie, Egypte: Quand un vent d'est balaie l'arrogance de l'Occident,” trans. Cristiana Petru-Stefanescu (2011), http://www.versobooks.com/ blogs/394. 43. The discussion of the “truthfulness” (as opposed to truth) in realist politics is one of Bernard Williams’s important contributions that have yet to receive proper attention. Bernard Williams, Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002). For instance, Williams discusses Nietzsche and in doing so alludes to the relationship between realism as the critique of false consciousness, and truthfulness as a way of opening new possibilities:One of Nietzsche’s most striking qualities is the obstinacy with which he held to an ideal of truthfulness that would not allow us to falsify or forget the horrors of the world, the fact that their existence has been necessary to everything that we value, or the further fact summarized in the slogan “God is dead”—that the traditional metaphysical conceptions which have helped us to make sense of the world, and in particular to bear its horrors, have terminally broken down. He often calls on honesty and intellectual conscience, and he prizes those who have to have an argument against the sceptic inside themselves—“the great self-dissatisfied people.” . . . The value of truthfulness embraces the need to find out the truth, to hold on to it, and to tell it—in particular, to oneself. (13 ff.) 44. Lear, 119. 45. PI, 113. 46. Badiou, Tunisie, Egypte. 47. One way to understand the failure of the Arab Spring to generate anything of substance beyond initial events is not only the turn away from the actual problems themselves, but clinging to the fantasy of what might be. 48. See Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Contradictions of the Arab Spring,” (November 14, 2011), http:​//www​.alja​zeera​.com/​indep​th/op​inion​/2011​/11/2​01111​11101​ 71153​9134.​html.​“The rapid public embrace of this current . . . terrified those in power—the rulers of every Arab state without exception, the governments of the ‘outside’ states who were an active presence in the geopolitics of the Arab world, even

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the governments of very distant states.” Wallerstein has long been a keen interpreter of movements that possess the utopian impulse. For other connections see Immanuel Wallerstein, After Liberalism (New York: New Press. 1995), and Utopistics: Or Historical Choices of the Twenty-First Century (New York: New Press, 1998). 49. Lear, 103. 50. Ibid., 104. 51. Ibid., 116. 52. Ibid., 117. 53. Ibid., 115.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Allison, Henry E. Kant’s Transcendentalism and Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004. Badiou, Alain. “Tunisie, Egypte: Quand un vent d'est balaie l'arrogance de l'Occident.” Translated by Cristiana Petru-Stefanescu. 2011. http://www.versobooks.com/blogs/394. Benhabib, Seyla. Situating the Self. New York: Routledge,1992. ———. The Roots of Romanticism. Edited by Henry Hardy. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 2001. Estlund, David. Democratic Authority: A Philosophical Framework. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. ———. “What Good Is It? Unrealistic Political Theory and the Value of Intellectual Work.” Analyse & Kritik 2 (2011): 395–416. ———. “Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy.” Philosophy & Public Affairs 39, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 207–237. Galston, William. “Realism in Political Theory.” European Journal of Political Philosophy 9, no. 4 (2010): 385–411. Geuss, Raymond. “Alain Badiou’s Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil.” European Journal of Philosophy 9, no. 3 (December 2001): 408–412. ———. Philosophy and Real Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008. ———. “Realismus, Wunschdenken, Utopie.” Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 58, no. 3 (2010): 419–429. ———. Politics and the Imagination. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. ———. “Raymond Geuss on Realism and Utopianism in Political Philosophy.” 2010. http:​//phi​losop​hybit​es.co​m/201​0/05/​raymo​nd-ge​uss-o​n-rea​lism-​in-po​litic​ al-ph​iloso​phy.h​tml. Goodwin, Barbara. Social Science and Utopia: Nineteenth-Century Models of Social Harmony. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1978. Gray, John. Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. ———. Gray’s Anatomy: Selected Writings. New York: Penguin Books, 2010.

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Hamlin, Alan, and Zofi Stemplowski. “Theory, Ideal Theory and the Theory of Ideals.” Political Studies Review 10, no. 1 (January 2012): 48–62. Hill, Thomas, Jr. Respect, Pluralism and Justice: Kantian Perspectives. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Honig, Bonnie, and Marc Stears. “The New Realism: From Modus Vivendi to Justice.” In Political Philosophy versus History? Contextualism and Real Politics in Contemporary Political Thought. Edited by Jonathan Floyd and Marc Stears. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Irigaray, Luce. I Love to You: Sketch of a Possible Felicity in History. Translated by Alison Martin. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Jameson, Frederic. “Realism and Utopia in The Wire.” Criticism 52, nos. 3–4 (Summer/Fall 2010): 359–372. Joas, Hans. The Creativity of Action. Cambridge, England: Polity Press, 1996. Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ———. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Edited by Paul Guyer. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Lear, Jonathan. Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Levitas, Ruth. The Concept of Utopia. New York: Syracuse University Press, 1990. ———. Utopia as Method: The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013. Moi, Toril. “Beauvoir’s Utopia: The Politics of The Second Sex.” The South Atlantic Quarterly 92, no. 2 (Spring 1993): 210–242. Moylan, Tom. Demand the Impossible: Science Fiction and the Utopian Imagination. New York: Routledge, 1987. ———. Exploring the Utopian Impulse. London: Peter Lang, 2008. Parrinder, Patrick. Learning from Other Worlds: Estrangement, Cognition, and the Politics of Science Fiction and Utopia. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. Philp, Mark. “Peacebuilding and Corruption.” International Peacekeeping 15, no. 3 (2008): 310–327. ———. “Political Theory and the Evaluation of Political Conduct.” Social Theory and Practice 34, no. 3 (July 2008): 389–410. Pippin, Robert. Fatalism in American Film Noir: Some Cinematic Philosophy. Charlottesville and London: The University of Virginia Press, 2012. Rawls, John. The Law of Peoples: “With the Idea of Public Reason Revisited.” Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Ricoeur, Paul. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Edited by George Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. ———. History and Truth. Chicago, IL.: Northwestern University Press, 2007. Robeyns, Ingrid, and Adam Swift. Social Theory and Practice. Special issue Social Justice: Ideal Theory, Nonideal Circumstances 34, no. 3 (July 2008). Sable, Andrew. “History and Reality: Idealist Pathologies and ‘Harvard School’ Remedies,” in Political Philosophy versus History? Contextualism and Real

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Politics in Contemporary Political Thought. Edited by Jonathan Floyd and Marc Stears. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Sargent, Lyman Tower. Utopianism: A Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Sen, Armartya. The Idea of Justice, Belknap: Harvard University Press, 2009. Stemplowska, Zofia. “What’s Ideal About Ideal Theory?” Social Theory and Practice 34 (2008): 319–40. Taylor, George. “Ricoeur's Philosophy of Imagination.” Journal of French Philosophy 16 (Spring/Fall 2006): 93–104. Wallerstein, Immanuel. After Liberalism. New York: New Press, 1995. ———. Utopistics: Or Historical Choices of the Twenty-First Century. New York: New Press, 1998. Wallerstein, Immanuel. “The Contradictions of the Arab Spring.” November 14, 2011. http:​//www​.alja​zeera​.com/​indep​th/op​inion​/2011​/11/2​01111​11101​71153 ​ 9134.​html.​ Williams, Bernard. Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002. ———. In the Beginning Was the Deed: Realism and Moralism in Political Argument. Edited by Geoffrey Hawthorn. Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 2005.

Chapter 10

Why Ideology and Utopia Today? George H. Taylor

My title has at least two dimensions.1 First, why should we pay attention to the concepts of ideology and utopia today? Aren’t they outmoded, with ideology a vestige of the Marxist thinking of a prior generation of thought and utopia a romanticist and escapist notion? A second form of my question is why should we pay attention to the discussion of ideology and utopia in Ricoeur’s book on that subject? Here too, is Ricoeur’s discussion outmoded? He spends five chapters of that text, after all, on Marx and another three on Althusser. Aren’t the interrogations of those figures passé? Meanwhile, Ricoeur’s discussion of utopia focuses on nineteenth-century figures such as Saint-Simon and Fourier. Since I am the editor of the Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, it is likely not surprising that I continue to find value in that text. I do have some ambivalence about whether the concept of ideology retains currency; its connotation is generally pejorative. But whether or not we like the term, ideology remains, as I shall discuss, a significant placeholder for issues that remain quite vital. And I do want to emphasize the continuing importance of the concept of utopia. To establish the enduring vibrancy of the Lectures, I will first undertake some steps to locate its themes within larger dynamics of contemporary discussion on the nature of human cognition outside of Ricoeur’s work and then will turn to the Lectures’ distinctive and decisive contributions to this understanding. I will also try to show why the Lectures remain distinctive within Ricoeur’s corpus and a fruitful subject for further research.

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CONTEXTUALIZING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE LECTURES I will contextualize the current significance of the Lectures in three steps. All three of them show the dislocation of reason as foundational and so engage in a critique of the sufficiency of the Enlightenment legacy. In the words of George Lakoff, to whom I shall return, we cannot understand twenty-first-century politics on the basis of the model of an eighteenth-century brain.2 The Enlightenment emphasis on the mind operating on the basis of reason and facts is insufficient. The three steps of contextualization will work from broad to narrow, and I begin with the very general understanding of the brain articulated in recent decades in the field of what has become known as behavioral economics. Those resistant to economic jargon should not be put off by the reference to economics in this field; the main studies here lie in cognitive psychology. This work challenges the thesis of mainstream economics that we each seek to maximize our economic utility. Let me offer an example through some variations. Why do newspaper articles typically begin by focusing on the story of one individual affected by whatever the subject of the story is about rather than about the larger class of those affected? Why do we categorize groups in a summary fashion— “Muslim,” “woman,” “American,” “French?” Why do most people have in their head a sense of the “normal” person as white, male, heterosexual, and able-bodied? In all these cases, the research shows that we are very bad at statistical reasoning and instead think on the basis of prototypes. A story comes to life when we understand its implication for one affected individual rather than a statistical multitude. We tend to categorize quickly on the basis of groups and assumed norms. It would be much more rational—and economic—to think empirically and statistically, but we do not. So what’s the point? The research indicates that the brain operates on the basis of two systems. System 1 is more automatic and instinctive: it operates unconsciously, proceeds on the basis of associations (such as prototypes), requires no attention or effort, and functions quickly. System 2, by contrast, is more reflective and consists of what we more typically consider a rational reasoning process: it engages in systematic evaluation, is controlled, takes conscious effort, and proceeds more slowly.3 For our purposes, it is essential to recognize that system 1 is the default system for the brain. System 2 engages only when necessary and often accepts system 1 judgments. Think of our average day. Much of our activity is undertaken automatically: dressing; eating; brushing our teeth; driving. We could not function if we had to deliberate about each of the thousands of decisions we make daily. System 1 also involves “gut reactions”—our stomach speaks. We have an emotive reaction, positively or negatively, to an event, and our response is colored by

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this nondeliberative, emotional reaction. The system 1 functioning is typically effective and allows us to move forward. But it also acts on the basis of shortcuts, such as prototypes, and these can be inaccurate and dysfunctional. The implications of the interrelations of systems 1 and 2 are both fascinating and tremendously significant. For its deep instruction, I commend an excellent and quite readable book on the subject by one of its main proponents, Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow.4 In my view, everyone needs to know the basics of behavioral economics to understand better how the world works. But for our present topic, what is critical is the challenge of behavioral economics to the Enlightenment prioritization of reason. Instead, the mind works much more fundamentally on the basis of the intuitive, affective factors of system 1. System 2 rationality is often more subordinate to the operation of system 1. It takes us a lot of work to engage system 2 to overcome any system 1 limitations. The second step in contextualizing the significance of Ricoeur’s Lectures moves us to the narrower framework of cognitive linguist George Lakoff. Lakoff is himself attentive to the dynamics of behavioral economics, but his major contribution lies in showing how the mind works primarily on the basis of metaphor. He is particularly famous for his work with Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By.5 (It may be of interest that Mark Johnson was a graduate student of Ricoeur’s at the University of Chicago.) In Lakoff’s extensive writings, he argues forcefully for the foundation of human cognition not in the literal but in the metaphorical.6 The emphasis here is similar to that in behavioral economics on prototypes. Metaphors too are typically unconscious and automatic and proceed on the basis of type rather than categories with clearly delineated boundaries. There are obvious resonances of Lakoff’s work also with Ricoeur’s on metaphor, a point of relevance to which I return. For present concerns, of especial interest is Lakoff’s extension of his work on metaphor to politics. He criticizes the typical view that in politics all that is needed is to provide facts and figures to show where people’s interests lie, and people will vote accordingly. This approach, Lakoff maintains, ignores the cognitive unconscious, does not reach our deepest values, and suppresses legitimate emotions. Instead, he claims, we need to “embrace a deep rationality that can take account of, and advantage of, a mind that is largely unconscious, embodied, emotional, empathetic, metaphorical, and only partly universal.”7 Lakoff insists that we “cannot stick to policy and interest groups and issue-by-issue debate” but must attend politics’ “moral, mythic, and emotional dimension.”8 It is this moral, mythic, and emotional dimension of politics that, I shall argue, Ricoeur’s discussion of ideology and utopia attends and deepens particularly well. The third step in contextualizing the Lectures turns us to the social imaginary. Cornelius Castoriadis, Charles Taylor, and Ricoeur are generally

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recognized as the leading thinkers on the social imaginary,9 although Ricoeur’s work on the social and cultural imagination is more a subtext in the Lectures than a well-developed theme.10 A new journal, Social Imaginaries, is proving to be an important locus for discussion on this topic. Attention to the social imaginary participates in the “hermeneutic turn” in the social sciences and elucidates how “cultural configurations of meaning” orient our encounter with the world and influence the formation of social institutions and practices. The social imaginary also emphasizes the social and creative aspects of the imagination, the ability to reform social institutions.11 In opposition to materialistic and quantitative reductions of reality, the social imaginary highlights the ineradicable quality of structures of meaning (or of meaninglessness) in social life. In the words of Charles Taylor, the social imaginary has a “constitutive function.”12 It is not ornamental, not epiphenomenal. IDEOLOGY AND UTOPIA AND THE SYMBOLIC MEDIATION OF ACTION The larger significance of the Lectures on Ideology and Utopia lies in their development of the symbolic mediation of action. I want to focus on this topic, so that we can better determine how this theme can, at once, be integrated into the contemporary contextual factors just discussed and, at the same time, illuminate the meaning of ideology and utopia. It is also essential to appreciate that the symbolic mediation of action persists as a theme in Ricoeur, as he returns to it as an element of prefiguration (mimesis 1) in Time and Narrative.13 In fact, I want to start from an example of symbolic mediation that Ricoeur offers in Time and Narrative to help illustrate what the topic entails. Ricoeur writes that when we raise our hand, it is not simply a physical motion but has meaning, as depending on the context, it can be interpreted as voting, greeting a friend, or hailing a taxi (58). The physical activity is never isolable from the meaning of the activity; the activity is symbolically mediated. The meaning of action is a language that can be read (58). Readers of Ricoeur will be familiar with the extension of this argument: action is a quasi-text that can be interpreted (58). In the Lectures Ricoeur indicates that he grafts his entire analysis of ideology on Marx’s acknowledgment that there is a “language of real life” that exists before all ideological distortions.14 For Ricoeur the symbolic structure of action “is absolutely primitive and ineluctable.”15 I return to the import of Ricoeur’s insight for his theory of ideology but want to remain for the moment with the larger implications of Ricoeur’s thesis. He frequently reiterates in the Lectures that the symbolic structure of action is ineluctable. He claims that “a nonsymbolic mode of existence,

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and even less, a nonsymbolic kind of existence, can no longer obtain” (12). The world of human action—of human praxis—must “immediately have a symbolic dimension” (11). Praxis must have “from the beginning a symbolic dimension so that it might have and receive its own language” (81). No social action is not already symbolically mediated” (258). The import of this thesis for the larger inquiry into the nature of imagination is also telling. Ricoeur relates symbolic mediation with the imaginary. We would not be able to understand the notion of the imaginary if reality were not already symbolically mediated (139). There is a “primary imaginary structure of our being in the world”; the imaginary “is constitutive of our relation to the world” (145). The social imagination, Ricoeur writes, “is constitutive of social reality” (3). In turn, interpretation is not isolable from but integral to human praxis; it is “so primitive that in fact it is constitutive of the dimension of praxis” (10). Symbolic mediation, meaning, imagination, and interpretation are all interrelated and are all interrelated as integral to human action. The consequences of this thesis are immense. Human activity begins not in abstract logic or isolable fact but in symbolic mediation. In the Lectures, Ricoeur extends the argument into human activity beginning in rhetoric (11, 259). We see similar threads across Ricoeur’s corpus. In The Rule of Metaphor Ricoeur hypothesizes that we begin in metaphor: “Is there not, in Gadamer’s terms, a ‘metaphoric’ at work at the origin of logical thought, at the root of all classification?”16 In Time and Narrative, as previously noted, Ricoeur returns to the symbolic mediation of action and maintains that we begin in figuration, particularly prefiguration. To my knowledge, the secondary literature has little developed these subtexts across Ricoeur’s work in their consequence either for Ricoeur’s corpus on its own or for social theory at large. I develop these subtexts elsewhere.17 I will comment on these larger implications after incorporating Ricoeur’s extensions of these arguments for ideology. Ricoeur is quite direct that ideology and utopia are integrally connected to the symbolic mediation of action. “Ideology and utopia,” he writes, “have ultimately to do with the character of human action as being mediated, structured and integrated by symbolic systems.”18 If symbolic mediation is ineradicable, so is ideology.19 “[A] pre-symbolic, and therefore preideological, stage of real life can nowhere be found.”20 As readers of the Lectures know, Ricoeur’s main thesis is that underlying the distortive level of ideology identified and explored by Marx, there must be a constitutive level of ideology (182), a level of symbolization itself that can be distorted (255). If there were not symbolic mediation already at work in the most basic kind of action, there would be no symbolic structure that could be distorted (8). Ricoeur types the constitutive level of ideology as “nonpejorative,” one that seeks to preserve social and individual identity (258).21 While the utopia too

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can have a distortive function as escapist, it has a constitutive role as well, to help us imagine and bring to reality alternative futures.22 The utopia itself offers a form of identity, a “prospective identity,” something that we seek and are yet not (311). If the constitutive and distortive aspects of ideology and utopia relate to the symbolic mediation of action, so does the third component of ideology and utopia, its role as legitimation or as contestation of power. As Ricoeur relates, the process of legitimation lies within the level of symbolization (255). For many who participate in society, their engagement is not simply a matter of a social contract—of giving to the society in return for what is received (14)—but depends on belief. The symbols and symbolic structure of a society, culture, or nation do not give rise simply to thought23 but to belief. Acknowledgment that some in society may not believe does not negate the point that many do. And for many of those who do not believe in their society, this loss of belief is itself a troubling part of the legitimacy crisis. In the Lectures Ricoeur of course addresses the topic of legitimation in his discussion of Weber. Ricoeur observes that in each of the types of authority that Weber addresses—legal, traditional, and charismatic—the leader’s assertion of authority rests finally on the citizenry’s belief (Glauben).24 A system of power ultimately rests on our belief (214). If ideology acts to consolidate and reinforce this belief, the utopia offers a space to challenge this belief. I emphasize the interrelation between the symbolic mediation of action and belief. The deeper contributions of the Lectures to the theories of ideology and utopia and to the nature of the social and cultural imagination can be aptly summarized in Ricoeur’s response to Marx. First, Marx argues for a differentiation between an economic infrastructure and a superstructure of ideas; ideas are an “efflux” of the infrastructure of “material behavior.”25 But Ricoeur maintains that Marx’s allowance of a “language of real life” shows that the symbolic mediation of action permeates the economic infrastructure. The symbolic mediation of action is in fact infrastructural itself— inextricable to human action.26 While distortive ideology may be contrasted with praxis, a more constitutive form of ideology as symbolic mediation offers an “inner connection” with praxis (10). Symbolic mediation, imagination, and interpretation go all the way down. Second, symbolic mediation involves a motivational model—pertaining to our relation to structures of power, including belief (107, 210)—and this displaces Marx’s causal relation between infrastructure and superstructure. The motivational model better founds the possibility of agency in human praxis. Third, Marx criticizes interpretation as fallow because it does not effect change; interpretation remains caught in the superstructure, the world of ideas. In the language of Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the

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world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”27 Yet, Ricoeur responds, the utopia is not simply a dream but seeks to change reality. The fiction that is the utopian form of productive imagination does not remain in the air but aims to shatter reality. Like ideology, in its constitutive fashion it can act at an infrastructural level. THE CONTINUING CONTEMPORARY VITALITY OF THE LECTURES I now want to pull back from specific discussion of the themes of the Lectures to argue for their continuing vitality today. To do so I return to the three stages of contextualization with which I began and proceed in a reverse order. First, it is likely only too apparent that the Lectures, irrespective of their focus on the precise topics of ideology and utopia, offer decisive contributions to the contemporary attention to the social imaginary. In fact, I would argue that Ricoeur’s development—in the Lectures and elsewhere—of the theme of the symbolic mediation of action goes significantly further than the work of Castoriadis and Charles Taylor in clarifying how the social imaginary operates. Substantively, the thesis of the symbolic mediation of action is also hugely important. As I shall pursue in more detail when turning to other stages of contextualization, it is an essential contribution of Ricoeur’s to articulate that human culture is situated and begins in symbolic mediation. We begin not with reason, fact, or quantification but in meaning, imagination, metaphor, rhetoric, and, yes, ideology. As I attempt to elaborate elsewhere, perhaps the best way to encapsulate Ricoeur’s approach here is to relate it to his thesis in Time and Narrative.28 We begin in figuration. This seems a momentous reversal of the Enlightenment claim asserting the primacy of reason. As evident, there is much value in Ricoeur’s analysis in the Lectures on the symbolic mediation of action that can be retained independent of any attention to ideology. For Ricoeur’s work to be congruent with the current turn toward conceptualization of the social imaginary, should we drop the vocabulary of ideology? After all, Ricoeur acknowledges that ideology is persistently a polemical concept (2), and Charles Taylor insists that the social imaginary allows for a constitutive function as, he claims, ideology does not.29 Even if Taylor does not incorporate Ricoeur’s nonpejorative sense of ideology, do not we still give credit to what he means? Characterizing an approach as an ideology is an aspersion, a denunciation. As I adverted to at the outset, I do think that the vocabulary of the social imaginary more easily allows for consideration of positive functions of social and political life than does the term ideology. It is difficult for ideology to shake its negative connotations.

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Nevertheless, I would urge that the terminology of ideology be retained and incorporated into the larger perspective of the social imaginary, because the conception of ideology contains values that are often missing or underplayed in the notion of the social imaginary. In part, ideology’s weakness—as polemical, as critique—is also its strength. Although critique of particular social imaginaries is not unknown,30 we seem more typically to conceive of the social imaginary as positive: it is creative, imaginative. But Nazism was also a social imaginary that was creative and imaginative, and we each have our views on perverse social imaginaries of various political stripes today. The conception of ideology retains the analytic lens that can perceive distortion. The conception of ideology is also attentive to the problematic of power and legitimacy, as an orientation to the social imaginary is often not. And the vocabulary of ideology typically presumes a coherence in approach—perhaps totalistic—that the social imaginary does not. The social imaginary may permit multiple such forms, whereas ideologies may view themselves more in competition, each asserting its own view about the proper form of ideological coherence. Finally, while Ricoeur maintains that the major ascription of ideology rightly is political, he also appreciates that the characterization of ideology—including all of the above traits—can apply to other contexts too: economic, moral, aesthetic, religious, and so on.31 I would also suggest that Ricoeur’s concept of utopia be retained from the Lectures and included into the perspective of the social imaginary. The utopian includes the possibility of historical change, as the social imaginary also often but not necessarily does. A social imaginary may be static. Retention of the utopian is additionally important in relation to how Ricoeur’s corpus as a whole offers a resource for considering the social imaginary. If, as I have commented, Ricoeur not only continues to adhere to the notion of the symbolic mediation of action but expands upon it in his development of the notion of figuration, the same persistence is not true in his reference to the utopian. The year 1975 marked the publication of La métaphore vive (1975, later translated as The Rule of Metaphor) and delivery at the University of Chicago of the course lectures for the Lectures on Ideology and Utopia and the forthcoming Lectures on Imagination.32 This was a time period when Ricoeur emphasized the creativity and productivity of imagination. If Ricoeur’s work on metaphor demonstrates that we are not caught in the prison house of language,33 his work in the two sets of lectures demonstrates similarly that we are not caught in the prison house of contemporary social and political structures. This is a most important message today and in my mind an essential and abiding contribution of Ricoeur’s work here. So in the contemporary context of increased scholarly regard for the social imaginary, I find much of

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value to be retained in the Lectures on not only the social mediation of action but on the more particular themes of ideology and utopia as well. I offered as the second potential contemporary context for the Lectures Lakoff’s work on metaphor and his stress on the inextricability to politics of its “moral, mythic, and emotional dimension.”34 And then the third context was the insight from behavioral economics that our minds work primordially on the basis of the intuitive, affective factors of system 1, while system 2 rationality is often more subordinate and interstitial. I want to treat both of them together. It is likely apparent that Ricoeur’s elaboration of the symbolic mediation of action fits nicely with Lakoff’s emphasis on the “moral, mythic, and emotional dimension” of politics. I would argue that both extend the intuitive, affective arena of system 1. System 1 informs not only systems of economic behavior or of categorization (prototypes) but also affect—emotion—and Lakoff and Ricoeur show this affect extends to basic political and other beliefs. As I have discussed, part of the message of the symbolic mediation of action is that we begin not only in interpretation but in belief. Importantly, this beginning in belief influences, at least as a default, each one of us, not just those pitiable voters we criticize for not making rational choices because they are emotional or ideological. Symbolic mediation is inextricable, and so is ideological mediation, again at least as a default. I say as a default, as there is some evidence we can train our system 2 rationality to reduce our ideological bias,35 but I am skeptical that system 2 ever prevails over system 1. Whatever the agreement with that judgment, I would still insist that we each begin in system 1, in affect, moral intuition, and ideology. Education and intelligence do not automatically insulate us from ideology or bias. Some would claim that education in fact allows us to construct more elaborate ideological pyramids. These affective values with which we begin are not necessarily negative; they may in fact be ennobling. But they are ideological nonetheless. An additional contemporary significance of the Lectures, then, lies in their expanding the reach of system 1 intuition and affect into our beliefs as affected by the symbolic mediation of action. None of us is immune, a very humbling but illuminating insight. An additional abiding significance of this insight into the pervasiveness of ideology and the symbolic mediation of action is that it provides crucial understanding into the dynamics of contemporary politics. Systems of belief permeate our politics. In other work building on Ricoeur, I have discussed these beliefs as political faiths (or losses of faith),36 but I do not belabor that vocabulary here. Yet consider the symbolic mediation of national identity contained in the following ascriptions in the United States. We find language about the “sacredness” of the U.S. Constitution37 and the “sacralization” of our 1776 Declaration of Independence, something described as an “American Scripture.”38 In recent French culture, Julia Kristeva writes of This Incredible

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Need to Believe, a position that she adopts herself.39 The search for political and cultural symbols is felt to be particularly freighted when the search may be in vain. The persisting role of belief is reinforced by its possible loss. In France, Pierre Nora led a project to locate the lieux de mémoire, the “symbolic element[s] of the memorial heritage” of France,40 and posed whether their power of legitimacy persists or has become disenchanted.41 As François Dosse and various newspaper commentators have observed, it seems that French president Emmanuel Macron has been attentive to the need for this symbolism, for example, in stage-setting his speech the night of his election in the courtyard of the Louvre and in his early reception of President Putin at Versailles.42 Is Macron responding to the claim that in our fractured age we experience “a collapse of faith in public institutions” (emphasis added)?”43 To be more precise, we cannot understand contemporary politics if we do not view it through the perspective of the symbolic mediation of action and the role of belief. The presidential victory of Donald Trump in the United States was undoubtedly in part as a result of the policies he advocated, bringing back employment in the coal industry for instance. (I set aside whether the policy was an actual aim or a deception.) But his success was much more a result of the mythos he created, where not only America would be made great again but so would individual, particularly working-class, Americans. By contrast, whatever the merits of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, she and her campaign found it very difficult to articulate the values—the beliefs—they wanted to promote. I remember an editorial cartoon from 2008, when Ms. Clinton ran against Barack Obama, where the cartoonist depicted Ms. Clinton sitting next to civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King (then deceased), likely a surrogate for a representation of Mr. Obama. The cartoonist had Dr. King voice his famous lines—“I have a dream”—while Ms. Clinton articulated that she had “a comprehensive, multi-pronged, poll-tested, pro-active proposal.”44 The King (and Obama) lines resonated with underlying beliefs and values; Ms. Clinton could speak only of bureaucratic programs. And the characterization of her in 2008 remained accurate through 2016, to her detriment. It is a continuing source of amazement that in the United States it is the Republican Party whose politicians understand and build upon the need to speak to voters’ beliefs—system 1—while the more liberal Democratic Party largely continues, as with Ms. Clinton, to speak at the level of rational policy, system 2. At least to an outside observer, it appeared that similarly at stake in the recent presidential election in France was a basic decision about values and beliefs, about what it means today to be French. Emmanuel Macron’s vision of a France that was more open and European prevailed against Marine Le Pen’s vision of a France for the “true” French. Macron had to fight off perceptions that he was only a remote system 2 rational thinker, the

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investment banker and economy minister. It was interesting in this regard that in the midst of the campaign Macron traveled to a small village in which he had spent some of his childhood not to gather local votes but to show voters nationwide his attachment to his “terroir,” his roots.45 The example of President Macron seems particularly salient, since he was a student assistant of Ricoeur’s, working with Ricoeur on Memory, History, Forgetting.46 The relationship between the two has been receiving increased attention, and I draw as a source in particular upon François Dosse’s 2017 book, Le philosophe et le président.47 As in the other settings discussed, we can distinguish between Macron’s specific policies, which remain debated, and his attention to ideological factors in contemporary politics. Macron is himself comfortable using the term “ideology” in its positive sense, describing how ideology can play an essential contemporary role in providing a new foundation for (“refonder”) or restoration (“restauration”) of the political order (96, 99, quoting Macron). Dosse views these perspectives as arising out of Ricoeur (97), although in these statements Ricoeur is not mentioned by name. Intriguing as is the question of the origin of Macron’s intellectual and political approach, I focus instead on Macron’s contemporary manifestation of the Ricoeurean thematic on ideology and utopia that we are pursuing, whatever its point of origins for Macron. For Macron, ideology seems vital to relate symbolic values rather than just economic ones to the restoration of the political order. He is explicit that his vision of ideology looks backwards and forward in ways similar to Ricoeur on ideology and utopia. Macron embraces at once a love of France’s history and of the ambition to change (“‘l’amour de notre histoire et l’ambition du changement’”) (188, quoting Macron). For him, the nature of France as France exists as a hope (“‘la France, c’est une espérance’”) (204, quoting Macron). Macron has a similar aspiration to construct Europe as whole by refounding it (261). As the examples of the American and French contexts indicate, then, a great insight of Ricoeur’s delineation of ideology as integrative is that it makes apparent that individual or social group identification takes place on the basis of symbolic values, and these symbolic values may diverge from economic criteria. No longer is economic reasoning necessarily basic to human identity; other values may well hold integrative sway. Dosse argues that the intention for both Macron and Ricoeur is to establish a new political foundation by culture (270). The project is to reconstruct a “social-historical imaginary” (“imaginaire social-historique”) (251, 261). Ricoeur’s analysis of the symbolic mediation of action and its manifestations as ideology and utopia continues not only to have significant value but to deserve much greater appreciation for incisive understanding of contemporary culture and politics.

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THE LECTURES’ CONTRIBUTIONS TO RICOEUR’S CORPUS In the final section of my presentation, I turn from the larger ramifications of the Lectures in their analysis of the contemporary social imaginary to the text’s distinctive contributions within Ricoeur’s corpus. Along the way, I pursue some subjects in the text that the volume treats only briefly whose implications are weighty and are left to us to engage and cultivate. At many levels, then, the Lectures remains a rich resource both for the themes that it does address and for the suggestive topics on which it offers but brief hints. On some of these topics I have written at greater length elsewhere, as I reference. My first point returns to my earlier comment that the Lectures appeared at a signal time in Ricoeur’s scholarship, during the same year as the publication of La métaphore vive and the Lectures on Imagination. Throughout this period, Ricoeur is very attentive to the possibilities of creative and productive imagination. In the Lectures, the utopia offers the potential for shattering reality, for creative and transformative imagination. This emphasis on the creative imagination recedes in Ricoeur’s subsequent works, where the turn is more to the narrative as a recounting of a story or to memory and history.48 Much as I find great value in Ricoeur’s later works, for me his dedication in the Lectures and in other work of this period to the creative imagination and its social and political opportunities as utopia mark a high point of his intellectual career. The Lectures also are vital for establishing the availability of critique within hermeneutics but arguing that the critique occurs on the basis of a juxtaposition between ideological and utopian views, each engaging in a critique of the limitations of the other. This juxtaposition offers “a certain solution to the problem of judgment” but insists “that no point of view exists outside the game.”49 I find this insight very probing, and again would differentiate this stage of Ricoeur’s thinking from later reflections, where in his adoption of the formal rule of moral universalism, he turns more Kantian and Habermasian, even as he integrates the formal rule with practical wisdom.50 The Lectures are intriguing as well, because they provide hints about Ricoeur’s theory of interpretation writ large on bases that persist across much of his corpus but remain subtexts—only briefly illumined—throughout. A good example in the Lectures returns us to Ricoeur’s seizing on Marx’s recognition that beyond the distortions of current political and economic practice there may exist a “language of real life.”51 If earlier I emphasized how for Ricoeur the language of real—and distorted—life is symbolically mediated, now my emphasis is on the differentiation between the languages of real and distorted life. According to Marx, the language

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of distorted life is the language of “representation” (Vorstellung), while the language of real life is the language of “presentation” (Darstellung).52 Ricoeur observes that Marx retains from Hegel that “beyond distorted representation there exists real presentation.”53 The weight granted presentation (Darstellung) for the language of real life is quite fascinating, since, as Jean Grondin points out, Gadamer’s hermeneutics is guided by the concept of Darstellung.54 Does Ricoeur agree with this differentiation? Ricoeur comments first: “We must preserve the term Vorstellung, since it is the basic notion for what ideology means.”55 Despite its limited presence in the text, we must retain the significance of the implications of Vorstellung as a conceptualization of ideology. And yet Ricoeur does not limit Vorstellung to distortion. Consistent with his larger thesis about the range in ideology from distortion to integration, Ricoeur maintains, “The concept of ideology may be large enough to cover not only distortions but all representations, all Vorstellungen.”56 I have often been struck by the numerous moments where a discussion of Vorstellung and Darstellung pops up in Ricoeur’s corpus57 but have not had the chance to pursue the topic in depth. The Lectures offer another significant opportunity in which to see these themes at work in Ricoeur and in preceding thought. Pulling back from the larger range of Ricoeur’s corpus, the Lectures are important also for their interrelation with the Lectures on Imagination. I find it interesting, for examples, that Ricoeur does not delve into the distortions of imagination in the imagination lectures as he does into the distortions of ideology or utopia. The analytic framework of the Lectures may prove useful to interrogate imagination more closely. The role of the utopia in the Lectures is also meaningful as a point of comparison to what Ricoeur deems the highest form of productive imagination, the creation of a fiction. Both offer alternatives to present reality, and both partake of the “nowhere,” which is the literal definition of the utopia.58 Internal to the Lectures themselves there is much that remains to be explored, evaluated, and extended. I offer just a couple examples. First, there seems to be some ambiguity in Ricoeur’s discussion of utopia between its ability to shatter reality and its potential as imaginative variation. The latter, which builds on Husserl, projects possibilities but ones that remain hypothetical. The utopia as shattering, by contrast, suggests the realization of a new truth—not just a hypothetical—that comes to life. Utopia as shattering seems more similar to the “seeing as” of metaphor—we bridge to something new—while the utopia as imaginative variation seems more a matter of “as if.” Given my concern that in Ricoeur’s subsequent work he seems to give less weight to the productive imagination as utopian in the sense of shattering, it seems revealing that in Time and Narrative, configuration (mimesis2) is described as “the kingdom of the as if.”59

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There also seems much more to mine in Ricoeur’s work on legitimacy.60 Is he accurate that all political systems cannot survive only on the basis of the imposition of force but require legitimation, that is, citizenry belief? Is Ricoeur correct that in every political system there is a gap in level between the authority leaders claim and the belief in this authority offered by the citizenry? What explains the basis for this gap? Note that this question is different from how the “surplus value” of ideological legitimation seeks to fill this gap. Ricoeur’s discussion of legitimation seems more to focus on its distortive side. Should there also be development of legitimation’s goals to partake of an integrative ideology? Is citizenry belief—as a factor in the symbolic mediation of action—integral to even positive forms of legitimation? What is the import in Ricoeur’s discussion of legitimacy of his emphasis on the role of motivation as distinguished from the causality of the Marxist model? Continuing riches may be discovered through critical examination of the Lectures on its own, in relation to the remainder of Ricoeur’s corpus, and in relation to broader contemporary topics such as the social imaginary.

NOTES 1. I presented earlier versions of this chapter as keynote addresses at a workshop, “Rethinking Ideology and Utopia: 30 Years Later,” held in Paris at the Fonds Ricoeur, June 26–30 (2017), and at the Fifth “Congresso Ibero-Americano Sobre o Pensamento de Paul Ricoeur,” held at UNISINOS, Brazil, November 6–8, 2017. I thank both audiences for their engagement with and comments on these presentations. 2. George Lakoff, The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century Politics with an 18th-Century Brain (New York: Viking, 2008). 3. Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008). 4. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011). 5. George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). 6. For example, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999). 7. Lakoff, Political Mind, 13. 8. George Lakoff, Moral Politics: How Liberals and Conservatives Think, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 19. 9. Suzi Adams, Paul Blokker, Natalie J. Doyle, John W. M. Krummel, and Jeremy C. A. Smith, “Social Imaginaries in Debate,” Social Imaginaries 1 no. 1 (2015): 16. 10. Ricoeur does title “The Social Imaginary” a section of his article, “Imagination in Discourse and Action,” in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, trans.

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Kathleen Blamey, Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 181–87. 11. Adams, 16, 19. 12. Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2003), 183. Much of this book was later incorporated into Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007). 13. Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, trans. David Pellauer and Kathleen McLaughlin, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 57–58. Ricoeur also develops the thematic at some length elsewhere in Paul Ricoeur, Philosophical Anthropology (Cambridge: Polity, 2016), an article first published in French in 1977. In Time and Narrative, Ricoeur subsequently notes that he finds “inadequate” the differentiation in this article between constitutive and representative symbolism, 243 n.5. 14. Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed. George H. Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 77, quoting Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, German Ideology, ed. Christopher John Arthur (New York: International Publishers, 1970), 70. 15. Ricoeur, Lectures, 77. 16. Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny, Kathleen McLaughlin, and John Costello (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), 22. See also 24, 197–98. 17. Taylor, George H., “The Deeper Significance of Ricoeur’s Philosophy of Productive Imagination: The Role of Figuration.,” in Productive Imagination: Its History, Meaning and Significance, ed. Saulius Geniusas and Dmitri Nikulin (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018). 18. Ricoeur, Paul. “Ideology, Utopia, and Faith,” Protocol Series of the Colloquies of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture 17 (1976): 21. 19. Ricoeur, Lectures, 258. 20. Paul Ricoeur, “Can There Be a Scientific Concept of Ideology?,” in Phenomenology and The Social Sciences: A Dialogue, ed. Joseph Bien, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1978 edition (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), 51; Paul Ricoeur, “Science and Ideology,” in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation, ed. and trans. John B. Thompson (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 255. 21. While I later turn to French president Emmanuel Macron’s own assessment of ideology as potentially positive, it is interesting to note as well his independent conceptual evaluation of ideology as the work of translation between philosophy and politics. François Dosse, Le Philosophe et Le Président (Paris: Stock, 2017), 95–96, quoting Macron. 22. Ricoeur, Lectures, 16. 23. Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan, Religious Perspectives (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 347–57. 24. Ricoeur, Lectures, 204, 210, 212. A more detailed inquiry would be needed to assess Ricoeur’s brief contrasts between Weber’s employment of belief as Glauben

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and his usage of Vorstellung, which has been translated as belief but means representation (199, 203). 25. Ibid., 77, quoting Marx and Engels, 47. 26. Ricoeur, Lectures, 153–54. 27. Karl Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in Marx and Engels, 123. 28. Taylor, “Deeper Significance.” 29. Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, 183. 30. Ibid. 31. Ricoeur, Lectures, 17, 260, 296. 32. Paul Ricoeur, Lectures on Imagination, eds. George H. Taylor, Patrick Crosby, and Robert D. Sweeney (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2019); George H. Taylor, “Delineating Ricoeur’s Concept of Utopia,” Social Imaginaries 3, no. 1 (2017): 41–60. 33. Fredric Jameson, The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975). 34. Lakoff, Moral Politics, 19. 35. Christine Jolls and Cass R. Sustein, “The Law of Implicit Bias,” California Law Review 94 (2006): 976–91. 36. George H. Taylor, “Developing Ricoeur’s Concept of Political Legitimacy: The Question of Political Faith,” in Paul Ricoeur and the Task of Political Philosophy, ed. Greg S. Johnson and Dan R. Stiver, Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014), 159–82. 37. Robert N. Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial, 1 edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 4. 38. Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997), 213. 39. Julia Kristeva, This Incredible Need to Believe, trans. Beverley Bie Brahic, 1st edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). 40. Pierre Nora, “From Lieux de Mémoire to Realms of Memory,” in Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), xvii. 41. Pierre Nora, “General Introduction: Between Memory and History,” in Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, ed. Lawrence D. Kritzman, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996), 6. 42. Dosse, 102–03; Adam Nossiter, “Macron Quickly Assumes a Presidential Attitude,” New York Times, May 30, 2017, www.n​ytime​s.com​/2017​/05/3​0/wor​ld/eu​ rope/​emman​uel-m​acron​-fran​ce.ht​ml.; Solenn de Royer and Marc Semo, “Macron: Du Louvre Au Trianon, l’art et La Manière Présidentiels,” Le Monde, May 30, 2017, www.n​ytime​s.com​/2017​/05/3​0/wor​ld/eu​rope/​emman​uel-m​acron​-fran​ce.ht​ml. 43. Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2011), 6. 44. Dan Wasserman, “Editorial Cartoon,” Boston Globe, January 15, 2008. 45. Alissa J. Rubin, “On the Mountain Top with a French Candidate,” New York Times, May 5, 2017, www.n​ytime​s.com​/2017​/05/0​5/ins​ider/​on-th​e-mou​ntain​-top-​ with-​a-fre​nch-p​resid​entia​l-can​didat​e.htm​l. 46. Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004); Dosse, 64.

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47. Dosse. 48. George H. Taylor, “Prospective Political Identity,” in Paul Ricoeur in the Age of Hermeneutical Reason: Poetics, Praxis, and Critique, ed. Roger W. H. Savage (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015), 123–37. 49. Ricoeur, Lectures, 173. 50. Paul Ricoeur, “The Self and the Moral Norm,” in Oneself as Another, trans. Kathleen Blamey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 203–39; Paul Ricoeur, “The Universal and the Historical,” in Reflections on the Just, trans. David Pellauer (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2007), 232–48; George H. Taylor, “Ricoeur versus Ricoeur? Between the Universal and the Contextual,” in From Ricoeur to Action: The Socio-Political Significance of Ricoeur’s Thinking, ed. Todd S. Mei and David Lewin (New York: Continuum, 2012), 136–54. 51. Ricoeur, Lectures, 7, quoting Marx and Engels, 47. 52. Ricoeur, Lectures, 81. 53. Ibid. 54. Jean Grondin, “L’art comme présentation chez Hans-Georg Gadamer: Porteé et limits d’un concept,” Études Germaniques 62, no. 2 (2007): 337; Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall, 2d ed. (New York: Crossroad, 1991), 138. 55. Ricoeur, Lectures, 75. 56. Ibid., 77. 57. George H. Taylor, “Ricoeur and Just Institutions,” Philosophy Today 58, no. 4 (2014): 582–83. 58. Ricoeur, Lectures, 16. For a discussion of the “nowhere” in Ricoeur’s philosophy of imagination, see George H. Taylor, “The Phenomenological Contributions of Ricoeur’s Philosophy of Imagination,” Social Imaginaries 1, no. 2 (2015): 13–31. 59. Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 64; Taylor, “Delineating.” 60. Taylor, “Developing.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY Adams, Suzi, Paul Blokker, Natalie J. Doyle, John W. M. Krummel, and Jeremy C. A. Smith. 2015. “Social Imaginaries in Debate.” Social Imaginaries 1, no. 1 (2015): 15–52. Bellah, Robert N. The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Dosse, François. Le Philosophe et Le Président: Ricoeur & Macron. Paris: Stock, 2017. Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Translated by Joel Weinsheimer and Donald G. Marshall. 2nd ed. New York: Crossroad, 1989. Grondin, Jean. “L’art comme présentation chez Hans-Georg Gadamer: Porteé et limits d’un concept.” Études Germaniques 62, no. 2 (2007): 337–49. Jameson, Fredric. The Prison-House of Language: A Critical Account of Structuralism and Russian Formalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.

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Jolls, Christine, and Cass R. Sustein. “The Law of Implicit Bias.” California Law Review 94 (2006): 969–96. Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011. Kristeva, Julia. This Incredible Need to Believe. Translated by Beverley Bie Brahic. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. Lakoff, George. Moral Politics : How Liberals and Conservatives Think. 2nd ed. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2002. ———. The Political Mind: Why You Can’t Understand 21st-Century Politics with an 18th-Century Brain. New York: Viking, 2008. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. ———. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Maier, Pauline. American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997. Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. German Ideology. Edited by Christopher John Arthur. New York: International Publishers, 1970. Nora, Pierre. “From Lieux de Mémoire to Realms of Memory.” In Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, 1: xv–xx. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. ———. “General Introduction: Between Memory and History.” In Realms of Memory: Rethinking the French Past, edited by Lawrence D. Kritzman, translated by Arthur Goldhammer, 1: 1–20. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Nossiter, Adam. “Macron Quickly Assumes a Presidential Attitude.” New York Times, May 30, 2017. www.n​ytime​s.com​/2017​/05/3​0/wor​ld/eu​rope/​emman​uel-m​ acron​-fran​ce.ht​ml. Ricoeur, Paul. “Can There Be a Scientific Concept of Ideology?” In Phenomenology and The Social Sciences: A Dialogue, edited by Joseph Bien, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 1978 edition., 44–59. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978. ———. “Ideology, Utopia, and Faith.” Protocol Series of the Colloquies of the Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture 17 (1976): 29–37. ———. “Imagination in Discourse and Action.” In From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II, translated by Kathleen Blamey, 168–87. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1991. ———. Lectures on Ideology and Utopia. Edited by George H. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986. Ricoeur, Paul. Lectures on Imagination. Edited by George H. Taylor, Patrick Crosby, and Robert D. Sweeney. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2019. ———. Memory, History, Forgetting. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. ———. “Science and Ideology.” In Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action, and Interpretation, edited and translated by John B. Thompson, 222–46. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1981.

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———. The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language. Translated by Robert Czerny, Kathleen McLaughlin, and John Costello. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977. ———. “The Self and the Moral Norm.” In Oneself as Another, translated by Kathleen Blamey, 203–39. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. ———. “The Symbolic Structure of Action.” In Philosophical Anthropology, 176–94. Cambridge: Polity, 2016. ———. The Symbolism of Evil. Translated by Emerson Buchanan. Religious Perspectives. New York: Harper & Row, 1967. ———. “The Universal and the Historical.” In Reflections on the Just, translated by David Pellauer, 232–48. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2007. ———. Time and Narrative. Translated by David Pellauer and Kathleen McLaughlin. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Rodgers, Daniel T. Age of Fracture. Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2011. Royer, Solenn de, and Marc Semo. “Macron: Du Louvre Au Trianon, l’art et La Manière Présidentiels.” Le Monde, May 30, 2017. www.l​emond​e.fr/​polit​ique/​artic​ le/20​17/05​/30/m​acron​-du-l​ouvre​-au-t​riano​n-l-a​rt-et​-la-m​anier​e-pre​siden​tiels​_5135​ 853_8​23448​.html​?xtmc​ =paul_ricoeur&xtcr=1. Rubin, Alissa J. “On the Mountain Top with a French Candidate.” New York Times, May 5, 2017. www.n​ytime​s.com​/2017​/05/0​5/ins​ider/​on-th​e-mou​ntain​-top-​with-​ a-fre​nch-p​resid​entia​l-can​didat​e.htm​l. Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007. ———. Modern Social Imaginaries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press Books, 2003. Taylor, George H. “Delineating Ricoeur’s Concept of Utopia.” Social Imaginaries 3, no. 1 (2017): 41–60. ———. “Developing Ricoeur’s Concept of Political Legitimacy: The Question of Political Faith.” In Paul Ricoeur and the Task of Political Philosophy, edited by Greg S. Johnson and Dan R. Stiver, 159–82. Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014. ———. “Prospective Political Identity.” In Paul Ricoeur in the Age of Hermeneutical Reason: Poetics, Praxis, and Critique, edited by Roger W. H. Savage, 123–37. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2015. ———. “Ricoeur versus Ricoeur? Between the Universal and the Contextual.” In From Ricoeur to Action: The Socio-Political Significance of Ricoeur’s Thinking, edited by Todd S. Mei and David Lewin, 136–54. New York: Continuum, 2012. ———. “The Deeper Significance of Ricoeur’s Philosophy of Productive Imagination: The Role of Figuration.” In Productive Imagination: Its History, Meaning and Significance, edited by Saulius Geniusas and Dmitri Nikulin, 157–81. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2018. ———. “The Phenomenological Contributions of Ricoeur’s Philosophy of Imagination.” Social Imaginaries 1, no. 2 (2015): 13–31. Thaler, Richard H., and Cass R. Sunstein. Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Wasserman, Dan. “Editorial Cartoon.” Boston Globe, January 15, 2008.

Index

9/11, xii, 135–55 activism, 7 Adorno, Theodor, 6 affective motivation, 135–55 African Americans, 43, 59 Algeria, 11 alienation, 8, 37, 48n21, 100, 147 Allah, 149 Althusser, Louis, 18, 20–21, 89, 217 Al-Zawahiri, Ayman, 142 anthropology, ix, xiii anti-humanism, 20 Arab Spring, xiii, 205–8 Arendt, Hannah, 11, 34, 36–37, 40, 42, 49n23 Aristotle, 9, 40, 77, 79, 96, 118, 130 Ar-Reimy, Qassim, 143 Augustine, 40 authority, 3, 9, 10, 11, 15, 18, 20, 23, 25, 27n27, 31, 32–34, 36–41, 43, 46, 48, 49n23, 54, 89, 90, 115, 120–21, 130, 138, 139, 141, 148, 151, 191, 222, 230 Badiou, Alain, 205, 206 Barth, Karl, 7 Benhabib, Seyla, 60, 64 Benjamin, Walter, 41

Bloch, Ernst, 63 Bourdieu, Pierre, 12 brain, 218–19, 225 Butler, Judith, 24 Calvinism, 11 capabilities approach, 105, 180n23 capitalism, 6, 7, 14 Castoriadis, Cornelius, 219, 223 Changeux, Jean-Pierre, 154 Chicago, University of, 17, 219 Christianity, 61, 63, 68n52, 69n58 Christian socialism, 7, 12, 17, 18 Civil Rights Movement, xv, 34, 58, 59 Civil War, 58 Clinton, Hillary, 226–27 cognitive psychology, xvi, 218 Cold War, xvii Collège de France, 17 colonialism, 47n18 configuration, 229 consumerism, 6 Corbin, Henry, 79, 83 corporeality. See embodiment Crépon, Marc, 24 critical theory, 21 Dalbiez, Roland, 124 deconstruction, 93, 95 237

238

Index

dehumanization, 8 Deleuze, Gilles, 164 democracy, xvii, 3, 5, 10, 11, 16, 22, 23, 27n27, 34, 55, 96, 126, 128, 205; radical democracy, 5, 24 deontology, xiv, 61 Derrida, Jacques, 164, 167, 178, 180n19 dialectic, xiii, xiv, 7, 10, 12, 21, 42, 87–88, 92–99, 152 domination, 10, 12, 17–20, 23, 31, 33, 34, 36–39, 45, 49n23, 62, 139 Dosse, François, 226–27 economics, behavioral, xvi, 218, 219, 225 Eisenhower, Dwight, 68n53 Ellul, Jacques, 41, 49n35 emancipation, 4, 20, 21, 44, 203 embodiment, xvi, xvii, 114, 121–25, 130, 135–55, 169, 177 emotions, 123–25, 138, 225 the Enlightenment, 59, 60, 218 epistemology, ix, x, 98, 115, 129 Esprit, 9 Estlund, David, 187, 191–97 ethics, xiii, xiv, 4, 8, 24, 25, 57, 64, 66nn10–11, 103, 126–30, 171, 174; little ethics, xiv, 61 Euro-American alliance, xiii feminism, 108n67, 129 feminist standpoint theory, 103 Feuerbach, Ludwig, 33, 222 figuration, 60–64, 92, 99, 221, 223 Fonds Ricoeur, ix, 230n1 Ford, Henry, 96 Ford, John, xvii Foucault, Michel, 4, 12, 17 Fourier, Charles, 61, 92, 121, 217 Frankfurt School. See ideology critique freedom. See emancipation the French resistance, 6 the French revolution, 10 Freud, Sigmund, 17, 60, 124, 130, 147, 168, 180n22

Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 3, 4, 10, 11, 18, 20, 21, 23, 59, 83, 221, 229 Galston, William, 188–90, 208 Gandhi, Mahatma, 6, 16 Geertz, Clifford, xiv, 33, 47n3, 54, 90, 114, 120, 140 gender, xvi, 43, 59, 63, 101, 102, 114, 126–31, 143 The German Ideology, 20 Gifford Lectures, xiii globalization, 5, 24, 26 God, xv, 68n53, 69n58, 82, 83, 142, 145, 146, 150, 153, 157n66, 212n43 the Good, xiv, 46, 61, 62, 64, 142, 147, 154 Gramsci, Antonio, 3, 25n2 grand theory, xiii, xiv Grondin, Jean, 229 Guattari, Félix, 164 Guess, Raymond, xvii, 187, 188, 198– 201, 207, 208, 211n35 Habermas, Jűrgen, xiv, 18, 19, 21, 22, 58–60, 64, 67n31, 67n33, 90, 147, 228 Hansen, Stig Jarle, 141 Hegel, 9, 13, 28n51, 40–41, 43, 47, 229 Hegghammer, Thomas, 140–41 Heidegger, Martin, 3, 20, 40, 69n66, 83, 116 hermeneutical arc, 58, 59, 60 hermeneutical philosophy. See hermeneutics, philosophical hermeneutic of suspicion, ix hermeneutics, ix, xiii, xv, xvi, 11, 20, 22, 26, 57, 59, 90, 92, 98, 105, 124, 176, 219, 228; philosophical, 3, 53 Hester, Marcus, 76, 77 Hitler, 6, 136 Hobbes, Thomas, 121 Holocaust, 23 Honig, Bonnie, 189, 194, 195 Honneth, Axel, 105, 127 hope, 20, 57, 100, 150, 178, 207

Index

Horkheimer, Max, 6 hospitality, xvi, 163–84 Husserl, Edmund, 4, 17, 40, 116, 122, 229 Ibn ‘Arabi, xv, 75–83 identity, 117, 131n6, 163–84, 222; idem and ipse, 35, 42 ideology critique, xiii–xv, xvii, 19, 20, 21, 28n55, 53, 54, 57–60, 64, 65, 137, 155 imaginary, social. See social imaginary imagination, xiv, xvi, xvii, 17, 23, 25, 32, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46, 56, 64, 66n21, 69n57, 75–83, 88, 113–16, 119–23, 130–31, 196–97, 199– 200, 203, 219–22, 225, 228–29; lectures on, x; productive, xiv, 22, 57, 63, 195–97, 200–201, 206, 211n25, 223; reproductive, xiv, 63, 195–96 immigration, xvi, xvii, 165 Islam, 38, 61, 63, 75–83, 135–55, 218 Izutsu, Toshihiko, 79 Jameson, Frederick, xv, 87–88, 92–99, 101–6 Jaspers, Karl, 124 Jesus, 56, 63, 69n58 jihad, 135–55 jihadi. See jihad Johnson, Greg, 69n57 Johnson, Mark, 219 Judaism, 61, 63 the juridical, 8, 24 justice, 4, 6, 12, 16, 31 Kahneman, Daniel, 219 Kant, Immanuel, xiv, 20–21, 23, 40, 44, 57, 79, 93, 100, 119, 122, 166, 171, 172, 177, 178, 194, 210n20, 211n25, 228 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 58, 59, 226 Kirby, Katherine, 103, 104 Klee, Paul, 41 Kristeva, Julia, 225

239

Kruse, Kevin, 68nn52–53 Küng, Hans, 63 labor, 5, 37, 62, 126 Laclau, Ernesto, 10, 20, 27n27 Lakoff, George, 218–19, 225 Lefort, Claude, 10 legitimation, xiv, 23, 26, 31, 36, 38, 48n23, 89, 120–21, 208, 222, 230; of authority, 3, 10 Le Monde, 13 Lenin, 63 Leuchtenberg, William, 96 Levinas, Emmanuel, xv, 88, 103–5 Lévi-Strauss, Claude, 114 LGBTPQIA+. See gender liberalism, 4 liberation. See emancipation lifeworld, 116 linguistics, xvi, 75 Macron, Emmanuel, 226–27 Mannheim, Karl, xiv, 18, 53–55, 57, 62–63, 68n55, 89, 91, 94–96, 115 Mannheim’s Paradox, xiv, 57, 94 Maoism, 14, 58 Marcelo, Gonçalo, 99–100 martyrdom, xvi, 135–55 Marx, Karl, 10, 18, 33, 37, 53, 55–56, 89–90, 120, 217, 221–22, 228 Marxism, xiii, xiv, xv, 7–10, 26n26, 27n51, 47n3, 63, 88–90, 217; neo-Marxism, 55; Althusserian, 89 master/slave relation, 10 May 1968, 13 metanarratives, 19 metaphor, xiii, xiv, xv, 53, 63, 75–83, 113, 115–20, 129–30, 179n7, 221, 224–25 Michel, Johann, 4, 12 migration, 163–84 militant, 6, 15 Mollica, Richard, 151–52 Moltmann, Jürgen, 69n58

240

Moscow, ix motivation, 145–49, 153 Mouffe, Chantal, 10, 20, 24, 27n27 Mounier, Emmanuel, 7–10, 26n18, 26n20 Mulbocus, Yasmin, 143 Mumford, Lewis, 62 Muslim. See Islam Nanterre, University of, 11, 15, 16, 17 narrative, xiii, 56, 63, 92, 106, 116–17, 174–75 Nawaz, Maajid, 144 Nazism, 224 New Deal, 62, 68n52, 68n53 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 41, 212n43 nonviolence, 6, 32 Nora, Pierre, 226 Nussbaum, Martha, xv, 88, 103, 105 Obama, Barack, 226 ontological possibility, 118 Osama bin Laden, 148 Oz, Amos, 144 pacifism. See nonviolence Pannenberg, Wolfhart, 69n58 parables, 56 Patočka, Jan, 100 Le Pen, Marine, 226 personalism, 8, 13, 26n20 phenomenology, 4, 98, 122, 165 philosophy of the will, xiii phronesis, 11, 23, 57, 64, 65, 228 Plato, 55, 93 the political, 3, 13, 25, 210n22 the political paradox, 10, 18, 38, 39, 55 politics, realist, 187–208 postmodernism, 57, 164, 179n5, 179n6 poststructuralism, xiii power, 3, 5, 7, 16, 18, 19, 32, 36–37, 39, 47n11, 97, 126–30, 135–55, 208, 210n22, 222 practical wisdom. See phronesis pragmatism, 10, 13

Index

prefiguration, 120, 220, 221 presentation, 229 progressivism, 3, 4, 6, 12, 25 the Prophet, 63 propoganda, 135–55 Protestantism, 12 Protevi, John, 153 prototypes, 218, 219, 225 psychoanalysis, x, 90, 124, 125, 137 Putin, Vladimir, 226 Qutb, Sayyid, 140, 144 racism, xvii, 34, 59, 63, 102, 143 radicalism, 3, 5, 7, 9, 17 Rawls, John, xvii, 105, 187 realism, 187–208 realist politics. See politics, realist recognition, 126–27 religion, 38, 61, 62, 63 representation, 229 revolution, 6–15, 17, 24, 25, 58, 60, 61, 65, 205 rhetoric, xii, 135–55 the right, xiii Roosevelt, Franklin, 12, 68n53 Rousseau, 121 Russia, xvi, 34, 58 Sable, Andrew, 209n7 Saint-Simon, Henri de, 60, 67n31, 92, 217 Schleifer, S. Abdallah S., 151 Searle, John, 119 Second World War. See World War II sexism, xvii the sixties, xiii social imaginary, xii, 10, 25, 88, 91, 113, 219, 223–25 socialism, 7, 95 socialism, Christian. See Christian socialism Society for Ricoeur Studies, ix, x Socrates, 102 the Sorbonne, 11, 13, 17

Index

South, global, xvii Stagecoach, xvii, 201–4 the state, 12, 13, 20, 36 Stears, Marc, 189, 194, 195 structuralism, 60, 93, 98 suffering, xvii, 4, 100–6, 163, 169, 173 surplus of meaning, x, xv, 62, 117, 118 surplus value, 31, 37, 38, 46, 62, 230 symbol, xiv, 6, 22, 33, 34, 54, 91, 94, 122, 140, 154, 221–22, 225; symbolic action, xiii, 220 Taylor, Charles, 127, 219, 223 Taylor, George H., xi, xiii, xiv, 22, 27n51, 56, 57, 67n32, 210n22 teleology, 61 terrorism. See jihad Thiriez-Arjangi, Azadeh, ix Tomkin, Silvan, 138 tragedy, 7, 25, 57, 165 transgender, xii, 101 translation, 172–74 Treanor, Brian, 24 Trimble, David, 144, 154 Tronto, Joan, xv, 88, 103–5, 108n73 Trump, Donald, 37, 96, 226 Tully, James, 189

241

Ulanov, Ann, 149, 154 the unconscious, 105, 124, 147, 168, 218, 219 the university, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 Venema, Henry, 24 Vietnam War, 11 violence, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11, 32, 36, 39, 40, 135–55, 180n19; state, 13, 16, 18 Walzer, Michael, 105 Wayne, John, 201–4 Weber, Max, xiv, 3, 18, 33, 54, 89, 90, 120, 126, 139, 184n53, 219n22, 222 Williams, Bernard, 189, 195, 200, 209n11, 212n43 Wittgenstein, Ludwig, 75–77, 79, 84n8 women, rights of. See gender Woodard, Colin, 67n28 work. See labor World War II, 6 Wright, Lawrence, 148 Žižek, 19, 27n27

About the Contributors

Recep Alpyağil is professor of philosophy of religion at the University of Istanbul. He received his PhD in philosophy at the University of Istanbul. His specializations consist of continental philosophy, negative theology and Islamic philosophy. He is the author of more than six books on the mentioned fields in Turkish. Stephanie N. Arel, co-editor, is an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at  the National September 11 Memorial & Museum and a visiting researcher at New York University. She is the author of Affect Theory, Shame and Christian Formation (2016) and co-editor of Post-Traumatic Public Theology (2016). She is president of the Society for Ricoeur Studies (2018–2020) and actively involved with organizing workshops at the Fonds Ricoeur in Paris. Her work revolves around the interplay of psychology and religion to inform an evaluation of trauma and its impact on human dignity. John Arthos is associate professor in the rhetoric program in the Department of English, and director of public oral communication at Indiana University. He is the author of four books on rhetoric and hermeneutics. Annalisa Caputo is associate professor in theoretical philosophy (M-FIL/01) at the University of Bari (Italy), Department DISUM. She also has a National Scientific Qualification as an associate professor in aesthetics (M-FIL/04). Since 2004, she has been in charge of a B.A. course in Languages of Philosophy at the University of Bari, and since 2016 in charge of a course in Teaching Philosophy, in the Second-cycle degree. She is also visiting professor of philosophical anthropology at the School of Theology of Apulia and founder

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About the Contributors

and editor in chief of the International Journal of Philosophy (online, open access, blind peer reviewed journal): www.logoi.ph Linda Lee Cox is adjunct professor of philosophy at Austin Community College in Austin, Texas, where she teaches philosophy and ethics courses. She recently taught feminist philosophy and feminist ethics at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. She completed her Ph.D. in English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, an M.A. in philosophy at Duke University, and a B.A. at Rice University. Her research, including work in Etudes Ricoeurienne/Ricoeur Studies, focuses on the work of Paul Ricoeur and its relationship to philosophy and literature, as well as on ethical approaches to women’s incarceration. She is currently a visiting scholar at the University of Texas at Austin focusing on global human rights. Nel van den Haak is a philosopher, retired from VU Medical Centre in Amsterdam. She was connected to philosophical departments of several Dutch universities. She has published her dissertation on Ricoeur (Metafoor en Filosofie [Metaphor and Philosophy], 1999), and several articles on Ricoeur as well. Her research is on hermeneutics (Ricoeur, Gadamer), genderstudies philosophy, political philosophy (Ricoeur, Arendt), metaphors in the area of health and illness (De Machinemens [Human as Machine], 2013), medical philosophy. Greg S. Johnson is associate professor in the philosophy department at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington. He is also a research associate at the Oxford Institute for Ethics, Law and Armed Conflict, University of Oxford. He is the author of Elements of the Utopian (2011) and is, with Dan Stiver, the co-editor of the series on the Thought of Paul Ricoeur (Lexington Books). Roger W. H. Savage is professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. His publications include Music, Time, and Its Other: Aesthetic Reflections on Finitude, Temporality, and Alterity (forthcoming), Hermeneutics and Music Criticism, and the edited volume Paul Ricoeur in the Age of Hermeneutical Reason: Poetics, Praxis and Critique. He was a Fulbright Scholar and a Moore Institute Visiting Fellow at the National University of Ireland, Galway. He is a past president of the Society for Ricoeur Studies. Dan R. Stiver is the Cook-Derrick Professor of Theology in the Logsdon School of Theology of Hardin-Simmons University. His publications include The Philosophy of Religious Language: Sign, Symbol, and Story (1996), Theology after Ricoeur: New Directions in Hermeneutical

About the Contributors

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Theology (2001), Life Together in the Way of Jesus Christ: An Introduction to Christian Theology (2009), and Ricoeur and Theology (2012). He was president of the Society for Ricoeur Studies from 2010 to 2012 and is co-editor with Greg Johnson of the series on the Thought of Paul Ricoeur (Lexington Books). He co-edited with Greg Johnson the first book in the series, Paul Ricoeur and the Task of Political Philosophy. George H. Taylor is professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. He specializes in legal hermeneutics and hermeneutics more generally. He studied as a graduate student under Ricoeur, and he is the editor of Ricoeur’s Lectures on Ideology and Utopia (1986) and co-editor of Ricoeur’s forthcoming Lectures on Imagination. He has written on Ricoeur extensively.