Eileen Brennan
Whether it is possible, or even desirable, to forge a connection between hermeneutics and phenomenology is something that divides phenomenologists. Of those who have tried to establish the connection, two stand out: Martin Heidegger and Paul Ricoeur. In Being and Time, Heidegger (1962, 62 [SZ 38]) famously declared that phenomenology is a hermeneutic, though not in the sense of an epistemological theory of interpretation. This version of the connection was acceptable to Heidegger’s most famous disciple, Hans-Georg Gadamer, but while Ricoeur agreed that Heidegger had successfully “grounded” hermeneutics in phenomenology, he still felt that more needed to be said about how that connection was made (Ricoeur 2007, 6). Some years later, in From Text to Action, Ricoeur set out to show how it is possible for hermeneutics and phenomenology to have a relationship of “mutual belonging” (Ricoeur 2008, 23). The discussion that leads up to this demonstration focuses on all that separates them, so that when the connection is finally made it is clear that this is a relationship between opposites.
This chapter examines four programmatic statements on the relationship: two versions offered by Heidegger in the 1920s and two versions offered by Ricoeur, one in the late 1960s and the other in the mid-1980s. Attention is drawn both to the evolution of Heidegger’s and Ricoeur’s thinking on the subject and to the ways in which the various accounts differ from one another.
Jean Greisch argues that there are two “decisive” periods in the “evolution” of hermeneutic philosophy: the first is 1919–1923, and the second is the period of the early 1960s (Greisch 2000, 53). The importance of the first period, according to Greisch, is that it sees Heidegger’s development of an original conception of phenomenology, which is linked to research on “the hermeneutics of factical life” (Greisch 2000, 53). In the early 1960s, Gadamer’s Truth and Method and Ricoeur’s Finitude and Guilt were both published. It is easy to see how the early 1960s were pivotal in the evolution of hermeneutics, given the publication of those two great works, but the situation is altogether different when it comes to the first important period. Heidegger did not publish anything on the hermeneutics of facticity during this time; all discussion on the topic took place within the confines of the lecture hall at the University of Freiburg.1 To justify his claim about the significance of 1919–1923, Greisch points to Heidegger’s reputation for being “the hidden king” of German philosophy, who already had a number of disciples, including Gadamer, Jonas, and Ritter (they would soon be joined by Arendt at Marburg), all of whom would make a significant contribution to philosophy in the twentieth century.2 Heidegger’s clearest statements on the relationship between hermeneutics and phenomenology were made in the lectures of the summer semester 1923 (published in 1988) (Heidegger 1999). Those lectures outlined a research proposal and methodology. Heidegger explained that the topic of the research would be factical life, which meant “the being-there of Dasein” (Heidegger 1999, 62). The objective was “to bring this phenomenon authentically into view in intuition and indeed in such a way that Dasein itself, in accord with the basic tendency to hermeneutical investigation in it, discloses itself with regard to definite characteristics of its being” (Heidegger 1999, 61). Heidegger faced a significant challenge in ensuring that these “definite characteristics” of the being of Dasein were authentically disclosed. The challenge lay in their being “covered up” in a way that made them difficult to access. But Heidegger was confident that “a fitting concept of research” had already emerged in phenomenology, and he set about demonstrating both the latter’s suitability and its potential for further development (Heidegger 1999, 1).
The key text, for Heidegger, was Husserl’s Logical Investigations. He told his students that those inspiring investigations “were not really understood and perhaps to this day still are not” (Heidegger 1999, 55). He treated the work as a manual—a how-to book—that introduced its readers to a new way of “interrogating and defining” traditional philosophical subject matter (Heidegger 1999, 56). Its way of defining was novel, he declared, in that it used a descriptive and not “a constructivistic and deductive method” (Heidegger 1999, 56). But perhaps the best thing about the book was that the reader was shown how to conduct the investigation; Husserl was not offering an “idle prospect and programme” (Heidegger 1999, 56). Heidegger admired the Logical Investigations for other reasons too. Its phenomenological analyses drew their “concepts and propositions about concepts and propositions” from “the objects themselves” (Heidegger 1999, 55). Thus, what Husserl found in assertions were “their about-which and what they assert, two things which do not coincide with ‘subject’ and ‘object’” (Heidegger 1999, 55). On the basis of what he had learned from the Logical Investigations, Heidegger put forward the following definitions of “phenomenon” and “phenomenology”:
“Phenomenon” is thus not primarily a category, but initially has to do with the how of access, of grasping and bringing into true self keeping. Phenomenology is therefore initially nothing other than a mode of research, namely: addressing something just as it shows itself and only to the extent that it shows itself. Hence an utter triviality for any scientific discipline, and yet since Aristotle it has slipped further and further out of the grasp of philosophy.
(Heidegger 1999, 56)
Despite his enthusiasm for the work, Heidegger was openly critical of one aspect of the Logical Investigations. He dismissed as “unphenomenological” the “ideal of science” to which these investigations aspired. The ideal was “unphenomenological” because it had been imported from “elsewhere,” in this instance from “mathematics and the mathematical natural sciences” (Heidegger 1999, 56)
Heidegger’s assessment of the phenomenological works that emerged after the Logical Investigations was altogether different. He identified “four moments” in “the further development of phenomenology” (Heidegger 1999, 57): (1) the introduction of epistemological questions “from elsewhere” (i.e., the Marburg School and Dilthey’s work on the foundation of the human sciences); (2) the use of phenomenological distinctions appropriate to “the field of logic” in domains other than that of logic; (3) “the drive for a system”; and (4) a “general watering down” of phenomenology due to: (a) “the escalation of these three moments” and (b) infiltration by traditional philosophical terminology (Heidegger 1999, 58). Heidegger announced that these developments had, in turn, given rise to “transcendental idealism,” “a limited fund of phenomenological distinctions,” and a phenomenology given over to a passing trend (Heidegger 1999, 57–58). Heidegger’s advice to his students was not to engage with these developments in any way: “It is impossible to make out anything about phenomenology or obtain a definition of it from this philosophical industry. The business is hopeless!” (Heidegger 1999, 58).
Although Heidegger dismissed every attempt that had been made to develop phenomenology by importing ideas from elsewhere, he was not opposed to developing the method beyond what had been achieved in the Logical Investigations. He felt that the only legitimate approach was the one that discovered possible directions for development within the original design of the phenomenological method. Following this course, he began to consider how the things that show themselves are given to the phenomenologist, noting that they are invariably “publicly and self-evidently given” (Heidegger 1999, 58). He realized that in its current form phenomenology did not have the capacity to act as “guide” for his research. The problem was that the subject matter of his research—factical life—did not show itself in a public and self-evident way, having been “covered up” by the tradition of philosophical questioning. But Heidegger was hopeful of finding a way to develop phenomenology so that it would allow access to this hidden phenomenon. He explained the challenge in the following terms: it would be a matter of understanding phenomenology “in accord with its possibility as something which is not publicly and self-evidently given” (Heidegger 1999, 58).
Central to Heidegger’s development of this original conception of phenomenology was the notion of a “fundamental historical critique” (Heidegger 1999, 59). Heidegger noted that up until that point there had been an “absence of history in phenomenology: one naively believes that the subject matter will, no matter what the position of looking at it, be obtained in plain and simple evidence” (Heidegger 1999, 59). He believed that developing an element of “fundamental historical critique” within the phenomenological method would allow him to pursue the “tradition of philosophical questioning” all the way back to its original source in Greek philosophy, particularly in Aristotle (Heidegger 1999, 59). Once that “original position” had been accessed, it could then be “redeveloped” in a manner appropriate for the twentieth century: it would become something different and yet remain the same (Heidegger 1999, 60). Suitably updated, the “original position of looking” would present no obstacles to facticity showing itself. Heidegger insisted that what he was saying “about “phenomenon” and “phenomenology” has nothing to do with providing a methodology for phenomenology” (Heidegger 1999, 61). That would be a highly dubious undertaking. The sole purpose of taking up and developing phenomenology’s possibilities was to illuminate “a certain stretch of the path of inquiry” along which his hermeneutics of facticity would travel (Heidegger 1999, 61).
When, in Section 7 of Being and Time, Heidegger explained what he meant by “hermeneutics” and “phenomenology,” he repeated much of what he had said in the 1923 lectures we have just discussed. There were striking similarities, for example, in the way he initially defined “phenomenon” and “phenomenology”: “Thus we must keep in mind that the expression “phenomenon” signifies that which shows itself in itself, the manifest” (Heidegger 1962, 51 [SZ 28]); as to the “expression ‘phenomenology’ [, it] signifies primarily a methodological conception. This expression does not characterize the what of the objects of philosophical research as subject-matter, but rather the how of that research” (Heidegger 1962, 50 [SZ 27]). Once again, Heidegger acknowledged a debt to Husserl’s Logical Investigations: “The following investigation would not have been possible if the ground had not been prepared by Edmund Husserl, with whose Logische Untersuchungen phenomenology first emerged” (Heidegger 1962, 62 [SZ 38]). A glance at Section 2 of Being and Time will confirm that he followed the author of the Logical Investigations in eschewing a subject–object conceptuality. His inquiry has “that which is asked about,” “that which is interrogated” and “that which is to be found out by the asking” (Heidegger 1962, 24 [SZ 5]). It has no subjects or objects. As in the case of the 1923 lectures, Heidegger’s planned research in ontology would try to exhibit something that had been “covered up.”
Heidegger introduced a new terminology in Section 7 of Being and Time that allowed him to sharpen a distinction he had made in the 1923 lectures. He distinguished a “formal” from a “phenomenological” conception of “phenomenon” and “phenomenology” (Heidegger 1962, 59 [SZ 35]). The formal conception of “phenomenon” and “phenomenology” was defined using phrases from the 1923 lectures on ontology, and could be seen to apply to things that show themselves from themselves in a public and self-evident manner. The phenomenological conception of “phenomenon” and “phenomenology” was described as a “deformalized” version of the latter, and was explicitly linked to things that do not show themselves at all. Heidegger announced that it was these hidden things that were phenomena in a “distinctive sense”:
What is it that must be called a “phenomenon” in a distinctive sense? What is it that by its very essence is necessarily the theme whenever we exhibit something explicitly? Manifestly, it is something that proximally and for the most part does not show itself at all: it is something that lies hidden, in contrast to that which proximally and for the most part does show itself; but at the same time it is something that belongs to what thus shows itself, and it belongs to it so essentially as to constitute its meaning and its ground.
(Heidegger 1962, 59 [SZ 35])
How, then, are we meant to understand a phenomenology that can exhibit what is “hidden”? Heidegger repeated what he had said in the 1923 lectures on ontology: “What is essential in it does not lie in its actuality as a philosophical ‘movement’” (Heidegger 1962, 62–63 [SZ 27]); “We can understand phenomenology only by seizing upon it as a possibility” (Heidegger 1962, 63 [SZ 38]). The phenomenology that Heidegger envisaged here retains an important detail of the blueprint that he had presented in 1923: it would have an element of fundamental historical critique. We know this because Section 8 of Being and Time states that historical critique will be a “task” for Part Two of the work, a part that Heidegger never managed to write.3
There was a second idea for an original conception of phenomenology that Heidegger had introduced as early as 1919 but did not fully develop until Being and Time, and that was the idea of an interpretive phenomenology: “Our investigation itself will show that the meaning of phenomenological description as a method lies in interpretation” (Heidegger 1962, 61 [SZ 37]). He then went on to say that “the phenomenology of Dasein is a hermeneutic in the primordial signification of this word, where it designates this business of interpreting” (Heidegger 1962, 62 [SZ 37]). If we refer back to the 1923 lectures on ontology, we will see that a hermeneutic in the primordial signification of the word: is not “a doctrine about interpretation,” but is rather a unified activity of encountering, seeing, grasping, and expressing in concepts the being-there of Dasein (Heidegger 1999, 11). Section 7 of Being and Time described phenomenology as a hermeneutic in two additional senses of this word. According to Heidegger, by uncovering the meaning of being and the basic structures of Dasein, one would effectively exhibit the horizon for the ontological study of entities that differ from Dasein. Phenomenology was thus “a ‘hermeneutic’ in the sense of working out the conditions on which the possibility of any ontological investigation depends” (Heidegger 1962, 62 [SZ 37]). Heidegger declared that phenomenology was also a hermeneutic in “the third and specific sense of an analytic of the existentiality of existence” (Heidegger 1962, 62 [SZ 38]). This is the sense, he said, “which is philosophically primary,” that is first in the order of his philosophical inquiries. He mentioned a fourth “derivative” sense of hermeneutics: hermeneutics in the epistemological sense of a general theory of interpretation such as we find in Dilthey (Heidegger 1962, 62 [SZ 38]). He announced that the phenomenology of Dasein was not a hermeneutic in that sense.4
In The Conflict of Interpretations, Ricoeur acknowledged that Being and Time had established a connection between hermeneutics and phenomenology, but he criticized Heidegger for failing to show how it had proved possible to make that connection. He thought that the problem with the work was that it took the “short route” to grounding hermeneutics in phenomenology, “breaking with any discussion of method” (Ricoeur 2007, 6). As Ricoeur explained,
One does not enter this ontology of understanding little by little; one does not reach it by degrees, deepening the methodological requirements of exegesis, history, or psychoanalysis: one is transported there by a sudden reversal of the question. Instead of asking: On what condition can a knowing subject understand a text or history? one asks: What kind of being is it whose being consists of understanding? The hermeneutic problem thus becomes a problem of the Analytic of this being, Dasein, which exists through understanding.
(Ricoeur 2007, 6)
It should be remembered that, in 1969, Ricoeur was not in a position to read Heidegger’s early lectures on the hermeneutics of facticity. Those lectures would not be published for another two decades. All Ricoeur had at his disposal, at that time, was the “astonishing torso” of Being and Time5 and Heidegger’s densely worded, programmatic statements on a hermeneutic phenomenology.
Remarkably, Ricoeur’s response to the perceived limitations of Being and Time was to rehearse elements of the strategy Heidegger had adopted in the 1923 lectures on ontology. Ricoeur said that he would undertake an “investigation,” whose objective was “the renewal of phenomenology” (Ricoeur 2007, 3). He explained that it would proceed by grafting “the hermeneutic problem onto the phenomenological method” so that “paths” would be opened to contemporary philosophy, which would allow it to “give an acceptable sense to the notion of existence” (Ricoeur 2007, 3). But there was also one important area where Ricoeur’s critical response to Being and Time diverged from Heidegger’s lectures on the hermeneutics of facticity. Ricoeur did not agree with Heidegger that the theory of meaning and intentionality, found in the Logical Investigations, was free from all “Platonizing and idealizing tendencies,” although he would later accept that Heidegger’s assessment of the work had been correct (Ricoeur 2007, 9). As Ricoeur interpreted the work, in 1969, it “cleared the way [to ontology] by designating the subject as an intentional pole, directed outward, and by giving, as the correlate of this subject, not a nature but a field of meanings” (Ricoeur 2007, 8–9). However, Ricoeur thought that Logical Investigations also “reconstructed a new idealism,” which reduced the question of being first to the question of the sense of being and then to “a simple correlate of the subjective modes of intention” (Ricoeur 2007, 9). This “new idealism” served to undermine the contribution that the work might otherwise have made to research in ontology.
The first step in Ricoeur’s renewal of phenomenology was to carry the debate with Husserl to “the level of semantics.” Ricoeur took issue with Husserl’s “theory of signifying expressions,” which, he said, did not include the idea that some expressions have a meaning which is “irreducibly nonunivocal,” that is “double” or “multiple” (Ricoeur 2007, 15). He noted that Husserl “explicitly excludes this possibility in the First Investigation” (Ricoeur 2007, 15). The problem with Husserl’s refusal to accept that there were expressions with double or multiple meaning was that it cut phenomenology off from the very language in which “all ontic and ontological understanding arrives at expression” (Ricoeur 2007, 11). Having examined works by Augustine, Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Nietzsche, and Freud, Ricoeur was convinced that the expression of an understanding of this type (i.e., ontic or ontological) was invariably reliant upon “a certain architecture of meaning, which can be termed ‘double meaning’ or ‘multiple meaning,’ whose role in every instance, although in a different manner, is to show while concealing” (Ricoeur 2007, 12).
Ricoeur noted that this “double meaning” or “multiple meaning” had a counterpart in interpretation: “Interpretation, we will say, is the work of thought which consists in deciphering the hidden meaning in the apparent meaning, in unfolding the levels of meaning implied in the literal meaning” (Ricoeur 2007, 13). But, as he quickly pointed out, there was no universally agreed method of interpretation: “the operations of interpretation” have given rise to various, often conflicting methodologies including psychoanalysis, “the philosophy of the spirit,” and the phenomenology of religion. Ricoeur did not favor any one of these methodologies over the others, nor did he follow Heidegger in claiming that the phenomenological method was the fundamental methodology. As far as Ricoeur was concerned, each and every hermeneutic methodology had the potential to unveil some aspect of existence, and so he believed that it would be prudent for philosophy to stay in contact with all of them, avoiding the course that Heidegger had taken, that is, “separating [hermeneutics’] concept of truth from the concept of method” (Ricoeur 2007, 15). However, there was more to Ricoeur’s “semantic approach” than staying close to the conflicting methodologies of textual exegesis. Crucially, it was at this level—“the level of the theory of meaning developed in the Logical Investigations”—that Ricoeur wanted to effect a first “implantation of hermeneutics in phenomenology” (Ricoeur 2007, 15). That is to say, he wanted to renew phenomenology by broadening its theory of signifying expressions so that it included “double” or as he preferred to say, “symbolic” meaning.
Ricoeur wanted to place a second graft “at the level of the problematic of the cogito as it unfolds from Ideen I to the Cartesian Meditations,” and this would be a further step in his proposed renewal of phenomenology (Ricoeur 2007, 17). He did not deny that the cogito is a truth, but it is, he said, “a truth as vain as it is invincible” (Ricoeur 2007, 17). He claimed that “it is like a first step which cannot be followed by any other, so long as the ego of the ego cogito has not been recaptured in the mirror of its objects, of its works, and, finally, of its acts” (Ricoeur 2007, 17). This was something that he had learned from Dilthey. Following Jean Nabert, Ricoeur gave the name “reflection” to this indirect and critical appropriation of the ego. His plan was to substitute reflection in this sense for the cogito’s reflexive grasping of itself “in the experience of doubt” (Ricoeur 2007, 17). But there was to be an additional dimension to grafting hermeneutics onto phenomenology at this level. Ricoeur had learned from psychoanalysis “that so-called immediate consciousness is first of all ‘false consciousness’” (Ricoeur 2007, 18). And this new insight would oblige him “to join a critique of false consciousness to any rediscovery of the subject of the cogito in the documents of its life; a philosophy of reflection must be just the opposite of a philosophy of consciousness” [my italics] (Ricoeur 2007, 18). Of course, if this second graft was going to introduce something into Husserlian phenomenology that opposed it, the consequences for that version of phenomenology would be significant. Ricoeur used a dramatic image when describing the anticipated effects of this second phase of implanting hermeneutics in phenomenology. He said that it would cause the Husserlian cogito to explode! (Ricoeur 2007, 17).
Ricoeur’s approach to forging a connection between hermeneutics and phenomenology clearly differed from that of Being and Time. Ricoeur described his own approach as the “long route” to an ontology of understanding. It was meant to traverse the two levels we have just discussed before reaching the existential level where, in the shadow of Heidegger’s ontology of understanding, it would offer glimpses of the being that is being interpreted by any given hermeneutic methodology. Ricoeur’s fundamental ontology would be neither unified nor separate from “the movement of interpretation” (Ricoeur 2007, 19).
Sixteen years later, in From Text to Action, Ricoeur set out once again to demonstrate the possibility of connecting hermeneutics to phenomenology. This second demonstration reflected a deeper and more nuanced understanding of Husserl’s early work, and endeavored to show that the relationship was one of “mutual belonging” (Ricoeur 2008, 23). Ricoeur described the connection as follows:
On the one hand, hermeneutics is erected on the basis of phenomenology and thus preserves something of the philosophy from which it nevertheless differs: phenomenology remains the unsurpassable presupposition of hermeneutics. On the other hand, phenomenology cannot constitute itself without a hermeneutical presupposition. The hermeneutical condition of phenomenology is linked to the role of Auslegung [explication] in the fulfilment of its philosophical project.
(Ricoeur 2008, 23–24)
There are four steps to Ricoeur’s demonstration of the possibility of a mutually constitutive relationship. The first step identifies five idealist theses in the “Epilogue” to Ideas, which we might name as follows: (1) the ultimate justification thesis; (2) the intuitionist thesis; (3) the certainty and immanent perception thesis; (4) the primacy of the transcendental subject thesis; and (5) the ultimately self-responsible thesis. The second step in the demonstration outlines “the hermeneutical critique of Husserlian idealism” (Ricoeur 2008, 50), which problematizes certain aspects of those theses before proposing non-idealist alternatives. Taken together, the first and second steps in Ricoeur’s argument draw attention to what Greisch has termed “the unfathomable caesura” between hermeneutics and Husserl’s idealist interpretation of phenomenology (Greisch 2000, 59). The third step identifies the phenomenological presuppositions of hermeneutics; and the fourth step names the hermeneutical presuppositions of phenomenology. When taken together, all four steps are meant to show that there is “a dialectical” relationship between the opposed hermeneutics (of Heidegger, Gadamer, and Ricoeur) and Husserl’s transcendental idealism.
According to Ricoeur, the aspects of Husserl’s ultimate justification thesis that have proved unacceptable to hermeneutic philosophy are the subject–object conceptuality in which the thesis is couched and the related matter of its “self-assertive style”—it “is attested to only by the denial of what could deny it” (Ricoeur 2008, 24). Ricoeur notes that hermeneutics opposes the subject-object conceptuality by giving priority to the ontological “concept of belonging,” thus removing any justification for self-assertion (Ricoeur 2008, 27).
Hermeneutics also has difficulty accepting Husserl’s intuitionist thesis, but not because, as one might imagine, it construes the foundation of knowledge in terms of a simple intuition. As Ricoeur notes, Husserl recognized that interpretation plays an important role in supporting phenomenological intuition. The difficulty that hermeneutics has with this second idealist thesis is that, despite this acknowledgment, Husserl still considered phenomenological intuition to be a “total mediation,” a form of “absolute knowledge” though not, of course, in the speculative sense (Ricoeur 2008, 30–31). Hermeneutics is said to oppose Husserl’s ideal of “total mediation” by adopting the presupposition that “interpretation is an open process that no single vision can conclude” (Ricoeur 2008, 31).
Ricoeur notes that hermeneutics criticizes Husserl’s third, certainty and immanent perception thesis for failing to acknowledge that the intuition of objects is not the only form of consciousness that is open to doubt. As is well known, Husserl held that the perception of anything outside consciousness is dubitable; it is only in immanent perception that there is a “coincidence of reflection with what “has just” been experienced” (Ricoeur 2008, 25). In opposition to the one-sidedness of this thesis, hermeneutics proposes that subjectivity “seems susceptible to the radical critique that phenomenology otherwise applies to all appearances” (Ricoeur 2008, 31).
When Ricoeur outlines the difficulties that hermeneutics has with the primacy of the transcendental subject thesis, he focuses on comments that Husserl made about a potential confusion that can occur when one tries to separate empirical and transcendental consciousness. He notes that the only way to separate them is to employ “the reduction,” which shatters the psychological realism that is intrinsic to experience in the empirical sense, enclosing consciousness in an “acosmic realm.” But, as he points out, the reduction introduces something that would pose a problem for hermeneutics, namely, subjective idealism. In an effort to avoid this problem, hermeneutics shifts the focus from consciousness to the Lebenswelt [life-world], which Ricoeur describes as “the horizon of our life and our project” (Ricoeur 2008, 34).
Finally, Ricoeur mentions that hermeneutics cannot accept Husserl’s ultimately self-responsible thesis, which concerns the ethics of the reduction and accords ultimate self-responsibility to “the mediating subject.” He notes that hermeneutics opposes the idea of self-responsibility with the idea of a subject that “responds to the matter of the text, and hence to the proposals of meaning the text unfolds” (Ricoeur 2008, 34). As Ricoeur remarks, “Hermeneutics proposes to make subjectivity the final, and not the first, category of a theory of understanding. Subjectivity must be lost as radical origin if it is to be recovered in a more modest role” (Ricoeur 2008, 34).
Ricoeur insists that accepting hermeneutics’ critique of Husserl’s transcendental idealism is a condition of forging a connection between phenomenology and hermeneutics. With that in mind, then, we turn to consider the third step in his argument, which is designed to show that, despite the fact that they stand opposed to each other, phenomenology remains the unsurpassable presupposition of hermeneutics (Ricoeur 2008, 23). Ricoeur begins by addressing the objection that the discipline of hermeneutics predates that of phenomenology by centuries, arguing that it is sufficient to show that a “phenomenological awareness” precedes hermeneutics “in the order of foundation” (Ricoeur 2008, 36). He suggests that hermeneutics has four phenomenological presuppositions, evidencing these in the great works of twentieth-century hermeneutics: (1) every question about a being is a question about the meaning of that being (thus, in Being and Time “the ontological question is a phenomenological question”); (2) there is an aspect of “the intentional movement of consciousness toward meaning,” which interrupts “lived experience”; it is called the epochē (hermeneutics talks about a moment of “distanciation” within “the relationship of belonging,” which makes it possible to have a critical perspective on that relationship) (Ricoeur 2008, 36–38); (3) linguistic meaning is derivative of a nonlinguistic experience (hence, Truth and Method begins with the experience of art, accentuating, within that experience, the ontological aspects of “the experience of play”; it focuses on “the participation of players in a game,” which turns out to be “the first experience of belonging susceptible of being examined by the philosopher”) (Ricoeur 2008, 39); and (4) it is important to return “from a nature objectified and mathematicized by Galilean and Newtonian science to the Lebenswelt” (hermeneutics seeks to implement “the very same principle of return” “on the plane of the human sciences”) (Ricoeur 2008, 41).
The fourth and final step in Ricoeur’s argument is to establish that hermeneutics is an unsurpassable presupposition of phenomenology. Thus, he sets out to demonstrate that it is necessary for phenomenology “to conceive of its method as an Auslegung, an exegesis, an explication, an interpretation” (Ricoeur 2008, 41). To make this demonstration “striking,” Ricoeur focuses “on the texts of [Husserl’s] ‘logical’ and ‘idealist’ periods” (Ricoeur 2008, 41). He then gives what can only be described as a master class in textual analysis. He discovers a first recourse to Auslegung in the Logical Investigations, and notes the appearance there of “the concept of Deutung” (“interpretation”), noting that it “is embedded in the process whereby phenomenology maintains the ideal of logicity, of univocity, which presides over the theory of signification” in that work (Ricoeur 2008, 43–44). He then moves on to discuss the use of “the concept of Auslegung” in the Cartesian Meditations. The concept has a less restricted role in this later work, where it “enter[s] into problems of constitution in their totality” (Ricoeur 2008, 45). Declaring that all “determination is explication,” he quotes the following remarkable claim from the Cartesian Meditations: “‘This own-essential content is only generally and horizonally anticipated beforehand; it then becomes constituted originaliter—with the sense: internal, own-essential feature (specifically, part or property)—by explication’ (Hua 1:132; CM, 101).”6 Ricoeur thinks that Husserl was not unaware of “the coincidence of intuition and explication”; however, the problem was that he “failed to draw all its consequences” (Ricoeur 2008, 49).
Ricoeur has a name for a philosophy that comprises both a phenomenology cognizant of its hermeneutical presuppositions and a hermeneutics imbued with a “phenomenological awareness.” He calls it “hermeneutic phenomenology.” It was never his intention “to work out—‘to do’—this hermeneutic phenomenology” (Ricoeur 2008, 35). He sought only “to show its possibility by establishing, on the one hand, that beyond the critique of Husserlian idealism, phenomenology remains the unsurpassable presupposition of hermeneutics; and on the other hand, that phenomenology cannot carry out its program of constitution without constituting itself in the interpretation of the experience of the ego” (Ricoeur 2008, 35–36).
There is a distinction to be made between Ricoeur’s idea of “mutual belonging” and the relationship described in Being and Time. The latter, as we have seen, concerns “the phenomenology of Dasein,” which is said to be a hermeneutic in three different but related senses. If there is a comparison to be made with Heidegger, it is with the Heidegger of the summer semester 1923 who was careful to preserve a distinction between hermeneutics and phenomenology even as he endeavored to draw them closer together. But it would be a mistake to push the comparison too far. Heidegger would certainly have objected to Ricoeur’s idea of a relationship between opposites, on the grounds that dialectic is “an external framework,” imported into phenomenology from elsewhere (Heidegger 1999, 35). Ricoeur (1967, 6) could have responded to that objection by pointing to examples of dialectical relationships in phenomenology, including the “original dialectic of sense and presence … which is best illustrated by the empty-full relationship described in the Logical Investigations.” Of course, we will never know whether this would have been enough to persuade Heidegger to change his position.