Key Influences on Ricoeur: Gabriel Marcel

Dauenhauer (2008) divides Ricoeur's professional works into two periods. The first is the pre-hermeneutic anthropology period. The second is the hermeneutic anthropology period. Ricoeur's works in the pre-hermeneutic anthropology period (prior to 1960) fall within the tradition of existential phenomenology. During the 1960's Ricoeur's work took a literary turn and his work integrated phenomenological description and hermeneutic interpretation.

The remainder of this post begins a discussion of Ricoeur's pre-hermeneutic anthropology period. Ricoeur's early works were particularly influenced by three philosophers Gabriel Marcel, Karl Jaspers, and Edmund Husserl. First we will take a look at the influence of Gabriel Marcel (pictured above) on Ricoeur.

Marcel (1889-1973) and Ricoeur first meet in 1934 while Ricoeur was studying at the Sorbonne. Marcel had a great influence on his personal life and his professional work. Marcel, a Catholic, is often associated with Christian existentialism, though He later resisted this designation. Consequently, both Marcel and Ricoeur are in the philosophical lineage of Soren Kierkegaard who is considered the "father of existentialism".

Treanor (2009) makes clear the significant influence of Marcel on the work of Ricouer.

Marcel's influence on contemporary philosophy is apparent, for example, in the work of Paul Ricoeur, his most famous student. Through Ricoeur, Marcel has influenced contemporary philosophy in and around the hermeneutic tradition. The pattern of “detour and return” that characterizes Ricoeur and some of his students closely resembles Marcel's dialectic of primary and secondary reflection.^[13] Likewise, Marcel's understanding of otherness—illustrated by his image of “constellations,” conglomerations of meaningfully connected but non-totalizable beings—is an explicit challenge to philosophers of absolute otherness including Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and John D. Caputo, and a valuable resource for philosophers with a chiastic understanding of otherness, including Ricoeur and Richard Kearney.

In my next post, I'll examine the influence of Karl Jaspers on Ricoeur.

References

Dauenhauer, Bernard, "Paul Ricoeur", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

Treanor, Brian, "Gabriel (-Honoré) Marcel", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).