Volume 5, 2016
Ethics and Environment / Éthique et environment
Richard Kearney
Pages 219-231
Between Flesh and Text
Ricoeur's Carnal Hermeneutics
This essay explores how Paul Ricoeur analyses the body as both flesh and text. Beginning with a phenomenology of embodiment and life in his early philosophy of the will, after his hermeneutic turn in the 1960s he concentrated more on the mediation of flesh through textual interpretation and language. This led Ricoeur beyond Husserl and Levinas and closer to the work of Merleau-Ponty. His later writing opens horizons for rethinking the ‘flesh of the world’ in new ontological and ethical ways.