Volume 3, Issue 2, Spring 2013
Selected Papers on The Philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand
David Utsler
Pages 46-55
Dietrich von Hildebrand and Paul Ricoeur
Eidetic and Hermeneutic Phenomenology
Dietrich von Hildebrand and Paul Ricoeur share the same philosophical roots in the early phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Ricoeur went beyond Husserl to develop his own unique version of hermeneutics. Although Ricoeur rejected Husserl’s idealist version of phenomenology, Ricoeur never rejected the earliest interpretation Husserl gave to his own phenomenology. Von Hildebrand, although contributing insights of his own, identified his own phenomenology as that of the phenomenology explicated in Husserl’s Logical Investigations. In this paper I will look at aspects of Ricoeur’s account of the “mutual belonging” of phenomenology and hermeneutics. Assuming the affinity between von Hildebrand’s phenomenology and that of Husserl’s, I will apply Ricoeur’s analysis more closely to von Hildebrand. My thesis is that the mutual belonging shared by phenomenology and hermeneutics forms a basis to bring Dietrich von Hildebrand and Paul Ricoeur into dialogue. While their philosophies are markedly different, they both share a deep respect for the meaning of being.