Studia Phaenomenologica

Volume 13, 2013

On the Proper Use of Phenomenology: Paul Ricoeur Centenary

Paul Ricoeurs religionsphilosophisches Denken zwischen Schrift(en) und absolutem Voraus

Ricoeur developed a very elaborated philosophy of religion. At the same time, he always moved along interdisciplinary borders of philosophy, theology, exegesis, historical and language sciences. His religious concerns are in this sense related to pre-philosophical experiences that within certain fields lend themselves to hermeneutical articulation. His analysis of the Scriptures in terms of narrativity deals with biblical texts. However, he doesn’t speak as a theologian, but as a philosopher, since the question of a philosophical and theological hermeneutics is from his own point of view closely related to the fundamental tension between autonomy and heteronomy. This paper regards his work as a new form of French philosophy of religion, and as a result of this includes a critical consideration of the pre-textual sphere understood as an absolute “priority”. This absolute “priority” should be presupposed by any hermeneutics of the written revelation, even when it is not able to provide a final response to its radical-phenomenological implications.