Ricoeur, Paul (1913–2005)

3. Text and interpretation

Ricoeur’s critique of Lévi-Strauss and others remains one of the best accounts available of the strengths and weaknesses of the structuralist approach. It also formed the backcloth against which Ricoeur developed his own hermeneutical theory. In a short text called Interpretation Theory (1976) and in a series of essays reprinted in Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (1981), Ricoeur worked out a systematic theory of interpretation based on a distinctive notion of the text. A text, according to Ricoeur, is an instance of written discourse; it involves four forms of ‘distanciation’ which differentiate it from the conditions of speech. First, in spoken discourse there is an interplay between the event of saying (the utterance) and the meaning of what is said; but in the case of written discourse, the event of saying is eclipsed by the meaning of what is said: it is the meaning which is inscribed in the text. Second, whereas in spoken discourse there is an overlap between the intention of the speaking subject and the meaning of what is said, in the case of written discourse these two dimensions of meaning drift apart: the meaning of the text does not coincide with what the author meant. Third, whereas spoken discourse is addressed to a specific recipient, written discourse is addressed to an unknown audience and potentially to anyone who can read. Fourth, whereas the shared circumstances of the speech situation provide some degree of referential specificity for spoken discourse, in the case of written discourse these shared circumstances no longer exist.

These various characteristics of the text provide the basis upon which Ricoeur elaborates his theory of interpretation. Like earlier thinkers within the tradition of hermeneutics, Ricoeur treats the text as a privileged object of interpretation. But unlike earlier thinkers, Ricoeur argues that the process of interpretation can be facilitated and enriched by the use of explanatory methods of analysis. Since a text is a structured totality of meaning which has been distanced from its conditions of production, it can be analysed fruitfully and legitimately by means of structuralist methods. But this type of analysis can never be an end in itself. It can only be a step along the path of interpretation – that is, a partial contribution to the broader hermeneutical task of unfolding the ‘world’ of the text and the significance it has for its readers.

While Ricoeur’s theory of interpretation is formulated with regard to texts, he argues that it can be extended to non-textual phenomena like action (see Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (1981) and From Text to Action (1986)). Ricoeur’s argument is that action involves the four forms of distanciation characteristic of written discourse; and hence, for the purposes of analysis, action can be treated as a text. One advantage of this approach is that it enables Ricoeur to propose a novel solution to the problem of the relation between explanation and understanding in the social sciences. Just as the interpretation of texts can be facilitated by the structuralist analysis of their contents, so too the understanding of action can be enriched by an explanatory account. Hence explanation and understanding are not necessarily opposed to one another, as some philosophers of social science have suggested (see Social science, contemporary philosophy of). Rather, the explanation of action can be treated as an integral part of a process of understanding.