Paul Ricoeur Analysis
In Paul Ricoeur we explore his extensive and profound research in the dynamics of narratives. His is a hermeneutical approach to narratives which takes into consideration the dynamics at play in them as spelt out in the threefold mimetic cycle . In Ricoeur is also an exploration of the world of the text, tropes and metaphors, and the dynamics of memory, history and forgetting in human life.
Ricoeur’s exploration of the dynamics of narratives is, to a large extent, guided by two key words: time and narrative. His aim was to study how the two realities influence each other and what impact they have on human realities:
“One presupposition commands all the others, namely, that what is ultimately at stake in the case of structural identity of the …show more content…
Augustine’s interminable ponderings on the problem of time in the 11th chapter of the Confessions. It was a problem that could not be resolved neither by the ontological status of time (quid) nor by the questions of its space (ubi), nor by the cosmological understanding of time based on the movement of the heavenly bodies like the sun, the moon and the other astral powers. Augustine however noticed a flicker of order in the chaos of time through the order conferred by a poem that opened the way for the exploration of the narrative world (ibid., 6).
Aristotle’s Poetics inspired Ricoeur’s reflection on narratives. Narratives for Ricoeur was suppose to give a poetic solution to the problem of time. The logic of a poetic solution in Aristotle resolving the problem of time in Augustine thousands of years later is the very inversion of the order of time in which the solutions precede the problems they were intended to resolve. This, in itself, is a very important cue for the exploration of narratives, where linearity is never the norm, but part of the many possibilities. Even when linearity succeeds in imposing itself on narratives with the aim of being methodical and scientific, it is always a bad master, as it brings out only an episodic juxtaposition of disjointed and unrelated events not bound together by teololgy. Human life takes its meaning not from the endless flow of time, but from the significant and decisive moments of life. The poetic power is to render meaning and offer the possibility for a surplus of meanings that no canon of positivism can
Ricoeur’s exploration of the dynamics of narratives is, to a large extent, guided by two key words: time and narrative. His aim was to study how the two realities influence each other and what impact they have on human realities:
“One presupposition commands all the others, namely, that what is ultimately at stake in the case of structural identity of the …show more content…
Augustine’s interminable ponderings on the problem of time in the 11th chapter of the Confessions. It was a problem that could not be resolved neither by the ontological status of time (quid) nor by the questions of its space (ubi), nor by the cosmological understanding of time based on the movement of the heavenly bodies like the sun, the moon and the other astral powers. Augustine however noticed a flicker of order in the chaos of time through the order conferred by a poem that opened the way for the exploration of the narrative world (ibid., 6).
Aristotle’s Poetics inspired Ricoeur’s reflection on narratives. Narratives for Ricoeur was suppose to give a poetic solution to the problem of time. The logic of a poetic solution in Aristotle resolving the problem of time in Augustine thousands of years later is the very inversion of the order of time in which the solutions precede the problems they were intended to resolve. This, in itself, is a very important cue for the exploration of narratives, where linearity is never the norm, but part of the many possibilities. Even when linearity succeeds in imposing itself on narratives with the aim of being methodical and scientific, it is always a bad master, as it brings out only an episodic juxtaposition of disjointed and unrelated events not bound together by teololgy. Human life takes its meaning not from the endless flow of time, but from the significant and decisive moments of life. The poetic power is to render meaning and offer the possibility for a surplus of meanings that no canon of positivism can