Study On Paul Ricoeur's Semantic Imagination

Imagination plays an important role in the development of human society.Einstein even believes that imagination is more important than knowledge. From Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece, to Spinoza, Pascal, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Sartre,etc, all the philosophers of the ages tried to offer a new insight in imagination, which often caused other disputes. In modern times, the theory of imagination came into crisis, facing all kinds of accusations:imagination is a psychological phenomenon, its reflections are illusory, it does not "say" anything,and, it is lack of ontological significance, the word'imagination'is vague and polysemantic and so on. Paul Ricoeur(1913—2005), the famous contemporary French philosopher, master of phenomenology and hermeneutics, echoing such a situation of imagination, gave it a higher status.Riceur's academic career is long and tortuous. He wrote dozens of books and numerous papers covering various social fields. But since The Symbolism of Evil, then, The Living Metaphor, the three volumes of Time and Narrative, From Text to Action, Ideology and Utopia, Thinking about the Bible, untill Memory, History and Forgotten, Ricoeur explored the same theme imagination. He put a language point to imagination and identified imagination more with language than with psychology,probing into the creation of imagination in the language, which are usually under the guise of a symbol, myths, metaphor, narrative, etc. Imagination is seen as an indispensable agent in the creation of meaning in and through language-semantic innovation, that is Ricoeur's semantic imagination.This, together with the social imagination, which begins with From Text to Action,constitute the core of Ricoeur's theory of imagination.Why Ricoeur expected more from imagination? How did the semantic imagination evolve? What relation has it with the language? How can it assume the burden of semantic innovation? What effect has it made on the concept of imagination?What can it inspire us? These questions are the frame and the value of the dissertation:the study on Paul Ricoeur in China is still in the initial stage and need to be futher explored, until now,semantic imagination is a place where no one has ever been. On contrary,the research on Ricoeur is very prosperous in America and Europe. Many theorists have seen the important position of imagination in Ricoeur's thought. But, there is no comprehensive and systematic research from an angle of the creation of meaning.Ricoeur's theory of imagination offers us a share of resources. It also a guidance on the culture and social reality. With the methods of dialectic, comparison, history and analysis, this subject will investigate the theory of semantics imagination and discover the unique theoretical charm of Riceur. The first chapter clarifies the theoretical connotation and historical backgrounds. Aristotle, Kant, Sartre, Husserl, etc. all have affection on Ricoeur's semantics imagination. Especially, the concept of creative imagination in Kant, Heidegger and Gaston Bachelard's views of language. The following second, third and fourth chapter will make analysis and research on the three phases of the semantic imagination-The Symbolism of Evil in the1960s,The Living Metaphor in the1970s, Time and Narrative in the1980s. In the conclusion, Ricoeur'theory of imagination will be summarized and expanded.Also, I will reflect on its contributions and inspiration, and the following research afterwards.In The Symbolism of Evil, Ricoeur tried to use a'full linguistic method'to interpret the symbols, this means the start of semantic imagination.'Evil'is originally a religious word, how the philosophical discourse of evil became possible? Ricoeur used a transformation of method-through the intermediary of symbol and myth. Evil is in a more original and convincing symbolic language and the task of philosophy is to interpret this language. Ricoeur found the language materials from the existing religion of Greek, Hebrew, Pharisees. He represented the experience of these symbols with imagination and feelings:requirements for expression of the originally evil experience stirred language creation and formed the imaginative and symbolic language. Now, re-interpreting the existing symbolic language can reproduce the process of the fault and a new meaning come into being. The mythical symbol was given a narrative form. Also, using imagination, Ricoeur explained the origin, the end, the reality of the fault and the transition from myth to philosophy, through re-interpreting the four types of myth-the creation myth, the fall of mankind, the tragedy and the soul-exiled myth. In this way, Ricoeur developed the hermeneutic imagination, promoted the creation of meaning. Here, the creativity of imagination is to disclose the hidden meaning in other ways and to reflect the being-in--the-word of human. Thus, the imagination is no longer as the distinction between true and false.The Living Metaphor importantly manifests Ricoeur's semantic imagination. The metaphor is one of the most difficult problems of language. Through the Development of Aristotle, rhetoric, semiotics, semantics, metaphor became an important subject. In his book, Ricoeur explicitly associated the imagination with language and semantic innovation. The language of poetry can produce images. Half as thought, half as experience, seeing-as makes the meaning and the image an intuitive relationship. It gives order to the sense and projects the use of the images, and, it ensures the associaton between the meaning of words and the richness of imagination. Hence, there is no unbridgeable gap between semantics and psychology because of a close connection between language and images. The metaphor is the encounter of two different semantic fields, it is the creative imagination that enables us to find resemblance in their impertinence. Then, a new semantic field is forged and the meaning innovation is engendered. But the meaning is inextricably linked with reference. Another important contribution of Ricoeur's metaphor is to put forward 'metaphorical truth'. The metaphor, Ricoeur claims, re-describes the reality, and thus point to the existence.From the language innovation perspective, Time and Narrative is the companion of The living Metaphor. Ricoeur believes that the plot can integrate heterogeneous components, such as purpose, means, cause, agent, situations, peripeteia, etc, into a complete story and an action time unity. So, the arrangement of the plot can configure the time, synthesize the heterogeneous components and contribute to the meaning innovation.The process of synthesis is the work of the creative imagination. Ricoeur examined the action of synthesis in the historical narrative and fictional narrative. The threefold Mimesis-prefiguratin,configuration, refiguration, is Ricoeur's unique contribution on the narrative problems. At the prefiguratin stage, the narrators understand the semantic structure, the symbolic resources and the temporal feature of the behavior world in advance. Such knowledge is the premise of the narrative. It also a reference of the life. Configurantion is the use of imagination to integrate the various details and sporadic events into a meaningful story. Here, the plot synthesizes the ideas and characters and serves as a strong ferment in connecting the preceding and the following stage.Reconfiguration is the theory of reading. At this stage, with his own experience, the audience interprets, proves and develops the world of the text that formed in the preceding stage. The text also drives and changes the audience's personal experience and viewpoint. The world of text and the world of readers overlap and produce a new meaning of interpretation. Of course, here, the creative imagination of readers plays an important role.From the symbolic imagination, the metaphorical imagination and the narrative imagination, we can see the development process of Ricoeur's semantic imagination. Methodologically, it is a process from phenomenology to phenomenological hermeneutics. In essence, Ricoeur's semantic imagination is the interpretation of the new possibility of meaning.Through the semantic analysis and reflection on the meaning of discourse-symbol, metaphor, narrative, Ricoeur's hermeneutics entered the ontological stage, language and the reflection eventually directed to the the problem of existence. From the unit of generating a new meaning, in The Symbolism of Evil, the semantic innovation is on the basis of word:through the creative interpretation on the words of the symbol, such as blasphemy, forgiveness, the new meaning is produced. In The living Metaphor, innovation is on the basis of a new pertinence of two different semantic field, this is carried out on the sentence level. In Time and Narrative, the innovation unit is plot. By the plot, purposes, causes and chances are linked together in the unit of time.Paying attention to the fictional ability, Ricoeur reconciled imitation and imagination:there is no alternative between the imagination that reproduce the reality and the imagination that re-create reality, because the meaning of the reality already existed in the images. The creative imagination makes the semantic innovation become a reality and discloses another possible world. However, the semantic imagination-the symbolic imagination in the1960s,the metaphorical imagination in the1970s, the narrative imagination in the1980s, has more much significance than what we mentioned above. In fact, they link with religion, poetry, ethics, etc, and make a difference.In the final stages of narrative imagination-the reader's reception of the text, the hermeneutic circle returned to the the world of action. The act of reading is the ultimate indicator of the'refiguring of the world of action under the sign of the plot'. At this level, Ricoeur stepped into the politics, this is what Ricoeur calls the'social imagination'. In another sense, the social imagination is showed in the pre-figuration stage, therefore, the social imagination is both the directon and the beginning of the semantic imagination. Ricoeur examines it under two ideas-ideology and utopia. He think it should oppose the ideology which justifies or dissimulates, also the Utopia which displays another possible world that is totally different with the world we live in. There is a profound analogy between the action and the text:the social significance of an action is similar to a sentence within a text,the society just like the text and the action like the sentence. The interpretation of Hermeneutics reponds the calls of ideology and utopia, and it has a creative force.From the semantic imagination to social imagination, it is a process from meaning to action and then to meaning. This cycle is benign and sublimate. Associated with language, imagination get rid of completely subjective, possesses the sense of ontology and epistemology. But, this is at the cost of suspending the reproductive imagination. Ricoeur's significance is that he saw the power of imagination from another angle, and gave the imagination an extendable space. Imagination is an indispensable part of human society, it echoes the situation that human beings confront, cares for the human destiny. That, is exactly Ricoeur's strength.