Paul Ricoeur's Hermeneutics Theory

Paul Ricoeur is one of the most important representative of contemporary phenomenology and hermeneutics.His thought process runs through the history of Western thought throughout the 20th century,where has been a series of ideological trends such as the phenomenological movement in 1930s,the linguistic turn in the 1950s,the structuralist polemic in the 1960s,the deconstructivist trend in the 1970s,and the postmodern debate in the 1980s.There were many contradictions in the change of thought,who involved and shaken the fundamentals of Western culture.These contradictions have triggered various kinds of crisis,such as the subject crisis,the crisis of meaning,and the crisis of the humanities paradigm.Joining many debates on the theories and methodology of the Western ideological world,Paul Ricoeur integrated these opposing ideas and achievements into the theory of hermeneutics,and founded the hermeneutics of reflexion about human actions to put forward his own thoughts and opinions on the difficult historical issues and the new crisis of philosophy.His theory of hermeneutics starts with the reflexion.And the most fundamental issue of his reflective philosophy is related to the possibility of self-understanding as the subject of actions such as cognition,willingness,and evaluation.Reflection is to return to itself,so that the subject can regain the principle of consistency in various activities in the action of rational thinking and moral responsibility.Paul Ricoeur opposes the self-awareness of direct consciousness in traditional subject philosophy,because for him,the self is not directly established,and the subject's self-establishment must be regained by action.Simultaneously,he does not agree with the topic of "anti-subject philosophy" proposed by deconstructionism and post-structuralism.He combines the subject matter with the question of meaning.In the initial stage of the development of his hermeneutics theory,Ricoeur emphasized the mediating role of symbol,interprets multiple semantic meanings through symbols.In the next stage,he shifts from symbols to texts,through the mediation of texts to achieve the self-understanding.After these two phases of symbol and text,Ricoeur finally established his own hermeneutics by emphasizing the dialectical relationship between the self and the others.The value of Ricoeur's hermeneutics in reconstructing subjectivity and meaning is:the human self-understanding can neither rely on the direct consciousness of selfdisplay,nor can rely on the direct understanding of the existence of the being.Instead,it needs to interpret the entire symbolic world in which we live,to identify the relationship between itself and the others in the various dialogues,to rethink the discourse's reference to the external world and existence.In the process of reflection,symbols,words,discourse,texts,and others all serve as indispensable "mediators".Only by interpreting one's actions,works,words in the world,and relationships with others can oneself regain itself.Therefore,Ricoeur's hermeneutics theory is to explore the mediating factors between subject and meaning in a series of propositions such as will,symbol,text,metaphor,narrative,and identity,to explore the relationship between hermeneutics and existence and to transplant the subject of metaphysics into the land of practice.So that it can leave the epistemology and the metaphysical category and enter the moral category.This is an idea about actions,happiness,obligations,responsibilities,and ultimately leads to a relational ontology of human actions.This thesis makes a comprehensive,holistic,systematic and diachronic study of Ricoeur's hermeneutics theory,and hopes to add a meager force to the current Ricoeur research.In addition,based on Ricoeur's original works,this study discriminates and discusses the problems of Chinese translation of many terms,and hopes to provide some references for readers who cannot read the original French language.