Stepping Outside The Self To Understand The Self

This MA thesis is a critical study of Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics, itself being one way of interpreting Paul Ricoeur. It intends to analyze Paul Ricoeur's thought of transgression in his reflective hermeneutics by means of the approach of close reading, specifically, of the approaches of semantic criticism and verbal analysis criticism, and the idea of organic unity of the New Criticism. The author of this paper attempts to make a transgression herself in her interpretation of Paul Ricoeur's.Paul Ricoeur maintains the continuity in phenomenological hermeneutics to the extent that hermeneutics remains fundamentally an understanding of the self. But his hermeneutics of the self is different from his predecessors. He criticizes their intuitionalism and idealism, because he seeks for a rigorous hermeneutical phenomenology, which requires an interpretative process of the distanciation of the self from itself within the interior of appropriation. He does not found his hermeneutics of the self upon itself; instead, he transgresses from the self, taking a roundabout path of non-self to reach the ultimate terminal of the being. And he transcends his hermeneutics of the self from epistemology to ontology when he speaks of interpretation as a way of man's existing. This paper synthesizes Ricoeur's creative hermeneutics of detour through the text and the personal other, and explores his thought of transgression.The thesis is divided into six chapters.Chapter One, "Introduction", introduces the motivation for choosing the topic of thought of transgression, gives a brief introduction to, a literature review of and literary research on Paul Ricoeur's theory and draws the outline of the thesis. As a sub-genre of the new textual theory, hermeneutics now is both philosophical and literary. Thus the study of it is fundamental to literary research. And it points out that this thesis is an initial study of Paul Ricoeur's thought of transgression by synthesizing the detour through both the text and the personal other and attempts to inspire readers to understand their own thinking and being in their reading.Chapter Two, "Hermeneutics and Literary Research", is a fundamental discussion of the relationship between hermeneutics and literary research. Recently, literary theory has mingled other domains which do not explicitly address literature, and thus has become "textual theory", a new genre. Any literary research guided by textual theory could not avoid being mixed with other fields such as structuralism, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, philosophy etc. Hermeneutics, parallel to psychoanalysis, narratology, phenomenology etc., is a sub-genre of the new theory. Furthermore, the study of hermeneutics is fundamental to literary research. First of all, literature needs to be read and to be understood, namely, the meaning of literature consists in the way of its being read. Hermeneutics as a systematic study of interpretation offers a proper way to understand literature. Second, hermeneutics, a new sub-genre of mixture, inspires readers to think about the general problems about human such as self-reflexivity. This paper, a study of Ricoeur's reflective hermeneutics attempts precisely to perform those two functions in literary research.Chapter Three, "Ground for Transgression", makes a critical review of the origin of Paul Ricoeur's reflective hermeneutics, and elaborates what Ricoeur has transcended. Transgression means a situation of being and not being. For Ricoeur, he must have grasped the philosophy of the self from his predecessors, and maintains the hermeneutics to be a study of understanding the self; but he breaks through the boundaries of all disciplines. In fact, he mingles literary criticism, philosophy, phenomenology, structuralism and hermeneutics together, searching the long route of interpreting so as to reach the self at the hermeneutical level of certitude. The origin of his understanding of the self is analyzed in two aspects, one vertical from history and the other horizontal from his contemporary counterparts.Chapter Four, "Transgression to Unworldly Literature", is an application of semantic criticism and verbal analysis criticism of the New Criticism in Paul Ricoeur's theory of text interpretation. It explores the details in Ricoeur's hermeneutics of detour which embodies exactly his thought of transgression. He asserts that literature is text-reader correlated, and that interpretation of the text is for the reader an understanding of the self. However, the hermeneutics of the self is neither intuitive nor direct; it must take a detour through the analysis of the language in which we talk about the self. And the hermeneutical arc that he formulates highly resembles his philosophy of detour. During the process of appropriation, the pursuit of reference and meaning of the words in text leads to intertextuality. The meaning of a word is derived from its reference to another piece of literature. Through the mutual reference in texts, an imaginary world of literature emerges, and thus the reader can realize his being in this unworldly literature.Chapter Five, "Transgression through the Other", is a further close reading of the textuality and organic unity of Ricoeur's writing, and discovers that the understanding of the self could transcend literature and the hermeneutics of the self could be mediated through other subjects. This part construes the intermediary of understanding the self through the other. The analysis of the dialectic between sameness and selfhood, and the dialectic between "the self and "the other" helps to form personal identity. The operation of intersubjectivity ought to avoid idealism so as to appropriate to Ricoeur's hermeneutical level of certitude. As a result, the self itself becomes mediation of the other, reciprocally united to his fellow men by means of his body and its prolongation, discourse and the textual word. Ricoeur makes his final great transgression by exceeding both the personal identity of the self and the other, to realize the being in one's interpretation.Chapter Six makes a conclusion. Ricoeur has made great transgressions in his hermeneutics of the self. First, he transgresses both the epistemological and ontological hermeneutics, and consequently, he claims that his hermeneutics of the self must be a philosophy of detour. Second, in understanding the words inscribed in texts, the meaning rules and gives the reader a self. When the reader transgresses to such unworldly literature, he understands and possesses himself. As a matter of fact, however, where there is reading, there is misreading. Though this paper would be a kind of misreading of Paul Ricoeur, it is hoped to be a positive one. The study of Paul here is limited to his theory of text and the relation between the self and the other, with no consideration of his hermeneutics related with metaphor, narratology etc. But this paper may be the start of a further study on Paul's reflective hermeneutics, such as understanding the self by means of the consciousness of time in his narratology, and deriving his thought of transgression from his study of language, metaphor, and conflicts of interpretations.