Memory, Conscience and Forgiveness

Dialogues between the Philosophical and the Theological in Paul Ricoeur

Abstract

To the question of the origin of the subject, from a strictly phenomenological approach, Ricoeur adds the problematic of lack and its overcoming, its liberation through forgiveness. For him, the issues of the origin of the subject and the origin of forgiveness are inseparable: the question of identity “who am I?” would have as a consequence that of forgiveness, “how can I effectively be free?”. His theoretical description of the will highlights the structure of freedom proper to man, this being the condition of all human responsibility, on which culpability will be structured, which, according to Ricoeur, no man escapes, as freedom becomes reduced to slavery. We find the situation of the guilty party described earlier, extended to all humanity, guilty, bringing inherence to his freedom. Therefore, it is not destroyed, it is transformed into hope of liberation. This is precisely what myths tell man: the myth of innocence is desire, courage and imaginary experience that underpin the eidetic description of the voluntary and the involuntary. Ricoeur's approach to forgiveness is based on memory, history and oblivion, that is, it is a resumption of the author's phenomenological phase, reaffirming its existence and importance, even in its most "hermeneutic" moments.