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Editor’s Introduction

      Paul Ricoeur’s work is rarely viewed through the lens of political philosophy. And yet the question of power and the desire-to-live-together in the polis is his constant preoccupation and the substance of numerous writings.¹ However, none of these themes are presented as part of an overall system in which they are a part. Lectures 1. Autour du politique is composed of studies coming from a wide range of periods and treating apparently unrelated topics.² Ideology and Utopia deals with the political from the standpoint of the social imagination, but the anthropological and epistemological reflections on this topic do not extend to the institutional forms of the political.³ This last aspect is indirectly approached in two other collections, notably through a reflection on the law.⁴ Finally, the most fully developed text on the political as such is to be found in the series of three studies on ethics, morality, and practical wisdom in Oneself as Another.⁵

Generally speaking, Ricoeur assigned a limited scope to each of his writings; he himself characterizes his thinking as a style that privileges fragmentation. This is singularly the case in political matters, where he seems to have been unconcerned about confining to oblivion so many studies never to be republished. The selection of the texts collected here has been guided by the concern to repair this oversight by restoring Ricoeur’s political project in its coherence and in the diversity of its centers of interest.⁶ An initial criterion, that of chronology, has prevailed: retrieving the most salient features of the development of his thought over a period of six decades. This is complemented by a thematic criterion, which has led to retaining the most significant texts and – a more difficult task – setting aside those deemed circumstantial: those with less apparent philosophical intent, as the content was focused on a question specific to a point in time.

      The first section brings together texts from the 1950s and 1960s, written in the context of the Christianisme social [Social Christianity] movement during the period, from 1958 to 1970, when Ricoeur was its president. Is there any need to underscore this fact? Since these writings, which contain reflections that remain entirely pertinent today, are related to a political and theological context that is now distant from our own, we have provided in notes, when necessary, some information useful for understanding them. It was indeed within the framework of this Protestant movement that the philosopher first developed his political thought. Far from a Christian apologetic, it was for him a matter of articulating conviction and responsibility, paying particular attention to giving an account of the tradition within which he placed himself, through the mediation of the public debate he solicited. On the basis of this foothold, an evolution ensued, and over its course the philosopher continued, little by little, to strip his formulations of their theological or biblical references, as if increasingly to open them up to discussion in secular terms.

      In this respect, the text “The Adventures of the State and the Task of Christians” constitutes the exception that proves the rule. For this 1958 article is the transposition in theological terms of “The Political Paradox,” the seminal text published the preceding year in the journal Esprit, after the Soviet repression of the Budapest uprising in October 1956.⁷ In these circumstances, the “Christians’ task” is to demonstrate with respect to the State both responsibility, by actively participating in democratic institutions, and critical vigilance. In the first instance, Ricoeur dismisses, back-to-back, anarchism and the apology of submission. In the second, he rejects both millennialist utopia and sterile criticism. The central point is focused on the double-sided reality which is the State, a protective and pedagogical institution, but at the same time the power that is potentially subjugating through lies and illusions.

The parallel with respect to the argument of “The Political Paradox” is clear: the political is the realm of an extreme tension between “rationality” – the explanation it gives of the world – and “irrationality,” which is seen in the use of force, repression, totalitarianism. This internal tension is constitutive of the political, for the claim to provide a total meaning to the world generates violence: the more one desires the good, the more one is inclined to impose it. In this way, Ricoeur warns the citizen, the guardian of democracy, against any totalizing system of explaining the world, any dogmatic understanding of history. As a corollary, power should be divided and controlled. Ricoeur declares himself to be in favor of a political liberalism, that is, a State respectful of limits to its domain and confident in the liberty of its citizens.

      In his effort to grasp the political as such, Ricoeur discerns an evil specific to it, the grandeur of the political ambition and its claims. The result of this is a critique of Marxism, published in 1959 in “From Marxism to Contemporary Communism.” If Marxism succumbed to political evil with Stalinism, this is because it, quite wrongly, made political domination the consequence of another evil: economic exploitation. In this text, Ricoeur presents a diagnosis of “the petrification of Marxism.” The following year, however, in “Socialism Today,” he is no less critical in the face of “the gradual downfall of the great dream of the founders of socialism,” degraded to the welfare state. The heirs of Marx and Proudhon are in serious danger of turning away from the fundamental significance of work in human activity, to the benefit of a simple socialization of abundance and, finally, to the promotion of the “common man” (l’homme quelconque). Beyond the question of Ricoeur’s political allegiances – he, the great reader of Marx, is not himself Marxist, but socialist in his leanings – it is his philosophical approach that is especially to be underscored. The terms, “dream,” “decline,” and “petrification” seem to suggest that political evil is accompanied over time by the ideological rigidness of utopia in the domain of the social imagination.

In addition to the preceding two criteria, there is a third, methodological one. It is conveyed in the ample reflection on “Hegel Today,” from 1974, which opens the second section.⁸ Political evil has its counterpart on the level of thinking, which requires elucidation. What is at issue is the temptation of synthesis, of totalization, the illusion that leads thought astray. Applying this observation to the work of philosophy itself, Ricoeur states his “invincible points of resistance” with respect to Hegelian absolute knowledge. There are intractable aspects of human experience that do not allow themselves to be totalized within a theory. They remind us of the sense of limitation and of the impossibility of attaining a view of the whole. With Kant, we come back to an awareness of the limits of knowledge. From this perspective, the fragmentary style Ricoeur has adopted is highlighted as a philosophical strategy in opposition to the claims of a definitive synthesis. In this sense, there is good reason to see in the texts collected in this volume less an ensemble that forms a system, than exercises of systemization in the critique of system-building.

      The reflection on Hegel nevertheless leads to a proposal. In fact, Ricoeur advances the possibility of a function that would be related more to the imagination than to knowledge, here a utopian function, which would be the site of figures portraying the realization of man, in the forward projection of his freedom – rather than in the mode of totalization. The theme of imagination, clearly present in Ricoeur, thus finds an application in the political field. One has only to consider on this point writings that can be found elsewhere.⁹

      The next three texts date from the 1990s. “Morality,

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