Resounding Empathy: A Critical Exploration of Ricoeur’s Theory of Discourse, to Clarify The Self’s Reliance on Relationships With Other Persons by Benjamin Joseph Shank A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Institute for Christian Studies © Copyright by Benjamin Shank 2020 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………….…………………………………………………………………………………………1 1. Our Thesis Proposes a Ricoeurian self that is otherwise than Ricoeur’s own version...………………...……1 2. Our proposal is grounded in several philosophical, historical, and scientific contexts………………………2 3. Our contexts allow us to revisit Ricoeur on metaphor, narrative, the self, and recognition…...….………….7 4. In contrast to parts of Time and Narrative, we resound with those who influence us.…………...….9 5. Oneself as Another reveals a self enmeshed with the language that entwines us with others………….…...10 6. Linguistic anthropology reveals that empathy points to a primordial, inescapable connection…………….12 7. Integrating all four contexts reveals a self that is based on the polysemy and vitality of belonging…...…...14 CHAPTER ONE: THE GENESIS OF METAPHOR………………………………………………………………...16 1. Ricoeur’s description of metaphor emphasizes its qualities of being polysemic and being alive…………...16 2. Metaphor’s polysemic vitality relies on a suspension of literal reference…………………………………...17 3. Metaphor’s many meanings allow us to re-describe reality as it manifests……………….……………...…22 4. Metaphor casts meaning as poets do, opening possibilities philosophy has not historically considered…...27 5. Unfolding being through the possibilities of metaphor shifts truth from certitude to trust………………....32 6. Ricoeur presents the poet both as a perceptive genius and as a rhetor speaking to an audience……………36 7. Rhetors do not simply perceive but select their metaphors to produce the most plausible meanings……....41 8. Ricoeur’s arbitrary selection by “geometer” misses the possibility that perception itself is selective……...43 9. Selectivity, like language, comes from others as we come to share their sensibilities……………………...49 10. Ricoeur reframes language as exploring possibility, and ties rhetor, audience and truth in discourse……...53 CHAPTER TWO: KINDS OF TESTIMONY………………………………………………………………………...57 1. Ricoeur’s confessional testimony omits possibilities that his own understanding of metaphor introduced…57 2. Ricoeurian narrative begins and ends with a historical self, while Levinasian subjectivity faces others……60 3. Levinasian testimony begins where language ends, and “before” being appears in the world……………...67 4. Appearing before others may orient the self in a way akin to the immemorial natality we experience…….71 5. Rapprochement between Ricoeur and Levinas requires a kind of knowledge that we have already seen…...79 ii 6. The interruption that inaugurates the self’s responsibility begins the self otherwise than Ricoeur……….….80 7. To reconcile Ricoeur and Levinas, we may allow conditioned subjectivity to precede reflectivity………...84 8. Imaginative testimony would present a more open self than confessional, historical testimony would…….91 9. Imaginative testimony may, like our appearance in the world, reveal more than it intends to portray……...96 10. We may complete Ricoeur’s historically narrated subjectivity by grounding it in natality…………………98 CHAPTER THREE: ATTESTATION’S ADDRESS…………………………………………………...………..…103 1. Understanding metaphor as discourse allows us to consider it a moment of shared cognitive experience…103 2. Developmental psychology affirms that the self begins in shared cognitive experience…………………...110 3. When Ricoeur turns to narrative, he drops the language of vitality, narrowing narrative’s qualities……...119 4. Without vitality, Time and Narrative narrows the scope of possibilities that attestation can embrace……126 5. The historian’s debt to the dead broaches the possibility that debts may be animating and productive…...131 6. Understanding other minds makes possible our own understanding, just as being cared for allows trust…137 7. Attestation’s ties to discourse and our own minds imply that we may enter a world given us by others….144 CHAPTER FOUR: RECOGNIZING EMPATHY………………………………………………………...………...148 1. We hope to have shown that metaphor requires others, that we testify to our reliance on others, and that our minds attest to our dependence on others…………………………………………………….…………….148 2. Ricoeur’s study of recognition’s definitions moves from its active to passive meanings………………….153 3. Ricoeur’s study of recognition and the gift establishes the origin of a capacity in other persons………….161 4. The phenomenon of the gift implies familial love, rather than self-interest, as our primordial condition…166 5. Personalized gifts reveal a level of empathy that reframes our political reality as inter-connected……….171 6. Empathy fulfills many requirements of the Derridean trace by which others influence the self……...…….182 7. Empathy establishes us as selves in a world of others, and does so in a way we cannot reciprocate………188 8. Empathy unites our studies, providing a means for the transmission of metaphor, the resonance between persons, the learning of trust, and a primordial connection that explains nurture in society……………….191 CHAPTER FIVE: THE FRAME OF BELONGING………………………………………………………………...199 iii 1. Conceptions of grief and morning in Eastern societies reveal a self that is first and inescapably social…. 199 2. An essentially social self becomes by imitation, resounds with influence, relies on nurture and develops a mind through empathetic understanding…………………………………………………………………...205 3. Within a frame of belonging, we would become ourselves with, through and by other persons………….211 4. While Gadamer proposes knowledge through belonging, and Habermas advocates knowledge through rational criticism, Ricoeur suggests knowledge through both belonging and critique…………………….216 5. Rigorous study of belonging might reveal that traditions will inevitably be critiqued by traditions………221 6. New metaphors for self and other may allow us to realize the polysemic vitality of the person…………...230 CONLCUSION………………………………………………………………………………………...……………242 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………………...…………254 iv Acknowledgements The lineage of this particular philosophical organism is long, complex, and interconnected, as all good taxonomies must be: from the Kingdom Parentes Curans: Roxanne and Stephen Shank, Juanita Shank, Joyce Dyarman, Ken Pierson, and Joseph and Mary Shank from the Phylum Magistri Primi: Ted Lehman, Crustal Downing, Henry Venema, Helen Walker, Rev. Aron Kramer, Megan Ginnick from the Class Magistri Posteri: Robin Collins, Doug Frank, Amy Marga, Peter Powers, Kathryn Schifferdecker, Dirk Lange of the Order Philosopha Majora: Aristotle, Paul Ricoeur, Daniel J. Siegel, Emmanuel Levinas, Hannah Arendt, Charles Taylor, Jacques Derrida of the Family Luces Ducentes: Henry Venema (again), James Olthuis, Nik Ansell, Alan Padgett, Patrick Kiefert, Stephanie Arel of the Genus Subsidium Directum: Jeff Dudiak, Morny Joy, Bob Sweetman of the Species Patientia Tremenda: Ron Kuipers, the sharp-eyed audience of one v For my Mother vi Introduction 1. Our thesis proposes the possibility of a self, grounded in Ricoeur’s own work, that is nonetheless otherwise than Ricoeur’s version The goal of this dissertation is to use Ricoeur’s understanding of metaphor as developed in The Rule of Metaphor to further our understanding of the self and its relation to other persons. While Ricoeur does eventually present a full-fledged anthropology, he develops it through narrative structure, which results in a conception of the self that is different than one derived through metaphor might have been. Namely, while a narrative self is congenial to alterity, our thesis is that a self that is conceived through metaphor would rely upon alterity at its most fundamental level: not as a detour or dialectic, but as its very condition of origin. After introducing Ricoeur’s understanding of metaphor in the first chapter, we will use each subsequent chapter to focus on several points after The Rule of Metaphor where Ricoeur might have developed his understanding of the self – and its relation to alterity – somewhat differently than he in fact did under the narrative structure. Even our first chapter proposes one such possibility, in that Ricoeur did not fully consider metaphor’s origin as learnable techne, and thus missed a possibility to understand metaphor as imitative play between persons. The second chapter explores Ricoeur’s disagreement with Levinas, and proposes that, since no kind of language can make a full accounting of any person, to account for the influence of other persons on the self, a complete understanding of testimony must include a kind of testimony that is more than verbal, akin to the resonance through which artists of every kind learn techne. The third chapter studies Ricoeur’s understanding of attestation, the trust one implicitly places in oneself as the author of one’s own acts, and notes that what Ricoeur counts as a secondary sense of attestation, one’s trust played out in a world of others, actually seems, developmentally, to precede the trust in the self, and demonstrably does 1 so in the acquisition of language. The fourth chapter examines Ricouer’s laudable work on recognition, and adds that a full understanding of the person must also include empathy, particularly in the passive sense of being empathized with, to account for growth into vital