Paul Ricoeur has died at a young ripe age of 92. It’s excruciating for me personally to overcome a true philosopher’s death as I feel that they are the conscience-keepers of the time and their encyclopedic knowledge in disciplines of human thought shakes me up from the “complacency of the known.”
Ricoeur seems to have said that in our lifetime, we are engaged in a chain of conversations. As soon as you are born, you enter the conversation already happening there. Hearing the living and the dead speak and add something to the conversation and depart.
In that case, Ricoeur has made a worthwhile contribution in enlivening the conversation. A brilliant polymath, his lifelong project of investigating the discipline of “philosophical anthropology” has startlingly engaged him in subjects from phenomenology, biblical exegesis to narratology. This kind of anthropology deals with the study of what Ricoeur calls the “capable person.” And the “capabilities and vulnerabilities” that humans display in the activities that make up their life – with a strong emphasis on an exhaustive understanding of the self.
“Justice proceeds by conceptual reduction; love proceeds by poetic amplification.”
The Harvard philosopher, John Rawls in his critically acclaimed book A Theory of Justice – which I personally feel is an intensely argued book par excellence – posits two principles of Justice.
The first argument reveals that justice requires that “basic social goods” like liberty and opportunity, income, wealth and the bases of self-respect must be equally distributed; unless an unequal distribution is to everyone’s advantage.
His second argument is inextricably linked with the first: under favorable conditions, a special condition called “justice as fairness” helps prioritize certain liberties and opportunities through liberal constitutional democracy.
The two principles are fundamentally concerned with providing certain basic liberties equally for all; and the inequalities in income, wealth, etc needing to be structured to maximally benefit the worst-off members of the society.
Ricoeur’s idea of “justice as conceptual reduction” carries a strong undercurrent of Rawlsian idea of Justice. What Ricoeur means is perhaps this.
Justice is commonly aspired by all societies; but, few are really willing to provide it without concessions. These concessions are influenced by circumstances and people’s views. Say, amnesty is requested by a child-rapist from the President. He would try to interpret the case objectively but a self-understanding of the brutality of the action against a young schoolgirl may affect the verdict. I’m just speculating.
Or better, if a government employee is found guilty of a vehicle-accident by a
All this with a genuine intention not to strip the accused of his basic liberties and giving enough time for the law to take its course and give the best possible verdict.
*********
Justice is a system crucial to a society’s survival. And by placing poetry alongside with it, Ricoeur reflects the spirit of what the Polish Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz said:
“What is poetry, if it cannot save a nation?”
By assigning the gradual spread of love as the objective of poetry, Ricoeur resonates Milosz’s dictum. The use of amplification is even more marvelous. Poetry amplifies or intensifies or strengthens experience and thoughts emanating out of it.
All this in the service of humanity; with a genuine aim to multiply love. Love must be cumulative; not reductive.
So, Ricoeur astonishingly provides an acute contrast between “Justice” as a subtracting concept and “Poetry fused with Love” as an ever-adding concept.
May poetry empower humans with love and may love for justice enable human progress.
I acknowledge Ricoeur’s phantom that has propelled me write this post.
Few more understandings about Ricoeur’s philosophy to be posted later…
No comments:
Post a Comment