Abstract

In this paper, I attempt to show the evolution of the concept of testimony in PaulRicoeur’s writing. In the paper “Herméneutique du témoignage” given at theConference of Castelli in 1972 Ricoeur defined “testimony” in legal terms, as atestimony given in the frame of a dispute. In contrast, in “La Mémoire, l’Histoire,l’Oublie”1Ricoeur split testimony from the legal frame and characterized it as adialogical “natural institution.” My first hypothesis is that, even though in the1972 conference he recognized the legal origin of testimony, his definition is notquite the standard one. In order to establish this hypothesis, I will compareRicoeur’s definition with C.A.J. Coady’s understanding of the term to showwhere the differences are and explore the implications of each. Next, I willdiscuss the limitations of the legal definition, and how the concept of testimonywas changed in order to overcome them. I will then show how Ricoeur’s conceptof testimony works in MHO so as to associate memory with history. Finally, Iwill focus on Ricoeur’s revised notion of testimony in his last book Parcours dela reconnaissance, and argue that some of the changes in the definition had anargumentative and not a phenomenological reason