Abstract

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. ;This thesis has attempted to examine Paul Ricoeur's work as a whole. Its aim has been made to enquire whether the dialectics of difference and identity played any essential part in his hermeneutic phenomenology. ;The introduction gave an overall view of Ricoeur's writings situated within the contemporary landscape of French philosophy. ;Part I set out to study Ricoeur's abstract phenomenology. The results obtained showed: That Ricoeur's philosophical background, especially Husserl's phenomenology and Marcel's existentialism, had a deep influence on him; That his structural phenomenology of the will, developed from an imaginative combination of Husserl's epistemological method and Marcel's ontological vision, to constitute a framework towards the understanding of human nature; That 'man's non-coincidence with himself' brought an existential distance within structural unity, thus leading to an abstract reflection upon the structures of human reality, and to the disclosure of a 'fault'. ;Part II enquired into the emergence of Ricoeur's hermeneutics, a turning point towards concrete phenomenology. This study demonstrated: That the 'same' of meaning could be reached only indirectly through the 'other' of signs, of symbols and myths calling for interpretation; That such an 'other' had to be critically deciphered if it was to disclose the 'same' of consciousness; That the structure of symbols, understood in terms of archaeology and teleology, explained the conflict of interpretations which, in turn, and when arbitrated, revealed a 'same'. ;Part III studied Ricoeur's concrete phenomenology of language and narrative. This discussion showed: That the hermeneutic circle of explanation and understanding was itself a dialectics of difference and identity, at the level of text and semantic innovation; That identity could only be a narrated identity since man finds himself via the mediation of stories and histories. ;Thus, the conclusion must be drawn that the dialectics of difference and identity is the touchstone beneath Ricoeur's hermeneutic phenomenology