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The World of the Work (Ricoeur:1991)

30/03/2011 By Kelly Cooper

"To begin with, appropriation is dialectically linked to the distanciation characteristic of writing. Distanciation is not abolished by appropriation but is rather the counterpart of it. Thanks to distanciation by writing, appropriation no longer has any trace of affective affinity with the intention of an author. Appropriation is quite the contrary of contemporaneousness and congeniality: it is understanding at and through distance.

In the second place, appropriation is dialectically linked to the objectification characteristic of the work. It is mediated by all the structural objectifications of the text; insofar as appropriation does not respond to the author, it responds to the sense. Perhaps it is at this level that the mediation effected by the text can be best understood. In contrast to the tradition of the cogito and to the pretension of the subject to know itself by immediate intuition, it must be said that we understand ourselves only by the long detour of the signs of humanity deposited in cultural works. What would we know of love and hate, of moral feelings, and, in general, of all that we call the self if these had not been brought to language and articulated by literature? Thus what seems the most contrary to subjectivity, and what structural analysis discloses as the texture of the text, is the very medium within which we can understand ourselves.

Above all, the vis-á-vis of appropriation is what Gadamer calls 'the matter of the text' and what I call here 'the world of the work.' Ultimately, what I appropriate is a proposed world. The latter is not behind the text, as a hidden intention would be, but in front of it, as that which the work unfolds, discovers, reveals. Henceforth, to understand is to understand oneself in front of the text. It is not a question of imposing upon the text our infinite capacity for understanding, but of exposing ourselves to the text and receiving from it an enlarged self, which would be the proposed existence corresponding in the most suitable way to the world proposed. So understanding is quite different from a constitution of which the subject would possess the key. In this respect, it would be more correct to say that the self is constituted by the 'matter' of the text" (Ricoeur 1991:87-88).

Ricoeur, Paul
1991[1986] From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson, trans. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

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From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II (SPEP) at Amazon.com

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“Language is the House of Being because Language, as Saying, is the Mode of Appropriation” (Heidegger 1971:135)

06/01/2011 By Kelly Cooper

“In order to be who we are, we human beings remain committed to and within the being of language, and can never step out of it and look at it from somewhere else. Thus we always see the nature of language only to the extent to which language itself has us in view, has appropriated us to itself. That we cannot know the nature of language-know it according to the traditional concept of knowledge defined in terms of cognition as representation-is not a defect, however, but rather an advantage by which we are favored with a special realm, that realm where we, who are needed and used to speak language, dwell as mortals.

Saying will not let itself be captured in any statement. It demands of us that we achieve by silence the appropriating, initiating movement within the being of language-and do so without talking about silence.

Saying, which resides in Appropriation, is qua showing the most appropriate moment of appropriating. This sounds like a statement. If we only hear this statement it does not say to us what is to be thought out. Saying is the mode in which Appropriation speaks: mode not so much in the sense of modus or fashion, but as the melodic mode, the song which says something in its singing. For appropriating Saying brings to light all present beings in terms of their properties-it lauds, that is, allows them into their own, their nature. Hölderlin sings these words in the beginning of the eighth stanza of ‘Celebration of Peace’:

Much, from the morning onwards,
Since we have been a discourse and have heard from one another
Has human kind learnt; but soon we shall be song.

Language has been called ‘the house of Being.’ It is the keeper of being present, in that its coming to light remains entrusted to the appropriating showing of Saying. Language is the house of being because language, as Saying, is the mode of Appropriation.

In order to pursue in thought the being of language and to say of it what is its own, a transformation of language is needed which we can neither compel nor invent. This transformation does not result from the procurement of newly formed words and phrases. It touches our relation to language, which is determined by destiny: whether and in what way the nature of language, as the arch-tidings of Appropriation, will retain us in Appropriation. For that appropriating, holding, self-retaining is the relation of all relations. Thus our saying-always an answering-remains forever relational. Relation is thought of here always in terms of the appropriation, and no longer conceived in the form of mere reference. Our relation to language defines itself in terms of the mode in which we, who are needed in the usage of language, belong to the Appropriation” (Heidegger 1971:134-136).

Heidegger, Martin
1971[1959] On the Way to Language. Peter D. Hertz, trans. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc.

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