New book by Dries Deweer!
Ricoeur's Personalist Republicanism
Published by Rowman
and Littlfield.
Introduction
Moral and political
convictions never stand alone. They are always connected to an underlying view
of mankind. Liberalism, which currently predominates, is connected to a focus
on the free individual. Marxism thinks of man in terms of class struggle,
determined by economic relationships. Halfway through the twentieth century a
powerful alternative came about, by the name of “personalism”. This term stood
for a form of social and political thought based on the concept of the human
person. This concept stresses that a human being only becomes human in
relationship with others and in a commitment to values that go beyond one’s
individual interests. However, the success of personalist philosophy did not
last long. After an intensive golden age between the 1930s and 1950s
personalists disappeared from the forefront, pushed aside by the new crop of
structuralists and poststructuralists. Hence, it would seem that personalism
did not make a profound impression. John Hellman, who carried out historical research
into the movement, worded his conclusion rather sharply: “The ‘Personalists’
are unimportant in the history of philosophy” (Hellman
1973, 385).
Hellman’s conclusion is way too emphatic. Although
the philosophical development of personalism in a strict sense did cool off,[1] it remains remarkable to what
extent personalist ideas influence western thought. A personalist movement is
still active within the domain of applied ethics, for example in medical ethics
or business ethics.[2] More importantly, personalism
continues to be the key to Christian democratic ideology (Beke 2008; Norgaard Mortensen
2014; Van Hecke 2008). Hence, in Europe, it is the
philosophical background for important political leaders such as the German
chancellor, Angela Merkel, or the first President of the European Council,
Herman Van Rompuy. In the United States, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker
Movement, for example, were profoundly inspired by personalist ideas (Zwick and Zwick
2005, 97-115). This raises the question what
continuing philosophical relevance can be found in personalism, and more
specifically in a social ethics and political philosophy based on a personalist
view of mankind.
French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) is
an interesting interlocutor in light of the preceding question. As a young
academic he made a name for himself as a public intellectual under the wing of
the influential personalist Emmanuel Mounier. Hence, he was considered a
representative of personalism in his younger years. Nevertheless he later
supported fatal criticisms of personalism.[3]
The extent to which Ricoeur succeeded in integrating these two elements –
loyalty and criticism – in his work shows us a way to consider personalism so
that it still provides us with a tenable philosophical stance and an important
input in contemporary political philosophy. Therefore, the question that will
lead us throughout this book is: To what extent does the thought of Ricoeur bear
a continuing stamp of personalism that allows him to instigate a personalist
perspective within contemporary political philosophy?
Although in principle the scope of our question
covers the entirety of Ricoeur’s huge oeuvre, we will specifically focus on his
political philosophy. His political thought is not restricted to one or more
monographs. It is spread over many essays on social ethics and political
philosophy, published throughout the years, especially in the journals Esprit and Le christianisme social, but elsewhere as well. Given the fact that
these essays are based on an underlying interpretation of the human person, we
also have to take into account the relationship of his political thought with
his philosophical anthropology. This philosophical anthropology was originally
contained in the three volumes of his Philosophie
de la volonté (Ricoeur 1950, 1960a, 1960b). However, I will especially focus
on Soi-même comme un autre (1990), because this work is the key to
Ricoeur’s later thought. My method in the exploration of these works will be to
think along with Ricoeur and to follow the development of his thought along
evolving social contexts, methodological refinements, and the continuous
confrontation with other authors, all the while keeping his relationship with
personalism in mind as a continuing thread. This will allow us to gain an
insight into the gradual elaboration of key concepts such as personhood, the
political paradox, and the responsibility of the person as citizen, leading to
a compelling answer to my question and, particularly, to a personalist input
that draws our attention to a blind spot in contemporary political philosophy. With
this end in view I will go through four stages.
The first stage presents the particularity of
the political philosophy of personalism. Personalist thought has been studied
quite extensively,[4] but an analysis of the overarching
political theory has until now been lacking. The first chapter fills this gap,
albeit in a modest way, because I will limit myself to three personalist
philosophers who represent the personalist influence on Ricoeur. After an
explanation of the social and intellectual context in which French personalism
came about, I will focus on the thought of Jacques Maritain (1882-1973),
Emmanuel Mounier (1905-1950) and Paul-Ludwig Landsberg (1901-1944). Maritain
was an intellectual heavyweight in his day and the most influential
representative of personalism. The aforementioned Mounier and his friend and
colleague Paul-Ludwig Landsberg were the main theoreticians of the early Esprit movement, the personalist
movement with which the young Ricoeur sympathized. The analysis of the
political thought of these three authors shows remarkable overlap, to such an
extent that we can talk about a common personalist political theory. That
provides us with an insight into the personalist framework in which Ricoeur’s
own political philosophy came into being.
In the second stage, I focus on Ricoeur’s own
direct involvement in the personalist movement. Between the end of the Second
World War and the 1960s Ricoeur grew into one of the main theorists of
personalism, by means of frequent contributions to the journals Esprit and Le christianisme social. Three topics received ample treatment: the
relationship between personalism and existentialism, the possibility of a
Christian socialism and the perils and promises of politics. These three topics
in which Ricoeur succeeded in leaving his mark on personalist thought will be
examined in the second chapter. The analysis of the concerned essays will show
that the reflection on the paradoxical nature of politics and the subsequent
responsibility of the citizen was the spearhead of Ricoeur’s intellectual
contribution to personalism. Moreover, we will find that Ricoeur’s reflections
build on the political theory of personalism manifested in the first chapter.
The fact that a personalist dimension is present
in Ricoeur’s thought during those early years is more or less generally
acknowledged. Most secondary literature, however, gives this little or no
attention (Monteil 2013b; Muldoon
2002; Simms 2003) or presents it as just a phase (Dosse 2008; Michel 2006; Mongin
1998; Reagan 1996).[5] This last version of the facts is what I will
call into question in the third stage. I will look at how Ricoeur indeed
supported fundamental criticisms of original personalism, while he nevertheless
continued to display a tenacious critical loyalty. The four criticisms that
were on the table will all prove to be given a response in Ricoeur’s later
work. This key particularly opens a new perspective on Ricoeur’s late main
work, Soi-même comme un autre (1990), that is as the expression of an
endeavor to bring the core ideas of personalism back into the limelight, but in
a more resilient manner. Special attention will be devoted to the criticism
that personalism mixes up philosophy and faith. The controversy that surrounds
Ricoeur himself in that regard prompts us to abandon for a while our
methodology of thinking along with Ricoeur, to engage in the concerned debate
in the secondary literature and to reach a conclusion on the extent to which
Ricoeur himself remains vulnerable to the trouble of original personalism.
The restatement of personalism brings us to the
fourth and final stage, where I return to Ricoeur’s political thought. On the
basis of his later hermeneutical phenomenological anthropology Ricoeur took a
new look at political philosophy during the last two decades of his life. In
the study of the personalist-inspired political theory in his early work (in
the second chapter) we will have encountered key concepts such as the political
paradox and the responsibility of the person as a citizen in a preliminary form.
In the fourth chapter we are going to find out how Ricoeur elaborates these
concepts later on. This will allow me to work out how he implicitly uncovers a
personalist potential within contemporary political philosophy. In that regard I
will look at the attempt to solve the dilemma between liberalism and communitarianism
by focusing on the concepts of citizenship and civic virtue. This debate
spurred the revival of republicanism in Anglo-American political philosophy.
Authors such as Quentin Skinner, Philip Pettit and Michael Sandel argue for the
understanding of freedom as non-domination, combined with an emphasis on a
mixed constitution and a vigilant citizenry. I will first show that Ricoeur’s
political thought is on the same wavelength with contemporary republicanism. Eventually
I will argue that Ricoeur’s personalist leanings allow him to circumvent
problems that haunt more common kinds of contemporary republicanism, namely the
blindness for transnational citizenship, the lack of foundation for the
required civic virtue and the controversiality of the intrinsic value of self-government.
The final result lies on three fronts. First,
there is more clarity in the status of personalism in contemporary philosophy,
as Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology shows that there are still viable
means to elaborate the core ideas of personalism, beyond the usual criticism.
Second, a personalist kind of republicanism is shown to provide a valuable
input into the contemporary philosophical debate on citizenship. This opens the
door to further investigation, for the next step that presents itself is to
examine how a personalist republicanism can be elaborated in the light of vexed
questions with regard to the ethical meaning of citizenship, such as the
relationship between justice and solidarity, our collective responsibility for
the environment and multicultural coexistence. Finally, the most tangible
result is a deeper understanding of the oeuvre of Ricoeur, in the sense that
this work shows that personalism is an important and above all underestimated
perspective for understanding his thought.
[1] There are,
however, notable exceptions who still try to elaborate personalism as a
distinct philosophical system. See for example (Buford 2009,
2011; Burgos 2000; Triest 2000).
[2] For personalism in
contemporary medical ethics, see for example (Petrini
and Gainotti 2008; Schotsmans 1999; Vanlaere and Gastmans 2011). For contemporary
business ethics, see for example (Acevedo
2012; Ballet et al. 2014; L. Bouckaert 1999; Gronbacher 1998; Whetstone 2002).
[3] This is especially
clear in the essays Meurt le
personnalisme, revient la personne (1983b) and Approches de la personne (1992a), which will be analyzed in
detail further on in this book.
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