XXX, 2, 2020: The Renewal of Hermeneutics: with Paul Ricœur and Beyond. Edited by Johann Michel and Carla Canullo

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The title of a book that Jean Greisch published in 1985, L’âge herméneutique de la raison, aptly defines the cultural milieu in which Ricoeur’s work developed. At a time when hermeneutics mostly displayed the ontological traits given to it by Heidegger, Ricoeur traced a hermeneutical path that he would describe as the “long way”, since, having started from the hermeneutics of symbols, he had then engaged in a dialogue with the human sciences, history and literature. The many themes tackled by the French philosopher along his intellectual trajectory (epistemology, ontology, politics, ethics, memory, justice…), which constitute the different jalons of the long way he opened up, allow us to understand his contribution to philosophy as a “work in progress”, to use a term that emphasises its fertility. The articles of this issue of “Discipline filosofiche”, giving centre stage to “the renewal of hermeneutics with Paul Ricoeur and beyond”, are intended as part of this work in progress. They take up again some issues discussed by Ricoeur, but they also explore territories that are not usually associated with hermeneutics and that Ricoeur himself did not or could not explore, as they did not belong to his time. Those territories he certainly would not have considered as unrelated to Humanity. He would certainly have reoriented his “long way” in their direction, and hermeneutics now allows us to understand and interpret them by carrying forward the renewal he began.
Ricoeur’s renewal of hermeneutics does not consist only in his rejection of the “ontological turn” promoted by Heidegger and his disciples, who viewed understanding more as a way of being than as a path to knowledge – a path followed also by the sciences, especially the so-called “human sciences”. Ricoeur’s rejection was motivated by the thought that the way of ontological hermeneutics was definitely too short to do justice to the epistemological and methodological issues raised by the sciences. Being open to those issues, Ricoeur renewed hermeneutics by turning it into a hermeneutics of symbols, texts, action, a hermeneutics of the self, of the human being with its own “capabilities”. Today these issues can be further explored by opening new workshops – by questioning the “who” of the interpreter or the revival of hermeneutics as a critical way, a way of semantic innovation, a way that intercepts and focuses on the themes of “suspicion” and the tragic, or even as a way that investigates the vulnerability of the other, human rights and inter-human relationships. In all these fields hermeneutics was renewed with Ricoeur, whose concern for a constant dialogue with his time made him attentive to their issues.
Our present reality prompts reflections that were not available to Ricoeur, as whole fields unknown to the French philosopher have emerged. Such is the case of the Digital Turn that characterizes our times, which must be understood in terms of its role and value in our own cultural context – a role and value that prompt us to conceive of the “who” and Identity as an Online Identity that appears as a “profile” in the social media. On the other hand, it is no longer possible to ignore the issues raised by the way our environment is currently inhabited and transformed. These new emergencies of reality also contribute to renewing hermeneutics, shaping it into a way that re-interprets the inhabited space and the architecture that constructs it, even to the point of stretching what Ricoeur used to call the “arc of the text”: from the text itself to action, and from action to the landscape, intended as that text that is interpreted by geography and that opens up the space for a hermeneutics of the environment that lives up to its challenges.
Although the challenges Ricoeur faced are not those we are facing today, the “work in progress” of the “long way” proves capable of interpreting our own time, bringing hermeneutics beyond the stage associated with the French philosopher. It proves capable of renewing hermeneutics by enabling it to explain reality more fully, interpreting its hidden folds so as to gain a deeper understanding of it.

Contents
(click on the titles to view the abstracts)

Johann Michel, Carla Canullo, Avant-propos. Le renouvellement de l’herméneutique ou la continuation de la «voie longue»
Paul Ricœur, Concetto e simbolo (a cura di Carla Canullo)
Johann Michel, Qui interprète?
Vinicio Busacchi, La via dell’ermeneutica critica
Jean-François Houle, L’Innovation sémantique comme pré-interprétation ou la fonction herméneutique de l’imagination chez Paul Ricœur
Annalisa Caputo, Il Nietzsche di Ricœur e l’eredità ermeneutica del “sospetto”
Marco Casucci, Tra filosofia e non-filosofia: i “luoghi” del tragico nell’ermeneutica ricœuriana
Sebastiano Galanti Grollo, Per un’ermeneutica dell’alterità: Ricœur e la vulnerabilità dell’altro
Alessandro Colleoni, Droits de l’homme et expérience de la vulnérabilité: Une «humanité» à soigner?
Renato Boccali, Essere-in-relazione. Ermeneutica dell’agire e poetica del voler vivere insieme in Paul Ricœur
Luca Possati, The Rise of the Code and the Hermeneutics of Technology: A Ricoeurian Perspective on Software
Alberto Romele, Digital Hermeneutics as Hermeneutics of the Self
Chiara Pavan, Come ci raccontiamo oggi? Rappresentazione e vita nella nostra identità online
Francesca D’Alessandris, Progettare l’altrove. Considerazioni sul ruolo dell’ermeneutica per un’architettura utopica
Paolo Furia, Landscape as a Text: Ricoeur and the Human Geography
Maria Cristina Clorinda Vendra, Interpreting the Natural Environment. Paul Ricoeur’s Directions for an Eco-Hermeneutic Phenomenology