Ricoeur on History, Fiction, and Biblical Hermeneutics
Ricoeur on History, Fiction, and Biblical Hermeneutics
Written by Dr Gregory J. Laughery
Copyright 2006: Dr Gregory J. Laughery
Download the Full 35 Page PDF File of the Paper.
Published in 'Behind' the Text: History and Biblical Interpretation' this paper addresses the radical historiographical challenge of postmodernism. Many today argue that history is not what is used to be.
"Postmodern theories have not only had an impact on the disciplines of history and literature, but they are funding much of the discussion in biblical studies, biblical hermeneutics, and theology." Dr Laughery draws on the work of Paul Ricoeur in responding to these new approaches, and contributes insightful conclusions.
Introduction
Jean-François Lyotard's volume, The Postmodern Condition and its 'incredulity toward metanarratives', broke open a large fissure of uncertainty in many disciplines. The rising force of such postmodern ideas is having a profound impact on the discipline of history. In recent years debate among historians has taken new directions. At present, serious challenges pertaining to the truth of written history and the knowledge of the historian are in evidence. While controversy concerning the truth-value of history has a long tradition, postmodern theories argue for new ways of viewing and doing history. Historical truth, objectivity, facts, events and knowledge are all targets for revision. Marc Trachtenberg expresses his concern in the following manner:
Increasingly the old ideal of historical objectivity is dismissed out of hand. The very notion of 'historical truth' is now often considered hopelessly naïve.
For Trachtenberg, and others, postmodern proposals represent a contemporary crisis in the discipline of history. What is viewed as a radical scepticism and a virulent relativism are considered to be an assault on traditional forms of all that history stands for, including, objectivity, knowledge, clarity and evidence. Facts and truths that are objectively discovered and conveyed were assumed to be the emblem of historical accounts, but this view of history is changing.
The postmodern reply to these assumptions is that new ways of thinking about history are essential. The old Enlightenment fantasies of certainty and objectivity that were thought to be at the center of a writing of history are no longer taken into account. Keith Jenkins states:
.... the attempt to pass off the study of history in the form of the ostensibly disinterested scholarship of academics studying the past objectively and "for its own sake" as "proper" history, is now unsustainable. ...... In fact history appears to be just one more foundationless, positioned expression in a world of foundationless, positioned expressions.
Writing history, for Jenkins and others, is merely a subjective enterprise, exclusively based on literary construction without objective grounding. As such, getting the story straight has little to do with the events of the past. Under the template of postmodern theory 'new wave' historians argue that a discovery of an accurate recounting of historical events in time is an impossible task. In this scenario, writing history has more to do with inventing meaning, than finding facts. Any pursuit of the truth of historical occurrence in the past becomes highly dubious. How then are we to understand written accounts of past events as 'new wave' historians influence and re-shape the discipline of history? Does the discipline face a growing crisis?
The contemporary debates over history writing and historians also have enormous repercussions for biblical truth, which in some sense, claims to be connected to real events in history. In addition to historical questions, there is another related dimension to our present context that merits consideration. Biblical interpretation is much influenced by the contemporary interest in literary criticism and narrative. The narrative turn has drawn the attention of literary theorists, philosophers, biblical exegetes, theologians and historians, becoming the object of intense debate. What is the relation, or lack thereof, between history and historical accounts of the past? How might narratives recount something about the real world? In the light of contemporary literary theories promoted by 'new wave' historians, how are we to view the biblical narratives?
The present essay will reflect on and evaluate recent proposals that are at the heart of these questions. I will focus on three major issues: history and historical discourse; historical discourse and fictional literature; historical discourse, fictional literature and the Bible. My purpose in what follows is to interpret and apply the reflections of the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur to these issues and to draw out several implications for biblical hermeneutics.
1) History and Historical Discourse.
One response to postmodernism and its influence on historical questions has been for some scholars to claim that the text is history. Daniel Marguerat, in a discussion of postmodernism and historiography, argues that there is no history without the written plots and interpretations of the historian. He maintains that any distinction between history and written accounts of history has now been destroyed. A somewhat similar view is advanced by Paul Veyne, who proposes a narrativist model of history that is plot centered; there is no history without the writing of a plot. History, Veyne contends, is made by the written construction of plots.
Such notions of history and writing history are useful in pointing out the role of the historian as interpreter and the importance of narrative configurations, but they have the severe disadvantage of reducing history to interpretation and emplotment, hence devaluing any distinction between historical discourse and history. How do we arrive at historical discourse, a selectively written account of history? There has been much discussion on this issue and it is impossible to cover the wide diversity of views here. I shall closely follow Paul Ricoeur's work and commentary on this controversial aporia. Ricoeur suggests a critical three-fold historiographic operation that comprises, at each level, enrichment and problematization.
First, Ricoeur argues, we begin with an investigation of what we find in sources and documentation. These detail sources, for example, traces, testimony, and chronicles can be evaluated and to some degree verified as to their reliability. Sources are not, at this stage, what Ricoeur refers to as 'la connaissance historique' (historical knowledge). According to Ricoeur, on this level, historical occurrence has a twofold epistemological status: it brings about statements of details that can be affirmed or negated by testimony, trace, or documentation, and it plays a role in the overall explanation and narrative configuration, where it passes from the status of a verifiable occurrence to an interpreted occurrence. In spite of the instability of the relation between the occurrence and its documentation there is no reason to assume that the occurrence was not an actual event in the world prior to its documentation.
Second, there is an explicative/comprehension level, which concerns not just 'who', 'where', and 'when', but 'why', 'to what effects', or 'results.' This level comprises such elements as social, political or economic considerations that ripple out from an occurrence in the past. On this level, as Ricoeur points out, there are conflicting models of the erklären (explanation) and verstehen (understanding) of past occurrences as historical knowledge: some explain by subjecting the past to laws or regulations, others understand by connecting the past to a teleology. The notions of epistemological value are attached to one or the other of these models of cultivating and articulating the past. In effect both attempt, albeit in different ways, to establish something of a scientific dimension of historical discourse through centering on understanding (Dilthey) or explanation (Hempel). However, in Ricoeur's view, the problematic is that explanation without understanding or understanding without explanation results in a truncated epistemology. In the debate between these models, Ricoeur highlights the work of G. H. von Wright in Explanation and Understanding (who situates the conflict in Plato and Aristotle). Wright attempts to synthesize the regulatory and the causal or teleological in connection with human action. In finding such a point of view promising, Ricoeur ponders the following question: does a narrative ordering assure the unity of a mixed model? This question leads us to the next stage of the historiographic operation.
Third, the interpreted sources and the explanations and understandings are configured in (re) writing a grand historiographical narrative, which aims to be a representation of the past. This (re) writing representation is connected to memory, the intentionality of the historiographer, and the target of recounting truth about the past in dependence on the previous levels. At this point, the historiographical operation is brought to closure. Ricoeur prefers the term 'représentance' for the combined three level operation in order to emphasize that historical representation is working towards bringing to light the targeted reference. These three distinct, yet related levels of operation, offer a critical knowledge of the past.
Ricoeur's threefold notion of the historiographical operation shows that history and historical discourse are not to be equated. For Ricoeur, there is a behind the text or an outside the text that merits consideration in historical inquiry. Trace, testimony, and représentance, stand for something that took place outside the text. While the behind or outside the text are not the only concerns in the interpretation of historical discourse, they nevertheless remain valid interests. Historical occurrences only become historical discourse when they are written, while history remains history even though it is not written down. Thus, we are not merely interested in texts, but in a reliable interpretation of the historical character of the events which the texts represent.
PLEASE CONTINUE TO READ THE REST OF THE ARTICLE BY DOWNLOADING THE FULL PDF VERSION:
Download the Full 35 Page PDF File of the Paper.