Freedom and Global Anthropology

Abstract

Whatever methodological title one gives to Ricoeur’s major work, it is basically a treatise on the philosophy of the will. It should not be regarded as unusual therefore if one discovers within that discussion a phenomenological treatment of the traditional themes which have dominated discussion of the will since Saint Paul, and from the perspective of The Symbolism of Evil, before that time in terms of the central role of those themes, particularly in western religious symbolism and mythology. There is a dialectical interplay of freedom and bondage, ideal possibility and actual limitation, fault and transcendence, freedom and evil, which create the foundation for the development of the basic themes. The fact that traditional themes predominate does not mean that Ricoeur’s discussion and presentation of the philosophy of the will is in any sense a traditional presentation. Ricoeur has attempted to bring that discussion into the context of the phenomenological method by specifying man’s fundamental possibilities under the rubric of the “will” primarily through the eidetic delineation of the structures of voluntary and involuntary, the existential specification of fallibility, and the hermeneutic elaboration of actual fault. The reason for Ricoeur’s choice of the subject “will” reveals his ties with contemporary French phenomenology.