Mémoire, conscience et pardon : dialogues entre le philosophique et le théologique chez Paul Ricoeur.

Memory, Consciousness, and Forgiveness: Dialogues between the Philosophical and the Theological in Paul Ricoeur In his phenomenological approach, Paul Ricœur adds to the question of the origin of the subject those of lack and overcoming, i.e., the issue of his or her liberation through forgiveness. According to him, the problem of the origin of the subject and that of the origin of forgiveness are intertwined: the question of the subject's identity "who I am" is connected to the question of forgiveness "how can I be effectively free?" Ricœur's theoretical description of the will sheds light on the structures of human freedom. This latter is the condition of human responsibility, it grounds the possibility of guilt as a condition from which the human being cannot escape. Indeed, Ricoeur argues that guilt is freedom reduced to slavery. Guilt is extended to all humanity. Although the human being is guilty, there is still a hope for liberation. This is precisely what myths tell us: the myth of innocence concerns the desire, the courage, and the imaginary experience that supports the eidetic description of the voluntary and the involuntary. Ricoeur's analysis of forgiveness leads to memory, history, and forgetting. Otherwise put, it consists in a revival of the phenomenological phase of his thought, which has never been abandoned in his hermeneutical development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]