Language as the Power of Norm-guided Creation. On Paul Ricoeur's Lectures on Language (1962-1967)

Between 1962 and 1967/68, Ricœur devoted several courses to the question of language. Even though there are many traces of these lectures in the articles and essays published during these years (and collected in part in The Conflict of Interpretations), they have so far attracted little attention from the research community. However, they mark a decisive turning point in Ricœur’s thinking and lay the systematic foundation of the hermeneutics of the text that he would deploy in his later works. The article first clarifies the place occupied by these courses in Ricœur’s work. It then presents the archival material and characterizes the specific approach of each of the courses on the basis of Ricœur’s preparatory manuscripts. In a final section, three particularly instructive aspects of the courses are discussed: the shift from symbol to metaphor (in discussion with Greimas and Jakobson), the articulation of analytic philosophy and phenomenology (Frege and Husserl), and finally the program of a transcendental foundation of the rules of discourse production (Strawson, Wittgenstein and Chomsky).