1
The Concept of Second Naiveté in the thought of Ernst Simon and Paul Ricoeur By Elie Holzer
Published in Languages and Literatures in Jewish Education, Studies in Honor of Michael Rosenak, J. Cohen, E. Holzer & A. Isaacs, Hebrew
University and Magnes Press, Jerusalem, (2006), pp. 325-344.
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The Concept of Second Naiveté in the thought of Ernst Simon and Paul Ricoeur Elie Holzer
Introduction 1
The term Temimut (Naiveté ) appears as early as in biblical language as an adjective describing a quality of three biblical characters.
2
It also appears in
Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy, chapter 18, v. 13 in the following general prescription: “ 'ה ע תהיה ע י תמי
“ – ”אלהיYou shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God. ”3 Texts by medieval Jewish commentators commentators reflect two orientations in the interpretation interpretation of Temimut . Rashi interprets Tamim as the trait of an individual who adopts a stance of acceptance towards whatever befalls him, with no attempt to inquire into his or her destiny. According to Rashi, in its textual context, the above verse from Deuteronomy implies that people should rely exclusively on God rather than sorcery to provide for their needs. Another interpretation suggests Temimut as a total orientation to God: Even when one wishes to know the future, one should turn to prophets elected by God rather than to sorcerers. Temimut relates, therefore, to a single and sole orientation to God, to the exclusion of other gods and false prophets.
4
Neither the Bible nor these commentators, however, elucidate what Temimut actually entails entails or its potential significance significance as a mode mode of religious life. Although it implies some quality of religious attitude, the concept of Temimut has failed to attract serious attention of Jewish thinkers over the centuries, with the exception of Rabbi Judah Loew, known as the Maharal of Prague (1525-1609), who developed the concept of Temimut as a rich mode of active spiritual engagement in life.
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1
I translate Temimut as Naiveté instead instead of innocence or integrity. integrity.
2
See Noah (Genesis, 6,8); Jacob (Genesis 25, 27); Job (1,1).
3
Translation from the Stone edition
4
See Rashbam and Sforno.
5
Maharal of Prague, “Netiv Hatemimut” in Netivot Israel Vol. 2, Jerusalem 1971, pp. 205-208.
3
th
Only in 20 century Jewish thought does the concept of Temimut take an interesting turn, in the writings of Ernst Simon and later on by Emmanuel Levinas.
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In his
discussion of the attitude of the religious person after having encountered and assimilated some forms of secular and critical worldviews of life, Simon offers the concept of Temimut Shniya (Second Naiveté), as a model for both religious thinking and religious education. “Second Naiveté” appears to express a general state of mind, characterized by cognitive elements as well as an attitude towards existential questions. It is used more specifically in the context of religious beliefs and attitudes, to describe a critically mediated attitude towards the reality claims of religious faith. More recently, the concept of Second Naiveté has attracted renewed interest 7
among scholars because of its role in the writings of Paul Ricoeur. Despite several similarities in the use of this concept by Simon and Ricoeur, we believe that a comparison of the two highlights several differences, which are potentially significant for the thinking of religious educators. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to discuss and compare Simon and Ricoeur’s understanding of Second Naiveté. Before exploring the heart of the matter, I would like to add a more personal note. The choice of this topic is intimately connected to the book in which it appears, namely the Festschrift in the honor of Michael Rosenak. It was Mike who introduced me for the first time to Simon’s concept of Second Naiveté, years ago, when, after the collapse of my own First Naiveté, I sought alternatives beyond the existential desert which remained in its wake. Moreover, Mike exemplifies the concept of Second Naiveté, both in his scholarly work, as well as in his personal life and in his interactions with people. I can therefore think of no more appropriate title for a contribution to this book.
6
E. Levinas, La Tentation de la Tentation, Quatre Lectures Talmudiques. Paris: Les Editions the
Minuit, 1968, pp. 67-109. 7
Mark I. Wallace, The Second Naiveté, Barth, Ricoeur, and the New Yale Theology, Macon, GA,
Mercer University Press, 1990.
4
Second Naiveté in Ernst Simon’s thought 8 Simon discusses the concept of Second Naiveté in his article “Az Eitam,” on 9
which our analysis here focuses. At the outset of the article, Simon distinguishes between Tom (innocence) and Temimut (naiveté). Tom refers to a situation whereby an individual holds a clear and coherent worldview, based on firm (and unexamined) beliefs in a world of good, justice and truth. Such an organized worldview is free of both engagement in existential questions and experience of existential crises.
10
In
terms of religious beliefs, Tom may include faith in a God who rules men’s life according to norms of good and justice, or belief in revelation as it is presented in the Holy Scriptures. Thus, in this form of innocence, the language of the Scriptures is perceived as referential to either empirical or spiritual reality. Although Simon places the characteristics of the Temimut (naiveté), which he labels later as Temimut Shniya, Second Naiveté, in contradistinction to Tom, or “First Naiveté,” he provides no formal definition of the former. Instead, he illuminates several aspects of Second Naiveté, primarily through a discussion of the writings of earlier philosophers and theologians. 11
In general, Simon distinguishes among three different states of being : According to Simon, First Naiveté, criticism and Second Naiveté are not only possible states or attitudes but three distinctive stages of human-religious development. The first state is a state of innocence (Tom), or First Naiveté, as described above.
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Ernst Simon was born in Germany in the year 1899. He grew up in an assimilated environment and
became one of Martin Buber’s closest students as a young man. In the aftermath of World War I, he became a Zionist. In the early 1920s, he was active in the Free Jewish House of Learning, established by Buber and Rosenzweig. He emigrated to Palestine in 1928 but returned to Germany in 1934 to participate in the Centre for Jewish Adult Education, founded by Buber. In 1935, he returned to Palestine and joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Simon was an educator, a researcher and a philosopher. He died in 1988 in Jerusalem. 9
Simon, “Az Eitam,” in Haim od Yehudim Anahnu?, Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Hapoalim, 1982, pp. 135-169
(Hebrew). Simon takes credit for suggesting the concept of second naiveté. It was Hugo Bergman, who pointed out to him that the catholic philosopher Peter Wust (1884-1940) had already used this term in this writings. See “Az Eitam,” p. 135. 10
According to Simon, when this innocence is attributed to a large group, it is labeled as “primitive”
innocence. 11
Simon also talks about three educational stages towards authentic communication, see p. 167-168.
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The second state is one of enlightenment, reflection and critique.
12
This state is
obtained when one is exposed to modern critical scientific and philosophical thinking. Man is then to apply reason in the critical examination of his beliefs. Thus, the individual establishes his own knowledge of reality by challenging unexamined beliefs and the authority attributed to traditions in general, and to traditional religious beliefs in particular.
13
This critical activity leads to the collapse of the First Naiveté.
Scientific inquiry and critical thinking have undermined the status of pre-given truths and norms, either those originating in nature (e.g.,Greek philosophers) or revelation (e.g., the Bible as source of normative knowledge). In contrast to pre-modern philosophical and religious worldviews, in which man was conceived as an integral part of a macrocosm, modern man perceives himself as an autonomous being who shapes and controls his universe.
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However, such critical reflection brings about a crisis, which, in modern philosophical writings, is expressed as man’s discovery of the limitations of his own knowledge. Kant’s philosophy is paradigmatic of man’s inherent inability to know reality “as it is.” Hegel discusses the raising of historical consciousness, which in its subsequent developments led man to acknowledge historical relativism and plurality of forms of life and religious expressions.
15
Thus man is sovereign, yet alone, having
lost all former anchors of faith. To resolve this crisis, Simon develops what Ehud Luz has described as a form of religious humanism.
16
Luz characterizes Simon’s religious
thought as an attempt to reconcile religion, which is expected to redeem man from total relativism, and humanism, which prevents the sacrifice of man’s autonomy and dignity by religion. It is important to emphasize that, according to Simon, it is reason and the discovery of the limits of human knowledge which lead man to the threshold of Second Naiveté. This is the reason why a major part of Simon’s article retraces
12
One cannot infer from Simon’s writings if reflection and critique function more as a cause or rather
as a result of the collapsing of First Naiveté. 13
For an analysis and a critic of Enlightenment’s attack on the authority of traditions, see H. G.
Gadamer, Truth and Method , Second Revised Edition, New York: Continuum, 1996, pp. 271-290. 14
See for example Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1953.
15
Ehud Luz, “Hatemimut Hasheniya, Al Hahumanism Hayehudi shel Akiva Ernst Simon ,” Mehkarei
Yerushalyim beMahshevet Israel, Vol. 2 (4), Jerusalem, 1983, pp. 613-644. 16
Ibid.
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how various philosophers and theologians have discussed the concept of docta ignorantia as recognition of the limitations of one’s knowledge.
17
The result is Second Naiveté, a concept which Simon adopts from Wust, a 19
th
century catholic thinker. According to Wust, the main characteristics of Second Naiveté are man’s capacity for adopting a stance of both wonder and fear of the 18
world.
For man, wonder is the origin of philosophy and detached analysis, while
fear is the impetus for religion and practical engagement.
19
The state of Second
Naiveté is also characterized by man’s optimistic future-oriented approach to life. On one hand, having assimilated a reflective and critical state of mind, she or he is realistic about the realities of life, yet refuses to “identify what there is and what could potentially be.”
20
21
“Belief is anticipation, drawing the future into the present.”
At the same time, Second Naiveté is a state of being, a readiness to revisit one’s childhood experiences, for example to use the name of God again and to pray. In Second Naivete, the sources of song and of faith are reopened, making it possible for man to reconnect to prayer, in some way.
22
Thus, Second Naiveté entails two simultaneous “moves”: on the one hand the person goes back to his initial First Naiveté; he uses religious language again, he is again capable of praying. On the other hand he crafts his overall orientation beyond
(but not on behalf of) science and rationality. In Second Naivete, the person actively seeks a meaning of life that lies behind the here and now of his/her personal existence. Although he fully acknowledges the significance of the reflective criticism of life, reality and of what appears to be a meaningless existence, the newfound positive orientation allows him/her to resist the total claim of critical thinking, to go beyond the conclusions of his rational self and explore new realms of meaning.
17
“Az Eitam” , pp. 142-152. Simon discusses Socrates, Plato, Philo, Augustinus, Nicolas of Cusa.
18
P. 139.
19
Pp. 139-140.
20
P. 167.
21
“Shabbat anticipates redemption, prayer anticipates its being answered. The Ten Commandments
anticipate a society where justice will reign,” p. 168. 22
P. 169.
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Overall, Simon seems to consider all three stages as essential elements in a chronological, biographical process.
23
In the introduction to his article, while
discussing the person who has attained Second Naiveté, he says: one will recognize the signs of the long transitional period between the Tom [first naiveté] and the Temimut [second naiveté], a period of shocking doubts about faith and achievements of critical philosophy and science”.
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In the context of education, Simon’s view of Second Naiveté offers a productive language for educators’ thinking about religious education. Thus, educators of adolescents might consider adolescents’ religious crises constructively, in terms of a collapse of their First Naiveté, rather than in terms of a problem. Educators might also reflect and explore possible pedagogical and curricular elements designed to facilitate the collapse of forms of First Naiveté or the development of a Second Naiveté for adolescents. Overall, the concept itself has the potential to engage educators’ thinking about religious education in more subtle terms of overall attitudes and orientations to be nurtured, rather than as knowledge or practices. However, Simon’s use of the concept appears to be limited in at least two ways. First, as we said, Simon’s discussion of Second Naiveté is presented in general and occasionally, even suggestive language. This undermines its possible uses and expressions in the practices of teaching because it does not explicitly relate to any particular aspect of teaching. One, however, may claim that the very nature of Second Naiveté precludes its treatment in discursive language. A more important limitation concerns Simon’s attempts to resolve the crisis and reach Second Naiveté through the use of means which are still grounded in the rational philosophical tradition/paradigm whose total claim on man he tries to overcome. Simon’s sense of the “remedy” appears to be intimately linked to his diagnosis of the problem. The employment of critical reason provides modern man with a sense of autonomy by which he or she establishes knowledge and values. According to Simon, it is by the use of reason that reason’s limitations are recognized, opening up the possibility for a Second Naivete to appear. Thus the use of reason 23
Although he stresses that most people might remain at the second stage, see p. 135. For a slightly
different description of these three stages, see pp.167-168. 24
P. 135. My translation and my emphasis.
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brings about the collapse of First Naivete because religious language is understood to compete with scientific and historical knowledge. Religious language and views disintegrate in the presence of the fruits of critical thinking, modern scholarship and modern consciousness. It is, however, in a subsequent use of reason, when it discovers its own limits, that a potential for a Second Naiveté is created. However, what if man cannot rely on either reason and its very foundations or on religious language and faith experience because his/her motivations seem to involve more than what s/he is conscious of?
Second Naiveté in Paul Ricoeur’s Thought Unlike Simon, Ricoeur uses the concepts of First and Second Naiveté sporadically and wrote no specific essay on the topic of naiveté. Nonetheless, we believe that these concepts do capture a major aspect of his philosophical work. To highlight the meaning of these terms in Ricoeur’s thought, we shall discuss the role they play as a frame of reference in Ricoeur’s agenda. We begin by discussing Ricoeur’s core idea that the engagement with symbols and texts, in general, and narratives and religious texts in particular, is a philosophical activity par excellence. The concept of Second Naiveté assumes its full meaning when interpretations of (religious) texts and symbols are confronted and challenged.
From philosophy to hermeneutics
In one of his earlier volumes, The Symbolism of Evil, Ricoeur points out that the interpretive work on symbols gives rise to thought.
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This insight leads him to
investigate the broader connection between the interpretation of symbols, on one hand, and philosophical reflection, on the other. How can the interpretation of symbols, which are man’s signs in the world including myth, language, rituals, metaphors and narratives, contribute to one’s reflection on existence? Ricoeur is willing to speculate as follows: In the to-and fro of interpretation with “the gift of meaning from symbol, the philosopher profits in understanding.”
26
In order to better
understand the human capacity for meaning and understanding, Ricoeur turns to “the
25
Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967, p. 346.
26
Ibid., p. 348.
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fullness of language,” which encompasses symbolic and mythic forms of language, as well as metaphorical and narrative language. The interpretation of symbols, which incorporate the fullness of language, therefore requires the investigation of linguistic expressions. Although the process of interpretation may never end, by engaging in hermeneutic activity regarding symbols, we “shall have a better understanding of man and of the bond between the being of man and the being of all beings.”
27
In contrast to the excessively generic Cartesian concept of consciousness, Ricoeur’s hermeneutical turn is based on the assumption that consciousness is neither the locus nor the origin of meaning.
This is well illustrated by the field of
psychoanalysis, as well as the phenomenology of religion. In both cases, immediate consciousness is not necessarily genuine consciousness: The cogito undergoes a decentering and does not constitute the locus of reflection or human self-understanding. For Ricoeur, man’s original effort to be is not transparent to himself and must be recovered. Reflection should, therefore, not be confused with immediate intuition (as with Descartes). Reflection is an “appropriation of our effort to exist and of desire to be through the works which bear witness to that effort and desire.”
28
Reflection which
leads to self-understanding is thus possible only through the engagement with the expressions of life created by humans.
29
In other words, Ricoeur is not preoccupied
with a definitive starting point of philosophy, similar to the Cartesian autonomous doubting self. For Ricoeur, language is an adequate starting point for meditation on symbols and the meaning that is inherent in language. It is therefore through what Ricoeur calls “the long route” of hermeneutical activity concerning symbols (myth, language, rituals, metaphors and narratives) that man can reach meaning and self30
understanding :
27
Ibid., p. 355.
28
Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation , , New Haven and London: Yale
University Press, 1970, p. 46. 29
“It is necessary to renounce the chimera of a philosophy without presuppositions and begin from a
full language,” The Symbolism of Evil , p. 19. “The symbol gives; but what it gives is occasion of thought, something to think about,” ibid., p. 348. In the philosophical hermeneutics of Ricoeur, knowledge is a gift before it becomes a task; it must be received before it can be doubted. 30
The choice for the long route is one of Ricoeur’s important critiques of Heidegger, see The Conflict
of Interpretations, Don Ihde (ed.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974, p. 10.
10
In contrast to the tradition of the cogito and to the pretension of the subject to know itself by immediate intuition, it must be said that we understand ourselves only by the long detour of the signs of humanity deposited in cultural works.
31
This is
man’s single alternative for recovering himself. Hence, philosophical reflection becomes hermeneutics:
The ultimate root of our problem lies in this primitive connection between the act of existing and the signs we deploy in our works; reflection must become interpretation because I cannot grasp the act of existing except in signs scattered in the world. This is why a reflective philosophy must include the results, methods and presuppositions of all the sciences that try to decipher and to interpret the signs of man.
32
That appropriation of my desire to exist is
impossible by the short path of consciousness; only the long path of interpretation of signs is open. Such is my working hypothesis in philosophy. I call it concrete reflection that is the cogito mediated by the entire universe of 33
sign.
“Concrete reflection” is a fundamental philosophical position that Ricoeur adopts, breaking away from the proud autonomous modern Cartesian self. It has particular significance in the educational context, because it demands that the learner adopt an attitude of openness and vulnerability vis-à-vis the text and additional cultural signs. The reader is required to “de-possess” and “de-center” himself or herself: It is with Freud and Philosophy that I broke away from the illusions of consciousness as the blind spot of reflection. The case of the symbolism of evil is not an exception, one tributary of the gloomy experience of evil. All reflection is mediated, there is not immediate self-consciousness. The first truth “I think, I am” remains as abstract and empty as it is invincible; it has to be “mediated” by the ideas, actions, works, institutions and monuments and that objectify it. It is in these objects, in the widest sense of the word, that the Ego must lose and find itself . We can say, in a somewhat paradoxical sense,
31
Paul Ricoeur, The hermeneutical function of distanciation, Hermeneutics and the Human
Sciences, UK Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 143. 32
Freud and Philosophy, p. 46.
33
The Conflict of Interpretations, pp. 264-265.
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that a philosophy of reflection is not a philosophy of consciousness if by consciousness we mean immediate self-consciousness.
34
Instead of a direct access to the self, one must engage in the interpretation of human beings’ signs in the world, which are repositories of insights about life. This is also the objective of the study as texts: What would we know of love and hate, of moral feelings and, in general, of all that we call the self , if these had not been brought to language and articulated by literature? Thus what seems most contrary to subjectivity, and what structural analysis discloses as the texture of the text, is the very medium within which we can understand ourselves.
35
Thus, interpretation is the way by which modern man is to reaffirm life through an honest act of reflective engagement with symbols. An assessment of reality is attained through symbolic, communal interpretation, rather than detached rational thought. However, the very interaction with texts, especially religious texts and symbols, becomes problematic for this same modern person. No simple and direct access to the meaning of these religious symbols and texts exists. When he approaches religious symbols and texts from a stance of “concrete reflection,” modern man cannot revert to a primitive naiveté: Does that mean that we could go back to a primitive naiveté? Not at all. In every way, something has been lost, irremediably lost: immediacy of belief. But if we can no longer live the great symbolisms of the sacred in accordance with the original belief in them, we can, we modern men, aim at a second naiveté in and through criticism. In short, it is by interpreting that we can hear again.
34
36
“Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation,” in Lewis S. Mudge, Paul Ricouer’s Essays on
Biblical Interpretation, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980, p . 106 [my emphasis]. 35
Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences , J. Thompson (ed.), UK Cambridge University
Press, 1981, p. 143. 36
Symbolism of Evil, p. 351.
12
What Ricoeur refers to as the loss of immediacy of belief is modern man’s awareness of scientific and historical criticism, namely those sources normally viewed as sources of man’s knowledge and systematic reflection which render the engagement with these texts meaningless when they are approached in a mode of “primitive naiveté.” In a further development of his philosophical work, Ricoeur acknowledges that serious hermeneutical engagement with texts must also confront what he has called the hermeneutics of suspicion. Ricoeur points to three major schools of hermeneutics initiated by Freud, Marx and Nietzsche, who share a reductionist hermeneutics of false-consciousness.
37
Ricoeur’s concern to find a way to retrieve
religious symbols and texts via hermeneutical engagement must, at the same time, elucidate how to overcome the reductive explanatory character of the hermeneutics of suspicion. Ricoeur retraces this part of the journey in his own philosophical work: Hermeneutics appeared henceforth as a battle field traversed by two opposing trends, the first tending toward a reductive explanation, the second tending toward a recollection or a retrieval of the original meaning of the symbol. My problem was to link these two approaches and to understand their relation as dynamic and as moving from first naiveté through critique toward what I called at the time a second naiveté.
38
Thus stated briefly, “First Naiveté” signifies a person’s simplistic connection with and acceptance of the symbolic/mythic foundations of the surrounding culture. “Critical distance” signifies the reader’s use of various interpretive approaches which create a distance from mythic symbol systems. “Second Naiveté,” a term used by Ricoeur to capture the core idea of his philosophical project , signifies a person’s interpretive stance, informed by the use of critical models, but open to the depth of symbolic meaning.
39
37
Freud and Philosophy, pp. 32-36.
38
“From existentialism to the philosophy of language,” reprinted in Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of
Metaphor , Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979, p. 318. 39
See also: “For the second immediacy that we seek and the second naiveté that we await are no longer
accessible to us anywhere else than in a hermeneutics,” The Symbolism of Evil, p. 352.
13
Several interesting comparisons with Simon are appropriate at this point. Both Simon and Ricoeur have a similar conception of a three-phase process: First Naiveté, Critical Thinking and Second Naiveté. Both attempt to negotiate the challenges posed by modern consciousness to the religious person. There are, however, two major differences between them: for Simon, modern manifestations of reason (historical consciousness, scientific knowledge) are means to knowledge attainment and responsible for the inevitable collapse of First Naiveté. Only subsequently, when reason discovers its own limits, does the potential for Second Naiveté emerge. Ricoeur’s point, however, is more radical: From the masters of suspicion, we learned that reason itself cannot be relied on, neither from the perspective of the text (when reason appears in its linguistic expressions in texts), nor from the perspective of the reader (when he or she engages in reading of a text). The real locus of understanding resides in possible hidden meanings and motivations, both in the text and of the reader. Therefore, to attain Second Naiveté, a state in which religious texts “speak” again to the reader, one must negotiate this uncertainty. According to Ricoeur, the modern reader wishing to engage in the philosophical process of self-understanding has no alternative route to Second Naiveté. To some degree, Second Naiveté is not only a challenge for modern man’s engagement with religious texts, but also for modern man’s philosophical project in general. Secondly, as distinct from Simon, we find that the special nature of Ricoeur’s treatment of Second Naiveté is circumscribed in the very practices of the work of hermeneutics, particularly the hermeneutics of religious texts.
40
Moreover, unlike
Simon, Ricoeur’s concept of Second Naiveté is not vague: It is informed by both a theory of text and meaning, as well as by the clarification of principles of hermeneutical engagement with texts. A brief discussion of these elements provides conceptual insights to Second Naiveté in Ricoeur’s philosophy.
Hermeneutics as appropriation of the world of the text
Ricoeur has devoted much of his work to an analysis of what occurs when learners engage with text in a manner which contributes to their self-understanding.
40
This is not to say that hermeneutics is peripheral or secondary. As we said in the previous paragraph,
for Ricoeur the very hermeneutical activity of text study is the philosophical activity par excellence by which man engages in self-understanding.
14
For Ricoeur, to understand oneself is to understand oneself “before the text” and to be understood by the text. This is because texts propose worlds that the reader may inhabit. Ricoeur’s basic philosophical project is to facilitate an encounter between the reader and text, beyond reductionism and historical relativism. Let us briefly examine the meaning of Ricoeur’s statement that interpretation is the appropriation of the world of the text. According to Ricoeur, a text is a work of discourse, which means that it is a structured totality and cannot be decomposed into its constituent sentences. Through the medium of texts, language assumes different forms known as genre (poetics, plays, etc.). Hermeneutics, then, consists of “the art of discerning the discourse in the work; but this discourse is only given in and through the structures of the work.”
41
The locus of meaning resides in the text itself and its discourse, rather than in the author’s mind, due to the fact that texts hold the characteristic of distanciation. One sense of distanciation is that written discourse permits the “matter” of the text to free itself from the finite intention of the author, as well as from the social conditions of the text’s production. The text is then addressed to an unknown reader and to any reader and is, therefore, “condemned” to become “de-contextualized” from its original social and historical conditions of production. The reader encounters the “world of the text” which is what written discourse carries within itself: Not the intention of the author, which is supposed to be hidden behind the text; not the historical situation common to the author and his original readers; not the expectations or feelings of these original readers; not even their understanding of themselves as historical and cultural phenomena. What has to be appropriated is the meaning of the text itself, conceived in a dynamic way as the direction of thought opened by the text.
42
Drawing on Heidegger, Ricoeur considers the world of the text as forcing the reader into a new type of distanciation from his or her everyday real life. It opens for the
41
Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences , p. 138.
42
Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory, Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Fort Worth, Texas
Christian Press, 1976, p. 92. For Ricoeur’s view about the three dimensions of the interpretive process, see hereunder, note 52.
15
reader “new possibilities of being in the world” within everyday reality.
43
In
interpretation, man’s imagination is at work. Imagination is a rule-governed activity that schematizes semantic fields by “reviving former experiences, awakening dormant memories, irrigating adjacent sensorial fields”.
44
Ricoeur distinguishes between two
domains of semantic imagination, poetic language in the form of metaphoric expressions and narrative language.
45
In studying the creative capacity of language
(in metaphorical and narrative discourse), one discovers the ability of language to reveal various aspects of reality: “Language in the making celebrates reality in the making.”
46
In Ricoeur’s own words, the polysemic nature of words accounts for the
ability of language to hold a “surplus of meaning.”
47
Poetry in general, and metaphors
in particular, suspend the functional characteristic use of ordinary language: Instead of providing information about reality, they propose a “world.” A poem evokes feelings and challenges us to change our way of looking at things; it can also engage us with new horizons to explore. Poems feed us existentially by articulating values, goals and feelings by which we can orient our lives. Metaphor is therefore not merely a substitution of a word by another word on the basis of a perceived resemblance
48
:
Live metaphors tell us something more that we did not know before. They suggest new insights into reality and offer new ways of orienting oneself in the world. By
43
“Philosophy and Religious Language,” in Figuring the Sacred , M. Wallace (ed.), Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1995, p. 43; See also “Hermeneutics can be defined no longer as an inquiry into the psychological intentions which are hidden beneath the text, but rather as the explication of the beingin-the world displayed by the text. What is to be interpreted in the text is a proposed world which I could inhabit and in which I could project my own most possibilities,” Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, p. 112. 44 45
Paul Ricoeur, From Text to Action, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, , p. 173. See The Rule of Metaphor , for the former, and the three volumes of Time and Narrative for the
latter. 46
A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination , Mario J. Valdes (ed.), Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1991, p. 462. For Ricoeur’s discussion of the relationship between language and reality, see The Rule of Metaphor , pp. 216-256. 47
As is indicated by the subtitle title of his book, Interpretation Theory, Discourse and the Surplus of
Meaning. 48
See The Rule of Metaphor , Study 3, “Metaphor and the Semantics of Discourse,” pp. 65-100.
16
going beyond the world and re-describing reality,
49
they enable us to look differently
at reality: …We cease to identify reality with empirical reality or, what amounts to the same thing, that we cease to identify experience with empirical experience.
50
Metaphors give new ways to talk about things and therefore they change our sense of reality.
51
This, briefly said, is the new dimension of text understanding which Ricoeur proposes, a dimension by which, as he says, we should be able to “hear” texts again, even after they have been made distant through the application of critical methods of interpretation. The ability to hear the text again, the state of Second Naiveté, is not, however, exclusively related to a theory of text and leads Ricoeur to engage in the articulation of the process of interpretation. Again, the concept of Second Naiveté frames his discussion.
A three-fold spiral process of interpretation
What principles does the reader use in the practical engagement of texts, in order to reach a Second Naiveté, an ability to have these texts speak to him again? Formally, Ricoeur’s hermeneutic follows a three-stage method. The fir st phase is the naïve, noncritical and non-reflective encounter between the reader with the text. In the second stage, the reader applies various methods of critique (e.g., historical, philological, sociological, psychoanalytical), both requiring and resulting in his distanciation from the text. The third stage entails an attempt, despite and beyond the critical distanciation, to encounter the text again as something that speaks to the reader here and now. A closer look, however, underlines the need to refine the description of these stages as a fusion of three moments in the hermeneutical process, rather then three distinct stages. These moments have been formulated in different terms. Ricoeur summarized these moments as “naïve understanding,” “objective explanation” and “appropriation.”
52
49
Ibid., p. 240.
50
From Text to Action , p. 11.
51
On the relationship between philosophy and the interpretation of metaphors, see Rule of Metaphor ,
Study 8, “Metaphor and Philosophical Discourse,” pp. 257-314.
17
David Klemm, one of Ricoeur’s interpreters, refers to Ricoeur’s dimension of interpretation as “first naiveté,” “critique” and “second naiveté.”
53
Lewis Mudge uses
the terms of “testimony in the making,” “critical moment” and “post-critical 54
moment.”
David Tracy uses the terms of “understanding,” “explanation” and
“understanding.”
55
The first stage of textual interpretation entails recognition of the text as a work of discourse whose meaning is different than the author’s original intention in its historical context. The reader draws on its forms of literary production and interprets 56
the text in light of its semantic structures.
At this stage, Ricoeur endorses Gadamer’s
view that understanding is always historical, in that a reader’s understanding is presuppositional and assumes a perspective. However, at this stage, the reader seeks to
52
In the context of his later work on time and narrative these stages are discussed as a threefold
mimesis. According to Ricoeur, all understanding follows an arc which begins with an initial preunderstanding of reality that the reader brings to the text (mimesis 1), the reconstructing and the configuration of this initial understanding of reality by the text (mimesis 2) and the final intersection between the world configured by the text and the world of the reader (mimesis 3), Paul Ricoeur , Time and Narrative, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984-88, Vol. 1, pp. 52-87. See also Mario
Valdes, “Paul Ricoeur and the Literary Theory,” L.E. Hahan (ed.), The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur , Chicago and Lasalle Illinois:Carus Publishing Company, 1995, 259-280, especially pp. 276-278. For a discussion of the differences between Ricoeur’s accounts of the different stages of the hermeneutical process, see Dan R. Stiver, Theology after Ricoeur; New Directions in Hermeneutical Theology , Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, pp. 56-78. 53
David Klemm, The Hermeneutical Theory of Paul Ricoeur , Lewisburg, Penn.: Bucknell Press, 1983,
p. 69. 54
Lewis Mudge, “Paul Ricoeur on Biblical Interpretation,” in Lewis S. Mudge (ed.), Essays on Biblical
Interpretation, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980, pp. 18-32. 55
David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism , New
York: Crossroad Press, 1981, pp. 151-2, note 107. 56
See Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning , p. 76. One of Ricoeur’s important
ideas is that the literary forms of religious language cannot be separated from the content they convey: “It is not enough to say that religious language is meaningful, that it is not senseless, that it makes sense, that it has a meaning of its own, and so forth. We have to say that its meanings are ruled and guided by the modes of articulation specific to each mode of discourse,” Paul Ricoeur, “Philosophy and Religious Language,” Journal of Religion 54, 1974, p. 75. See also his claim that in hermeneutics there is an “affinity between a form of discourse and a certain modality of the confession of faith,” ibid. 74. This is one of Ricoeur’s main critiques of Bultman’s hermeneutic of religious text, see P. Ricoeur, “Preface to Bultman,” Conflict of Interpretations, pp. 381-401.
18
discover the text’s message about an object of meaning, while refraining from any projection of his own beliefs and presuppositions onto the text.
57
Thus, at this stage,
the reader attempts to capture something of the literary and theological worlds represented by the text.
In the second stage, the stage of explanation, various critical explanatory approaches, such as historical criticism, structural analysis or redaction analysis, are applied to test the first understanding for adequacy and coherence, which are important to gain an improved understanding of the relation between the parts and the whole of the text. Let us emphasize that Ricoeur seeks to combine two dimensions of interpretation, namely explanation and understanding,
58
each of which is inadequate on its own:
Explanation alone becomes reductive, while understanding alone remains vulnerable to illusions of self-deception. Explanation is critical or socio-critical, but understanding can also operate at a post-critical level. Explanation entails the willingness to abolish the idols which are projections of the human will. Understanding requires willingness to listen with openness to symbols and indirect (and religious) language. Thus, the reader engages first in skepticism, suspicion and critique, but is subsequently called into a mode of retrieval, seeking a new possibility to listen to religious language. In other words, for Ricoeur, suspicion is not the last word: Text and context, suspicion and belief, faith and understanding are to be maintained in circular tension.
57
59
“It is necessary for us to struggle also with the presuppositions of modern man himself, with the
presuppositions of his modernity,” P. Ricoeur, “The Language of Faith,” in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur: An Anthology of His Work , Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart (eds.), Boston: Beacon
Press, 1978, p. 227. 58
For the discussion of explanation and understanding, see Schleiermacher and Dilthey in The
Hermeneutics Reader, K. Mueller-Vollmer (ed.), New York: Continuum, 1997, pp. 72-97;148-164. For
Gadamer’s view on the question see Truth and Method , Part II, pp. 171-380. See also Ricoeur’s article “What is a text? Explanation and understanding,” Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences , pp. 145-164. 59
Therefore, Ricoeur sees the work of the masters of suspicion not as a stage to be overcome but as an
actual and critical stage of the interpretive process. In positive terms, the masters of suspicion clear “the horizon for a more authentic word, for a new reign of Truth, not only by means of a destructive critique, but by the invention of an art of interpreting… by an exegesis of meaning,” Freud and Philosophy, p. 33; See also: “’Symbols give rise to thought’; but they are also the birth of idols. That is
why the critique of idols remains the condition of the conquest of symbols.” Freud and Philosophy, p.
19
In the third stage of understanding, Second Naiveté occurs at the intersection of the reader’s world and the world of the biblical text. Having negotiated the two earlier stages, the reader critically re-appropriates a meaning of a symbol or of a religious 60
text of the past for the present.
The reader’s hermeneutical activity in engagement with these worlds culminates in the reader’s self-interpretation: By
“appropriation,” I understand this: that the interpretation of a text
culminates in the self-interpretation of a subject who thenceforth understands himself better, understands himself differently, or simply begins to understand himself. This culmination of the understanding of a text in self-understanding is characteristic of the kind of reflective philosophy which, on various occasions, I have called
“concrete reflection.” Here hermeneutics and
reflective philosophy are correlative and reciprocal … Thus it must be said… that reflection is nothing without the mediation of signs and works, and that explanation is nothing if it is not incorporated as an intermediary stage in the process of self-understanding. In short, in hermeneutical reflection – or in reflective hermeneutics - the constitution of the self is contemporaneous with the constitution of meaning.
61
According to Ricoeur, consciousness is not a given but an objective. Hermeneutical engagement with symbols and texts, therefore, becomes the philosophical activity par excellence which allows the reader to engage in self-understanding. Let us emphasize:
According to Ricoeur, appropriation is not so much an epistemological act (assimilation of knowledge) as it is an ontological act, a transformational experience of the learner with the text. Moreover, with Heidegger, Ricoeur sees in hermeneutics a mode of being rather than a mode of knowledge. Understanding as interpretation is the primordial condition of man and hermeneutics becomes therefore tied to the understanding of being.
62
543. In his “Preface to Bultmann,” Ricoeur offers a hermeneutics of faith as a rejoinder to the hermeneutics of suspicion. 60
The Symbolism of Evil, p. 351.
61
Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences , p. 158.
62
The Conflict of Interpretations, p. 11. Ricoeur’s concepts of language, truth and understanding are to
be understood in light of the ideas of Heidegger and Gadamer on language.
20
If indeed true appropriation is a form of Second Naiveté, Second Naiveté in Ricoeur’s thought ultimately becomes a form of being.
Educational Epilogue Simon’s concepts of reason and Second Naiveté operate in what appears to be a typical modern paradigm, in which faith must be redeemed from its silence in the face of critical and reflective thinking. Ricoeur, on the other hand, also corresponds with the post-modern paradigm, with an awareness that the true nature of the human condition is other than (universal) reason and a recognition of man’s limitations. Man must confront his lack of direct access to himself, to insights about life and to his inevitable pre-understanding. Thus, as we saw, hermeneutical engagement becomes the crucial human activity for self-understanding. The role of Second Naiveté in the overall context of Ricoeur’s thought contains some engaging views for religious educators today, both because it addresses the question of human self understanding in a postmodern world and because it is based on a philosophical argument calling for the need for serious engagement in the study of religious texts. Moreover, because it is grounded in the practices of the hermeneutics of texts, Ricoeur’s treatment of First Naiveté, criticism and Second Naiveté is especially appealing for educators. Ricoeur’s thought is not limited to philosophical ideas that might be examined for their implications in practice. Given the fact that Ricoeur’s core philosophy is the hermeneutical engagement with symbols and texts, the concept of Second Naiveté can be described as concrete hermeneutical moves, examples of questions one should ask and eventual pedagogical devices one may employ.
63
In addition, Ricoeur’s hermeneutical thinking obliterates the classical meansends paradigm that often prevails in education, especially in teachers’ concepts of the study of texts as a mere means to acquire only knowledge.
64
Especially for the study
of texts in the context of religious education, Ricoeur’s insights challenge us to be 63
For a concrete and compelling interpretation of a biblical story, following Ricoeur’s hermeneutical
approach, see Theo L. Hettema, Reading for Good, Narrative Theology and Ethics in the Joseph story from the perspective of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1996. 64
See J. Dunne, Back to the Rough Grounds, Indiana: Notre Dame, 1993; see also Elie Holzer,
Educational aspects of hermeneutical activity in text study (forthcoming)
21
sensitive to the practices and the processes of interpretation as a central locus for religious education.
65
In this perspective, it is interesting to note that Ricoeur’s view
of Second Naiveté adds a new and important dimension to the ongoing discussion of the hermeneutical circle in the practice of interpretation, which is precisely what we find challenging for educators. Whereas Schleiermacher spoke of the hermeneutic circle as consisting of the relation between the parts and the whole of a text, and Gadamer (following Heidegger) spoke of the hermeneutical circle as the reader’s prejudices and the text, Ricoeur speaks of the circularity of understanding and faith: What we have just called a knot - the knot where the symbol gives and criticism interprets - appears in hermeneutics as a circle. The circle can be stated bluntly: “We must understand in order to believe, but we must believe in order to understand.” The circle is not a vicious circle, still less a mortal 66
one; it is a living and stimulating circle.
… the second faith of one who has engaged in hermeneutics, faith that has undergone criticism, post-critical faith.(…) It is a rational faith, for it interprets; but it is a faith because it seeks, through interpretation, a second naiveté (…) “Believe in order to understand, understand in order to believe”such is its maxim; and its maxim is the believing and understanding.
65
“hermeneutical circle” itself of
67
See also Jonathan Cohen, “Subterranean Didactics: Theology, Aesthetics and Pedagogy in the
Thought of Franz Rosenzweig,” Religious Education , Vol. 94, Winter 1999, pp. 24-38. 66
The Symbolism of Evil, p. 351.
67
Freud and Philosophy, p. 28, my emphasis. See also “The hermeneutic circle can be stated roughly
as follows. To understand, it is necessary to believe; to believe, it is necessary to understand....behind believing there is the primacy of the object of faith over faith; behind understanding there is the primacy of exegesis and its method over the naive reading of the text.” Ricoeur, Conflict of Interpretations, p. 389. And: “The believer in the hermeneut when he is faithful to the community, and
… the hermeneut in the believer when he does his scientific work of exegesis. This is today the dual condition of modern man in whom struggles both a believer and an atheist; in the believer himself they confrontone another: an adult critic and a naïve child who listen to the Word,” in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, ed. by Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), p. 222 . See
also: “Hermeneutics seems to me to be animated by this double motivation: willingness to suspect, willingness to listen; vow of rigor, vow of obedience. In our time we have not finished doing away with idols and we have barely begun to listen to symbols,” Freud and Philosophy, p. 27.
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If we are to apply Ricoeur’s insights to the context of education, focus is slightly diverted from how religious texts can be understood. The ultimate question becomes how the understanding of religious texts constitutes an activity that enacts as well as facilitates the emergence of Second Naiveté. As I have personally discovered from Mike’s living example, Second Naiveté is less a concept to talk about as it is a concept to be enacted in the practices of life.
