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PARTISAN REVIEW
complicated one at that. This impression would be correct, for
Time
and Narrative
is only one chapter in the story of an author constantly
"on the way." Now in his seventies, Ricoeur keeps emerging, phoenix–
like, from the philosophical rubble of seemingly intractable prob–
lems. His narrative theory is one of these periodic manifestations,
best viewed against the background of his earlier confrontations with
phenomenology, structuralism, semiotics, et al. With
Time and Nar–
rative,
narrative theory has made a "great leap forward," thanks to
Ricoeur's interdisciplinary approach and constant interaction with
the history of philosophy. His contribution will probably be of in–
terest to thinkers in the social sciences, literary theory, philosophy,
and even theology.
Ricoeur's intellectual pilgrimage has paralleled that of his ca–
reer: he is as much at home with European existentialism as he is
with Anglo-Saxon linguistic analysis; he has taught at the University
of Paris and at the University of Chicago. One constant in his in–
tellectual migrations has been his interest in the question which lay
behind Kant's critical philosophy: what is man? Ricoeur's earliest
books, which together comprise the incomplete
Philosophy of the Will,
attempt to unravel Kant's riddle by considering
willing
to be the
phenomenological key to human being. Ricoeur's goal is to counter
the negative thrust of Sartre's existentialism, particularly where
human freedom is concerned. However, Ricoeur discovered that
human volition is not open to such direct inspection, and so in the
1960s he looked to symbols to see what they expressed about the
human condition. This led to his fascination with language, and
ultimately in the 1970s to an extensive "detour" into larger questions
about interpretation.
Creativity is the special problem which continues to motivate
Ricoeur's work. Why should there be sense rather than nonsense?
What can the imagination and its unique product, creative lan–
guage, tell us about the world and human being? Ricoeur, like
Pascal, wants to wager: he bets that creative language expresses cer–
tain otherwise inaccessible features of the human condition. Ricoeur's
first gambit was to explore metaphors (in
The Rule of Metaphor,
University of Toronto Press, 1977), and with his book on narrative
he has raised the stakes. In his preface to
Time and Narrative
Ricoeur
says that his books on metaphor and narrative form a pair and were
conceived together. The first volume of
Time and Narrative (Temps et
recit)
was published in Paris by Seuil in 1983 (the second and third
volumes appeared in 1984 and 1985 respectively, and an English
