Reading Under Circumstances

This paper responds to Edward Said’s criticism that Ricoeur’s philosophy takes insufficient account of “worldliness.” Rather than simply defend Ricoeur, I take Said’s criticism as a challenge to consolidate resources in Ricoeur’s philosophy that might be useful to non-specialists skeptical of its social theoretical relevance. First, I summarize Said’s critique of Ricoeur and formulate the enduring challenge I take from it. Second, I turn to Ricoeur’s model of the threefold mimesis of action in relation to both time and space and propose that the capabilities of narrating and building he identifies should be subsumed under the more general capacity of designing. Third, I turn to Ernst Wolff’s interpretative social theory of the “technicity” of action, which I argue that is the most productive way of conceptualizing the central role of material (or technical) circumstances in Ricoeur’s work. Finally, to alleviate Said’s concern I suggest that Michel de Certeau’s distinction between strategies and tactics is useful for emphasizing the inherent asymmetry between actors and their technical circumstances without committing to Said’s exaggerated conclusion that this asymmetry is constitutively oppressive.