Pathways to Liberation: Paul Ricoeur on Memory, History, and the Dynamics of Forgiveness

Abstract To the question of the origin of the subject, from a strictly phenomenological approach, Paul Ricoeur adds the question of lack and its overcoming, its liberation through forgiveness. For him, the questions of the origin of the subject and the origin of forgiveness are inseparable: the question of identity “who am I?” would lead to the question of forgiveness, “how can I effectively be free?” His theoretical description of the will highlights the structure of human freedom. Freedom is the condition of all human responsibility, upon which guilt will be structured, from which, according to Paul Ricoeur, no man escapes: guilt is freedom reduced to slavery. We find the situation of the guilty one described above, extended to all humanity. Humanity is guilty, so its freedom is inherent. Therefore, it is not destroyed, it becomes a hope for liberation. This is precisely what myths come to tell man: the myth of innocence is desire, courage, and the imaginative experience that supports the eidetic description of the voluntary and the involuntary. Paul Ricoeur’s approach to forgiveness synthesizes memory, history, and forgetting. In other words, it is a resumption of the phenomenological phase of our author which, by the way, has never been set aside, even in its most “hermeneutical” moments.