Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Translation

Author(s): Richard Kearney

Source: Research in Phenomenology, Vol. 37, No. 2, MEMORIAL FOR PAUL RICOEUR (2007),
pp. 147-159
Published by: Brill
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 ,,s Phenomenology
BRILL Research i

Paul Ricoeur and the Herrneneutics of Translation

Richard Kearney
Boston College

Abstract

This essay looks at how Ricoeur's hermeneutics functions as both philosophy o/'translation and
philosophy as translation. It starts with a overview of Ricoeur's theories in the light of the history
of the philosophy of translation and shows how he, following in the footsteps of Gadamer,
understands the act of translation as an art of negotiating and mediating between Self and Other.
It then goes on to explore the hermeneutic model of translation, advanced in Ricoeur's later
work, in terms of three main paradigms: linguistic, ontological and ethical. The essay concludes
with a discussion of the crucial role played by translation in hospitality, pluralism and pardon.

Keywords
hermeneutics, translation, ethics, memory, hospitality

Translation has been a central feature of Paul Ricoeur's philosophy, though it

was not until his later years that he made it an explicit theme of his work. Well
before Ricoeur actually thematized the subject, the art of translation was
something he actually performed in his philosophical practice. Ricoeur was an
inveterate mediator, someone who navigated and negotiated transits between
rival positions. He was, it could be argued, unequaled as a diplomat of philo
sophical exchange, forever finding a point of commerce—if not always resolu
tion—between ostensibly irreconcilable viewpoints. Consider his endless
brokering and commuting between Continental and Anglo-Saxon thought at
the most general level. Then, within the Continental tradition more specifically,
between existentialism and structuralism; between hermeneutics and Critical
Theory; between phenomenology and the human sciences; between Freudian
psychoanalysis and Hegelian dialectics; between literary theory and the phi
losophy of religion; between historical understanding (Verstehen) and scientific
explanation {Erklären)·, between psychology and neuro-science; between eth
ics and politics, and so on. And consider, finally, his many acts of mediating
translation within hermeneutics itself between romantic hermeneutics (from

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2007 DOI: 10.1163/156916407X185610

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148 R. Kearney / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 147—159

Schleiermacher and Dilthey) and critical or radical hermeneutics (developed

by Habermas and Derrida, respectively)
What is remarkable in all these critical intercessions is that Ricoeur never

ceased to respect both adversarial partners in the exchange. He deftly trans

muted conflict into conversation without ever sacrificing depth of conviction
or acuity of evaluation. In his philosophical role as translator, Ricoeur was, I
believe, unrivaled in his time. Indeed, one could say that Ricoeur's thought
represented both philosophy as translation and a philosophy »/translation. In
what follows below I will concentrate mainly on the latter.

1. Ricoeur's Philosophy of Translation

In On Translation, one of Ricoeur's last works, published in French in 2004

and in English in 2006, Ricoeur treats directly of the processes and problems
of translation. He outlines two paradigms. First, the linguistic paradigm, which
refers to how words relate to meanings within language or between languages.
And, second, the ontologicalparadigm, which refers to how translation occurs
between one human self and another. Let me say something about each.1
a) The Linguistic Paradigm. Language is one, yet languages are many. In this
very distinction lies the primordial need for translation. What all languages
share in common is a capacity to mediate between a human speaker and a
world of meanings (actual and possible) spoken about. But if this function
constitutes the unifying property of language, the fact that there exists a plu
rality of languages, both living and dead, means that we are faced with a dou
ble duty of translation, internal and external. In short, one of Ricoeur's great
originalities is the way in which he demonstrates how translation is both intra
lingual and inter-lingual.
Ricoeur's understanding of the historical development of the philosophy of
translation helps clarify the issue. Some of the earliest reflections on the prob
lems and enigmas of translation go back, at least in Western history, to the
major encounters between cultures. In classical times, we find the translation
between Greek and Latin languages to be a crucial landmark, while the famous
feats of biblical translation from Hebrew and Aramaic to Greek and Latin—

ranging from the Septuagint to the decisive translations of St. Jerome (author
of the Vulgate), or later again, of Luther in German, or the King James authors

" Paul Ricoeur, Sur la traduction (Paris: Bayard, 2004); translated by Eileen Brennan as On
Translation (London: Routledge, 2006).

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 R. Kearney / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 147—159 149

in English—mark yet another set of milestones in the history of inter-linguis

tic translation.
One of the earliest words for a translator in Greek was hermeneus and in

Latin interpres. Both terms, notes Ricoeur, carry the sense of an intermediary
laboring between two distinct languages or speakers. The term translator arises
from the Latin verb, transfero, transfere, translation, which evolves into the
term translatare, translater in the Romance languages of the Middle Ages
(hence the later English translate). In the fifteenth century, the Italian human
ist Leonardo Bruni became the first modern thinker to devote an entire
scientific treatise to the art of translation, entitled De Interpretation Recta
(1420). Here Ricoeur locates the original appearance of the term traducere,
referring to a unitary concept of translation and giving rise in the sixteenth
century to the French term traducteur, employed by the humanist Etienne
Dolet.2 The twentieth century saw a number of influential theorists of transla
tion, from Croce and Rosenzweig to Benjamin (The Task of the Translator) and
Steiner {After Babel). Ricoeur's own recent study on translation follows in the
footsteps of these intellectual predecessors. What Ricoeur adds is a singularly
hermeneutic twist, as I endeavor to show below.

As mentioned, Ricoeur underscores the way in which some of the great

translations of biblical and classical texts played formative roles in the develop
ment of both national and cultural identities. He is fully conscious of the
dramatic influence exerted by Luther's German translation of the Bible, or the
Moravian Brethern's Czech translation, or the Genevan French translation,
not to mention the crucial role played by renditions of classical texts in the
birth of the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or Romanticism. In all these
instances of inter-linguistic translation, the transmigration of one linguistic
thesaurus into another was linked with modern ideas of human emancipation
and change. And the momentous encounter with the Other outside the
nation, or indeed the European world generally—with the discovery of other
continents and civilizations from the fifteenth century onwards—is a crucial
reminder for Ricoeur of the modern necessity of translation. Thus understood,

21 I am indebted to Dominico Jervolino for this reference to Dolet and to several other sources

on the history of translation cited below. See Jervolinos illuminating paper, "The Hermeneutics
of the Self and the Paradigm ofTranslation," presented at the Rome International Conference on
Translation (April 2004) and his Introduction to La traduzione: Una sfida etica (Brescia: Morcel
liana, 2001), 7-35. See also his pioneering essay, "Hermeneutique et traduction. L'autre,
l'etranger, l'höte," Archives de Philosophie 63 (2000): 79-93.

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150 R. Kearney / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 147-159

translation has always been, in Antoine Berman's resonant (and virtually

untranslatable!) phrase, oft cited by Ricoeur—une epreuve de I' etranger?
b) The Ontological Paradigm. Translation is understood by Ricoeur in both
a specific and a general sense. In the specific sense—the one in common con
temporary usage, outlined above—it signals the work of translating the mean
ings of one particular language into another. In the more generic sense, it
indicates the ontological act of speaking as a way of not only translating one
self to oneself (inner to outer, private to public, unconscious to conscious) but
also, and more explicitly, of translating oneself to others. As Dominico Jervo
lino puts it: "To speak is already to translate (even when one is speaking one's
own native language or when one is speaking to oneself); further, one has to
take into account the plurality of languages, which demand a more exacting
encounter with the different Other. One is tempted to say that there is a plu
rality of languages because we are originally plural. The encounter with the
Other cannot be avoided. If one accepts the necessary nature of the encounter,
linguistic pluralism appears no longer as a malediction, as the received inter
pretation of the myth of Babel would have it, but as a condition which requires
us to surrender the all-encompassing dream of a perfect language (and of a
global translation, so to speak, without residues). The partiality and the
finitude of individual languages is then viewed not as an insurmountable
obstacle but as the very precondition of communication among individuals."4
This ontological model of translation is, I believe, one of Ricoeur's most
consequential insights. It demonstrates how and why translation matters. And
it lies at the basis of his ethical and political theory, as we shall see in the next
section. Ricoeur compares the work of the translator to that of a middleman
between "two masters," between an author and a reader, a self and another. He
underscores the word "work," stressing the importance of both (i) a labor of
memory, and (ii) a labor of mourning. As such, Ricoeur borrows liberally from
Freud's famous notion of'working through' (Durcharbeitung).
This emphasis on the work-like character of translation refers to the com
mon experience of tension and suffering that the translator undergoes as he/
she checks the basic impulse to reduce the otherness of the other, thereby
subsuming alien meaning into one's own scheme of things. The work of trans
lation might thus be said to carry a double duty: to expropriate oneself from

31 Antoine Berman, L'epreuve de l'etmnger (Paris: Gallimard, 1984).

41 "The Hermeneutics of the Self," 6; see also Paul Zumthor, Babel ou I'inachevement (Paris:
Seuil, 1997).

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 R. Kearney / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 147-159 151

oneself as one appropriates the other to oneself. In other words, we are called
to make our language put on the stranger's clothes at the same time as we
invite the stranger to step into the fabric of our own speech. The result of a
good translation is when one language rediscovers itself in and as another {soi
meme come un autre).

Ricoeur argues that good translations involve a crucial openness to the

other. Indeed he recommends that we be prepared to forfeit our native lan
guage's claim to self-sufficiency—which can sometimes go to extremes of
nationalism and chauvinism—in order to 'host' (qua hospes) the 'foreign'
{hostis). As the linquist Emile Benveniste points out in Le Vocabulaire des Insti
tutions Indo-Europeenes, the two terms hospes and hostis are etymologically
akin.5 Following Benveniste, Ricoeur writes: "Despite the conflictual charac
ter which renders the task of the translator dramatic, he or she will find satis
faction in what I would like to call linguistic hospitality. Its predicament is that
of a correspondence without complete adhesion. This is a fragile condition,
which admits of no verification other than a new translation... a sort of dupli
cation of the work of the translator which is possible in virtue of a minimum
of bilingualism: to translate afresh after the translator." And he adds (again in
On Translation): "Just as in a narration it is always possible to tell the story in
a different way, likewise in translation it is always possible to translate other
wise, without ever hoping to bridge the gap between equivalence and perfect
adhesion. Linguistic hospitality, therefore, is the act of inhabiting the word of
the Other paralleled by the act of receiving the word of the Other into one's
own home, one's own dwelling."6
Linguistic hospitality calls us to forgo the lure of omnipotence: the illusion
of a total translation that would provide a perfect replica of the original.
Instead it asks us to respect the fact that the semantic and syntactic fields of
two languages are not the same, nor exactly reducible the one to the other.
Connotations, contexts, and cultural characteristics will always exceed any
slide rule of neat equation between tongues. Short of some kind of abstract
symbolic logic—or fantasy Esperanto logos—there is no single unitary lan
guage. Translation, as George Steiner has powerfully reminded us, is always
after babel? It is forever compelled to acknowledge the finite limits of speech,

" Emile Benveniste, Le vocabulaire des institutions indo-europeennes (Paris: Minuit, 1969).
6) Sur la traduction, 19-20.

71 George Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1975). For an excellent analysis of the ontological aspects of translation see John Sallis, On
Translation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002).

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 152 R. Kearney / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 147-159

the multiplicity of different tongues. To function authentically, therefore, the

translator must renounce the dream of a return to some adamantine logos of
pure correspondences. The attempt to retrieve a pre-lapsarian paradise of time
less signs is futile. And sometimes dangerous. Even the Enlightenment ideal of
a perfect universal language was obliged to recognize the genuine resistances
of cultural differences predicated upon linguistic diversities. Indeed, most
attempts to instantiate an absolute universal language proved, in point of fact,
to be thinly disguised imperial ploys to impose one particular language (e.g.,
French, English, Spanish) over other politically subordinate ones. Here
Ricoeur's deep ethical commitment to social justice and equity come to the
fore, a point to which we shall return in the next section.
As soon as there is language there is interpretation, that is, translation. In
principio fuit interpres. Words exist in time and space, and thus have a history
of meanings that alter and evolve. All translation involves some aspect of dia
logue between self and stranger. Dialogue means just that, dia-legein, welcom
ing the difference. It is for this reason that in his essay "The Paradigm of
Translation," Ricoeur proposes translation as a model of hermeneutics. Both
in its normal role as a transfer of meaning from one language to another and
in its more specific role as a transfer of understanding between different mem
bers of the same linguistic community, translation entails an exposure to
strangeness. We are dealing with both an alterity residing outside the home
language and an alterity residing within it. "The gap between a hypothetical
perfect language and the concreteness of a living language is felt again and
again in the linguistic exchange: it is always possible to say the same thing in
a different way. Now, to say something in a different way, to say it in other
terms, is exactly what a translator does from one language to the other. The
inputs at the two ends, the two halves of the problem, so to speak, clarify each
other and present again the enigma and the richness of the relationship with
the Other."8

It might be noted that Ricoeur's theory of translation here follows a similar

emphasis to his theory of the text as model of interpretation in the seventies
and eighties. In both cases, Ricoeur underscores the 'distancing' of sense. In

8) "The Hermeneutics of Self," 8; see also Jervolino, "Translation as Paradigm for Hermeneutics
and Its Implications for an Ethics of Hospitality," in Ars Interpretandi, vol. 5 (Münster: Lit Ver
lag, 2000), 57-69.

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 R. Kearney / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 147—159 153

the case of the written text, this refers to how meaning gains autonomy from
1) the intention of the original author (e.g., Homer); 2) the original world of
circumstances in which the author wrote or which she/he wrote about

(Homeric Greece); and 3) the original readers of the text when it was first
produced (the Greek community who read Homer's Odyssey).
A similar aspect of 'distantiation' occurs in translation where the estrange
ment of meaning precedes and even provokes the subsequent act of reading as
a renewed reappropriation of the original meaning. Or as Ricoeur liked to put
it, the best path to selfhood is through otherness. Thus while Schleiermacher
and the romantic hermeneuts tended to favor a somewhat Platonic model of
dialogue as a return (anamnesis/aneignung) to original meanings, Ricoeur
might be said to favor a more Aristotelian model that stresses a) a plurality of
meanings and b) a methodical appreciation of the complex 'poetics' and 'rhet
orics' involved in the interpretation of linguistic meaning. (Hence, as already
noted, the importance of Ricoeur's call, pace Gadamer and Heidegger, for a
rigorous critical relationship with the human sciences—including linguis
tics—and a surpassing of the old dichotomy between 'understanding' and
'explanation'. Though it has to be said that the gap between Ricoeur and
Gadamer became quite narrow in the end.)
For Ricoeur the matter is clear: there is no self-understanding possible
without the labor of mediation through signs, symbols, narratives, and texts.
The idealist romantic subject, sovereign master of itself and all it surveys, is
replaced by an engaged self that only finds itself after it has traversed the field
of foreignness and returned to itself again, altered and enlarged, or as James
Joyce would say, 'othered'. The moi gives way to the soi, or more precisely to
soi-meme comme un autre. The arc of translation epitomizes this journey from
self through the other, reminding us of the irreducible finitude and contin
gency of all language. And here, of course, we find echoes of Ricoeur's early
writings on finitude and fallibility from Freedom and Nature to Fallible Man.
For Ricoeur, the task of outer translation finds correspondences in the work
of inner translation. Indeed the very problem of human identity, as he shows
in Oneself as Another, involves a discovery of an other within the very depths
of the self. This 'other within' is itself plural, signifying by turns the uncon
scious, the body, the call of conscience, the traces of our relations with other
human beings, or the sign of transcendence inscribed in the deepest interiority
of the human heart. This means that the question of human identity or, more
exactly, the answer to the question "who are you?" always entails a translation
between the self and others both within the self and outside the self. Every
subject, as Ricoeur puts it, is a tapestry of stories heard and told. This makes

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 154 R. Kearney / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 147-159

of each one of us a narrative identity, operating as both authors and readers of

our own lives. Which is another way of saying, translators of our own lives.
Life stories and life histories are always parts of larger stories and histories
in which we find ourselves entwined (empetre). This is where the paradigm of
translation as transference to and fro, forward and back, reveals its everyday
power. "To think, to speak is always to translate, even when one speaks to
oneself, when one discovers the traces of the Other in oneself. After all, lan
guage, understood as a peculiarly human attribute, is always coupled to a
specific and particular language and to the variety and plurality of languages."9
Indeed, Ricoeur goes so far as to suggest that the future ethos of European
politics, and eventually of world politics, should be one based upon an
exchange of memories and narratives between different nations, for it is only
when we translate our own wounds into the language of strangers and retrans
late the wounds of strangers into our own language that healing and recon
ciliation can take place.10

2. The Ethics of Translation: Applied Hermeneutics

This brings us to Ricoeur's ultimate claim that an ethics of translation involves

a process of inter-linguistic hospitality. The world is made up of a plurality of
human beings, cultures, tongues. Humanity exists in the plural mode. Which
means that any legitimate form of universality must always—if the hermeneu
tic model of translation is observed—find its equivalent plurality. The creative
tension between the universal and the plural ensures that the task of transla
tion is an endless one, a work of tireless memory and mourning, of appropria
tion and disappropriation, of taking up and letting go, of expressing oneself
and welcoming others. The final word of Ricoeur's last major published book,
Memory, History and Forgetting (2000, in French; 2005, in English), is 'incom
pletion {inachevement)." And this is telling. For it acknowledges that transla
tion, understood as an endlessly unfinished business, is a signal not of failure
but of hope. 'Fallible Man' finds a new vocation as 'Capable Man'.

" "The Hermeneutics of Self," 9; and "La question de l'unite de l'oeuvre de Ricoeur: La para
digme de la traduction," Archives de Philosophie 4 (2004): 659-68.
I0) Ricoeur, "Reflections on a New Ethos for Europe," in Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of
Action, ed. Richard Kearney (London: Sage, 1996), especially the section entitled "The Model of
Translation," pp. 4—5.
111 Ricoeur, La memoire, l'histoire, I'oubli (Paris: Seuil, 2001), 657; translated by David Pellauer
as Memory, History and Forgetting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005).

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 R. Kearney / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 147-159 155

Let me conclude, then, with some remarks on Ricoeur's appreciation of the

ethical implications of translation as a hermeneutic model of existence. In an
important essay entitled "Reflections on a new Ethos for Europe" (1992, in
French; 1996, in English), Ricoeur outlines five ethical functions of transla
tion.12

(a) A hermeneutics of translation provides, first, a basis for an ethic of

hospitality. This, says Ricoeur, involves "taking responsibility in imagination
and in sympathy for the story of the other, through the life narratives which
concern the other."13 In the cross-over of testimonies and memories between

people of different cultural traditions we may witness a salutary transference

permitting us to welcome the story of the other, the stranger, the victim, the
forgotten one.
(b) Second, a hermeneutic of translation solicits an ethic of narrative flexi
bility. Cultures constantly face the challenge of resisting the reification of a
founding historical or mythical event into a fixed dogma; they can do this by
showing how each event may be told in different ways by different generations
and by different narrators. Not that everything thereby becomes relative and
arbitrary. On the contrary, acts of foundational suffering or struggle, for exam
ple, call out for compassion and justice; and the best way of achieving this is
often to invite empathy with strangers and adversaries by allowing for a plural
ity of narrative perspectives. The resulting overlap may thus lead to what
Gadamer calls a 'fusion of horizons' where diverse horizons of consciousness
and consciehce may at last find common ground.14 A reciprocal transfer
between opposite minds. "The identity of a group, culture, people or nation,
is not that of an immutable substance," writes Ricoeur, "nor that of a fixed
structure, but that, rather, of a recounted story." A hermeneutic exchange of
stories effectively resists arrogant conceptions of cultural identity that prevent
us from perceiving the radical implications of the principle of narrative trans
latability—namely, "the possibilities of revising every story which has been
handed down and of carving out a place for several stories directed towards
the same past."15 This mode of attentiveness to stories other than our own—
fostered by intercultural translatability—might be said to consort well with

121 "Reflections on a New Ethos for Europe," 5-14.

I3) Ibid., 7. Another plea for a certain kind of understanding, wisdom, and phronetic 'reason' as
alternatives to panic and fear before terror is offered by Corey Robin, "Reason to Panic," in "Fear
Itself," special issue, The Hedgehog Review 5, no. 3 (Fall, 2003): 62-80.
141 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (London: Sheed and Ward, 1975), 273f.
,5> "Reflections on a New Ethos for Europe," 7.

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156 R. Kearney / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 147—159

the virtue of detachment vis-ä-vis one's own obsessive attachment to what is

'mine' and ours'.

(c) This leads us to a third ethical principle of translation—that of narra

tive plurality. Pluralism here does not mean lack of respect for the singularity
and uniqueness of a particular event (historical, cultural, religious). It might
even be said to increase our sense of awareness of such singularity, especially if
it is foreign to us in time, space, or cultural provenance. "Recounting differently
is not inimical to a certain historical reverence to the extent that the inexhaust

ible richness of the event is honored by the diversity of stories which are made
of it, and by the competition to which that diversity gives rise."16 Multiple
perspectives need not betray the concrete specificity of an historical event. On
the contrary, they may eloquently testify to its inexhaustible richness and sug
gestiveness. And this faithful testimony may in fact be deepened as we extend
the circle of reference to include further or alternative perspectives. Ricoeur
adds this critical point: "The ability to recount the founding events of our his
tory in different ways is reinforced by the exchange of cultural memories. This
ability to exchange has as a touchstone the will to share symbolically and
respectfully in the commemoration of the founding events of other cultures,
as well as those of their ethnic minorities and their minority religious denom
inations."17 This point applies as much to events of pain and trauma as to
events of pride and celebration.

161 Ibid., 8. This principle of radical hermeneutic plurality calls for an equally radical pluralist
politics. I would suggest a political theorist like Chantale Mouffe offers some interesting possi
bilities here when she talks about moving beyond an 'antagonistic' politics of us-versus-them to
a more democratic 'agonistic' politics that fosters a robust and creative conflict of interpretations.
She argues that when the political channels are not available through which conflicts can take an
'agonistic' form, they degenerate into the 'antagonistic' model of absolutist polarization between
good and evil, the opponent being perceived as an 'enemy' or 'demon' to be destroyed. The mis
takenness of apocalyptic politics is evident here. But there is a more subtle error committed by
certain strands of liberal rationalism and individualism when they ignore the crucial motiva
tional role played by communal affects, passions, and identifications in our contemporary world.
Mouffe concludes that the goal of genuine democracy is not to move from a bipolar to a unipo
lar system of politics but to foster the emergence of a multipolar world with a balance among
several regional poles allowing for a plurality of powers. By converting antagonism into agonism,
we are allowing dissent to express itself within a common symbolic space, rather than resorting
to violence. Adversaries thus become legitimate opponents, rather than illegitimate enemies.
This, she suggests, is the only way to avoid the hegemony of one single hyperpower or the col
lapse into violent chaos. See her book, On the Political', (London: Routledge, 2005).
,7) "Reflections on a New Ethos," 9.

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 R. Kearney I Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 147-159 157

(d) A fourth ethical function of translation is the transfiguring of the past.

This involves a creative retrieval of the betrayed promises of history. It permits
us, for example, to respond to our 'debt to the dead' and endeavor to give
them a voice. The goal of tolerant testimonies is, therefore, to try to give a
future to the past by remembering it in a more attentive way, both ethically
and poetically. A crucial aspect of reinterpreting traditions is the task of dis
cerning past promises that have not yet been honored. For "the past is not only
what is bygone—that which has taken place and can no longer be changed—
it also lives in the memory thanks to arrows of futurity which have not been
fired or whose trajectory has been interrupted."18 In other words, translations
from the past can actually give an unfulfilled future to the past. For, as Ricoeur
reminds us, the emancipation of the "unfulfilled future of the past is the major
benefit that we can expect from the crossing of memories and the exchange of
narratives."19 It is especially the founding events of a particular, national, polit
ical, or religious community—traumatic or emancipatory—that require being
reread in this critical manner. For, in so doing, we may unlock the potencies
and expectancies that the subsequent unfolding of history has forgotten or
betrayed. Fundamentalism, of whatever ideology, is another term for such
betrayal. This is why hermeneutic tolerance involves a special acoustic, a par
ticular practice of auditory imagination attuned to seminal moments of
suffering or hope—as well as to the various complex testimonial and textual
responses to those events—that are often occluded by Official History. "The
past is a cemetery of promises that have not been kept," notes Ricoeur. And
attentive modes of remembrance may provide ways of "bringing them back to
life like the dry bones in the valley described in the prophecy of Ezekiel."20
(e) A fifth and final moment in the hermeneutics of translation is pardon.
If empathy and hospitality towards others are crucial steps in an ethic of non
violence, there is something more—something that entails moving beyond
narrative imagination to forgiveness. In short, the mutual translation of mem
ories of suffering demands more than sympathy and duty (though these are

"" Ibid., 8. See also Ricoeur "Memory and Forgetting" and "Imagination, Testimony and Trust,"
in Questioning Ethics, ed. Mark Dooley and Richard Kearney (London: Routledge, 2004), 5-11
and 12-17. See also on this subject of critical and empathic remembrance, R. Kearney, "Narra
tive and the Ethics of Remembrance," in Questioning Ethics, 18-30.
"Reflections on a New Ethos," 8. See also Francis Clooney, Hindu God, Christian God,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 26-27; Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about
the Buddha, ed. Rita Gross and Terry Muck (New York: Continuum, 2002); Swami Tyagananda,
"Harmony of Religions," (lecture, Harvard University, April 8, 2000) (www.vedanta.org).
201 "Reflections on a New Ethos," 9.

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158 R. Kearney /Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 147—159

essential for any kind of justice). And this something extra' involves pardon
insofar as pardon means 'shattering the debt'. Here the order of justice and
reciprocity can be supplemented, but not replaced, by that of the order of
charity and gift'. Such forgiveness demands huge patience, an enduring prac
tice of 'working-through', mourning and letting go. But it is not a forgetful
forgiveness. Amnesty can never be based on amnesia. It remembers our debt
to the dead while at the same time introducing something other, something
difficult almost to the point of impossibility, but something all the more
important for that. One thinks of Brandt kneeling at Warsaw, Havel's apology
to the Sudeten Germans, Hume's dialogue with Gerry Adams and the IRA,
Sadat's visit to Jerusalem, Hillesum's refusal to hate her hateful persecutioners.
Or of certain survivors of 9/11 who, having witnessed what the terrorists did,
or lost loved ones, still refused to cry vengeance.
Such exceptional moments signal a point in the hermeneutics of translation
where an ethics of justice is touched by a poetics of pardon. The one does not and
cannot replace the other. Justice and pardon are crucially important in our
response to suffering. They are both called for. For, as Ricoeur reminds us, if
at moments, charity does indeed exceed justice, "we must guard against sub
stituting it for justice." Charity remains a surplus; and it is this very "surplus
of compassion and tenderness [that] is capable of giving the exchange of mem
ories its profound motivation, its daring and its momentum."21 The surplus,
evidenced in pardon, is endless in its demands for translation and inexhaust
ible in its resources. It is what makes the impossibility of forgiving possible.

211 Ibid., 11. For a more elaborate analysis of this point see Ricoeur, "Love and Justice," in Paul
Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action, 23—40. See also here Ricoeur's concluding section on
"Difficult Pardon" in Memory, History and Forgetting and Derrida's more deconstructive notion
of 'impossible pardon' in On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (London: Routledge, 2001).
Notions of unconditional love, pardon, and compassion are by no means the exclusive preserve
of the great monotheistic or religious Wisdom traditions. They are also centrally present in the
philosophical tradition of ancient Greece, as we have noted elsewhere: see the conclusion to "On
Terror" in my Strangers, Gods and Monsters (London: Routledge, 2003), 137: "Theseus sets out
to slay the Minotaur. But Socrates declines that option. He argues instead that the Monster is
best resisted by the guiding principle: 'do not harm, no matter what the circumstances'. Socrates
prefers to stay on in the city than to become a murderer of its laws by escaping. Resolving to
address the hidden cause of the Monstrous, rather than simply slay the beast, Socrates confirms
his basic philosophy that it is better to suffer than to do wrong. He says no to the lure of
sacrificial vengeance. He refuses to scapegoat." On the challenge of responding creatively, spiritu
ally and therapeutically to our hidden monsters of fear, terror, and darkness, see Thomas Moore,
Dark Nights of the Soul, (New York: Gotham Books, 2004).

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 R. Kearney / Research in Phenomenology 37 (2007) 147-159 159

Though no less difficult for that. That is why, as Julia Kristeva observes, "to
forgive is as infinite as it is repetitive."22
In the difficult act of pardon, the empathy of translation between self and
other must always remain attentive to the demands of justice. Pardon cannot
forget protest any more than love can forget action.

221 Julia Kristeva, "Forgiveness," PMLA 117, no. 2 (March 2002): 282, cited by Kelly Oliver in
"Forgiveness and Subjectivity," Philosophy Today 47, no. 3 (2003): 280. Oliver offers a very useful
critical overview of some of the most significant discussions of forgiveness in contemporary
psychoanalysis and deconstruction, with particularly instructive attention to the work of Der
rida, Arendt, and Kristeva. She concludes her analysis with a plea for an ethics of the uncon
scious, capable of combining responsibility with forgiveness: "Subjectivity requires revolt and
transgression in order to individuate but it also presupposes forgiveness in order to belong to the
community.... the revolt of those excluded from the dominant order... is seen as uppitiness,
perversion or terrorism. Their revolt is not forgiven This withholding or foreclosure is an
essential part of domination and oppression, which operate through the colonization of psychic
space precisely by denying the possibility of sublimation, revolt and forgiveness." She proposes
this response: "The notion of the unconscious gives us an ethics of responsibility without sover
eignty. We are responsible for what we cannot and do not control, our unconscious fears and
desires and their affective representations. In addition, we are responsible for the effects of those
fears, desires and affects on others. This impossible responsibility entails the imperative to ques
tion ourselves and constantly engage in self-critical hermeneutics, which also gives meaning to
our lives. Responsible ethics and politics requires that we account for the unconscious. Without
doing so we risk self-righteously adhering to deadly principles in the name of freedom and jus
tice." (289).

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