The Faces of Violence in Paul Ricoeur:

Three Fundamental Dimensions.

Silvia Cristina Gabriel1
Abstract:
Using as theoretical framework C. A. J. Coadys legitimist and structural theories of
violence, we will explore Paul Ricoeurs legacy on the subject. First, we will consider
violence from an ethical and moral angle. Secondly, we will approach its political
dimension. Our contention is that Ricoeur defends an asymmetrical dialectic between the
legitimist and structural theories, in which the former acquire intelligibility only within a
broad concept of violence akin to Hannah Arendts. Thirdly, we will examine violence in
relation to time. We will make reference to the epoch-making events of historical
communities and to the destiny of violence in imposed forgetting and difficult forgiveness.
We will conclude with a brief account of the merits and the partly unresolved questions inside
Ricoeurs work.
Key Words:
Paul Ricoeur, violence, legitimist theories, structural theories, ethics, morality, political
sphere, politics, history, difficult forgivness.
*****

1.

Introduction
C.A. Coady proposes two major theories about violence. The first, related to
conservative policies viewpoints, upholds legitimizing arguments which define violence as
the illegitimate use of force. 2 The second, associated with the political left wing, supports a
broad concept of violence, bordering structural violence,3 for which it is near to every
form of social injustice. Coady remarks that, despite their differences, they both represent an
overmoralization of this concept which ought to be much less ethically crammed to avoid
evading the central issue of violens and become politically useful.4
Without denying the autonomy of the political field, defended by Paul Ricoeur in his
well-known article The Political Paradox (1957),5 not only here but also in Ethics and
Politics (1958)6 and Oneself as Another (1990),7 does the author propose to speak in terms of
the intersection of ethics and politics. As Ricoeur claims that the political realm extends the
one of ethics by assigning to it a sphere of exercise, 8 he could hardly subscribe to a position
such as Coadys in which any evaluative definition of violence would become politically
useless.
In this article we intend to delineate Ricoeurs philosophical legacy on violence. First,
we will inscribe it within the field of ethics and morality (section 2). Secondly, we will focus
on the specifically political dimension of violence (section 3). Lastly, we will track violence
in relation to time (section 4). We will finish this article by attempting at assessing the merits
and partially unresolved issues within Ricoeur's work (section 5).
2.

Violence in the sphere of ethics and morality

Before setting about the specifications violence acquires in the ethical and moral
dimension, we must be clear on the fact that by convention, for Ricoeur both terms are not
exchangeable. They both acquire a technical character. While by ethics he means the aim of
an accomplished life,9 morality points to the articulation of this aim in norms characterized
at once by the claim to universality and by an effect of constraint. 10 This convention clears up
when Ricoeur links ethics to the Aristotelian teleological legacy and morality to Kantian
deontological tradition. Far from supporting strict orthodoxy, Agustn Moratalla is right in
claiming that his teleologism is, at the same time and indissolubly, deontologism. 11 A moral
deontologism which is subordinated to the ethical aim of the good life, but which operates
as its essential complement.
Where does this need for an ethical goal crossed by the Kantian idea of moral law,
derive from? Because for Ricoeur violence constitutes the primary circumstance in the
transition from a teleological to a deontological point of view.12 Why should violence go
from the level of good life (teleological level) to the level of the dutiful, the obligatory
(deontological level)? Ricoeur follows Hannah Arendt who states Violence [] is
distinguished by its instrumental character.13 As John Wall explains, for Ricoeur Violence is
meant as a broad term referring to any practice in which persons are instrumentalized for an
alien or fragmenting teleological purpose.14 The possibility of manifestation of this
instrumentalism arises in the telelogical level where not only cooperation but also
confrontation situations may happen. Before these situations due respect to people is raised as
stated in the second formulation of the Kantian categorical imperative: Act in such a way that
you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the
same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.15
This passage of an ethics, that Ricoeur calls nave, through morality is to establish
reciprocity on the very space where just by resorting to this ethics all figures of violence are
bound to be triggered. In this first level of ethics, and given the basic dissimmetry between the
power exerted by one will over another, we would be exposed, Ricoeur claims, to theft, rape,
psychological cruelty, deception, exploitation, torture, homicide, etc.
But for Ricoeur Kantian morality does not substitute Aristotelian ethics because the
Kantian solid idea of humanity as stated in the second formulation of the categorical
imperative hinders opening to intersubjectivity, to otherness, in short, to the plurality of
people accounted for by Arendt in The human condition (1958).16
This intrinsic difficulty of Kantian norms turns morality into a mere instance of
limited effectuation, which should be perfected through the final recourse of morality to
ethic.17 This final recourse of deontological morality to teleological ethics now turned into
critical ethics would guarantee the recognition of positive values belonging to the
historical and communitarian contexts of the realization of these same rules.18
The author thus faces the antagonism between the universalist and contextualist
theoretical position, related to the search for a philosophical foundation of human rights. It is
in this area that Ricoeur ventures on a sort of practical mediation to be in charge of
overcoming the antinomy between universalism and contextualism, which the current debate
on human rights keeps oscillating between.19 This practical mediation is entrusted to the
Aristotelian labour of phronesis, taken here as the practical wisdom of moral judgement in
situation.20

3.

Violence in the political sphere: the perpendicular structure of politics

In Oneself as Another Ricoeur confesses the following:
Hegel's philosophical project in the Philosophy of Right remains very close to my own
views, to the extent that [] the notion of Sittlichkeit [] has never ceased to instruct
us.21

As we anticipated in the Introduction, for Ricoeur the state becomes the realization of
the ethical intention in the political sphere. What we should ask ourselves is what Ricoeur
understands by state. He upholds Eric Weil's formula that the state is the organization of a
historical community; organized as state, the community is capable of making decisions. 22
Ricoeur is clear in advocating that Weil's formulation focuses on the rational form when it
comes to defining the state. This rational form highlights what Ricoeur calls the horizontal tie
of wishing to live together.23 This horizontality is immediately equated with Arendt's formula
to define power as the human ability not just to act, but to act in concert.24
Nonetheless, Ricoeur thinks there is more to Weil's formula than to Arendt's claims.
Arendt contested Max Weber's well-known definition of the state: the state is the form of
human community that (successfully) lays claim to the monopoly of the legitimate physical
violence within a particular territory. 25 Arendt replies that Power and violence are opposites;
where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent.26 Weil's advantage regarding Arendt's
position consists of the incorporation of a voluntarist dimension of the state, absent in Arendt.
This is the reason why Ricoeur assigns the state a perpendicular structure, in which the
horizontal level of the rational form is crossed through by a vertical one, precisely the one of
force.
In The Political Paradox he had already noticed that the reasonability inherent to the
political sphere structuring of human reality does not take place outside the realms of
politics conquest, exercise and conservation of authority operating in turn as locus of
political evil. In Critique and conviction (1995) he refines this idea by saying that from a
philosophical point of view, the polical field is an advanced form of rationality, but one
which also includes an archaic form of irrationality.27
Given the above, we can conclude that, on one side, a spirit of reconciliation between
the broad and legitimist theories on violence referred to in the Introduction emerges from
these developments. A reconciliation presented as an asymmetrical or imperfect dialectic in
the sense that the intelligibility of resorting to legitimate violence, that is, the irrational
moment, is tributary of the rational form or of the power Arendt speaks of. In sum, the state
would ultimately lie in a certain fragile convergence where the Weberian force or legitimate
violence is in relation of subordination and complementarity at a time with the Arendtian form
or power. On the other side, this appeal to legitimate violence keeps Ricoeur aloof from
Arendt because he claims that if the vertical relation be entirely absorbed within the
horizontal relation perhaps this would also be the end of the political.28
Why should the absence of a hierarchy constitute the downfall of the political, seen as,
we insist, a reasonable organization? Mainly because in front of the power Arendt speaks of,

authority constitutes, says Ricoeur, the most stable element, since it represents permanence,
endurance, or we might just say, resilience.29
4.

Time and violence

In La lectura del tiempo pasado: memoria y olvido (1999), Ricoeur defines founding
violence. On approaching the figure of the wounded memory, he observes that one of the
sources of vulnerability is the place of violence in the founding of identities, mainly
collective identity.30 After associating collective memory, as well as history, with violence, he
says there is no historical community that has not come of what can be termed an original
relation to war.31
These epoch-making events of a community and its members identity awareness
constitute in turn a tremendum fascinosum, whose counterpart, the tremendum horrendum, the
author had already anticipated in Time and Narrative Vol. 3 (1985), because loathing is the
negative form of veneration. Horror is inverted veneration, 32 concludes Ricoeur. To the
extent that ethical neutralization of history is neither possible nor desirable in these epochmaking events. This founding violence is a compelling reason to propose the fictionalization
of history. Before the unhappy pretence of the assessed neutrality of historical knowledge, he
claims that fiction gives eyes to the horrified narrator. Eyes to see and to weep. 33 Fiction,
the same as the metaphorical trope Ricoeur examined in The Rule of Metaphor (1975),34
introduces events in the sensitive, intuitive and vivid form of the image; and in this fashion
block the way of the elusive character of the pastness of the past 35 of those violent events
that must never be forgotten.36
In Memory, History, Forgetting (2000), this wounded memory finds its parallel in
the imposed forgetting. In front of political disorder experienced as a threat to social peace,
amnesty is depicted as the suspension of violence. But Ricoeur points out that because of this
disruption amnesty implies
institutional forgetting, touches the very roots of the political, and, through it,
the most profound and most deeply concealed relation to a past that is placed
under an interdiction.37
Therefore, if ethical neutralization contributes to denying the memory of founding
violence, amnesty keeps a phonetic and semantic affinity with the amnesia imposed in
relation to the crimes committed during periods of seditious violence.
Now then, Ricoeur thinks that whereas amnesty seeks reconciliation and civil peace, its
proximity to amnesia through the imposed forgetting intercepts the dialectics of seditious
violence and forgiveness. Forgiveness that must not be obliging, lenient or indulgent if it
tries to contribute to the healing of the wounded memory. In short: it must be a difficult
forgiveness. For Ricoeur, this difficult forgiveness, far away from the imposed forgetting
dictated by amnesty, implies some active forgetting capable of establishing a subtle
borderline between amnesia and infinite debt.38 In all: difficult forgiveness would imply a
certain act of faith set between imposed forgetting and infinite debt which could be read
as a credit we give to past violence to avoid its recurrence in the future.

5.

Conclusion
We will conclude this paper with a brief assessment of the achievements and partially
unresolved matters around violence as presented in Ricoeurs work.
First, within its merits stands a serious attempt at mediating between universalist
claims and communitarian limitations affecting the philosophical principles of human rights,
through his proposal of the universals in context. Among the unresolved topics lies the
evasive character of these inchoative universals. Ricoeurs intention of reconciling
Aristotelian phronesis with Hegelian Sittlichkeit through Kantian Moralitt39 can be
challenged following Martha Nussbaum as she questioned him as follows:
What is the lesson taught us by the plays concluding appeal to practical
wisdom (to phronein)? How can there be good deliberation in a situation in
which all the altermatives involve doing violence to an important value?40
Especially when Nussbaum herself reminds us that The first thing that tragic phronein
shows us, for Ricoeur as for Hegel, is the [] partiality of the competing principles.41
Second, it is worth noting the virtue behind Ricoeurs position on avoiding the
unilaterality of Arendts and Webers proposals. The structure in which the rational form of
living with or co-action is crossed by the irrational thorn of the legitimate force proves
plausible. And if it proves plausible, it is because its program cannot be unilaterally associated
with either conservative fundamentalism or radical political left wing. Among some
unfinished matters, he enigmatically sets aside his early aspiration of articulating a political
philosophy. All the more enigmatic when he, at times, urges us to make use of legitimate state
violence to put an end to violence once and for all.42
Finally, we think how original he is in stating the fictionalization of history as an
iconic device capable of preventing historical communities from forgetting founding
violence. This fictionalization also operates as a solution to restore politics through difficult
forgiveness. Among the drawbacks, is the attempt at explaining difficult forgiveness,
regarded as an act of faith, within a supra-ethics Ricoeur associates with economy of the gift
which is characterized by the victory of the logic of superabundance over the logic of
equivalence or the reciprocity. 43 Bringing difficult forgiveness closer to the economy of the
gift turns the former into a unconditionality ending up as its attribute. We believe this
poetics of love (agpe) in which Ricoeur inscribes difficult forgiveness should open further
up to the language of justice. In that sense, we consider Tzvetan Todorov's idea of bringing
exemplary memory together with justice a better way to restore politics through difficult
forgiveness. Conditioning difficult forgiveness to comparison, analogy and generalization
inherent instances in Todorov's notion of exemplary memory would better guarantee that
when it comes to forgiving we have in fact learnt from the past. 44 Especially when, ultimately,
it is important to learn how to cope with the multiple and multiform faces of violens in the
course of time.

Notes
Translated from Spanish to English by Mara Viviana Matta.
M Weber incarnates this legitimism. See M Weber, The Profession and Vocation of Politics, in
Political Writings, P Lasssman and R Speiers (eds.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1994,
pp. 309369.
3
See J Galtung, Violence, Peace and Peace Research, in Journal of Peace Research, 1969, Vol. 6 n.
2, pp. 167-191. See also J Galtung, Cultural Violence, in Journal of Peace Research, 1990, Vol. 27 n.
3, pp. 291-305.
4
See C A J Coady, Violence, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Version 1.0, London.
5
See P Ricoeur, The Political Paradox, in ib., History and Truth, Northwestern University press,
Evanston, 1965, 247-70.
6
P Ricoeur, Ethics and politics, in ib., From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II, Northwestern
University Press, Evanston, 1991, pp. 325-337.
7
See P Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, Northwestern University Press, Evanston, 1992.
8
See P Ricoeur, Ethics and, p. 333.
9
P Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1992, p. 170.
10
Ibid.
11
A D Moratalla, Introduccin, in Paul Ricoeur, Lo justo, Caparrs Editores, Madrid, 1999, p. 13.
12
P Ricoeur, The Just, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 2000, p. xvii.
13
H Arendt, On violence, Harcourt, Brace, 1969. p. 48.
14
J Wall, Moral Meaning. Beyond the Good and the Right, in Paul Ricoeur and Contemporary Moral
Thought, J Wall, W Shweiker, and D Hall (eds.), Routledge, London, 2002, p. 53.
15
I Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, Hackett, Indianapolis, 1993. p. 36.
16
See H Arendt, The human condition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1958, p. 8.
17
P Ricoeur, Oneself, p. 171.
18
Ibid., p. 274.
19
Ibid.
20
Ibid.
21
Ibid., pp. 254255.
22
See E Weil, La philosophie politique, Vrin, Paris, 1984, p. 131.
23
P Ricoeur, Critique and conviction: conversations with Franois Azouvi and Marc de Launay,
Columbia University, New York, 1998, p. 99.
24
H Arendt, On Violence, p. 46.
25
M Weber, The Profession, pp. 310-311
26
H Arendt, On Violence, p. 70.
27
P Ricoeur, Critique, p. 98.
28
See ibid. p. 99.
29
See P Ricoeur, Pouvoir et violence, in ib. Lectures 1, Paris, Seuil, 1991, pp. 20-42.
30
P Ricoeur, La lectura del tiempo pasado: memoria y olvido, Arrecife, Madrid, 1999, p. 31.
31
Ibid. p. 82.
32
P Ricoeur, Time and Narrative. Vol 3, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1988.
33
Ibid. p, 188.
34
See P Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies in the Creation of Meaning in
Language, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1978.
35
P Ricoeur, Time, p. 190.
36
Ibid. p. 187
37
P Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2004. p. 453.
2

See ibid.
P Ricoeur, Oneself, p. 290.
40
M Nussbaum, Ricoeur on Tragedy. Teleology, Deontology, and Phronesis, in Paul Ricoeur and
Contemporary , p. 272.
41
Ibid.
42
P Ricoeur, El filsofo y el poltico ante la cuestin de la libertad, in ib. Sociedad, poltica e
historicidad, Docencia, Buenos Aires, 1986, p. 191.
43
See P Ricoeur, Amor y justicia, in ib. Amor y justicia, Caparrs Editores, Madrid, 1993, pp. 13-34.
44
See T Todorov, The Uses and Abuses of Memory, in What Happens to History: The Renewal of
Ethics in Contemporary Thought, Howard Marchitello (ed.), Routledge, New York, 2001, pp. 11-22.
Todorov basically confronts two modalities of memory: literal memory and exemplary memory.
Whereas literal memory runs the risk of repressing the present under the past, exemplary memory
implies the use of past events as a model for understanding new situations, working the past as an
action principle for the present and the future.
38
39

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Silvia Cristina Gabriel is Senior Lecturer and Researcher in the University of Buenos Aires
(Argentina). She has published many articles in national and foreign academic journals, mainly on
Political Philosophy, Hermeneutics, and Aesthetics. She is particularly interested in the hermeneutical,
political, ethical, and aesthetical aspects of Paul Ricoeurs work.