Follow-up to The Conflict of Interpretations, this set of essays features Ricoeur’s take on the history and task of hermeneutics; interpretation as it relates to understanding and informing human action; the relationship between philosophical and biblical hermeneutics; the role of imagination; and what hermeneutics has to say to ethics and politics. Throw in the kitchen sink and you’ve got yourself a nice little list.
Ricoeur asks us to consider imagination as a method, writing about how “the work of imagination” (hey, isn’t imagination about play?) is to “see one thing as another.” Imagination creates a place in which we can “try out new ideas, new values, new ways of being in the world.” Sounds like playing make-believe to us. But in theory world, what practical function, if any, does this work of imagination give to fiction?
Since fiction is by definition make-believe, in what sense, given Ricoeur’s remarks on imagination, can we say that there is truth in literature?