The symbol, I said, is constituted from a semantic perspective such that it provides a meaning by means of a meaning. In it a primary, literal, worldly, often physical meaning refers back to a figurative, spiritual, often existential, ontological meaning which is in no way given outside this indirect designation. The symbol invites us to think, calls for an interpretation, precisely because it says more that it says and because it never ceases to speak to us. [From "Structure and Hermeneutics," in The Conflict of Interpretations]

This is my summary of the basic structure of the symbol: I think that symbols communicate by means of a double meaning. Take, for example, some traditional symbols of evil (I wrote a book on these): stains, pollution, deviation, bondage, fall—you know the drill. You might have heard sin described as a stain on the soul, or vice as a kind of slavery of the will, or the original sin as the fall of man. These symbols aren't taken literally, but they do each have a literal meaning.

The literal meaning not only points towards a figurative meaning, it also adds to that figurative meaning. The symbol isn't just a creative way of saying the same thing you could say non-symbolically: what you say with a symbol can be said only with that symbol because, in a sense, the literal meaning of the symbol produces the specific figurative meaning.

Think of it this way: if you talk about the fall of man, you're talking about a Biblical interpretation of why there is evil and hardship in the world. But by calling it the fall, you're also creating this image in your head (and others' heads) of a person literally falling. That adds to the meaning, because that visual of a person falling conveys something that literal language can't.

What really makes symbols interesting, in my opinion, is that they're not fixed. Symbols evolve because their literal meanings had evolved, but they also evolve when their figurative meanings are understood in new ways.

For us who speak, language is not an object but a mediation. Language is that through which, by means of which, we express ourselves and express things. Speaking is the act by which the speaker overcomes the closure of the universe of signs, in the intention of saying something about something to someone; speaking is the act by which language moves beyond itself as a sign toward its reference and toward what it encounters. [From "Structure, Word, Event," in The Conflict of Interpretations]

Back in my day, there were these folks called Structuralists. Ferdinand de Saussure was the big daddy of them all, and he wanted to approach language as an object of empirical science. Translation: he wanted to analyze language scientifically. Hello, linguistics!

The Structuralists treated language as a closed system of rules and relations between signs. They didn't care much about the real world of things language refers to; in fact, some of them said that language, if you really got down it, didn't really refer to anything in the first place. As if language weren't abstract enough already.

This approach had its benefits, resulting in new insights about the form and functionality of language—but it also had its drawbacks. Is language really as abstract as all that? Don't we use it to actually communicate about things? I think that the Structuralist view of language is flawed because it can't tell us much about language as it's used: to communicate about stuff.

Narrative fiction, we said, 'imitates' human action, not only in that, before referring to the text, it refers to our own preunderstanding of the meaningful structures of action and of its temporal dimensions but also in that it contributes, beyond the text, to reshaping these structures and dimensions in accordance with the imaginary configuration of the plot. Fiction has the power to 'remake' reality and, within the framework of narrative fiction in particular, to remake real praxis to the extent that the text intentionally aims at a horizon of a new reality that we may call a world. It is this world of the text that intervenes in the world of action in order to give it a new configuration or, as we might say, in order to transfigure it. [From From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II]

The Twilight series came out the year I left this mortal plane, but that doesn't mean I can't talk about it.

Now, obviously—pardonnez-moi—vampires aren't real, and yet they're intelligible. We can understand them. Why? Because the image of the vampire combines images that imitate or represent things in real life: life and death, hunger, lust, blood, sexuality, the desire for immortality—the usual.

That means that vampire stories can be extended metaphors for human desires and human actions. Because we already have an understanding of this kind of thing, we can read and makes sense of unreal figures and fictional actions that are based on them. We understand what it means to fear something that wants to harm us, for example. Big teeth! Sparkles! Well, maybe not sparkles.

Fiction can also make you rethink the meaning of your actions and the situations and circumstances in which you act. A powerful story might inspire you to question your beliefs or revise your moral outlook, and that might move you to act differently in the future than you had in the past.

In sum, fiction isn't just about the meaning of human action; fiction can give new meaning to human action.

If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal and may be assimilated to so-called rules of thumb. The text is a limited field of possible constructions. The logic of validation allows us to move between the two limits of dogmatism and skepticism. It is always possible to argue for or against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them, and to seek for an agreement, even if this agreement remains beyond our reach….As the logic of text interpretation suggests, there is a specific plurivocity belonging to the meaning of human action. Human action, too, is a limited field of possible constructions. [From From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, II]

My detractors have called me a relativist because I scoff at the notion that a text has only one correct interpretation. I say this because I think that any interpretation relies partly on the context of the work itself and partly on the context of the reader doing the interpreting.

Now, I don't think that these two contexts are everything. The meaning of a text is relative to these contexts, but not entirely relative to them. If it were, then there would be no text; there would only be context… and there would be nothing to read. Even on Twitter. The Internet would be overrun with pictures of cats.

Human action gets its meaning the same way. Context has a say, but so does each action itself. Both of these establish a basis for interpretation. Think of it this way: if I smile and wave at you, chances are I'm being friendly. There are, however, other possibilities: maybe I'm being ironic, for example, and I actually think you're lame.

Now, there may be quite a few possibilities of what my gestures mean, but the possibilities are not endless. Not every interpretation makes sense. You wouldn't, seeing me waving and smiling in your general direction, think, "Ricoeur wants me to read these tweets by Justin Bieber!" That interpretation just isn't in the field. Even for a Belieber.

The true artist only experiences the motivation which is proper to his art and does not yield to any commands exterior to his art: to court the tyrant, to give renown to the Revolution. Even when he portrays the society of his times, even when he foretells the future, the artist is true if he does not plagiarize a sociological analysis which has already been done or a claim which has already found a non-aesthetical expression. On the contrary, he will create something new, something that is socially and politically valid, only if he is faithful to the power of analysis which flows from the authenticity of his sensitivity as well as from the maturity of the means of expression which he has inherited. [From History and Truth]

Is there truth in art? That's a question that we philosophers like to ask every now and then; I think Plato started it. My answer is that, yes, art conveys truth, but while this truth can be philosophical or political or sociological (or, like, whatever), it's never just philosophical or political or sociological if it's also artistic truth.

Let's back up and think about this for a sec.

The artist has something to say that cannot be said by anyone other than an artist. A painting or a poem or a play might offer some insight into the human condition, or a political conflict, or a sociological development, but this insight cannot simply be lifted from the work of art, as if the artwork were simply some political or sociological message with an artistic coating.

If you can abstract a message from some work of art without substantially changing the message, then the work isn't art. In art, truth is expressed both by the whole of the work and by each part within the context of the whole. You can't just extrapolate from art without oversimplifying the message.