IL DIALOGO DEGLI SCETTICISMI

Olivier Abel

The aim of this article is to present Ricoeur’s thought as the result of the combination, frequently present in the authors of the French philosophical tradition – from Bayle to Diderot -, of reflection and skepticism, and to identify in the “skeptein” his most authentic style. It is in this key that Ricoeur’s famous “greffe” of hermeneutics onto phenomenology can be interpreted as the expression of a balance between trust in what is given and acceptance of its inescapable opacity. Ricoeur’s philosophy, unlike that of the authors of the so-called “French phenomenological school” (Lévinas, Lyotard, Sartre, Henry, Derrida, Merleau-Ponty), while not renouncing to understand what exists, accepts to do so staying in the conflict of interpretations, that is, in the gap between past, present, and future points of view. This gives rise to a thought that challenges the fixity of the written word and embodies the dialogical spirit of Plato’s work.