L’arco dell’identità e Paul Ricœur

As for interpretation Ricœur spoke about a «hermeneutic arc» – keeping together the terms Dilthey had separated, that is explaining and understanding – in the same way we can read the arc traced by the French philosopher since Le volontaire et l’involontaire introducing for the first time the expression cogito brisé, cogito shattered. Starting from this first pillar, Ricœur traced the arc of identity, progressively showing the complexity up to the renowned formulation of the narrative identity. In this identity, the core of a subject that is not self-position is synthesised, but that is rather (a) living ‘who’, whose narrative identity opens and does not stop at this single form. Another form, not a Ricœurian one though made possible by the opening of the identity, is the oikological identity, that is the identity of who ‘is’ and discovers himself/herself ‘in front of’ – in front of a You, in front of a world, of religion, of culture or in front of another ‘who’. Through this the arc of identity gets richer and, starting from the cogito brisé and then developing in the narrative identity, also develops in the temporal and at the same time locative identity which is identified as oikological. Through this, finally, the arc of identity accomplishes itself from a single tending to series of arches that, together, accomplish the arch that relaunches identity towards all the forms that experience could bestow it.