The Symbolism of Evil

367 Pages·1986·13.92 MB·English

by  Paul Ricoeur

THE SYMBOLISM
OF EVIL
PAUL RICOEUR
Translated from the French by
Emerson Buchanan
BEACON PRESS BOSTON
This Beacon paperback edition reprints Volume XVII
oj the Religious Perspectives Series
which is planned and edited by Ruth Nanda Anshen
Dr. Anshen's Epilogue to this reprint appears an page 358
Copyright © 1967 by Paul Ricoeur
First published as a Beacon Paperback in 1969 by arrangement
with Harper & Row, Publishers, Incorporated
Beacon Press books are published under the auspices of
the Unitarian Universalist Association
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
‘ons embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address
& Row, Publishers, Incorporated, 49 East 33rd Street, New York,
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Printed in the United States of America
International Standard Book Number: 0-8070-1S67-9
Third printing, April 1972
Contents
PART I
The Primary Symbols: Defilement, Sin, Guilt
Introduction: PHENOMENOLOGY OF “CONFESSION” 3
1. Speculation, Myth, and Symbol 3
2. Criteriology of Symbols 10
3. The Philosophical “Re-enactment” of Confession 19
Chapter 1. DEFILEMENT 25
1. The Impure 25
2. Ethical Tenor 29
3. The Symbolism of Stain 33
4. The Sublimation of Dread 40
Chapter II. SIN 47
1. The Category of “Before God”: The Covenant 50
2. The Infinite Demand and the Finite Commandment 54
3. The “Wrath of God” * 63
4. The Symbolism of Sin: (1) Sin as “Nothingness” 70
5. The Symbolism of Sin: (2) Sin as Positive 81
Chapter III. GUILT 100
1. Birth of a New Stage 101
2. Guilt and Penal Imputation 108
3. Scrupulousness 118
4. The Impasse of Guilt 139
Conclusion: RECAPITULATION OF THE SYMBOLISM
OF EVIL IN THE CONCEPT OF THE SERVILE
WILL 151
PART II
The “Myths” of the Beginning and of the End
Introduction: THE SYMBOLIC FUNCTION OF MYTHS 161
1. From the Primary Symbols to Myths 161
2. Myth and Gnosis: The Symbolic Function of die
Narration 164
3. Toward a “Typology” of the Myths of the Beginning and
the End of Evil 171
Chapter I. THE DRAMA OF CREATION AND THE
“RITUAL” VISION OF THE WORLD 175
1. Primordial Chaos 175
2. The Ritual Re-enactment of the Creation and the Figure
of die King 191
3. A “Recessive” Form of the Drama of Creation; Hie
Hebrew King 198
4. A “Mutant” Form of the Drama of Creation: The
Hellenic Titan 206
Chapter II. THE WICKED GOD AND THE “TRAGIC”
VISION OF EXISTENCE 211
1. The Pre-Tragic Themes 213
2. The Crux of the Tragic 218
3. Deliverance from the Tragic or Deliverance within the
Tragic? 227
Chapter III. THE “ADAMIC’ MYTH AND THE
“ESCHATOLOGICAL” VISION OF HISTORY 232
1. The Penitential Motivation of tire “Adamic” Myth 235
2. The Structure of the Myth: The “Instant” of the Fall 243
3. The “Lapse of Time” of the Drama of Temptation 252
4. Justification and Eschatological Symbols 260
Chapter V. THE CYCLE OF THE MYTHS 306
1. From the Statics to the Dynamics of the Mythc 306
2. The Reaffirmation of the Tragic 310
3. The Appropriation of the Myth of Chaos 326
4. The.Struggle between the Adamic Myth and the Myth
of Exile 330
Chapter IV. THE MYTH OF THE EXILED SOUL AND
SALVATION THROUGH KNOWLEDGE 279
1. The Archaic Myth: “Soul” and “Body” 283
2. The Final Myth 289
3. Salvation and Knowledge 300
Conclusion: THE SYMBOL GIVES RISE TO THOUGHT 347
Epilogue: RELIGIOUS PERSPECTIVES,
Its Meaning and Purpose by Ruth Nanda Anshen

Part One
The Primary Symbols:
Defilement, Sin, Guilt

Introduction:
Phenomenology
o f "Confession”
1. Speculation, Myth, and Symbol
how shall wb makb the transition from the possibility erf evil in
naan to its reality, from fallibility to fault?*
We mH try to surprise the transition in the act by “re-enacting”
in ourselves the confession that the religious consciousness makes
of it.
Of course, this sympathetic re-enactment in imagination cannot
take the place of a philosophy of fault. It will still remain to be
seen what the philosopher makes of it—that is to say, bow he
incorporates it into the discourse on man begun in the fust volume -
of this work under the influence of the dialectic of the finite and
the infinite. This final development will occupy the third volume.
We cannot yet anticipate the direction it will take, since we do not
yet know the new situation from which philosophy will have to
take its bearings.1
But if the "re-enactment” of the confession of the evil in man by
the religious consciousness does not take the place of philosophy,
* The present volume is the second in the author’s Finitude and Guilt.
The first volnme has been translated under the title: FaUibls Man (H.
Regnery, 1966).—Ta.
1 See the concluding chapter, “The Symbol Gives Rise to Thought.”
S
nevertheless that confession lies within the sphere of interest of
philosophy, for it is an utterance, an utterance of man about him­
self; and every utterance can and must be taken up into the ele­
ment of philosophic discourse. We shall indicate presently the
philosophic locus, so to speak, of this “re-enactment,’’ which is no
longer religious experience and which is not yet philosophy. But let
us indicate first what is said in the utterance that we have called
the confession of the evil in man by the religious consciousness.
It seems tempting, at first, to begin with the most elaborate, die
most rationalized expressions of that confession, in the hope that
those expressions will be closest to the language of philosophy in
virtue of their “explanatory” character. Thus, one will be inclined
to think that it is against the late constructions of the Augustinian
epoch concerning original sin that philosophy is challenged to
measure itself. Many philosophies, classical and modern, take this
supposed concept as a religious and theological datum and reduce
the philosophical problem of fault to a critique of the idea of
original sin.
Nothing is less amenable to a direct confrontation with philosophy
than the concept of original sin, for nothing is more deceptive than
its appearance of rationality. On the contrary, it is to the least
elaborate, the most inarticulate expressions of*the confessionof evil
that philosophic reason must listen. Therefore we must proceed
regressively and revert from the “speculative” expressions to the
“spontaneous” ones. In particular, it is essential to be convinced
from the start that the concept of original sin is not at the begin­
ning but at the end of a cycle of living experience, the Christian
experience of sin. Moreover, the interpretation that it gives of this
experience is only one of the possible rationalizations of the root
of evil according to Christianity. Finally and above all, this ration­
alization, which is embalmed by tradition and has become the cor­
nerstone of Christian anthropology, belongs to a period of thought
marked by gnostic pretentions to “know” the mysteries of Gad
and human destiny. Not that original sin is a gnostic concept; on
tiie contrary, it is an anti-gnostic concept But it Belongs to the age
of gnosis in the sense "that it tries to rationalize the Christian ex­
perience of radical evil in the same way as gnosis set up as “knowl-