The responsive self: Phenomelogy of the response in Paul Ricoeur

Abstract

This article aims to examine three sources of uneasiness that affects the self, as it is thought by Ricoeur and, at the same, the different responses that Ricoeur could offer, that is, a) the worldly living situation that tests the patience of the subject and requires its consent; b) the world, as the ground and horizon of human action, that demand the development and attunement of our capabilities as answers, and c) the encounter with the fragile other that call for our hospitality and care as a measured and solicit response. The concepts of patience and consent, responsiveness, hospitality and care will be examined under the light of the phenomenology of the will (1950) and of the capable man (1990; 2004a) that Ricoeur elaborates at the beginning and at the end of his work. The thesis of this article is that the subject can be only understood in relation with a multiple alterity that constitutes it as responsive self: the situation, the world and the other appeal to the subject and makes room for the exercise of its freedom demanding different types of responses through which the subject take charge of each instance of alterity an, at the same it, it is constituted by its response.