Time and Narrative, Volume 3 (Time & Narrative) - Softcover

Ricoeur, Paul

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226713369 ISBN 13: 9780226713366

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1990

Synopsis

In the first two volumes of this work, Paul Ricoeur examined the relations between time and narrative in historical writing, fiction, and theories of literature. This final volume, a comprehensive reexamination and synthesis of the ideas developed in volumes 1 and 2, stands as Ricoeur's most complete and satisfying presentation of his own philosophy.

Ricoeur's aim here is to explicate as fully as possible the hypothesis that has governed his inquiry, namely, that the effort of thinking at work in every narrative configuration is completed in a refiguration of temporal experience. To this end, he sets himself the central task of determing how far a poetics of narrative can be said to resolve the "aporias"—the doubtful or problematic elements—of time. Chief among these aporias are the conflicts between the phenomenological sense of time (that experienced or lived by the individual) and the cosmological sense (that described by history and physics) on the one hand and the oneness or unitary nature of time on the other. In conclusion, Ricoeur reflects upon the inscrutability of time itself and attempts to discern the limits of his own examination of narrative discourse.

"As in his previous works, Ricoeur labors as an imcomparable mediator of often estranged philosophical approaches, always in a manner that compromises neither rigor nor creativity."—Mark Kline Taylor, Christian Century

"In the midst of two opposing contemporary options—either to flee into ever more precious readings . . . or to retreat into ever more safe readings . . . —Ricoeur's work offers an alternative option that is critical, wide-ranging, and conducive to new applications."—Mary Gerhart, Journal of Religion

About this title

About the Authors

Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) was the John Nuveen Professor in the Divinity School, the Department of Philosophy, and the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. He was the author of many books, including Memory, History, Forgetting, Oneself as Another, and the three-volume Time and Narrative, all published by the University of Chicago Press.

David Pellauer is a professor of philosophy at DePaul University.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Time and Narrative Volume 3

By Paul Ricoeur, Kathleen Blamey, David Pellauer

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 1988 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-226-71336-6

Contents

PART IV: NARRATED TIME, 
Introduction, 
SECTION 1: THE APORETICS OF TEMPORALITY, 
1. The Time of the Soul and the Time of the World: The Dispute between Augustine and Aristotle, 
2. Intuitive Time or Invisible Time? Husserl Confronts Kant, 
3. Temporality, Historicality, Within-Time-Ness: Heidegger and the "Ordinary" Concept of Time, 
SECTION 2: POETICS OF NARRATIVE: HISTORY, FICTION, TIME, 
4. Between Lived Time and Universal Time: Historical Time, 
5. Fiction and Its Imaginative Variations on Time, 
6. The Reality of the Past, 
7. The World of the Text and the World of the Reader, 
8. The Interweaving of History and Fiction, 
9. Should We Renounce Hegel?, 
10. Towards a Hermeneutics of Historical Consciousness, 
Conclusions, 
Notes, 
Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

The Time of the Soul and the Time of the World The Dispute between Augustine and Aristotle

The major failure of the Augustinian theory is that it is unsuccessful in substituting a psychological conception of time for a cosmological one, despite the undeniable progress this psychology represents in relation to any cosmology of time. The aporia lies precisely in the fact that while this psychology can legitimately be added to the cosmology, it is unable to replace cosmology, as well as in the further fact that neither concept, considered separately, proposes a satisfying solution to their unresolvable disagreement.

Augustine did not refute Aristotle's basic theory of the primacy of movement over time, although he did contribute a lasting solution to the problem Aristotle left in abeyance concerning the relation between the soul and time. Behind Aristotle stands an entire cosmological tradition, according to which time surrounds us, envelops us, and dominates us, without the soul having the power to produce it. I am convinced that the dialectic of intentio and distentio animi is powerless to produce this imperious character of time and that, paradoxically, it helps conceal it.

Where Augustine fails is precisely where he attempts to derive from the distension of the mind alone the very principle of the extension and the measurement of time. We must, in this respect, pay homage to him for never having wavered in his conviction that measurement is a genuine property of time, as well as for refusing to lend any credence to what will later become Bergson's major doctrine in his Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, namely, that time becomes measurable through its strange and incomprehensible contamination by space. For Augustine, our division of time into days and years, as well as our ability to compare long and short syllables, familiar to the rhetoricians of antiquity, designate properties of time itself. Distentio animi is the very possibility of so measuring time. Consequently, the refutation of the cosmological thesis is far from being a digression in Augustine's closely knit argument. Instead it constitutes one indispensable link in this argument. Yet this refutation is, from the start, misdirected. "I once heard a learned man say that time is nothing but the movement of the sun and the moon and the stars, but I did not agree." By this overly simple identification of time with the circular movement of the two principal heavenly bodies, Augustine overlooks Aristotle's infinitely more subtle thesis that, without being movement itself, time is something that "has to do with movement" (ti tès kinèséôs). In so doing, he is forced to see in the distension of the mind the principle for the extension of time. But the arguments by which he thinks he succeeds in doing so do not hold up. The hypothesis that all movement—that of the sun, just like that of the potter's wheel or the human voice—may vary, hence accelerate, slow down, even stop altogether, without the intervals of time being altered in any way, is unthinkable, not only for a Greek, for whom sidereal movements are absolutely invariable, but for us today, even though we know that the movement of the earth around the sun is not absolutely regular and even though we must continually extend our search for the absolute clock. Even the corrections that science continues to make in defining the notion of a "day"—as a fixed unit for computing months and years—attests that the search for an absolutely regular movement remains the guiding idea for any measurement of time. This is why it is simply not true that a day would remain what we call a "day" if it were not measured by the movement of the sun.

It is true that Augustine was unable to abstain entirely from referring to movement in order to measure the intervals of time. But he tried to strip this reference of any constitutive role and to reduce it to a purely pragmatic function. As in Genesis, the stars are only lights in the sky that mark times, days, and years (Confessions, XI, 23:29). Of course, we cannot say when a movement begins and when it ends if we have not marked (notare) the place where a moving body starts from and the place where it arrives. However, Augustine notes, the question concerning "how much time is needed" for a body to complete its movement between two points cannot find a reply in the consideration of the movement itself. So the recourse to the "marks" that time borrows from movement leads nowhere. The lesson Augustine draws from this is that time is something other than movement. "Time, therefore, is not the movement of a body" (24:31). Aristotle would have come to the same conclusion, but this would have constituted no more than the negative side of his main argument, namely, that time has something to do with movement, although it is not movement. But Augustine was unable to perceive the other side of his own argument, having limited himself to refuting the less refined thesis, the one where time is purely and simply identified with the movement of the sun, moon, and stars.

As a result he was forced to make the impossible wager that the principle of their measurement could be found in expectation and memory. Hence, according to him, we have to say expectation is shortened when what we are waiting for approaches and memory is extended when what we remember recedes. In the same way, when I recite a poem, as I move along through the present, the past increases by the same amount as the future diminishes. We must ask therefore what increases and what diminishes, and what fixed unit allows us to compare these variable durations.

Unfortunately, the problem of comparing successive durations is only pushed back one step. It is not clear what direct access we can have to these impressions that are assumed to remain in the mind, nor how they could provide the fixed measure of comparison that he has refused to accord to the movement of the stars.

Augustine's failure to derive the principle for the measurement of time from the distension of the mind alone invites us to approach the problem of time from the other side, from that of nature, the universe, the world—expressions that we are temporarily taking as synonymous, knowing that we will subsequently have to distinguish them, as we shall also do for their antonyms, which for the moment we are terming indifferently soul, mind, consciousness. We shall later show how important it is for a theory of narrative that both approaches to the problem of time remain open, by way of the mind as well as by way of the world. The aporia of temporality, to which the narrative operation replies in a variety of ways, lies precisely in the difficulty in holding on to both ends of this chain, the time of the soul and that of the world. This is why we must go to the very end of the impasse and admit that a psychological theory and a cosmological theory mutually occlude each other to the very extent they imply each other.

In order to make apparent the time of the world, which the Augustinian analysis fails to recognize, let us listen to Aristotle, and also hear, behind him, the echoes of more ancient words, words whose meaning the Stagirite himself did not master.

The three-stage argument leading to the Aristotelian definition of time in Book IV of the Physics (219a34–35) needs to be followed through step by step. This argument holds that time is related to movement without being identical with it. In this, the treatise on time remains anchored in the Physics in such a way that the originality belonging to time does not elevate it to the level of a "principle," an honor reserved for change alone, which includes local movement. This concern not to tamper with the primacy of movement over time is evident in the very definition of nature at the beginning of Book II of the Physics: "nature is a principle [arkhè] or cause [aitia] of being moved and of being at rest in that to which it belongs primarily, in virtue of itself and not accidently" (192b21–23).

The fact that time, nevertheless, is not movement (218b21–219a10) was stated by Aristotle before Augustine. Change (movement) is in every case in the thing that changes (moves), whereas time is everywhere in everything equally. Change can be rapid or slow, whereas time cannot include speed, under the threat of having to be defined in terms of itself since speed implies time.

In return, the argument holding that time is not without movement, which destroys Augustine's attempt to found the measurement of time in the distension of the mind alone, deserves our attention. "Now we perceive movement [more accurately: in (hama) perceiving movement] and time together ... and not only that but also, when some time is thought to have passed, some movement also along with it seems to have taken place" (219a3–7). This argument does not place particular stress on the mind's activity of perception and discrimination, or, more generally, on the subjective conditions of time-consciousness. The term that is stressed is "movement." If there is no perception of time without the perception of movement, there is no possible existence of time itself without that of movement. The conclusion to this first phase of the overall argument confirms this. "It is evident, then, that time is neither movement nor independent of movement" (219a2).

This dependence of time with regard to change (movement) is a sort of primitive fact, and the task later will be to graft the distension of the soul in some way to this something that "belongs to movement." The central difficulty of the problem of time results from this. For we do not at first see how the distension of the soul will be able to be reconciled with a time that is defined essentially as something that "belongs to movement" (219a9–10).

The second phase in constructing the definition of time follows, namely, applying to time the relation of before and after, through the transfer of magnitude in general, passing by way of space and movement. In order to lay the groundwork for this argument, Aristotle first posits the analogical relation that holds between the three continuous entities: magnitude, movement, and time. On the one hand, "the movement goes with [or better, obeys, akoluthei] the magnitude" (219a10), and on the other, the analogy extends from movement to time "for time and movement always correspond with each other" (219a17). Now, what is continuity if not the possibility of dividing a magnitude an infinite number of times? As for the relation between before and after, it consists in a relation of order resulting from a continuous division such as this. Thus the relation between before and after is in time only because it is in movement and it is in movement only because it is in magnitude. "Since then before and after hold in magnitude, they must also hold in movement, these corresponding to those. But also in time the distinction of before and after must hold, for time and movement always correspond with each other" (219a15–18). The second phase of the argument is completed. Time, we said above, has something to do with movement, but with what aspect of movement? With the before and after in movement. Whatever the difficulties in founding the before and after on a relation or order based on magnitude as such, and on the transfer by analogy from magnitude to movement and from movement to time, the point of the argument is not in doubt: succession, which is nothing other than the before and after in time, is not an absolutely primary relation. It proceeds by analogy from an ordering relation that is in the world before being in the soul. Once again we here come up against something irreducible. Whatever the mind contributes to the grasping of before and after—and we might add, whatever the mind constructs on this basis through its narrative activity—it finds succession in things before taking it up again in itself. The mind begins by submitting to succession and even suffering it, before constructing it.

The third phase of the Aristotelian definition of time is what is decisive for our purposes. It completes the relation between before and after by adding a numerical relation to it. And with the introduction of number the definition of time is complete: "For time is just this—number of motion in respect of 'before' and 'after'" (219b). The argument, once again, rests on a feature of the perception of time, namely, the mind's ability to distinguish two end points and an interval. The soul, then, notes that there are two instants, and the intervals marked out by these instants can be counted. In a sense, the break formed by the instant, considered as an act of the intelligence, is decisive. "For what is bounded by the 'now' is thought to be time—we may asssume this" (219a-29). But the privilege accorded movement is not weakened in any way by this. If the soul is necessary in order to determine an instant—more exactly, to distinguish and count two instants—and to compare intervals on the basis of a fixed unit, this perception of differences is founded on the perception of the continuities of magnitude and movement, and on the relation of order between the before and after, which "follows" from the order of derivation between the three analogous continua. Hence Aristotle can specify that what is important for the definition of time is not counted but countable numbers, and this is said about movement before being said about time. The result is that the Aristotelian definition of time—the "number of motion in respect of 'before' and 'after' " (219b2)—does not contain an explicit reference to the soul, despite drawing upon, at each phase of the definition, the operations of perception, discrimination, and comparison, which can only be those of the soul.

Below we shall discuss at what cost the phenomenology of "time-consciousness" that is implicit, if not in the Aristotelian definition of time, at least in the argumentation that leads up to it, can be brought to light, without thereby simply tipping the balance from Aristotle back to Augustine again. In truth, in one of the subsidiary treatises appended to his definition of time, Aristotle is the first to grant that the question of deciding whether "if the soul did not exist time would exist or not is a question that may fairly be asked" (223a21–22). Is not a soul, or better an intelligence, necessary in order to count, and first of all to perceive, discriminate, and compare? To understand Aristotle's refusal to include any noetic determination in the definition of time, we must follow to the very end the requirements whereby the phenomenology of time, suggested by such noetic activity of the soul, is unable to displace the principal axis of an analysis that accords a certain originality to time, but only on the condition that it no longer question its general dependence with respect to movement.

What are these requirements? They are the prerequisites already apparent in the initial definition of change (and movement) that root it in physis —its source and its cause. It is physis that, by supporting the dynamism of movement, preserves the dimension of time over and above its human aspects.

In order to restore its fullness to physis, we must be attentive to what Aristotle retains from Plato, despite the advance his philosophy of time represents in relation to that of his teacher. Moreover, we must lend an ear to the invincible word that, coming to us from far beyond Plato, before all our philosophy, and despite all our efforts to construct a phenomenology of time-consciousness, teaches that we do not produce time but that it surrounds us, envelops us, and overpowers us with its awesome strength. In this connection, how can we fail not to think of Anaximander's famous fragment on the power of time, where the alteration of generation and corruption is seen to be subject to the "arrangement of Time"?

An echo of this word coming from antiquity can still be heard in Aristotle in some of the minor treatises that the redactor of the Physics joined to the major treatise on time. In two of these appended treatises, Aristotle asks what it means "to be in time" (220b32–222a9) and what things "are in time" (222b16–223a15). He strives to interpret these expressions of everyday language in a sense that is compatible with his own definition.

But we cannot say that he is completely successful in doing this. Certainly, he says, being in time means more than existing when time exists. It means "being in number." And being in number means being "contained" (périékhétai) by number, "as things in place are contained by place" (221a17). At first sight, this philosophical exegesis of everyday expressions does not go beyond the theoretical resources of the previous analysis. However the expression itself does go beyond the proposed exegesis. And what is at issue reappears, even more forcefully, a few lines further on in the following form: "being contained by time," which seems to give time an independent existence, superior to the things that are contained "in" it (221a28). As if carried along by the power of the words themselves, Aristotle admits that we can say that "a thing, then, will be affected by time" (221a30) and he accepts the saying that "time wastes things away, that all things grow old through time, and that people forget owing to the lapse of time" (221a31–32).

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Time and Narrative Volume 3 by Paul Ricoeur, Kathleen Blamey, David Pellauer. Copyright © 1988 The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
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Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0226713369
• ISBN 13: 9780226713366
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 361