2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

S TRUCTURALISM, PHILOSOPHY, AND AI
The structural approach will forever be a scientific enterprise unable to go to the core
of the problem; the philosopher, instead, is concerned with the meaning of the words, for
which linguistic laws serve as instrumental mediation, forever unconscious (52).
Ricoeur provides a concrete example of the hermeneutic comprehension of religious
text on the basis of the body of myths contained in the Old Testament. He claims that the
sens of the sacred text is organized by at least three “noyaux de sens,” three agglomerations
of meaning: each being organized by a network of events: the first is represented by the an-
nouncement of Jahve’s coming and the deliverance form the Egyptian captivity, the second
is centered around David’s mission and the third focuses on the events after the Jews’ di-
aspora. For the correct comprehension of these agglomeration of meaning, Ricoeur stress-
es, a taxonomy of oppositions constructed along Structuralist lines is useless, because the
correct method of understanding must recover the “intellectual labor” (le travail intellectu-
el) that, starting from the mythical structure, was able to construct the identity of the nation
of Israël as a historical entity. The speculative theology embedded in the texts has a minimal
role in this process; the most important part, instead, is played by the constant interpretation
and re-interpretation of those biblical texts within a historical framework:
Le travail théologique sur ces événements est en effet lui-même une
histoire ordonnée, une tradition interprétante. La réinterprétation, par
chaque génération, du fond de traditions confère à cette compréhension de
l’histoire une caractère historique, et suscite un dévéloppement qui a une
unité signifiante impossible à projeter dans un sistème. […] il est
remarquable que c’est par ce travail de réinterprétation de ces propres
traditions que le peuple d’Israêl s’est donné une identité qui est elle-même
historique. 25
This is why the “taxonomic” structure of oppositions that, undoubtedly, can be discov-
ered within the biblical text, must be seen as a mere instrument, as the tool that enables the
mediation between the people of Israël and its own history: the meaning of the text is not
to be found in its structure, but in the active acts of interpretations that the structure makes
25. Paul Ricoeur, “Structure and Herméneutique…,” 49.
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