2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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possible, to be sure, but that will inevitably transcend it. In Ricoeur’s perspective, the ex-
ample is important because it shows the primacy of history, and especially of a historically
situated act of interpretation, over the synchronic coexistence of terms in opposition within
a myth that the Structuralists stress over and over. The historical primacy of history—the
fact that Israël’s own interpretation of its texts is constituted by a a series of events and not
by a speculative theology—entails that the current understanding of the text must be his-
torical as well. A structural analysis of the biblical text, according to Ricoeur, would skim
the surface of what constitutes the true meaning of the text for the people who has been con-
stantly involved with it. Rather, a correct comprehension will take the form of a “re-telling”
insofar as it will try to repeat, in a different context, the original “deployment” of sense that
“a présidé à l’elaboration des traditions du fond biblique.”
Structuralism, instead, misses this level of temporality that is inherent in the myths and
cannot account for the recovery of meaning that may happen through a structure but by
means of an act that will transcends it to reach beyond. Therefore, the “science structurale”
is valuable as a preliminary analysis of the conditions that may constraint those interpreta-
tive acts, but it is not sufficient to a truly philosophical, or hermeneutic understanding. It is
a science of the instrumental mediation that cannot—and should not dare to, as Ricoeur will
say later—overstep its boundaries into the philosophical domain.
The essential coordinates of the philosophical debate around Structuralist are thus laid
out: on one side stands the Hegelian project of a philosophy of the subject who understands
himself, reflexively, also as being: “une philosophie de soi et de l’être,” in Ricoeur’s words.
Hermeneutics, on this interpretation, comprehends itself as a scaled down, relativized ver-
sion of the Hegelian Logic that recognizes the intrinsic impossibility of providing a com-
plete, and truly Hegelian, description of all the categories and accepts the lesser goal of
supplying, at given time, an historically bound fragment of such an interpretation. On the
opposite side stands the Kantian project of providing an a-historical grid of formal, or pure-
ly syntactical, categories that the subject will be forced, unreflectively, to use in its daily
operations. The focal point that enables the dialogue between these two traditions, as
Ricoeur makes clear, is the subject, since both Kant’s and Hegel’s efforts must be read as