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of this broader task: we have to recover the act of existing, the positing of the self, in allthe density of its works.” 6 Hence it can be seen that Ricoeur has corrected Kant’s viewof the place of evil in freedom. He has, however, considered the locus of evil to stemfrom the disproportion in the synthesis between finitude and infinitude on the theoretical,practical, and especially affective levels which come to expression in the fullness ofsymbolic language. It is from the symbols of evil that thought reaches the notion of theservile will or the will in bondage. 7Ricoeur’s recourse, in a philosophic reflection, to religious symbols and to their underlyingmeaning is not problematic in so far as a philosophic task is undertaken. He, however,does more than that by letting assumed religious content slip into the philosophical hermeneuticsituation of his philosophical fore-comprehension. Thus, religious content is notsimply looked at but assumed, and precisely within his philosophy of freedom and evil.This has led him to accept, with Kant, a somewhat religious overtone to his interpretationof radical evil as a necessary and constitutive aspect of existential freedom, requiring thathuman existence be fallen. It is precisely this assumed stance, within which Ricoeurbegins his analysis of the ontic aspect of existence, which must be further examined.The pre-comprehension of existence that Ricoeur adopts requires an adjustment in orderto liberate existence philosophically from its prejudice of a specific faith option, withinwhich his reflection operates. Within that context radical evil must be extricated from itsnecessarily constitutive role in existential freedom. The resultant moral neutrality of existencemust liberate human existence from fallenness as its necessary constitution, so thatexistence as innocent, fallen, and recreated can be seen to share the same existentialstructure. Thus, while Ricoeur has avoided, in his ethical account of freedom in terms ofevil, the ontologizing of fault, he has, within the prejudice of his hermeneutic situation,made necessary to existence aspects which Heidegger has diligently avoided. The questionthen becomes whether and to what extent Ricoeur’s own long way, which initially aimsat resolving the problems which the short way ignores, must accept some prior guidancefrom the ontological level, in order to accentuate certain dimensions of human existencewhich are first encountered ontically. Failing to accept such guidance, reflection on theontic may result in exaggerating the importance of certain less essential aspects of the humancondition, but in no way mitigating the need and advantage of his long way to ontologyor his distinction between the essential and the existential dimensions of the humansynthesis of the finite and infinite in relation to evil.By contrast, Heidegger’s hermeneutics of existence arises at the point of avoiding theoption which Ricoeur exercises, in developing a philosophical anthropology. 8 Heideggerfrequently emphasizes that the definitive characteristics of the human are not at issue, butinstead the “understanding of Being” which is constitutive of it, thus showing a fundamentalprejudice toward reaching the ontological at the expense of a certain richness ofthe ontic accessible to methodological openness in another direction. This is clearly oneplace where Heidegger’s quick move to ontology precludes a certain necessary and beneficialinvestigation into concrete human being. In this context, what is so pivotal forHeidegger is the fact that the capacity for understanding Being as such emerges as thephenomenon for bringing the entirety of Dasein’s Being into question. There is, to be sure,a reciprocal implication between the inquiry into the meaning of Being and the being towhom this question is decisive, Dasein. But even within that reciprocity there is an even6Ibid.7It is not our purpose here to explore the content of the symbols of evil or of the symbolics ingeneral.8Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie & Edward Robinson (New York:Harper & Row, 1962), 74-75.75