Arts,language and hermeneutical aesthetics: Interview with Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005)

Responding to the interlocutors, Ricoeur, utilizing Kantian aesthetic theory, addresses the nature of the work of art, its universality and communicability, and explores its temporality — its ‘transhistoricity’ — by utilizing concepts derived from medieval philosophy, including ‘sempiternality’ and ‘monstration’. He expands on hermeneutics, defends it against charges of relativism, expatiates on the danger of aestheticism, and explains the value of mimesis in art. He explores the different art forms, focusing with Merleau-Ponty on Cézanne as a model of the ‘ipseity’ of the artist; and he dwells particularly on the singularity of music and its ‘pathic’ moods. A discussion of literature culminates in an emphasis on the special importance of Holocaust texts.