Celebrating Human Diversity, Tolerance, Acceptance and Letting-be: Gleanings from Ricoeur’s “Hermeneutics of Openness”

Hermeneutics as an art of understanding cannot be separated from human existence, and as such, hermeneutics is therefore an art in understanding human life and living. Philosophy, and in this case hermeneutics, can be a potent venue of insights and reflections on our condition as human existents. As pointed out by the modern French philosopher, the late Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), life can only be grasped by means of its multifaceted expressions or manifestations. The hermeneutic process can better explain the “ins-and-outs” of living, since the hermeneutic process itself is a dynamic and creative process in untangling and unravelling life’s situatedness as well as its conditionings. This is why I say that Ricoeur’s hermeneutics is a “life-interpretation”; a hermeneutics that seeks to understand life through the various manifestations of human living. (See, Paul Ricoeur, From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, pp. 109-113.)

In this my philosophical essay, let me focus on just one overarching theme in Ricoeurian hermeneutics, viz: the relationship between Ricoeur’s concept of “surplus of meaning” and his view on what he terms “hermeneutics of openness”. Ricoeur insists that the meaning of the text cannot be validated nor limited in terms of empirical or logical strictures since the metaphorical aspect of language will always afford surplus of meaning. Thus our interpretation always starts in terms of textual approximation as to the semantic significance of the text as it is subjectively understood and contextualized by us. We cannot therefore say that our appropriation of the text is the only absolute interpretation to the exclusion of other possible interpretations. The way how a linguistic act or a text is interpreted is always based on the situation and the context of the interpreter of the said text.

For Ricoeur, hermeneutics always starts through the via media of the various multiplicities of subjective possibility among interpreters (See, Paul Ricoeur, Ibid. pp. 157-159.). This simply means that as we move along in the process stage of interpretation and explanation up till the stage of understanding, we will begin to have a clearer interpretation and grasp of what the text says; and as we begin to share our interpretation with the community of interpreting hermeneutes (i.e., people attempting to interpret a text or a linguistic act), it will dawn on us that ours is not the only valid interpretation there is; and that the text itself opens up into varieties and pluralities of interpretations. Thus one can never dogmatize an interpretation to be the only right, accurate, and authentic interpretation. Although Ricoeur says that there are “better” interpretations, in the sense that these interpretations provide clearer illumination of the text and that they provide a better grasp of our human condition; he likewise emphasizes that at the start, we should give our initial interpretive approach of the text a dose of caution i.e., we should be prudent to think that our interpretation is only a probable approximation of the text and can therefore be mistaken or that there may be better interpretations than our very own.

I believe that this Ricoeurian concept of the “surplus of meaning” gives a significant degree of openness in Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of interpreting human phenomena and behavioral actuations. By seriously taking the implication of openness that the surplus of meaning engenders in hermeneutics, we will be prevented from becoming dogmatic, rigid, and closed-minded in our interpretations. Openness and open-mindedness are the attendant virtues to Ricoeur’s concept of the “surplus of meaning” since the interpreter is made to realize that the text is so rich in possible meanings that one cannot simply pin-down one’s interpretation as the only authoritative or sacrosanct interpretation. The hermeneute’s flexibility and sensitivity to this “surplus of meaning” will make him open and respectful to allow various possible interpretations of the text.

Now let us reflect what this Ricoeurian “surplus of meaning” tells us in the practical dimension of our contemporary life and living; and how Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of openness to subjective possibilities” is relevant to our society as of the present. Today’s world is beset with various conflicts and misunderstandings due to the diverse ways of reading the various expressions of life around us. Our diversity in religion, culture, ethos, worldview, and ideology, far from creating in us the capacity to celebrate each other’s differences, have made us even more unrelentingly rigid, narrow, dogmatic, prejudiced, and judgmental against those views which are different from ours. This is the reason why I feel that Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of openness” can make a great contribution in producing a multidimensional, multi-cultural and pluralistic human society whose attitude is openness to the “others”.

Following the principle of “surplus of meaning” i.e., that there are many possible interpretations in as much as there are various interpreters who reflect on a text or on a phenomenon, and given that this plurality of interpretations cannot be helped since all of us in our human conditioning are all situated, then it is best to listen and be enriched by the interpretation of others; since to do so would be to listen to their own contexts and their in-commensurable uniqueness of life-worlds. If we truly give an allowance that our views can be mistaken and that our partial understanding can be further enriched by the reflections of others, then this hermeneutic tolerance will be the best antidote to every kind of fundamentalist, exclusivist, extremist and dogmatic worldviews. We need to realize that the expressions of our human existence is so vast, so rich, so multidimensional, so inexhaustible, so varied; and we would surely do a great service to human existence if we allow this richness of life and living to widen our views on things to include that of others’ views and “take-on-things”.

What then is the sociological relevance and praxis of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of openness? We have seen how Ricoeur’s “surplus of meaning” brings us to the issue of openness and tolerance of other’s viewpoints. This for me is the significance of Ricoeurian hermeneutics to our contemporary human condition. Ricoeur points to us a viable way of peacefully and amicably resolving the various conflicts that we humans are now facing. This viable way of conflict-resolution is done through dialogue or authentic conversation with the view of understanding and indeed, more than understanding, I say “feeling” what the other feels with an open possibility of being changed or transformed by the other’s point of view.

I am convinced that Ricoeur is inviting us to take the courageous risk and to have the brave vulnerability to be open to “the other”. To engage in dialogue is a “cathartic” experience since it exorcises from us all the demons of rigidity, self-righteousness, megalomania, egotistic prejudices and feelings of self-invincibility (i.e., the feeling that one is not vulnerable to commit mistakes and that one is always right in all his views). To engage in dialogue is the first yet very significant step towards conversion or self-transformation (metanoia). Some people may be afraid to go this far (i.e., to the point of transforming his view of the “other”), still Ricoeur’s call to openness, acceptance, and genuine dialogue gently beckons them further on. The least thing that they can do as a starting point, is to initiate the process of dialogue and understanding by treating other points of view with genuine respect and considering them as another possible (or viable) ways of interpretation.

I strongly feel that respectful tolerance and authentic dialogue are the practical ways by which we can socially and practically engage Ricoeur’s “hermeneutics of openness” in our present milieu. In pursuance to achieving authentic dialogue, we therefore need to guard ourselves against the hubris of rigidity and the megalomania of dogmatic certainty. We need to be truly open to what life and “the others” have to say to us since we human beings, are called, in the words of Ricoeur, to “endlessly appropriate what we are, through the mediation of the multiple expressions of our desire to be and to become” (Paul Ricoeur, From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, p.45).

To be genuinely open to oneself, to others and to the world is to truly live-out with joy both our human finitude and our myriad human possibilities—and these can only be done when we are truly open to what life and its varied expressions, as well as what others have to say to us. To be genuinely open to Life is to learn from the experiences of others, even if their views and experiential understanding of Truth may be totally different from mine. This all-embracing and all-inclusive attitude of “letting-the-person-be” is what true tolerance and authentic acceptance of the “other” is really all about.