The Case Against Interpreting Eros as Erotic Love: A Commentary on Paul Ricœur’s Early Work in Education and Philosophical Anthropology

Abstract

Agape, philia, and eros are the forms of love that receive most attention in the work of the French philosopher Paul Ricœur. The general consensus among commentators is that when Ricœur talks about agape, he means a love that is all about giving, with no expectation of receiving anything in return; and when he talks about eros, he means something close to erotic love or erotic desire. This article builds on the research of two French commentators, Olivier Abel and Jérôme Porée, to offer a more detailed account of what Ricœur says about love of neighbour and concern for others, and where he says it, during one very specific period: 1947–1960. That is the period when Ricœur was very committed to education reform in France. However, the article disputes Abel and Porée’s interpretation of what Ricœur means by eros in Fallible Man, a work of philosophical anthropology published in 1960. The article shows that Ricœur’s interpretation of eros, far from being the standard one, is in fact highly original, and a perfect example of the imaginative use of philosophical resources that marked his early career. The article also discusses The Symbolism of Evil, a second work of philosophical anthropology that Ricœur published the very same year. In the context of that discussion, it draws attention to two references to “love” that link back to the eros of Fallible Man. It then offers a close reading of Marguerite Léna’s insightful commentary on a remarkable passage from The Symbolism of Evil, where Ricœur talks about the essential roles that love and fear play in all forms of education, including moral education.

1. Introduction

There is an entry on “love” (amour) in Olivier Abel and Jérôme Porée, Le vocabulaire de Paul Ricœur (“Paul Ricœur’s Lexicon”) [1], which can serve as a very useful guide for anyone who wants to build up a picture of how and where Ricœur uses that term. The first meaning of “love” that Abel and Porée discuss is “agape understood as love of neighbour” [1] (p. 12). Ricœur uses the term in that sense in several places, but the text that they choose to focus on, initially at any rate, is “Love and Justice” (Amour et justice [1990]) [2]. They note that Ricœur “never stopped contrasting love and justice, in an attempt to think of them together and to correct one through the other” [1] (p. 11). To explain what they mean by correcting one through the other, Abel and Porée briefly outline the limitations that justice imposes on love before quoting a passage from “Love and Justice” that suggests a way for love to temper the coldness of justice:

Love cannot abolish the rules of justice, and principally those of reciprocity; but conversely “Without the corrective of the commandment to love, the golden rule would be constantly drawn in the direction of a utilitarian maxim… I would even say that the tenacious incorporation, step by step, of a supplementary degree of compassion and generosity in all of our codes—including our penal codes and our codes of social justice—constitutes a perfectly reasonable task, however difficult and interminable it may be”.

[2] (pp. 35, 37)

Abel and Porée do not mention a rationale for limiting the power of love, but it is clear from a commentary that they go on to offer on Ricœur’s “State and Violence” [3] that the rules of justice, and principally those of reciprocity are essential for the maintenance and proper functioning of the modern state. The above quote within a quote is more informative. It explains that love’s immediate target is a principle called the “golden rule.” The “golden rule,” which is widely used across different cultures, is: treat others as you would want to be treated by them. But the problem with the rule, according to the quote, is that it can lead people to adopt a controversial utilitarian maxim. The following is a well-known formulation of a utilitarian maxim: act in such a way as to generate “the greatest happiness or utility for the greatest number.” That maxim is controversial because it can be used to justify disregarding the needs, and even the rights, of minorities. The quote from Love and Justice does not include an explanation for why the golden rule tends to be drawn in the direction of a utilitarian maxim, but it does include a suggestion for how a society that is governed by a maxim of that type might begin to address some of the difficulties that their minorities experience. Guided by love of neighbour and concern for others, it could incorporate “a supplementary degree of compassion and generosity” in its penal codes, its codes of social justice, etc.

The second meaning of “love” that Abel and Porée discuss is eros. They describe eros as “a sense no less fundamental” than love of neighbour and concern for others, “which touches on erotic desire and life” [1] (p. 11). Their illustrations of Ricœur’s use of the term are drawn from a range of texts including Fallible Man (L’homme faillible [1960]) [4]. They draw particular attention to the following statement from Fallible Man: “This fundamental feeling, this Eros through which we are in being, is particularized in a diversity of feelings of belonging that are, as it were, the schematization of it” [4] (p. 103). They then link that statement on eros to Ricœur’s commentary on the “Song of Songs” in Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies (Penser la Bible [1998]) [5]. They note that it is there that Ricœur talks about “erotic love” as a metaphor for all the figures of love [1] (p. 11).

Le vocabulaire de Paul Ricœur is a valuable resource, but it does not offer a complete overview of how and where Ricœur uses the term “love.” Abel and Porée do not discuss philia, for example. But Ricœur certainly uses the term “love” in that third sense. He mentions philia in Fallible Man (French original 1960) [4], and he is still commenting on “love” in that sense over forty years later in The Course of Recognition (Parcours de la reconnaissance) [6]. Indeed, he provides an insightful theory of philia, whose role in his late ethics clearly emerges in Oneself as Another (Soi-même comme un autre [1990]) [7]. However, one thing that Abel and Porée’s Ricœur lexicon does very well is trace a couple of paths for others to follow. The first path, which explores the meaning of agape understood as love of neighbour and concern for others, begins with “Love and Justice” [2], loops back to History and Truth (Histoire et Verité) [3], and then continues forward to arrive at The Course of Recognition [6]. Agape could be described as the apex of the latter text, playing a key role in complementing the three theories of recognition that it examines. The second path, which explores the meaning of eros, begins with Fallible Man [4] and continues to Ricœur’s commentary on the “Song of Songs” in Thinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies [5]. It then loops back to the third edition of History and Truth (1967 edition), an edition that is not available in English translation.

In this article, I take the first step on each of those paths, starting with Abel and Porée’s commentary on agape understood as love of neighbour. In Section 2, I draw attention to the link between Ricœur’s contribution to education reform in France and the essays collected in History and Truth, many of which refer to love of neighbour and concern for others. The idea is to show that comments on love were not considered out of place in Ricœur’s early writings on education, far from it. In Section 3, I offer a close reading of important sections from Fallible Man [4]. Fallible Man is the first part of a two-part study on the philosophical anthropology underpinning Ricœur’s philosophy of education. Abel and Porée use a key quote from that book to introduce their interpretation of what Ricœur means by eros. I dispute their interpretation and show that Ricœur’s treatment of eros is in fact highly original, and a perfect example of the imaginative use of philosophical resources that marked his early career.

In Section 4, I offer a close reading of important sections from The Symbolism of Evil (La symbolique du mal [1960]) [8]. The Symbolism of Evil is the second part of Ricœur’s study on the philosophical anthropology underpinning his philosophy of education. Abel and Porée do not include that text on their list of places where Ricœur uses “love” in the sense of eros. But I show how two references to “love” made in the opening chapter of that book link back to the discussion on eros in Fallible Man [4]. In that regard, I draw on the work of Marguérite Léna, a former doctoral student of Ricœur’s. I offer a detailed account of her insightful reading of a key passage from The Symbolism of Evil that specifies the role that love plays in all forms of education, including moral education.

2. Love of One’s Neighbour and Concern for Others

From the late 1940s to the early 1960s, Paul Ricœur devoted his attention to two large projects. As President of the Protestant Teaching Federation (La Fédération Protestante de l’enseignement) or PTF, a position he held from 1947 to 1960, he campaigned for a reconceptualization of “secularism” (laïcité), the principle on which the French public education system is founded [9] (pp. 177–178). Campaigning for change involved publishing articles in journals of education, including the PTF’s own Faith and Education (Foi et Éducation) and contributing to education seminars, workshops, and conferences. Another project of the period involved adopting a broader perspective on anthropology than Ricœur had had to date and saying more about “the structures of human reality” [4] (p. xliii). That project would result in the publication of a two-part work entitled Finitude and Guilt (Finitude et culpabilité), whose constituent elements are Fallible Man [4] and The Symbolism of Evil [8]. Finitude and Guilt was published in 1960, the same year that Ricœur stepped down from the position of President of the PTF. Not surprisingly, given that he worked intently on those two projects for almost exactly the same extended period, Ricœur’s work in education and his work in philosophical anthropology are interlinked in various ways.

History and Truth [3], the only book length study on education that Ricœur ever produced, points to some of the practical ways in which his work in education and his work in philosophical anthropology are connected. First, education gives him a critical perspective on university philosophy, which ultimately leads him to adopt a whole new way of thinking about philosophical problems. As he notes in, “Emmanuel Mounier: A Personalist Philosopher” (Emmanuel Mounier: une philosophie personnaliste), the “teaching function,” by which he means a body like the French Ministry of National Education, “points up rather well the strengths and weaknesses of university philosophy” [3] (p. 134). Among its strengths are “its ability to deal with problems of method and fundamental questions”; and among its weaknesses are “situating its problems on the fringes of life and history.” [3] (p. 134). Ricœur agrees with that assessment and tries to ensure that the philosophical problems to which he draws attention are always ones with a strong connection either to history or to everyday life, if not to both. Second, the high value he places on philosophy leads him to introduce philosophical concepts and to offer philosophical analyses both in his contributions to journals of education and in his talks at education conferences, seminars, and workshops. A good example of that is “Objectivity and Subjectivity in History” (Objectivité et subjectivité en histoire), another essay from that same collection. It started out as a talk he gave in December 1952 at CIEP de Sèvres, a public institution for educational and training cooperation [3] (p. 329). Delegates had gathered to discuss the then current issue of how to coordinate the teaching of history and philosophy in secondary schools. Addressing the issue, Ricœur thought it important to invite the audience to consider his philosophical analysis of the formation of the subjectivity of a historian: “the historian’s craft educates his subjectivity. History makes the historian as much as the historian makes history. Or, to be more precise, the historian’s craft makes history and the historian” [3] (p. 31). That is not the only reference to the formation of subjectivity that we find in Ricœur’s work of the period. To take one very important example, the second part of Finitude and Guilt includes a discussion on the formation of “ethical consciousness” and the role that love plays in that process. I will return to that example when I discuss the opening chapter of The Symbolism of Evil [7].

History and Truth is an important source for the entry on “love” in Abel and Porée’s Ricœur lexicon. There they find references to “Agape understood as love of one’s neighbour” [1] (p. 12). They quote from two essays in the collection before offering a general commentary. The first quote is taken from “State and Violence”: “…until the last day, love and coercion will walk along side by side as the two pedagogies, sometimes converging, sometimes diverging, of mankind. The end of this duality would be […] the end of history” [3] (p. 246). The second quote is taken from “The Socius and the Neighbor”: “…in comparison to love of neighbour, the social bond is never as profound or as comprehensive. It is never as profound because social mediations will never become the equivalent of encounter or immediate presence. It is never as comprehensive because the group only asserts itself against another group and shuts itself off from others” [3] (p. 108). In their general commentary on those two references to love of neighbour, Abel and Porée raise the question: “How can we combine justice and love, the judiciary’s ethics of responsibility and the prophet’s ethics of conviction, the logic of equivalence in retribution and the logic of the gift that goes beyond all retribution? [1] (p. 12). They do not say whether Ricœur ever succeeded in answering that very difficult question. Instead, they underscore his enduring interest in “love” in the sense of love of neighbour and concern for others. They note that that theme is explored in History and Truth and in various works right up to and including The Course of Recognition [6].

It is possible to discover a little bit more about the significance of the quotes from History and Truth that Abel and Porée have selected if we stop to consider the headings under which “State and Violence” and “The Socius and the Neighbor” are listed in the book. History and Truth is divided into two parts. As stated in the Preface to the First Edition (1955), the first part includes essays that are “devoted to the significance of historical work, some dealing with the historian’s craft proper” [3] (p. 3). The second part includes essays that have to do with “a critique of civilization.” Those particular essays are all “oriented toward a political pedagogy, the meaning of which is said to be clarified in the pages devoted to Emmanuel Mounier” [3] (pp. 3–4). “The Socius and the Neighbor,” which as we have just seen considers love of neighbour to be a deeper and more inclusive bond than the social bond of the Greek polis and its modern counterparts, is included among the essays in the first part of History and Truth. “State and Violence,” which as we have just seen names the two pedagogies that Ricœur thinks shape our “ethical consciousness,” is included among the essays in the second part of the book. As already indicated, Ricœur claims to have clarified the meaning of “political pedagogy” in the essay “Emmanuel Mounier: A Personalist Philosopher.” There he notes that Mounier’s pedagogy implies a politics, although he explains that, “Within the limitations of [this] study…, I cannot show how a pedagogy encompasses a politics, or rather, how it implies one” [3] (p. 140 [footnote 14]). He goes on to say that “Mounier preached a revival… of a civilization taken as a whole” [3] (p. 136). The idea was to leave the worlds of the bourgeois and the fascist far behind and “remake the Renaissance.” Ricœur explains that Mounier considered the world of the bourgeois “a world of ‘less’ (loving less and being less)”; and he considered the fascist’s world “a world of the ‘pseudo’: [the fascist’s] enthusiasm is a pseudo-generosity, his nationalism a pseudo-universal, his racism a pseudo-concrete, his aggressiveness a pseudo-strength” [3] (p. 139).

Finitude and Guilt, the two-part philosophical anthropology that underpins Ricœur’s philosophy of education, reprises at least some of the ideas that Ricœur introduces in History and Truth. I discuss Fallible Man in the next section, and I move on to consider The Symbolism of Evil in the section after that.

3. “This Fundamental Feeling, This Eros”

As Ricœur explains in the first chapter of Fallible Man, the “whole precomprehension” of his proposed philosophical anthropology is to be found in Plato’s Symposium, Phaedrus, and Republic, three dialogues that comment upon the myth of the soul [4] (p. 7). He has already expressed the view that “Philosophy does not start anything independently: supported by the non-philosophical, it derives its existence from the substance of what has already been understood prior to reflection” [4] (p. 4). It soon emerges that he is particularly interested in the belief that the soul “is the very movement from the sensible toward the intelligible; it is anabasis, the rising toward being” [4] (p. 7). He draws attention to Plato’s observation that the “soul holds opinions and makes mistakes; it is not vision, or at least, not at first, but an aim” [4] (p. 7). As is made clear in the Theaetetus, he says, it is only “With time and effort and through a long and difficult process of schooling” that the soul will cease to be an aim and become “contact and possession” [4] (p. 7). He goes on to offer a commentary on a passage in Book IV of the Republic where the soul appears as “an ambiguous power which undergoes the double attraction of reason and desire” [4] (p. 8). He explains that the former urges it on whilst the latter holds it back. Sometimes that ambiguous power, which Plato calls thumos, battles along with desire; other times, it takes the side of reason. It can thus be described as a “mélange” [4] (p. 9). He thinks that the most appropriate representation of that “field of forces” is to be found, not in the Republic, but rather in the Symposium and the Phaedrus [4] (p. 8). In the latter dialogues, “Eros, demi-god, demon” is “a representation of the soul” [4] (p. 9).

Ricœur’s first working hypothesis is that the idea that human beings are “by nature fragile and liable to err” is “an idea wholly accessible to pure reflection” [4] (p. 1). By “pure reflection” he means a rational style of inquiry. He is encouraged by a comment that Descartes makes at the beginning of the fourth Meditation: “man’s being is such that ‘I find myself subject to an infinity of imperfections, so that I should not be surprised if I err’” [4] (p. 1). Ricœur, who knows the Meditations very well, underscores the global character of that disposition toward error. It can be shown to be a feature of cognition, volition, and feeling. His second working hypothesis “is that this global disposition consists in a certain non-coincidence of man with himself” [4] (p. 1). Before testing that hypothesis, he once again turns to Descartes. He remarks that, “Here the Cartesian paradox of finite-infinite man recommends itself” [4] (p. 2). However, he makes it clear that he disagrees with Descartes’s interpretation of what it means to be “intermediate” between the finite and the infinite. One of the mistakes Descartes makes, he thinks, is “to treat human reality as a region, an ontological locality, or a place lodged between other places” [4] (p. 2). Guided by Plato’s reflections on the myth of the soul, he insists that “Man is not intermediate because he is between angel and animal… His ontological characteristic of being-intermediate consists precisely in that his act of existing is the very act of bringing about mediations between all the modalities and all the levels of reality within him and outside him” [4] (p. 3). To help him formulate a better explanation for what it means to be “intermediate,” he turns to works by Kant, Husserl, and Hegel.

Ricœur explains that the myth of “mélange” can be transposed to the level of “logos,” or philosophy, only in stages [4] (p. 17). The first “necessary, although inadequate stage” is a Kantian style examination of the power of knowing. The power of knowing brings into view the first “disproportion” that can be analysed using philosophical tools: the disproportion between receiving “the thing” and determining it [4] (pp. 17–18). Still following Kant, and “without worrying about critical orthodoxy,” he rediscovers the “third term,” or “intermediate,” in the transcendental imagination’s power of “synthesis” [4] (p. 18). As he observes, “What was previously ‘mélange’ and ‘misery’ for the pathetic understanding of man is now called ‘synthesis’” [4] (p. 17). The next stage in Ricœur’s transposition of Plato’s account of the soul from the level of myth to that of philosophy is a critique of the power of acting. That critique leads to the discovery of a second example of mediation: respect. Here is what Ricœur writes at the end of that second stage: “respect is the fragile synthesis in which the form of the person is constituted, just as the transcendental imagination was the hidden synthesis in which the thing’s form is constituted” [4] (p. 79). The third and final stage of the transposition process is a critique of the power of feeling. That critique is again modelled on Kant’s work. However, it also draws on Husserl’s investigations into the relationship between knowing and feeling. According to Ricœur, “…the significance of feeling appears in the reciprocal genesis of knowing and feeling. Taken outside of this mutual genesis, feeling is no more than a word that covers a host of partial functions: … disturbing emotions, affective states… etc. Put back into the movement of their mutual promotion, feeling and knowing ‘explain each other’” [4] (p. 83). Ricœur, who translated Husserl’s Ideas I (Ideen I) into French in the 1940s, is drawing on Husserl’s phenomenology of perception and his sketch of the founded character of feeling. As he indicates elsewhere, the key sections on the founded character of feeling are §§ 95 and 116 of Ideas I [10] (p. 213).

At each stage of the transposition of the “mélange” from the level of myth to the level of philosophy Ricœur spends some time discussing the specific finite and infinite considerations that consciousness manages to synthesize. In the case of the critique of knowing, the finite aspect of the dialectic is perspective, the infinite aspect is the verb; in the case of the critique of acting, the finite aspect of the dialectic is character, the infinite aspect is happiness; and in the case of the critique of feeling, the finite aspect of the dialectic is sensuous desire, the infinite aspect is “reason, whose specific desire is Eros” [4] (p. 92). Earlier, I mentioned that Ricœur draws attention to the way the Symposium and the Phaedrus depict the soul. He notes that in those dialogues, “Eros, demi-god, demon” is “a representation of the soul” [4] (p. 9). A little unexpectedly perhaps, given his appreciation for the way those dialogues imagine the soul as a “field of forces,” Ricœur does not follow suit. Instead of using the name Eros for the soul considered in its entirety, he uses it only for the infinite aspect of the dialectic of feeling, defined as “reason, whose specific desire is Eros” [4] (p. 92).

Before he offers a definition of eros, Ricœur discusses “two kinds of terminations of affective movements” [4] (p. 93). He also comments further upon “the reciprocal genesis of reason and feeling” [4] (p. 102). Drawing on Aristotle’s work in the area, he notes that the first kind of termination of affective movements “completes and perfects isolated, partial, finite acts, or processes” [4] (p. 93). He calls that pleasure. He then notes that the second kind of termination of affective movements completes and perfects “the total work of man,” a destiny, a destination, or an existential project [4] (p. 93). He calls that happiness in the sense of “the fullness of happiness or beatitude” [4] (p. 93). Finally, he points to the “inner discord” of pleasure and happiness. He explains that, “this duality of ‘ends’ animates and rules the duality of ‘movements’ and ‘appetites’ and internally divides human desire” [4] (p. 93). He is now ready to discuss the reciprocal genesis of reason and feeling.

The task he has set himself is to find, starting from “reason in the Kantian sense, reason as a demand for totality,” “the corresponding moment of feeling” [4] (p. 102). The first thing he does is draw attention to an “excellent text” from the Critique of Practical Reason [4] (p. 102). He explains that having rejected happiness as a principle of morality, Kant “rediscovers at the root of every dialectic and every transcendental illusion: ‘a view [Aussicht] into a higher immutable order of things in which we already are, and in which we may, by definite precepts, continue our existence in accordance with the supreme decree of reason’” [4] (p. 102). He comments that that little text “makes it very clear what the reciprocal genesis of reason and feeling can signify.” As he explains, “On the one hand, reason, as an openness to the totality, engenders feeling as an openness to happiness. On the other hand, feeling interiorizes reason and shows me that reason is my reason, for through it I appropriate reason for myself” [4] (p. 102). He remarks that, “In Platonic language, we are of the race of Ideas; the Eros that goes toward being is also that which recalls being as its Origin. In Kantian terms, reason is my ‘decree’ and my ‘destination’—my Bestimmung—the intention according to which I can ‘continue my existence’” [4] (p. 102). Taking the first line of each of the above quotations together, we can say that the feeling that corresponds to reason as an openness to totality is eros. Further, reason engenders eros, not as a desire that terminates in pleasure, but rather as something that is perfected in happiness. Ricœur is now in a position to offer the definition of eros that Abel and Porée note in Le vocabulaire de Paul Ricœur. The following is a longer version than the one they offer: “This fundamental feeling, this Eros through which we are in being, is particularized in a diversity of feelings of belonging that are, as it were, the schematization of it. These feelings called ‘spiritual,’ are no longer adaptable to any finite satisfaction; they make up the pole of infinitude of our whole affective life.” [4] (p. 103).

Introducing the short version of Ricœur’s definition of eros, Abel and Porée state that (1) “love” in the sense of eros is “no less fundamental” than love of neighbour and concern for others, and (2) it “touches on erotic desire and life” [1] (p. 11). I dispute both (1) and (2). As we saw in the above rather brief discussion on the “two kinds of terminations of affective movements,” Ricœur makes a distinction between “isolated, partial, finite acts, or processes,” which terminate in pleasure, and “the total work of man,” a destiny, a destination or an existential project, which terminates in happiness or beatitude. Now it is possible to assemble a list of the pleasures Ricœur names in “Affective Fragility,” the chapter where he discusses those issues. But it is not possible to assemble a list, even a very short one, of the fundamental feelings named in that chapter. That is because, in Fallible Man at any rate, Ricœur mentions one fundamental feeling only, and he calls it eros. What about agape understood as love of neighbour? It is not identified by name in Fallible Man, but if it has a place there, it is as one of the modalities of philia in which eros is said to “schematize itself.” Let me say something about that now.

Ricœur explains that the “schematization” of eros develops in two directions: (i) “that of interhuman participation in the various forms of ‘We’”; and (ii) “that of participation in tasks of supra-personal works that are ‘Ideas’” [4] (p. 103). Commenting on (i), he states that, “In the first direction the fundamental feeling schematizes itself in all the modalities of [philia]” [4] (p. 103). In other words, eros shows its essential features, not in one particular modality of philia, but rather in all of them. I think that that comment must surely rule out (2) above. If touching on erotic desire were an essential characteristic of eros, as Abel and Porée claim it is, touching on erotic would show up in all the modalities of philia. But it is evident that not all the modalities of philia touch on erotic desire. So, the interpretation of eros that Abel and Porée attribute to Ricœur does not work for Fallible Man, nor will it work for any other text that is closely related to it.

Ricœur goes on to say that, “The infinitude of feeling emerges clearly from the fact that no organized, historical community, no economy, no politic, no human culture can exhaust this demand for a totalization of persons, of a Kingdom in which, nevertheless, we now are and ‘in which, alone, we are capable of continuing our existence’” [4] (p. 103). When I read those lines, and especially the unusual phrase, “a totalization of persons,” I imagine someone totalling or adding up the number of persons in various social groups, systems, and institutions, etc. with a view to establishing which of them, either singly or in combination with others, would add up to the number of persons in the Kant-inspired Kingdom just mentioned. Every time the calculator gets the sum wrong, they will have to go higher, eventually rising toward an infinite number. If, for inclusive Kingdom of persons, we substitute Plato’s notion of being, the endless revising upwards could be said to capture, in properly philosophical concepts, the idea of the soul rising toward being. That was, of course, the very thing that Ricœur set out to do in Fallible Man. Interestingly, he goes on to describe eros as, “This interhuman schema of being” [4] (p. 103). He says that it “branches itself into the form of receptivity to the most far-removed and the form of the affinity for what is close at hand” [4] (p. 103).

When Ricœur comments on the second direction in which the “schematization” of Eros develops, he focuses attention on the things that bind people together, shared goals, and the conditions for the growth of friendships. He explains that without ideas, or creative themes, communities would have no bonds and no shared goals. With ideas, established friendships not only endure, they grow. To facilitate the growth and maintenance of friendships, eros also develops into “a devotion to Ideas” and the “spiritual feeling par excellence.”

4. “Love” Still Means Eros in the Symbolism of Evil

Fallible Man was never meant to be a standalone work. As already noted, it was designed to form the first part of a two-part study called Finitude and Guilt. The second part of that study is The Symbolism of Evil [8]. Taken together, Fallible Man and The Symbolism of Evil map out the philosophical anthropology underpinning Ricœur’s philosophy of education. Fallible Man and The Symbolism of Evil take a similar approach to answering questions about human nature. Both gather insights found in non-philosophical sources, which they then try to raise to the level of philosophical reflection. In the case of Fallible Man, as we have already seen, the insights into human nature are found in Plato’s myth of the soul, especially the version where the soul is depicted as a mixture, or mélange. In the case of The Symbolism of Evil, as I will now try to show, the insights come from the religious person’s confession of evil. Very ambitiously, Ricœur wants to use his imagination to “re-enact” the confessions, not only of his contemporaries, but also of those who have older forms of “religious consciousness.” To access the confessions of the latter, he will need to have recourse to a hermeneutics of symbols.

Fallible Man and The Symbolism of Evil are similar in other ways too. To take one important example, they both pay close attention to feelings, or the affective side of human experience. In the case of Fallible Man, as we have already seen, Ricœur draws attention to eros, the feeling that corresponds to reason’s demand for totality. In his commentary on “this fundamental feeling,” which is said to schematize itself into a variety of feelings of belonging, he uses the phrases, “spiritual feeling” and “ontological feeling.” In the case of The Symbolism of Evil, as I will now try to show, he focuses attention on the feelings of dread and fear, feelings which have been mentioned in confessions of evil from the earliest days of human history. There are two very interesting comments on love in the opening chapter of The Symbolism of Evil, which I will also discuss in this section. Ricœur does not use any of the Greek words for “love” there. But as I will try to show, when he uses the term “love” in The Symbolism of Evil, he means “love” in the sense of eros.

In The Symbolism of Evil, Ricœur draws a distinction between what religious people say about their own failings and what a theologian might say about the doctrine of original sin. He acknowledges that the latter “speculative” utterances are more elaborate and more “rationalized” than their spontaneous counterparts, but he cautions that it would be a mistake to infer that that means they are closer to philosophy. The problem with theological approaches to understanding wrongdoing and evil is that they are contaminated with “pseudo-philosophy,” a situation that makes them “less amenable to a direct confrontation with philosophy” in the proper sense [8] (p. 4). However, there is no contamination of that type in the “utterances that man makes about himself” [8] (p. 4). Those utterances “can and must be taken up into the element of philosophic discourse” [8] (p. 4).

Ricœur has an unusual proposal for how that might be done. As a first step, the philosopher must use their imagination to “re-enact” the confession of evil that the religious consciousness makes, and they must do that for three different forms of religious consciousness. Ricœur’s research in that field shows that to express their experience of wrongdoing or evil, the first form of religious consciousness to emerge used the symbol of stain; the second form of religious consciousness to emerge used the symbol of sin; and the third form of religious consciousness to emerge used the symbol of guilt.

The first chapter of The Symbolism of Evil begins as follows: “Dread of the impure and rites of purification are in the background of all our feelings and all our behavior relating to fault. What is there that the philosopher can understand about these feelings and these modes of behavior?” [8] (p. 25). It is conceded that the philosopher “would be tempted to reply: Nothing.” Defilement is barely a representation. What representation there is is submerged in terror, a “fear that blocks reflection.” Defilement “belongs to a mode of thought that we can no longer, it seems, ‘re-enact,’ even ‘in sympathetic imagination’” [8] (p. 25). But things are not what they seem. As Ricœur explains, it will prove possible “to ‘re-enact’ this sense of defilement” once the following stages of an investigation have been completed: (1) using ethnological science to allow defilement to “appear to us as a moment of consciousness that we have left behind”; and (2) bringing “into the account the symbolic richness of this experience of fault” [8] (p. 26). By then, we will have gotten close to an experience that has been retained, “and which perhaps conceals something that cannot be left behind, by which it survives through a thousand mutations” [8] (p. 26).

Drawing on the work of Raffaele Pettazzoni, an Italian anthropologist and philosopher of religion, Ricœur begins by recalling “the repertory of defilement,” which included “involuntary or unconscious human actions, the actions of animals, and even simple material events called defilements—the frog that leaps into the fire, the hyena that leaves its excrements in the neighborhood of a tent” [8] (pp. 26–27). He remarks that “our conscience no longer recognizes the repertory of defilement: what counts as defilement, for a conscience that lives under its regime, no longer coincides with what counts as evil for us” [8] (p. 26). The only things that we consider evil are “any offence against an ethical God, any violation of the justice that we owe to other men, [and] any lessening of our personal dignity” [8] (p. 26). Further, for something to be considered a fault, we have to be able to “insert a judgment of personal imputation” [8] (p. 27). For that reason alone, defilement appears to us to be a moment of consciousness that we have left behind.

Ricœur goes on to explain that there is more to defilement than an “inventory of faults.” Infectious contact is experienced both objectively and subjectively. When it is experienced subjectively, defilement is “a specific feeling which is of the order of Dread” [8] (pp. 29–30). He acknowledges that the feeling of dread may also appear “inaccessible to any re-enactment in imagination and sympathy,” but he assures us that the opposite is the case. The ancient feeling of dread is already “ethical dread and not merely physical fear” [8] (p. 30). It is “dread of a danger which is itself ethical and which, at a higher level of consciousness of evil, will be the danger of not being able to love any more, the danger of being a dead man in the realm of ends” [8] (p. 30). Ricœur claims that the feeling of dread contains in germ form all the later moments of “the progress of moral consciousness.”

What does “love” mean in the context of the above quoted statement, “the danger of not being able to love any more, the danger of being a dead man in the realm of ends”? The clue to the meaning is in the second description of the danger: “being a dead man in the realm of ends [la cité de fins].” Ricœur has not spoken about that pathology until now, but, as we have seen, he has explained how “The infinitude of feeling” that he calls eros “emerges clearly from the fact that no organized, historical community, no economy, no politic, no human culture can exhaust this demand for a totalization of persons, of a Kingdom in which, nevertheless, we now are and ‘in which, alone, we are capable of continuing our existence’” [4] (p. 103). The Kant-inspired language of “the realm of ends,” used in The Symbolism of Evil, is meant to remind us of that earlier discussion, helping us to see that the “love,” which a certain “higher level of consciousness” now dreads not being able to feel any more, is eros.

Ricœur makes a clear distinction between an ethical consciousness that perceives the danger of not being able to love anymore, and one that advocates for the abolition of fear. He explains that an ethical consciousness that wants to see the abolition of fear is one that will emerge only after the feeling of dread has undergone a series of “mutations and sublimations” [8] (p. 30). He notes that the “origin of… dread is the primordial connection of vengeance with defilement” [8] (p. 30). That connection, that “synthesis,” is “presupposed in any punishment conceived as revenge and expiation.” At one point, “vengeance will be absorbed into the idea of Order,” but that will not mean the end of suffering [8] (p. 30). As Ricœur remarks, “suffering is the price for the violation of order.” When it finally emerges, the ethical consciousness that wants to see the abolition of fear will make it clear that it values order and accepts that it must pay a price if actions for which it is responsible threaten to undermine order.

However, it will (1) demand that punishment is “proportionate to the fault”, (2) expect that “the personal worth of the guilty person” will be restored through a just punishment, and (3) “hope that fear itself will disappear from the life of conscience, as a result of its sublimation” [8] (p. 44). Commenting on (3) above, Ricœur states that, “The whole philosophy of Spinoza is an effort to eliminate the negative—fear and pain—from the regulation of one’s life under the guidance of reason” [8] (p. 44). Sympathetic though he is towards those who want to bring an end to fear and pain, he wonders whether it is possible to have a human existence that is entirely freed from negative feelings. He remarks that, “The abolition of fear appears to me to be only the most distant goal of ethical consciousness” [8] (p. 44).

At that point, the discussion moves on to the question of education. As we shall see, Ricœur thinks that fear and love both have roles to play in all forms of education, including the formation of “ethical consciousness.” Here is an abridged version of the relevant passage:

It is not the immediate abolition but the mediate sublimation of fear, with a view to its final extenuation, which is the soul of all true education. Fear remains an indispensable element in all forms of education, familial, scholastic, civic, as well as in the protection of society against the infraction of citizens. The project of an education which would dispense with prohibition and punishment, and so with fear, is undoubtedly not only chimerical but harmful. Much is learned through fear and obedience—including the liberty which is inaccessible to fear. There are steps that cannot be dispensed with without harm… the abolition of fear could only be the horizon, and, so to speak, the eschatological future of human morality. Before casting out fear, love transforms and transposes it. A conscience that is militant and not yet triumphant does not cease to discover ever sharper fears. The fear of not loving enough is the purest and worst of fears.

[8] (pp. 44–45)

Marguerite Léna’s L’Esprit de l’éducation [11] offers a very insightful commentary on the above passage. In preparation for discussing that commentary, I abridged the quote in the same way that she does. Léna, a philosopher of education and former doctoral student of Ricœur’s, does not offer an academic analysis of the passage. Rather, she takes a statement that interests her and then draws out its meaning using her detailed knowledge of both The Symbolism of Evil and Fallible Man. One statement that catches Léna’s attention is the following: “Fear remains an indispensable element in all forms of education, familial, scholastic, civic, as well as in the protection of society against the infraction of citizens” [8] (pp. 44–45). Ricœur does not comment further on familial and scholastic education, but Léna takes up the task, explaining how fears and love function in the context of those two forms of education.

Léna’s commentary on the passage begins as follows: “There is therefore a spiritual dynamic to the experience of fear, and not all fears have equal educational value” [11] (p. 110). Some fears must be allayed, others awakened. It is “unavoidable” that children will be frightened by new things and new situations that “uproot them from a familiar environment… and cast them into the unknown” [11] (p. 110). Léna offers the following examples of childhood fears: (1) the fears that babies have when they see unfamiliar faces or find themselves in unfamiliar surroundings; and (2) the fears that older children have “at the school gate or on their first skis.” She says that parents and teachers know that all of that is perfectly normal, and that if children are to grow, they must gradually integrate novelty; find ways of coping with disorientation; and alter their perception of the thing or situation that they initially found threatening. However, children are not expected to do all of that without help. But who, or what, can help them? “Love has this power.” Léna develops the point: “a child that is loved with true love, without overprotection or jealous possessiveness, feels and knows that they are safe enough not only to take a risk, but to seek it out and enjoy it” [11] (p. 110).

Léna’s commentary moves on to discuss moral education. Once again, she begins by naming “unavoidable,” or necessary, fears. In this instance, they are “the fear of effort” and “the fear of punishment.” Those fears are described as “servile fears.” The educator’s concern must be to gradually liberate the consciousness of their students from those fears. If their students continue to be afraid of effort and confrontation, they will fail to cross “a certain threshold of difficulty and resistance in time” to safeguard their powers of action [11] (p. 111). And without those powers, their moral life will simply wither away. She claims that childhood is the right time to experience the “ethical transformation” of servile fears. Those who fail to experience that transformation in childhood “remain stuck in an infantile conception of what is permitted and what is forbidden, which either paralyses them or causes them to rebel” [11] (p. 111).

The next thing Léna’s commentary does is explain Ricœur’s idea of a “conscience that is militant and not yet triumphant.” Léna offers two examples of the problem: (1) an overly confident child “who has opinions on everything”; and (2) a teenager who is unmistakably brash. She suggests that the problem with young people like that is that they “lack the spiritual restraint that paves the way for the most profound discoveries, the most delicate loyalties, and carves out the inner space that can hold the joy they bring” [11] (p. 111). The solution she proposes is “filial fear” (la crainte filiale), her interpretation of Ricœur’s “ever sharper fears.”

It is only at the very end of her commentary that Léna turns to consider the statement that “Before casting out fear, love transforms and transposes it” [8] (pp. 44–45). Her version of that statement is embedded in a paragraph where she looks back on what has been said about education so far and asks the reader to focus, initially at least, not on “the harsh law of men,” but rather on the “gentle law of men.” The phrases are borrowed from the French surrealist poet Paul Éluard. According to Léna, the “gentle law of men” dictates several things, including “that love can be fruitful, that is to say, the principle of being and of history” [11] (p. 112). The formulation she uses is really very interesting. Unlike her depictions of childhood fears, her explanations for why some adults do not develop a capacity for moral decision making, and her examples of “militant and not yet triumphant” forms of conscience,” there is nothing down to earth and readily accessible about her account of the “love” that transforms fear. Indeed, she needs the help of a poet to say what she wants to say on the topic. But what exactly does she want to say? As I read her, she is saying that the love that transforms fear is eros. My interpretation is based on the results of a simple test. If you try to match Léna’s description of the love that transforms fear with descriptions of agape, eros, and philia offered by Ricœur in his early works, the only one that comes close to her “principle of being and of history” is Ricœur’s “This fundamental feeling, this Eros through which we are in being…” [4] (p. 103). The “principle of being and of history” is certainly not a match for agape in the sense of love of neighbour and concern for others, nor is it a match for the bond between close friends, to take a straightforward example of philia.

Marguérite Léna’s commentary on the above quoted passage from The Symbolism of Evil stands on its own two feet as a thought-provoking commentary on what Ricœur means by the love that transforms fear. But it may be of interest to learn that she had Ricœur’s support and admiration for the work she was doing in philosophy of education. I learned about her work and Ricœur’s high regard for it from Jean Greisch.

5. Concluding Remarks

This article has focused on a limited period in Paul Ricœur’s long career: 1947–1960. During that period, Ricœur held the position of President of the Protestant Teaching Federation; campaigned for a reconceptualization of laïcité, or “secularism”; and developed his own ideas around political pedagogy. Publicizing that work, he wrote articles and book reviews for journals like Foi et Éducation and Esprit; and it was not at all unusual for him to mention love of neighbour and concern for others in those publications. As I have tried to show, Ricœur’s philosophy of education is underpinned by a philosophical anthropology that he presents in Finitude and Guilt. Finitude and Guilt also includes references to “love.” The terms used in this instance are eros and philia. Olivier Abel and Jérôme Porée, whose research on Ricœur’s use of the term amour I have found to be generally very helpful, attribute an interpretation of eros to Ricœur that, unfortunately, I cannot endorse. I have made the case that, far from offering the standard interpretation of eros, as Abel and Porée claim, Ricœur draws on Kant’s critical philosophy and to a lesser extent Husserl’s phenomenology of affectivity to arrive at a highly original interpretation of the concept. Understood in that sense, eros has a significant role to play in “all forms of education,” at least according to an important passage in The Symbolism of Evil [8]. To unpack the meaning of that remarkable passage, I have turned to Marguérite Léna’s commentary, which I analysed step by step. However, I would not want to claim that my interpretation of what Ricœur means by eros applies equally to works written after 1960, although I think that his support for Léna’s work in the philosophy of education suggests that he still made a distinction between eros and erotic desire at least until the early 1980s. I know that things look very different by the time we get to The Course of Recognition in 2004 [6], but the question that must be answered now is: what caused him to change his mind about eros?