폴 리쾨르의 해석학적 상상과 성경해석

Abstract

Paul Ricoeur, one of the most influential philosophers of language and hermeneutics, provides a unique contribution to philosophical and theological hermeneutics. For Ricoeur, the existential efficacy of texts ensues in self-understanding, either in validating one's extant understanding or in constructing a different self-understanding. He discovers that the tensive theory of metaphor suggests a theory of imagination distinct from the traditional theories that center on images as mental correlates of absent entities. For him, the theory of imagination resolves the problem of the creative capacity within language to restructure reality. The imagination mediates between the emergence of new meaning and the ruins of literal sense. Poetic language redescribes reality through the fictions that the writer imaginatively creates. Fictive narrative brackets the real world of manipulatable objects in order to redescribe reality, to present possible ways of construing what is real. The ability to redescribe reality on the basis of disengaging ordinary experience develops only in relation to the imagination. The imaginative function with reference to fiction parallels the imagination's role within metaphor. In the latter, imagination results in a semantic innovation that creates new configurations of meaning, in the former the imagination invents plots whereby whole configurations of reality arise. It is evident that the imagination is the key word of Ricoeur's hermeneutics, which enables the whole processes of textual interpretations. As a Christian, Ricoeur thinks that the biblical narratives provide authentic human existence, freedom, and hope for future possibilities. However. Ricoeur's biblical hermeneutics does not differentiate itself from his philosophical hermeneutics. Rather, his biblical hermeneutics stays as a part of philosophical hermeneutics. The new possibilities the biblical narratives reveal are the new realities, such as a New Creation, a New Covenant, the Kingdom of God. Those possible worlds are imaginative worlds projected through the creative imaginations. For him, the Gospel narratives can be called true not because they correspond to historical events, but because they reveal something essential for human existence. The lack of historicity in his biblical interpretation is criticized by a Yale theologian, Hans Frei, who wants to keep the history-likeness in the biblical narratives. His imaginative and creative hermeneutics allows diverse interpretations. On the one hand, this diversity in biblical interpretation can provide productive and multiple views in theology, on the other hand it can be a challenge to the unity for a religious belief. It is evident that Ricoeur's imaginative hermeneutics cannot provide the criteria that can distinguish a religiously correct interpretation from a false interpretation. However, when one should accept that no one can have God's absolute criteria for correct interpretation, one can adopt Ricoeur's imaginative hermeneutics for religious texts. Another weakness of Ricoeur's hermeneutics could be that it is difficult to distinguish between what is real and what is ideal. There is no brake that can stop Ricoeur's hermeneutic imagination slipping into the pot of fantasy. In spite of those weaknesses, Ricoeur's achievements in philosophical and theological hermeneutics should be commended.