Paul Ricoeur: la route de la reconnaissance de l'Homme faillible a l'Homme capable

In the writings of the French Philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), the theme of ‘recognition’, a very vital issue in today’s world, neither begins nor limits itself to his last book, The Course of Recognition (2004), alone. The prominence of the theme in this book is in the fact that it is in this work that Ricoeur attempts a philosophical probe on the theory of recognition. Thus, while ‘recognition’ is explicitly studied and dealt with in this book, the theme lies inherently at the core of his work, and runs through his entire intellectual wayfaring, having roots in his very first writings. The present paper proposes to find out the different occurences of ‘recognition’ in his writings, to analyse the contexts of its appearance, and the manner in which Ricoeur refers to it. The paper purviews whether or not the word holds the same significance as in The Course of Recognition with its three-pronged meanings such as ‘recognition-identification’, ‘recognition of oneself’, and ‘mutual recognition’. In case ‘recognition’ had been veiled, has another word been used instead of it? The paper raises also the hypothesis that one might find an entirely new meaning to the word ‘recognition’, never mentioned or is very much less developed in his last work.