Paul Ricoeur, the noted 80-year-old French philosopher, ended his second visit to Ukraine by a lecture at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy on June 23.
Prof. Ricoeur has for a number of years headed the Center for the Study of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics in Paris. He is author of dozens of works on Christian anthropology and linguistics along with books on symbols and metaphors, so his visit caused a sensation in the capital’s intellectual circles.
The philosopher is mainly interested in whether man can come to know himself through the form and configuration of the times — artistic, literary, and historical. Paul Ricoeur considers that the main objective of hermeneutics (he is one of the patriarchs of this science of interpretation) is to not so much analyzing conflicts and their interpretations as self-knowledge. Man perceives himself through the texture of culture.
In Kyiv, Mr. Ricoeur read lectures dealing with memory, translation, and cultural self-consciousness. At the French Cultural Center he spoke only French, much to the embarrassment of many in the audience (multilingualism is not among the kudos of the Kyiv intelligentsia). However, his devout followers were fully rewarded by the opportunity to communicate with the celebrity during his lectures at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.






