A Study On Paul Ricoeur’s Theory Of Discourse

Paul Ricoeur is probably the most wide-ranging of thinkers in the 20th century. Although he is famous as a philosopher, his work has also been across the subjects of hermeneutics, literary criticism, biblical exegesis, history, psychoanalysis, legal studies and politics.This dissertation, focusing on Paul Ricoeur’s theory of discourse, discusses his thoughts on "discourse" from five aspects. First, this dissertation will map an overall feature of Ricoeur’s theory of discourse, especially about how the concept of discourse derives from Emile Benveniste’s linguistic of discourse and how it is against Saussure’s linguistic of language and structuralist philosophy, as well as the main features of discourse.Then, the second chapter discovers a relationship between discourse and text, in which text can be seen like a model of the discourse, for it is any discourse fixed by writing. Then it investigates the discursive dialectic of event and meaning of the text and the work.The third chapter is mainly talked about the metaphor on discourse-sentence level and discourse-work level. Ricoeur has made his theory of metaphor on the discourse-sentence level so that the metaphoric meaning could be distinguished from the literal meaning. Besides, on the discourse-work level, metaphoric discourse, via imaginative vibration, is able to refer to the real world.The fourth chapter talks about the relationship between Ricoeur’s theory of discourse and hermeneutics of Dasein. By contrasting Heidegger and Ricoeur, we can make clear that why Ricoeur’s hermeneutical detour is necessary.The fifth chapter finally cites Ricoeur’s theory of discourse as the major contribution to the hermeneutics of self, which gives the latter an ontological position. After comparing with several kinds of discourses such as in science and in analytical philosophy, this chapter shows that self-identity relies on a combination of a semantic approach and a pragmatic approach in discourse.