Entre philosophie et linguistique: Autour de “Philosophie et langage” de Paul Ricœur

Abstract

What is the task – rather than the contribution – of philosophy with regards to language? In this article, we revisit Paul Ricœur’s answer to this question in his text “Philosophie et langage.” Ricœur sets forth as the task of philosophy the recovery of a triple linguistic mediation: from language to the world, from language to the subject, and from language to the human community. Starting from the concrete experience of speaking subjects, Ricœur opposes the systemic closure presupposed by the structuralistic view on language, which suspends the function of reference in the relation of meaning between two ideas. Provided with an enlarged conception of reference, one that includes the poetic function of language, the philosopher extricates from the notion of “the world of the text” the constitutive ontological dimension of language, since in its poetic function the latter reveals the multiple possibilities of our mode of existence. We point towards the connection between the reopening of that triple linguistic mediation and the call to an elaboration of a new ontology, one that Ricœur accomplishes through the notion of attestation.