Poética da vontade : uma ética hermenêutica na perspectiva de Paul Ricoeur

Abstract

This thesis has as main objective to support the application of Ricoeur’s ethics, especially from a perspective of respect and recognition, requires a poetic solution. For this, the present investigation 1) uses the third book of the Ricoeur’s small ethics, which deals with the Greek tragedy and the practical wisdom, to open the limits of Kantian formalism, with its ascending method of justification of maxims, at the same time that it elucidates the proposal of the French thinker to add a descending criterion of justification; 2) goes through the support that Conil’s proposal to defend a pure Kant’s Hermeneutization, unlike Ricoeur, remains within the limits of Kantianism that proclaims the ascending criterion of justification and as such is not sufficient to guide decision-making in difficult cases; 3) proposes the thesis that the solution to the problem of applying ethics to hard cases consists of a poetic solution, more specifically, a poetic-metaphorical use of the categorical imperative based on the capacity of the imagination; 4) elucidates respect as a descending criterion of justification to which priority must be given at all times when respect for the irreplaceable singularity of persons conflicts with the categorical imperative; 5) it makes clear that the link between respect and recognition is drawn insofar as both refer to the irreplaceable singularity, i.e., to the existence-value bearing beings; and finally 6) clarifies that the true recognition of existence-value is not in legal recognition or moral reciprocity but is rooted in the ethic-symbolic recognition of the gift economy. In this context, we propose a merely regulative use of the figure of agape as an additional supra-non-metaethical criterion that may be useful in order to control the demand for radical reciprocity always lurking at the heart of Kantian imperative.