Self-Responsibility: On Paul Ricoeur's "Fluent Affair With Pétainism"

Yvanka Raynova

doi:10.25180/lj.v27i2.391

Authors

Yvanka B. Raynova Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1652-2236

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25180/lj.v27i2.391

Keywords:

Paul Ricoeur, Pétainism, History, Political Fallacy, Ideological Error, Feelings of Guilt, Self-Responsibility, Self-Criticsm

Abstract

In 1994, three articles from the Pétainist magazine L'Unité française were discovered by chance. They were allegedly written by Paul Ricoeur in 1941-1942. This sparked a debate in which Ricoeur himself spoke up. Criticism of Ricoeur intensified after the publication of La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli. Raynova reconstructs the various positions to demonstrate the extent to which Ricoeur took responsibility for his past, as well as to show that some of the accusations against him were unfounded. She also emphasizes that everyone is responsible for what they write about others and that calumny and self-righteousness cannot be justified as a "right to one's own opinion." Rather, they should be condemned in the spirit of Levinas.

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