Ricœur face la mort: L’attitude agnostique et ses ramifications dans l’œuvre posthume de Vivant jusqu’à la mort

Abstract

In the second archive document, “Death”, from Living Up To Death, two lines of thought on the imaginary of survival are particularly developed. One explores the concept of perfect detachment, which can bring the “work of mourning” to fruition without giving in to the imaginary of the dead that survival usually expresses. Ricoeur misses this path until the emphasis is placed on a transfer of the love of life to others. The transmission of life then passes through the “written record”, left as testimony to others – the survivors – of one having been. The second line is that of imperfect detachment. Ricoeur then insisted on “God’s memory”, through the expression “God, remember me”, expressed in the eternal present of the concern for God. A reformulation in the future – “God will remember me” – would introduce the risk of a form of hypocrisy by imaginary projection, or of an inauthentic “consolation”. The “memory of God” remains the schematization of the eternal present of concern for the divine. It justifies human existence by grace. These two lines of imagining survival – the perfect and imperfect detachments would be an example of the putting into practice of an agnostic attitude in Ricoeur’s philosophy. In order to light them, this research seeks to compare the influence of Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne’s Process Theology in later ricoeurian thoughts.