From reflexive Philosophy to Hermeneutics: Evil according to Nabert and Ricoeur

Abstract

Jean Nabert is less known for his work and more for the attention that Ricoeur has
always devoted to him, including him among the sources of his thought and editing
his last texts, incomplete at the time of Nabert’s death, under the title of Le désir de Dieu. Ricoeur has never abandoned, on the other hand, the reference to this first source, as he also attests, for example, in one of the last speeches he has delivered: at the “Castelli” Congress, dedicated to the philosophy of religion between ethics and ontology, he has proposed a rereading of the “capable man” (homme capable) in the light of evil, but also of hope in a regeneration, trying to show what the hermeneutics “of myth” allows to capture both of the evil that man does and the evil by which he is affected. In the course of this conference we will seek to see what is the meaning and the putting into play of Nabert’s and Ricoeur’s reflection on evil and how it sheds light on the mystery of human being. We present here the first part of this collaboration.