Kwestia świadectwa Transcendencji. Tropem Paula Ricoeura

Abstract

What is the Transcendence Testimony? An attempt at answering this question on the basis of Paul Ricoeur’s texts runs into a distinction between “external” testimony, that is, an eyewitness’s account of the course of events, and “internal” testimony, that is, the confirmation of a person’s beliefs by the course of events. Ricoeur seeks to show that the religious meaning of testimony that emerges in biblical texts is determined by the interdependence and mutual conditioning of the two types of testimony. According to Ricoeur, this interdependence should be taken into account also when confronting the biblical concept of witness with the requirements of contemporary hermeneutical-phenomenological philosophy. Is it not the case, in particular, that the condition of possibility of recognizing the manifestation of the Absolute within history (in some “Here and Now”) is a reflexive movement, revealing the Absolute on the existential level defined by Jean Nabert as “originary affirmation”? However, Ricoeur, being conscious of the somehow aporetic nature of Nabert’s proposed solution, suggests that it can gain a significant expressive power if we read it in light of the concept of “substitution” presented in Lévinas’ work Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence.