The Primacy of Language in Paul Ricoeur’s Hermeneutics

This paper intends to explore the philosophical foundation of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics on meaning and truth. Husserl’s phenomenology and Heidegger’s existential phenomenology will be used as point of reference to disentangle the complexity of Ricoeur’s hermeneutical project. Ricoeur proposes and develops a new hermeneutical method. He places an emphasis on “the primacy of language” as a reference point to grasp self-understanding. Ricoeur shifts the focus of phenomenology from “intuition” to “mediation”; from “essence seeking” to “symbol interpretation”. It is equivalent to saying that in formulating his concept on self-understanding, Ricoeur historicizes the subject. Thus, subject is no longer understood in its essence, but rather, on how it creates itself through language.