Ricoeur's Critique of Heidegger's Conception of Time in Being and Time

Résumé 0

In the chapter entitled « The Aporetic of Temporality » of the third volume of Time and Narrative, published in 1985, Paul Ricœur enters directly into a debate with the author of Being and Time. In spite of the fact that he begins by emphasizing the originality of the Heideggerian time-analysis which breaks with Augustine’s and Husserl’s subjectivism, he nevertheless submits it to a severe critique which is centred on two main points : first, the privilege given to the being toward death, which Ricœur opposes to Spinoza’s carelessness regarding death and Arendt’s privilege given to natality, and secondly, the aporia involved in Heidegger’s conception of a finite temporality and of a vulgar concept of time, which in his view does not allow to take into account historical time as well as natural time. This paper undertakes, on the basis of Heidegger’s texts themselves, to give a detailed answer to Ricœur’s critique.