Review of Hermeneutics: From Structuralism to Paul Ricoeur

Structuralism was influenced by the developments in the science of anthropology, which has made the novel attempt to study language objectively in the same manner as the human artifact in the field of cultural anthropology. Structuralism, whose origins can be traced to the works of Ferdinand de Saussure, was intended “to be a human science, imbued with the full rigor and objectivity of the natural sciences, just as Freud had intended psychoanalysis to be a science of the human psyche.” (Johnson 2002, 228)

Moral Selves and Politics as a Crisis of Meaning

(Seminar Paper, Ateneo Philosophy Symposium, Ateneo de Zamboanga, 2005)

Human existence finds at the very core of its being that it is perpetually underway to language. According to the French Philosopher Paul Ricoeur, it is through language that the responsible human subject is revealed, a subject who speaks and acts in a world that is immersed in constant conflict, a subject who continuously suffers in life but still desires to live. The human person is this never-ending desire to be.The human subject is always a mystery, and thus, he is to be understood indirectly. Human existence demands a detour through language.