10.13135/2036-542X/8133



Inspired by Gabriël Marcel and Karl Jaspers, Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophie de la Volonté (1950/1960) develops a particular approach to existentialism emphasizing that freedom and nature are not opposites, but rather paradoxically connected by means of the notions of vocation and commitment. Ricoeur presents a kind of ‘tragic optimism’ in which the human being is characterized as a fallible creature that, nevertheless, succeeds in exchanging fear for hope, based on the original affirmation of his existence. This article explains how Ricoeur’s position relates to the mainstream existentialist understanding of revolutions. I argue that Ricoeur uncovers an existentialist threat to revolutionary action in his reflections on Maurice Merleau–Ponty’s Humanisme et terreur (1948) and Albert Camus’s L’homme révolté (1951). This threat concerns the political danger of freedom without transcendence. If the existence for itself transcends any givenness, then it also transcends that which cannot be transcended or should not be transcended. Then freedom lacks the firmness of respect for human dignity as that which cannot be negated. That is why revolutionary action needs prophetic input — as a constant reminder of the primary affirmation of the absolute value of the human person — if it is to avoid nihilistic violence.



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Dries Deweer
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Ricoeur and the Existentialist Threat to Revolutions
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Dries Deweer
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Ricoeur and the Existentialist Threat to Revolutions
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                                                              DOI 10.4399/97888255217954 – pag. 47-61 (dicembre 2018)




Ricoeur and the Existentialist Threat to Revolutions
                                                                                        Dries Deweer*




Abstract: Inspired by Gabriël Marcel and Karl Jaspers, Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophie de
la Volonté (1950/1960) develops a particular approach to existentialism emphasizing that
freedom and nature are not opposites, but rather paradoxically connected by means of
the notions of vocation and commitment. Ricoeur presents a kind of ‘tragic optimism’ in
which the human being is characterized as a fallible creature that, nevertheless, succeeds in
exchanging fear for hope, based on the original aﬃrmation of his existence. This article
explains how Ricoeur’s position relates to the mainstream existentialist understanding of
revolutions. I argue that Ricoeur uncovers an existentialist threat to revolutionary action
in his reﬂections on Maurice Merleau–Ponty’s Humanisme et terreur (1948) and Albert
Camus’s L’homme révolté (1951). This threat concerns the political danger of freedom
without transcendence. If the existence for itself transcends any givenness, then it also
transcends that which cannot be transcended or should not be transcended. Then freedom
lacks the ﬁrmness of respect for human dignity as that which cannot be negated. That is
why revolutionary action needs prophetic input — as a constant reminder of the primary
aﬃrmation of the absolute value of the human person — if it is to avoid nihilistic violence.

Keywords: Ricoeur, existentialism, revolution, violence, prophet.



Existentialists famously taught that existence precedes essence (Sartre 1946).
Implied is the idea that meaning does not direct commitment, rather com-
mitment is what directs meaning. The political implications of this exis-
tentialist frame of thought are — at least to some extent — well–known.
Especially if we look at the big French existentialists, Jean–Paul Sartre and
Maurice Merleau–Ponty, their communist convictions have never been a
secret. The inference from existentialism to communism is, however, by
no means necessary. In principle, people can make an authentic choice
for fascism just as well, as Sartre infamously argued (Sartre 1946: 53–54).
Nevertheless there is a clear link between existentialism and revolution.
The existentialist perspective breaks the fetters that tie us to society as
it is. There’s nothing necessary, nothing essential about the way society
is, so there’s nothing to keep us from choosing and pursuing something
     ∗
          Assistant Professor of Ethics and Political Philosophy at Tilburg University; d.s.m.deweer@
uvt.nl.


                                                                                                                 47
48      Dries Deweer


radically new. In this sense, the political dimension of existentialism is
both very emancipatory and very dangerous. This article analyzes Paul
Ricoeur’s interpretation of existentialism and the existentialist revolutionary
zeal. First, I will lay out Ricoeur’s reception of existentialism and then I will
explain how this inﬂuences his perspective on revolutions by means of his
reviews of Merleau–Ponty’s Humanisme et terreur (1947)1 and Albert Camus’s
L’homme révolté (1951).2 I argue that Ricoeur uncovers an existentialist threat
to revolutionary action.


1. A Personalist Reception of Existentialism

Paul Ricoeur engaged with existentialism under the wings of Emmanuel
Mounier, the founder of the personalist Esprit movement. Mounier tried to
bring existentialism into dialogue with Christian faith, thereby developing
his personalist philosophy into a kind of Christian existentialism (Mounier
1962a, 1962b). The young Paul Ricoeur followed the charismatic Mounier in
this endeavour. The guiding principle for this intellectual exercise were to be
found in the work of Gabriël Marcel and Karl Jaspers (Agís Villaverde 2012:
7–86; Dosse 2008: 118–130, Michel 2006: 21–72). These authors taught Ricoeur
an existentialism able to enter into dialogue with Christian convictions, in
contrast with Sartre or Heidegger, because they did not focus on existence
as such, but on the relationship between freedom and transcendence and
on commitment as a way to bridge both (Ricoeur 1947: 32–39). That way
Ricoeur put forward a strong analogy between his Christian faith and
existentialist thought, namely in their vision of human existence as a matter
of vocation. Neither shows human life as an objective datum, but rather as
a task to be fulﬁlled along the way (Ricoeur 1949c, 1951c).
    Ricoeur studied Karl Jaspers while in captivity in Germany, together
with his fellow inmate Mikel Dufrenne. After the war this collective study
resulted in the book Karl Jaspers et la philosophie de l’existence (Dufrenne &
Ricoeur 1947). In the same period he also made a comparative study of the
work of Jaspers and Marcel, the Christian existentialist who had been an
important mentor for him in the years before the war (Ricoeur 1947). At
the heart of Marcel’s existentialism is the embrace of the existentialist focus
on freedom and responsibility, but it is combined with a rejection of the
mainstream existentialist dichotomy between freedom and nature (Marcel
1945). Gabriël Marcel inspired a particular approach to existentialism empha-
sizing that freedom and nature are not opposites, but rather paradoxically

     1. Ricoeur 1992 [1948]; 2003 [1949].
     2. Ricoeur 1992 [1956].
                                      Ricoeur and the Existentialist Threat to Revolutions          49


connected by means of the notions of vocation and commitment. The issue
revolves around the idea of transcendence in human existence.
    The concept of transcendence deﬁnitely has its place in mainstream
existentialism. In L’être et le néant Sartre famously presented transcendence
as core characteristic of human existence itself. Être pour–soi, being for
itself, is characterized by facticity and transcendence. There transcendence
refers to the idea that, beyond the brute fact of ﬁnding ourselves thrown
into being, there is nothing solid to existence; we transcend anything that
we can get hold of: “[T]he contingency of being–for–itself [. . . ] cannot be
in existence unless in and through a transcendence, it is the perpetually
surpassed and perpetually recuperated recuperation of the being–for–itself
by the being–in–itself on the the basis of primary nihilation.” (Sartre 1943:
384)3 However, Marcel had a diﬀerent view of transcendence, in such a
way that he could distinguish himself from — what was considered to
be — the nihilism in Sartre’s philosophy of ‘le Néant’. Marcel looked for
experiences of transcendence as something to hold on to in an existence
that remains basically groundless. Whereas transcendence for Sartre is the
freedom of human existence, for Marcel it is something our freedom as
negation bumps up against, it is that which we cannot negate. Marcel found
this transcendence in ﬁdelity, hope and love. Paul Ricoeur emphasized the
extent to which Marcel mirrors Karl Jaspers in this regard, Jaspers, who
created the notion of boundary situations (Grenzsituationen) to describe the
experiences in which a person can overcome nihilism. There as well, the
focus is on experiences of transcendence as something to hold on to in an
existence that remains basically groundless (Ricoeur 1947).
    Based on this early existentialism of Marcel and Jaspers, first Emmanuel
Mounier (1962a, 1962b) and afterwards Paul Ricoeur in his Philosophie de la
Volonté (1950) further developed personalist existentialism as a kind of ‘tragic
optimism’ in which the human being is characterized at all levels by a me-
diation between ‘original affirmation’, as Jean Nabert (1962 [1943]) called it,
and existential difference. They portray the human being as a fallible creature
that, nevertheless, succeeds in exchanging fear for hope, based on the original
affirmation of his existence. In other words, the philosophical contemplation
reveals that our actual existence and more precisely the manner in which we
approach evil and suffering show that hope is more powerful than despair and
joy more powerful than fear. Refuting the dichotomy of freedom and nature
in mainstream French existentialism by means of a conception of situated and
created freedom was key to this endeavour.

      3. “[L]a contingence du pour–soi [. . . ] ne peut être existée que dans et par une transcendance,
elle est le ressaisissement perpétuellement dépassé et perpétuellement ressaisissant du pour–soi par
l’en–soi sur fond de néantisation première.” (Own translation).
50    Dries Deweer


    Ricoeur addressed the issue of freedom and nature as the relationship
between the voluntary and the involuntary in the ﬁrst part of his Philosophie
de la volonté (1950). He argued that the relationship between the voluntary
and the involuntary manifests itself as a dramatic conﬂict. Ricoeur took
a Marcelian approach in which the primary description needs to be fol-
lowed by a secondary reﬂection, a deeper look at the more fragile, but also
more essential connections. Like Marcel (1935), Ricoeur clariﬁed that rather
than analysing the human will as a problem, he meant to contextualize
it as a mystery. This mystery was to be understood as a reconciliation, a
rehabilitation of our self–awareness in relation to our bodies and the world,
without devolving into a self–foundation made impossible. This secondary
reﬂection reveals that the structures behind the voluntary and involuntary
hold a paradox of freedom and nature. Such a paradoxical ontology is only
possible after a deeper reconciliation, one that ultimately remains a question
of an “espérance” with religious connotations (Ricoeur 1950: 7–23).
    The question on Ricoeur’s mind was what this all meant for human
freedom. Freedom, he argued, is never free from the involuntary: “Daring
and patience never cease to alternate in the very heart of willing. Freedom
is not a pure act, it is, in each of its moments, activity and receptivity. It
constitutes itself in receiving what it does not produce: values, capacities,
and sheer nature.” (Ricoeur 1950: 454). Initiative and dependency of the will
thus always come together in freedom. The relation between the voluntary
and involuntary in other words is no dualism, but rather a paradox. Contrary
to Sartre, Ricoeur argued that human freedom is not transcendence in the
absolute sense (Ricoeur 1950: 453–56).
    In the second part of the Philosophie de la volonté (1960), Ricoeur’s am-
bition was to understand freedom through insight into evil. He searched
for the conditions of possibility for the human experience of misery, so that
he could conceptualize the fallibility manifested in it (Ricoeur 1960: 21–34).
As a concept, fallibility needed to express the disproportion between the
ﬁnite and inﬁnite qualities of a human being. He ﬁnds that human fallibility
is based on disproportion, on the limited ability to converge with oneself.
Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology was, therefore, characterized by a
ﬁxed pattern, a dialectic of (1) original aﬃrmation, (2) existential diﬀerence
and (3) human mediation. This dialectic ﬁrst of all signiﬁes that the ﬁnitude
is not primary, but instead the original aﬃrmation is. This original aﬃrma-
tion manifests itself in the aﬃrmation of concepts in knowledge, in the idea
of happiness in acting and as eros in feeling.
    The primary aﬃrmation, however, needs to brave the existential nega-
tion. Ricoeur insisted that this negation should not be made absolute. Instead
of Sartre’s radical distinction between en–soi and pour–soi, he saw a dialectic.
Anything other than that ignored the conatus essendi, the primary aﬃrma-
                                     Ricoeur and the Existentialist Threat to Revolutions        51


tion. The negation simultaneously amounted to a distinction between I
and the other, between I and myself, and what he calls “the sadness of the
ﬁnite” (Ricoeur 1960: 154). Based on our perspective, there is a distinction
between myself and the other in knowing. In acting, a distinction exists
between me and myself, between one’s own person as a destination and
one’s own contingency; the fact that I exist in spite of myself and that I
might as well have not existed or have existed with a diﬀerent character.
Sorrow is the aﬀective implication of that contingency and every other form
of negation, suﬀering in particular. The third element in the dialectic is the
human person itself, the human fragility that is born from the confrontation
between primary aﬃrmation and existential negation: “Being human is
the Joy of Yes in the sadness of the ﬁnite,” is how Ricoeur summarized it
(Ricoeur 1960: 156).4 Human freedom is the freedom to commit oneself
to humanity, which is not commitment in a void, but commitment on the
basis of this primary aﬃrmation, this attestation of hope that relates us to
the inﬁnite, to that which cannot be negated, the absolute value of respect
for human dignity.5


2. Implications for Revolutionary Action: Ricoeur on Merleau–Ponty

Ricoeur confronts existentialism with tragic optimism. As we have seen, this
does not imply an outright rejection of the entire existentialist framework,
but Ricoeur does reject a strict dichotomy between freedom and nature, and
therefore he follows Marcel and Jaspers in introducing a diﬀerent conception
of transcendence in comparison to Sartre. Important implications for our
understanding of revolutionary action follow from this. This ﬁrst becomes
clear if we look at Ricoeur’s reviews of Merleau–Ponty’s infamous political
essay Humanisme et terreur (1948).6
    Humanisme et terreur was written as a reaction to the consternation caused
by the renowned novel Darkness at Noon (1941), by Hungarian–British writer
Arthur Koestler, and his explanatory essay The Yogi and the Commissar (1945).
The novel about a Bolshevik who is impeached for treason played a major
role in the awakening over the true nature of Stalinism. Koestler explains
that communism imposes a choice between the yogi — the symbol for a
merely inner revolution and escape from reality — and the commissar —
the symbol for a relentless activism that reduces people to mere instruments
     4. “L’homme, c’est la Joie du Oui dans la tristesse du ﬁni”.
     5. For a complete analysis of Ricoeur’s Philosophie de la volonté as a reﬂection on personalist
existentialism, see Deweer 2017, Chapter 2.
     6. For an earlier publication of the analysis of Ricoeur’s response to Humanisme et Terreur in
light of the development of Ricoeur’s own political philosophy, see Deweer 2016.
52      Dries Deweer


in service of the revolution. In other words, he criticizes communism for
being a totalitarian system in which morality is by deﬁnition eclipsed by
eﬃciency, as is demonstrated by the terror under Stalin. Merleau–Ponty
wanted to adjust this bleak picture by clarifying the nature of political terror
in the Soviet Union in light of the humanist undercurrent in Marxism.7 In
Humanisme et terreur, Merleau–Ponty presents Marxism as a philosophy that
goes beyond the division between the yogi and the commissar. He stresses
that the Marxist philosophy of history concerns the realization of human
values in such a way that morality and eﬃciency go hand in hand. However,
given the insights of existentialism, he adds that history is contingent; that
is, that the actual course of history depends upon individual decisions. If
no decisions ever had to be made, then no violence would ever take place.
The realization of the proletarian revolution depends upon actual decisions,
their eﬀect on the revolution — and hence on guilt and innocence — only
becoming clear in hindsight:

     We do not have a choice between purity and violence but between diﬀerent kinds
     of violence. [. . . ] Violence is the common origin of all regimes. Life, discussion,
     and political choice occur only against a background of violence. What matters and
     what we have to discuss is not violence but its sense or its future. (Merleau–Ponty
     1948: 213)8

    That is why Merleau–Ponty held onto Marxism, in spite of the terror.
In his view, it was Stalinism, not Marxism that deserved criticism because
under Stalin, it was not the emancipation of the proletariat, but the com-
munist party itself that was exalted to the absolute. Stalinism replaced the
proletariat with the party commissar and thereby obscured the actual goal
of the revolution.
    Paul Ricoeur wrote two critical reviews of Merleau–Ponty’s book, one
for each of the political journals that he cherished over the course of his
career: The ﬁrst is in Esprit (1992 [1948]), the journal of the famous public
intellectual Emmanuel Mounier and his personalist movement that went
by the same name, and the other one is in Le christianisme social (2003
[1949]), the journal of the French protestant Left. In these reviews, Ricoeur
expresses his sympathy for Merleau–Ponty’s criticism of Stalinism, while
he also questions whether the problem is not deeper ingrained in Marxism
itself. More speciﬁcally, Ricoeur questions whether Marxism is suﬃciently

      7. For further analysis of Merleau–Ponty’s philosophical commitment to Marxism, see Coole
2007, Kruks 1981, Revault d’Allonnes 2001, Welten 2004, Whiteside 1988.
     8. “Nous n’avons pas le choix entre la pureté et la violence, mais entre diﬀérentes sortes de
violence. [. . . ] La violence est la situation de départ commune à tous les régimes. La vie, la discussion
et le choix politique n’ont lieu que sur ce fond. Ce qui compte et dont il faut discuter, ce n’est pas la
violence, c’est son sens ou son avenir”.
                                       Ricoeur and the Existentialist Threat to Revolutions         53


immune from the slippery slope towards the primacy of the commissar.
He considers proletarian humanism itself to be the source of terror, since
it is an attempt to constitute humanism without the transcendent, with-
out a transhistorical morality. According to Ricoeur, Marx’s mistake was
to think that the socio–economic circumstances of the proletariat would
suﬃce to produce compelling universal values, without any reference to
the transcendent. Marx neglects the importance of a prophetic appeal to
fraternity and justice. The pursuit of fraternity and justice is not guaranteed
by the passage of history. Without any reference to transcendent values,
says Ricoeur, the ability of indignation and the sense of duty to keep the
means and ends in balance fails:

    The pathology of Marxism is nowadays as important for our understanding of
    history as the pathology of liberal society. It allows us to detect a new kind of
    ‘mystiﬁcation’, the one that hides itself in the very idea of the proletarian, whenever
    one takes the prophetic outlook away from it. A doctrine that disregards the tran-
    shistorical dimension of history, an immanentist doctrine of history, is threatened
    with self–destruction. It breaks its own power of indignation and demand and
    loses itself in the very detours that were supposed to take it to its goals through an
    eﬀective history. (Ricoeur 1992 [1948]: 154)9

   In light of Koestler’s terminology of the yogi and the commissar Ricoeur
argues that Marxism implies that the primacy of the proletariat gradually
lapses into the primacy of the commissar. Nevertheless, he emphasizes that
this criticism should not be mistaken as a plea for the yogi. In other words,
his case against the totalitarian inclination in Marxism is not a plea for an
apolitical attitude. Even if we should not limit ourselves to the values of
history, like Marx, we still have to be concerned with the eﬀectiveness of
our values in history. That is why Ricoeur makes an additional distinction
between the category of the yogi and the category of the prophet. The
yogi withdraws into himself and, hence, is rightly subject to the Marxist
reproach of mystiﬁcation. The prophet, on the contrary, wants to aﬀect
history. Hence, what Marxism lacks is the input of the prophet.10

     9. “La pathologie du marxisme est aujourd’hui aussi importante pour la compréhension de
l’histoire que la pathologie de la société libérale. Elle permet de repérer une nouvelle forme de
“mystiﬁcation”, celle qui se cache dans l’idée même du prolétaire, quand on en évacue la visée
prophétique. Une doctrine qui méconnaît la dimension transhistorique de l’histoire, une doctrine
immanentiste de l’histoire, est menacé d’autodestruction; elle ronge sa propre puissance d’indignation
et d’exigence et se perd dans les “détours” mêmes qui devaient la porter à ses ﬁns à travers une
histoire eﬀective.” (Own translation).
    10. Ricoeur also framed this as a critical perspective on Christian faith. Although he acknowledges
that Christianity does not imply one speciﬁc political program, he emphasizes that a Christian
cannot withdraw from political life. He argues for a prophetic Christianity by which Christians
intervene in society in order to keep the appeal of transcendent values alive, thereby contributing to
a non–totalitarian socialism (Ricoeur 1948, 1992 [1948]: 153–156, 2003 [1949]: 37–50).
54    Dries Deweer


    Merleau–Ponty emphasizes that Marxism is not discredited by occasional
terror. Perhaps mistakes are made, that is what happens when people make
decisions, but Merleau–Ponty stresses that any violence that is implied in
the making of the revolution can only be judged in the future. Here it
is not Marxism itself, but rather existentialism that comes to the fore. In
the context of the absurdity of being we are to commit ourselves to the
realization of who we choose to be as an individual and as a community. But
then the meaning of what we do and therefore of what we are only becomes
clear after the facts. Hence we can see why existentialism is so fruitful to
communism. It provides the better defense for violent revolution. In the
end, there is no authority to question your means if meaning is constituted
somewhere beyond the horizon. Ricoeur’s point is that the communist
rejection of the transcendent made it vulnerable to totalitarianism as it
obscured, rather than promoted, the path to freedom and equality. In other
words, it is the absence of the prophet that perverts communism, but also
existentialism for that matter. For classical Marxism the prophet was silenced
in historical materialism, for the existentialist approach to Marxism the
prophet is silenced by the reduction of transcendence to human negation.
    That brings us to the merits and demerits of existentialism for political
thought. Existentialism is important for its emphasis on the contingency
of history and the role of individual choice. We are condemned to life and
we are condemned to living together, but we are not condemned to life
and society as it is. However, without any reference to transcendent values
revolutionary action eventually lacks an ability of indignation and sense of
duty. Existentialism makes us choose but it does not enable us to follow
through, because, without the intervention of absolute principes to hold on
to, we are doomed to wander astray, to loose ourselves in the means, because
there is nothing to correct the course if the course is only judged at the final
destination. Ricoeur further clarified this in his response to another classic in
the existentialist political literature, Albert Camus’s L’homme révolté (1951).


3. Implications for Revolutionary Action: Ricoeur on Camus

Ricoeur claims that Merleau–Ponty’s argument for the humanist character
of Marxist revolutionary action fails due to its inherent lack of appeal to tran-
scendent values. Without prophetic input the revolution becomes indistin-
guishable from nihilist violence. Can the existentialist commitment to revo-
lution be saved from nihilism? That is a key concern in the political thought
of Albert Camus, and the essay L’homme révolté in particular (Bowker 2013,
Carroll 2007, Corbic 2003, Guérin 2017). Camus wholeheartedly embraces
the existentialist focus on the absurdity of life, but he adamantly rejects
                                       Ricoeur and the Existentialist Threat to Revolutions          55


nihilism. He does not see this as a contradiction precisely because of the
role of revolt in human existence:

    The topicality of the problem of the rebellion is only based on the fact that nowadays
    entire societies have tried to keep their distance from the sacred. Being human can
    deﬁnitely not be summarized in the insurrection. But the history of today forces
    us, because of its contestations, to say that the rebellion is one of the essential
    dimensions of humanity. It is our historical reality. Unless we want to ﬂee from
    reality, we have to ﬁnd our values in it. Can we ﬁnd rules of conduct far away from
    the sacred and absolute values? That is the question posed by the rebellion. (Camus
    1951: 35)11

     Camus presents the revolt as a core characteristic of the human condition.
As human beings we do not confront absurdity by seeking refuge within
ourselves, which would be the option of the yogi in Koestler’s terminology.
Confronting absurdity is presented by Camus as a kind of negation that
immediately entails value aﬃrmation. That is the revolt: “What is a rebel?
A man who says no, but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He
is also a man who says yes, from the moment he makes his ﬁrst gesture
of rebellion.” (Camus 1951: 25)12 The revolt begins in the rejection of life as
it is, but it supposedly implies a volitional aﬃrmation of a universal value.
In one’s revolutionary action one does not only aﬃrm one’s own life, but
one constitutes solidarity. “I rebel — therefore we exist,” is Camus’s original
adaptation of Descartes’s famous proposition (Camus 1951: 307).
     Perhaps Camus is right about the initial phase of revolt, but what about
the slippery slope towards the commissar and the complete instrumental-
ization of the self and the other? Is the rebel (l’homme révolté) eventually
someone else than the commissar? It is in response to this question that
Camus distinguishes the revolt from the revolution. Whereas the revolt is a
negation in which the value of human life is aﬃrmed, the revolution is a
perversion of the revolt, in the sense that human lives are reduced to cogs in
a machinery that is to produce some abstract goal. Camus rejected the legit-
imation of revolutionary violence on the basis of overarching philosophies
of history and other grand schemes.



     11. “L’actualité du problème de la révolte tient seulement au fait que des sociétés entières ont
voulu prendre aujourd’hui leur distance par rapport au sacré. L’homme, certes, ne se résume pas
à l’insurrection. Mais l’histoire d’aujourd’hui, par ses contestations, nous force à dire que la révolte
est l’une des dimensions essentielles de l’homme. Elle est notre réalité historique. À moins de fuir
la réalité, il nous faut trouver en elle nos valeurs. Peut–on, loin du sacré et de ses valeurs absolues,
trouver la règle d’une conduite? Telle est la question posée par la révolte.” (Own translation).
     12. “Qu’est ce qu’un homme révolté? Un homme qui dit non. Mais s’il refuse, il ne renonce pas:
c’est aussi un homme qui dit oui, dès son premier mouvement.”
56      Dries Deweer


     True generosity towards the future consists in giving everything to the present. As
     such, the rebellion proofs that it is the movement of life itself and that we cannot
     dismiss it without renouncing life. [. . . ] Rebellion is therefore love and fecundity
     or it is nothing. The revolution without honour, the revolution of the calculus that
     neglects life whenever necessary by preferring an abstract humanity over ﬂesh and
     blood, simply replaces love for resentment. (Camus 1951: 376)13

    This critical emphasis on the history that follows revolt is what broke the
ties of friendship between Camus and Sartre and the other stubborn believers
in communism among the French post war intelligentsia (Aronson 2004).
    Paul Ricoeur wrote a very sympathetic review of L’homme révolté for the
journal Le christianisme social (1992 [1956]). He acclaims the attempt to correct
the existentialist naïveté concerning revolutionary violence and he commends
Camus’s distanciation from historical materialism in analyzing the revolt from
the metaphysical over the political to the economic instead of the Marxist
reversal. However, Ricoeur doubts whether Camus eventually succeeds in his
attempt to grasp the idea of measured revolt, i.e. revolt that does not lapse
into murder. The argument goes that the principle of the revolt trumps the
history of the revolt, and therefore that revolutionary wisdom is possible if one
finds a way to keep that ‘primary nobility’ in mind (Camus 1951: 36). This
wisdom implies the rejection of absolute philosophies of history and a constant
vigilance with regard to the tensions between the nobility of the goal and
the means employed: “Between God and history, between the yogi and the
commissar, [the rebellion] opens a difficult path where the contradictions can
co–exist and surpass themselves.” (Camus 1951: 358)14
    Ricoeur’s point is that Camus eventually suﬀers from the same mistake
as Merleau–Ponty. The aﬃrmation of inﬁnite value takes a back seat. The
emphasis on revolt reveals the value as a negation, as a distanciation from
the existing situation. Ricoeur, per contra, argues that it is not the revolt that
grounds the value, but rather the value aﬃrmation that grounds the revolt.
For, without this original aﬃrmation that there is something beyond the
absurd, every revolt would be self–destructive and excessive, which would
make us slip back into nihilism:
     Perhaps only a reflection on other kinds of revolt, like Job’s revolt, or the revolt
     by the prophets of Israël, would allow us to base all rejection unequivocally on an
     original affirmation, as these revolts are not based on the emotion of the absurd, or

    13. “La vraie générosité envers l’avenir consiste à tout donner au présent. La révolte prouve par
là qu’elle est le mouvement même de la vie et qu’on ne peut la nier sans renoncer à vivre. [. . . ] Elle
est donc amour et fécondité, ou elle n’est rien. La révolution sans honneur, la révolution du calcul
qui, préférant un homme abstrait à l’homme de chair, nie l’être autant de fois qu’il est nécessaire,
met justement le ressentiment à la place de l’amour.” (Own translation).
    14. “Entre Dieu et l’histoire, entre le yogi et le commissaire, [la révolte] ouvre un chemin difficile
où les contradictions peuvent se vivre et se dépasser.” (Own translation).
                                        Ricoeur and the Existentialist Threat to Revolutions           57


    at least not on a final absurdity, but on a second–to–last absurdity. Only this original
    affirmation could pull the revolt away from its internal process of destruction, of this
    self–intoxication that makes the revolt drift into the domain of resentment, despite
    the firm claim of Camus himself that he keeps the distinction. (1992 [1956]: 133)15


4. Identifying the Prophet

In his response to both Merleau–Ponty and Camus, Paul Ricoeur invokes
the image of the prophet as a signifier for what is lacking in the existentialist
approach to revolutionary action. It is a nice image to complement Koestler’s
distinction between the yogi and the commissar but it suffers from vague-
ness. If we need prophetical input, the obvious question is who or what the
prophet is supposed to be. Therefore, a significant portion of Ricoeur’s political
philosophy can be read as a further reflection on that question16.
    His source of inspiration is Emmanuel Mounier. The meaning of the idea
of the prophet becomes more clear in the context of Mounier’s personalist
political education, as the latter had already expressed the idea that political
responsibility is dependent on a balance between a political and a prophetic
pole. The political pole stands for an inclination to settle and compromise,
to get things done whatsoever, while the prophetic pole stands for courage
and reﬂection. Figures from both poles are necessary insofar as it is very
diﬃcult to unify these two poles into a single personality. Society needs
a mixture of persons who possess diﬀerent qualities and which span the
entire spectrum between the political and the prophetic. The general result
of this interaction is a state of critical vigilance, wherein people are willing
to take action, knowing that, while perfection is not attainable in this world,
the dignity of the person and the values that support this dignity must be
upheld (Mounier 1962b: 500–503).
    Ricoeur further elaborated these ideas of Emmanuel Mounier. He dis-
tinguishes between three different priorities for such a political education
program. First, he indicates that the individual must be made aware of the
ethical implications of collective choices. Power must be controlled by citizens
with an adequate awareness of the relationship between political means and
ethical ends. Second, he argues that this plan of education has to be directed
toward the realization of true democracy, even in the economic domain, insofar

    15. “Peut–être qu’une réflexion sur d’autres formes de révolte, celle de Job, celle des prophètes
d’Israël, qui ne s’articulent pas sur l’émotion de l’absurde, ou du moins sur un absurde dernier, mais sur
un absurde avant–dernier, permettrait seule de fonder sans équivoque tous les refus sur une affirmation
originelle; seule cette affirmation originelle pourrait arracher la révolte à son processus interne de
destruction, à cette auto–intoxication qui la rejette du côté du ressentiment, malgré le ferme propos de
Camus lui–même de l’en distinguer.” (Own translation).
    16. See also Deweer 2016.
58      Dries Deweer


as the shift from individual freedom of choice to collective choices can only be
compensated by maximal participation. Third, this form of education is moti-
vated by the notion that collective choices have to maintain a maximal degree
of pluralism. Public choices have to offer a horizon as wide as possible for the
development of the individual person, for it is only under such circumstances
of pluralism that freedom and responsibility can be secured. These elements
are the primary roles that Ricoeur attributes to the role of the prophet (Ricoeur
1958: 32–33; 1964: 340–346; 1991 [1965]: 250–257).
    Ricoeur deepened his intuitions regarding the importance of prophetic
input under the inﬂuence of another personalist philosopher from the Esprit
circle, Paul–Ludwig Landsberg. Instead of the political myths of fascism and
communism, Landsberg proposed a conception of truth, not as a deﬁnite
and unchanging system, but as a matter of permanent criticism and doubt.
Instead of mythologizing the present and the past as a foundation for our
vision of the future, he acknowledged, very much like Merleau–Ponty, that
choices and risks are an inevitable part of anticipating the future. The alter-
native to myths, then, are plans which are based on expansive knowledge
of the present, the past and the possibilities for the future. The viability of
any political system is its ability to combine values with realistic planning
(Landsberg 1952: 49–68).
    In that regard, Landsberg made use of certain conceptions from his com-
patriot, sociologist Max Weber. Weber distinguishes between two kinds of
political ethics. On one hand, he speaks of an ‘ethics of conviction’ (Gesin-
nungsethik) that prioritizes the execution of ideal principles. On the other
hand, he speaks of an ‘ethics of responsibility’ (Verantwortungsethik) that fo-
cuses on the real consequences of political action (Weber 1992 [1919]). Lands-
berg emphasizes the fact that the tension between both politico–ethical
perspectives, the tension between purity and commitment, is not a question
of political leaders alone. In a democracy, every citizen faces this dilemma
and the borderline between responsibility and culpability is a faint one. Po-
litical commitment in Landsberg’s personalism requires one eye on values
and the other on historical reality. Our incapacity to realize values in a pure,
consistent manner cannot paralyze us, but must yield a continuously critical
reﬂex. A sound tension between Gesinnungsethik and Verantwortungsethik is
a necessary element of personalist citizenship. There is no alternative to this
tension in the pursuit of our political vocation (Landsberg 1952: 100–107).
    Just like Landsberg, Ricoeur emphasizes that the distinction between
an ethics of responsibility and an ethics of conviction is not as absolute as
Weber had presented it.17 On the contrary, political ethics has to maintain a

   17. For an analysis of the distinction between Ricoeur and Weber in this regard, see Wolﬀ 2011:
229–232.
                               Ricoeur and the Existentialist Threat to Revolutions   59


dialectical relation between both poles. A pure ethics of responsibility would
end in Machiavellianism, while a pure ethics of conviction would lead to
oppressive moralism or clericalism. Hence, Ricoeur’s vision of political
education was focused on the development of consciousness and the man-
agement of the tension between these two ethical poles. Only on the basis
of this tension is virtuous political action possible; a political action that is
based on practical wisdom and which combines an awareness of human
fragility with a permanent striving toward ethical ideals. The dialectic of
an ethics of conviction and an ethics of responsibility, hence, expresses the
particular demand for the prophet. It combines a focus on achieving real po-
litical results with a strong and consistent adherence to transcendent values.
Nevertheless, Ricoeur recognizes that an ethics of conviction should never
directly inﬂuence political action if it is to avoid moralism. The dialectics
of an ethics of conviction and an ethics of responsibility comes down to a
permanent pressure of moral ideals on authority, without enforcing any
particular policy (Ricoeur 1964: 313–314; 1991 [1965]: 253–255).

5. Conclusion
Ricoeur uncovers an existentialist threat to revolutionary action in his re-
ﬂections on the work of Merleau–Ponty and Camus, especially if we bear
in mind that the latter two were already among the more nuanced voices
in French existentialism in comparison with Sartre’s stubborn moral blind-
ness for communist terror (Welten 2006). He highlights the dangers of
existentialist political theory. Basically, this concerns the political danger of
freedom without transcendence. If freedom is transcendence, like Sartre
saw it, then freedom lacks transcendence, like Ricoeur (and Marcel before
him) used the term. If the existence for itself transcends any givenness,
then it also transcends that which cannot be transcended or should not be
transcended. Then freedom lacks the ﬁrmness of transcendent values, the
ﬁrmness of respect for human dignity as that which cannot be negated. That
is the ﬁrmness of the railing that keeps us from going oﬀ track. Without
it, there’s nothing to stop us from committing political evil. That is why
revolutionary action needs prophetic input, as a constant reminder of the
absolute value of the human person.

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