Key Arguments

• Ricoeur recalls that in the Introduction attestation was framed between 'the ambition of self-founding cer tainty stemming from the Cartesian cogito' and 'the humiliation of the cogito reduced to sheer illusion following the Nietzschcan critique,' thus situating it within the 'quarrel of the cogito'.
• He notes that the subsequent studies unfolded in an 'atopos' relative to where the cogito was both posited and deposed, which means attestation can no longer be confined to an epistemic place on a 'scale of knowledge.'
• He explicitly says that by defining attestation from the viewpoint of aletheia (truth) he has already moved beyond a 'purely epistemic' discussion: 'The alcthic characterization of attestation is not limited to a given epistemic determination.'
• Invoking Aristotle’s Metaphysics VI, he aligns attestation with 'being-true' as one of the original significations of being, on the same level as categorial being, potentiality/actuality, and accidental being.
• He concludes that 'It is under the aegis of being as true that all our earlier remarks about attestation as credence and as trust can be assembled,' explicitly re‑reading the prior phenomenological and ethical analyses of attestation as having ontological import.

Source Quotes

The Ontological Commitment of Attestation We begin our ontological investigation at the point where our Introduc tion stopped. The homage we paid then to attestation as credence and as trust was intended to fit in both with the ambition of self-founding cer tainty stemming from the Cartesian cogito and with the humiliation of the cogito reduced to sheer illusion following the Nietzschcan critique. It is therefore in relation to the quarrel of the cogito that our first approach to attestation was situated.

The homage we paid then to attestation as credence and as trust was intended to fit in both with the ambition of self-founding cer tainty stemming from the Cartesian cogito and with the humiliation of the cogito reduced to sheer illusion following the Nietzschcan critique. It is therefore in relation to the quarrel of the cogito that our first approach to attestation was situated. Now the studies that form the body of this work have unfolded in a place that we have called atopos in relation to the place where the cogito was posited and hence also in relation to the place where it was deposed.

Now the studies that form the body of this work have unfolded in a place that we have called atopos in relation to the place where the cogito was posited and hence also in relation to the place where it was deposed. This is why we can no longer confine ourselves to the definition of attestation made at the beginning in terms of certainty; or rather, by defining attestation from the viewpoint of aletheia (truth), we have already engaged, without saying so, another discussion than that which could be said to be purely epistemic, as if it were a matter of simply situating attestation on a scale of knowledge. The alcthic characterization of attestation is not limited to a given epistemic determination.

This is why we can no longer confine ourselves to the definition of attestation made at the beginning in terms of certainty; or rather, by defining attestation from the viewpoint of aletheia (truth), we have already engaged, without saying so, another discussion than that which could be said to be purely epistemic, as if it were a matter of simply situating attestation on a scale of knowledge. The alcthic characterization of attestation is not limited to a given epistemic determination. If we ac cept taking as our guide the polysemy of being, or rather of beings, which Aristotle states in Metaphysics 6.2, being-true and being-false are original significations of being, distinct from and, it seems, of the same rank as being according to the categories, as being potentially and actually, and as being by accident.l It is under the aegis of being as true that all our earlier remarks about attestation as credence and as trust can be assembled.

The alcthic characterization of attestation is not limited to a given epistemic determination. If we ac cept taking as our guide the polysemy of being, or rather of beings, which Aristotle states in Metaphysics 6.2, being-true and being-false are original significations of being, distinct from and, it seems, of the same rank as being according to the categories, as being potentially and actually, and as being by accident.l It is under the aegis of being as true that all our earlier remarks about attestation as credence and as trust can be assembled. Is this to say that the metacategorics of being-true and being-false can be re peated in the terms in which Aristotle once formulated them?

Key Concepts

• The homage we paid then to attestation as credence and as trust was intended to fit in both with the ambition of self-founding cer tainty stemming from the Cartesian cogito and with the humiliation of the cogito reduced to sheer illusion following the Nietzschcan critique.
• It is therefore in relation to the quarrel of the cogito that our first approach to attestation was situated.
• This is why we can no longer confine ourselves to the definition of attestation made at the beginning in terms of certainty; or rather, by defining attestation from the viewpoint of aletheia (truth), we have already engaged, without saying so, another discussion than that which could be said to be purely epistemic, as if it were a matter of simply situating attestation on a scale of knowledge.
• The alcthic characterization of attestation is not limited to a given epistemic determination.
• 2, being-true and being-false are original significations of being, distinct from and, it seems, of the same rank as being according to the categories, as being potentially and actually, and as being by accident.l It is under the aegis of being as true that all our earlier remarks about attestation as credence and as trust can be assembled.

Context

Opening of '1. The Ontological Commitment of Attestation' in the Tenth Study, where Ricoeur re‑opens the problem of attestation and reinterprets his earlier epistemic framing in explicitly Aristotelian-ontological terms.