Key Arguments

• Ricoeur explicitly defines attestation in ontological terms as 'the assurance—the credence and the trust—of existing in the mode of selfhood,' thus directly tying it to a question of being rather than merely knowledge.
• He says that by presenting 'the ontological stakes of selfhood in this way, we are adding a new dimension to ontology, one that our hermeneutics of the self summons in its wake,' indicating that the prior hermeneutical analyses now call for an ontological deepening.
• He identifies a specific 'path' to explore: 'this path connects the investigation of the being of the self to the reappropriation of one of the four primordial acceptations of being, which Aristotle places under the distinction of act and of power,' thereby situating selfhood within the Aristotelian schema of being-as-act/power.
• The unity of human action—brought out in earlier studies—motivates this move: 'All of our analyses prompt this exploration, inasmuch as they point in the direction of a certain unity of human action,' and he immediately suggests this unity may 'belong to the metacategory of being as act and as power.'
• He notes that this ontological metacategory preserves what he had called the 'analogical unity of action,' acknowledging that action and the acting individual are polysemic but still form a unity that an ontology of act/power can articulate.
• Ricoeur shows that his discourse has in fact already presupposed this vocabulary: 'the language of act and of power has never ceased to underlie our hermeneutical phenomenology of acting man,' and he recalls that he has repeatedly used 'act' (especially 'speech act') as synonymous with 'acting' and 'action.'
• Similarly, he has used 'power' both as 'the power-to-act of an agent to whom an action is ascribed or imputed' and as 'the power-in-common of a historical community,' showing that the act/power pair already structures his accounts of individual and collective agency.
• He therefore poses the guiding question: 'Do these anticipations justify our joining the simply analogical unity of human action to an ontology of act and of power?', which states the project of grounding selfhood’s being in this Aristotelian acceptation of being.

Source Quotes

2.Selfhood and Ontology As has just been suggested, attestation is the assurance—the credence and the trust—of existing in the mode of selfhood. By presenting the onto- WHAT ONTOLOGY IN VIEW > 303 logical stakes of selfhood in this way, we are adding a new dimension to ontology, one that our hermeneutics of the self summons in its wake.

2.Selfhood and Ontology As has just been suggested, attestation is the assurance—the credence and the trust—of existing in the mode of selfhood. By presenting the onto- WHAT ONTOLOGY IN VIEW > 303 logical stakes of selfhood in this way, we are adding a new dimension to ontology, one that our hermeneutics of the self summons in its wake. One path deserves to be explored, even if the difficulties here seem more intractable than those encountered in the preceding section: this path con nects the investigation of the being of the self to the reappropriation of one of the four primordial acceptations of being, which Aristotle places under the distinction of act and of power.

By presenting the onto- WHAT ONTOLOGY IN VIEW > 303 logical stakes of selfhood in this way, we are adding a new dimension to ontology, one that our hermeneutics of the self summons in its wake. One path deserves to be explored, even if the difficulties here seem more intractable than those encountered in the preceding section: this path con nects the investigation of the being of the self to the reappropriation of one of the four primordial acceptations of being, which Aristotle places under the distinction of act and of power. All of our analyses prompt this exploration, inasmuch as they point in the direction of a certain unity of human action—setting aside for the moment the complementary theme of suffering to which we shall return in the following section.

All of our analyses prompt this exploration, inasmuch as they point in the direction of a certain unity of human action—setting aside for the moment the complementary theme of suffering to which we shall return in the following section. Does not this unity belong to the metacatcgory of being as act and as power? And does not the ontological significance of this metacategory preserve what we have already termed on several occa sions the analogical unity of action, in order to mark the polysemic char acter of action and of the acting individual, which the fragmentary nature of these studies has underscored?

Does not this unity belong to the metacatcgory of being as act and as power? And does not the ontological significance of this metacategory preserve what we have already termed on several occa sions the analogical unity of action, in order to mark the polysemic char acter of action and of the acting individual, which the fragmentary nature of these studies has underscored? Better yet: have we not, in the course of our investigations, often taken the term "act15 (speech act!) to be synony mous with the terms "acting" and "action"?

And does not the ontological significance of this metacategory preserve what we have already termed on several occa sions the analogical unity of action, in order to mark the polysemic char acter of action and of the acting individual, which the fragmentary nature of these studies has underscored? Better yet: have we not, in the course of our investigations, often taken the term "act15 (speech act!) to be synony mous with the terms "acting" and "action"? And have we not, in the same contexts, employed the term "power" to express either the powcr-to-act of an agent to whom an action is ascribed or imputed or the power-in- common of a historical community, which we hold to be more fundamen tal than the hierarchical relations of domination between governing and governed?

Better yet: have we not, in the course of our investigations, often taken the term "act15 (speech act!) to be synony mous with the terms "acting" and "action"? And have we not, in the same contexts, employed the term "power" to express either the powcr-to-act of an agent to whom an action is ascribed or imputed or the power-in- common of a historical community, which we hold to be more fundamen tal than the hierarchical relations of domination between governing and governed? In short, the language of act and of power has never ceased to underlie our hermencutical phenomenology of acting man.

And have we not, in the same contexts, employed the term "power" to express either the powcr-to-act of an agent to whom an action is ascribed or imputed or the power-in- common of a historical community, which we hold to be more fundamen tal than the hierarchical relations of domination between governing and governed? In short, the language of act and of power has never ceased to underlie our hermencutical phenomenology of acting man. Do these an ticipations justify our joining the simply analogical unity of human action to an ontology of act and of power?

In short, the language of act and of power has never ceased to underlie our hermencutical phenomenology of acting man. Do these an ticipations justify our joining the simply analogical unity of human action to an ontology of act and of power? 1.

Key Concepts

• attestation is the assurance—the credence and the trust—of existing in the mode of selfhood.
• By presenting the onto- WHAT ONTOLOGY IN VIEW > 303 logical stakes of selfhood in this way, we are adding a new dimension to ontology, one that our hermeneutics of the self summons in its wake.
• this path con nects the investigation of the being of the self to the reappropriation of one of the four primordial acceptations of being, which Aristotle places under the distinction of act and of power.
• Does not this unity belong to the metacatcgory of being as act and as power?
• the analogical unity of action, in order to mark the polysemic char acter of action and of the acting individual, which the fragmentary nature of these studies has underscored?
• the term "act15 (speech act!) to be synony mous with the terms "acting" and "action"?
• the term "power" to express either the powcr-to-act of an agent to whom an action is ascribed or imputed or the power-in- common of a historical community, which we hold to be more fundamen tal than the hierarchical relations of domination between governing and governed?
• the language of act and of power has never ceased to underlie our hermencutical phenomenology of acting man.
• Do these an ticipations justify our joining the simply analogical unity of human action to an ontology of act and of power?

Context

Beginning of '2. Selfhood and Ontology' in the Tenth Study, where Ricoeur redefines attestation ontologically and proposes to ground the being of the self in the Aristotelian distinction of act and power, drawing on the previously developed analogical unity of action and his recurrent use of act/power language.