Key Arguments

• Ricoeur says that 'It is only in this phenomenology of the "I can" and in the related ontology of the body as one's own that the status of primitive datum accorded to the power to act would be established definitively.', linking the primitive datum to a bodily phenomenology rather than to abstract metaphysics.
• He stresses that the phenomenon of ascription and the aporias are only a partial and abstract determination of ipseity, and that to go beyond the aporia one must seek 'richer and more concrete determinations to char acterize the ipscity of the self.', which includes the 'I can' and the lived body.
• He recalls that he has used antinomy strategically 'to combat the accusation of being a weak argument leveled, as it should be, against any alleged primitive datum.', thus justifying the recourse to the notion of primitive datum only after dialectical clarification.
• He insists that 'Yet it is indeed a matter of a primitive datum, namely the assurance that the agent has the power to do things, that is to produce changes in the world.', identifying the core primitive datum explicitly.
• He characterizes the dialectic’s function: 'The passage from the disjunctive to the conjunctive stage of the dialectic had no aim other than to carry to a reflective and critical level what was already precomprehended in this assurance of being able to do something.'
• He explicates the notion of assurance: 'To speak of assurance is to say two things. It is, first of all, to bring to light, on the epistcmological plane, a phenomenon we have already glimpsed several times, that of attestation. We are assured with a certainty that is not a belief, a doxa inferior to knowledge, that we can perform those familiar gestures that Danto roots in basic actions.'
• He then adds that admitting this primitive datum 'has not simply an epistcmological side, it has an ontological side as well. The primitive datum of the power-to-act is part of a constellation of primitive data that belong to the ontology of the self, to be sketched out in the tenth study.', thus pointing forward to a broader ontological framework.

Source Quotes

What would make this discourse based on the "I can" a different discourse is, in the last analysis, its reference to an ontology of one's own body, that is of a body which is also my body and which, by its double allegiance to the order of physical bodies and to that of persons, therefore lies at the point of articulation of the power to act which is ours and of the course of things which belongs to the world order. It is only in this phenomenology of the "I can" and in the related ontology of the body as one's own that the status of primitive datum accorded to the power to act would be established definitively. At the close of this investigation devoted to the relation between action and its agent, it is important to sketch out the paths opened by the series of aporias to which the phenomenon of ascription has given rise.

No ac commodation for the aporia as an aporia should transform lucid reflection into self-consenting paralysis. The phenomenon of ascription constitutes, in the final analysis, only a partial and as yet abstract determination of what is meant by the ipscity (the selfhood) of the self. From the aporetics of ascription, there can and should result an impetus to break out of these limits in the search for richer and more concrete determinations to char acterize the ipscity of the self.

And yet we did not fail to assert that the antinomy belongs to an antithetical strategy intended to combat the accusation of being a weak argument leveled, as it should be, against any alleged primitive datum. Yet it is indeed a matter of a primitive datum, namely the assurance that the agent has the power to do things, that is to produce changes in the world. The passage from the disjunctive to the conjunctive stage of the dialectic had no aim other than to carry to a reflective and critical level what was already precomprehended in this assurance of being able to do something.

Yet it is indeed a matter of a primitive datum, namely the assurance that the agent has the power to do things, that is to produce changes in the world. The passage from the disjunctive to the conjunctive stage of the dialectic had no aim other than to carry to a reflective and critical level what was already precomprehended in this assurance of being able to do something. To speak of assurance is to say two things.

The passage from the disjunctive to the conjunctive stage of the dialectic had no aim other than to carry to a reflective and critical level what was already precomprehended in this assurance of being able to do something. To speak of assurance is to say two things. It is, first of all, to bring to light, on the epistcmological plane, a phenomenon we have already glimpsed several times, that of attestation. We are assured with a certainty that is not a belief, a doxa inferior to knowledge, that we can perform those familiar gestures that Danto roots in basic actions.

It is, first of all, to bring to light, on the epistcmological plane, a phenomenon we have already glimpsed several times, that of attestation. We are assured with a certainty that is not a belief, a doxa inferior to knowledge, that we can perform those familiar gestures that Danto roots in basic actions. But admitting a primitive datum attested in the certainty of being able to act has not simply an epistcmological side, it has an ontological side as well.

But admitting a primitive datum attested in the certainty of being able to act has not simply an epistcmological side, it has an ontological side as well. The primitive datum of the power-to-act is part of a constellation of primitive data that belong to the ontology of the self, to be sketched out in the tenth study. What wc have just said of the phenomenology of the "I can" and of the neighboring ontology of one's own body already points in the direc tion of this ontology of the self It will only be at the end of a long journey through and beyond these philosophies of subjectivity that we shall be able to establish the concrete ties by

Key Concepts

• It is only in this phenomenology of the "I can" and in the related ontology of the body as one's own that the status of primitive datum accorded to the power to act would be established definitively.
• The phenomenon of ascription constitutes, in the final analysis, only a partial and as yet abstract determination of what is meant by the ipscity (the selfhood) of the self.
• Yet it is indeed a matter of a primitive datum, namely the assurance that the agent has the power to do things, that is to produce changes in the world.
• what was already precomprehended in this assurance of being able to do something.
• To speak of assurance is to say two things. It is, first of all, to bring to light, on the epistcmological plane, a phenomenon we have already glimpsed several times, that of attestation.
• We are assured with a certainty that is not a belief, a doxa inferior to knowledge, that we can perform those familiar gestures that Danto roots in basic actions.
• The primitive datum of the power-to-act is part of a constellation of primitive data that belong to the ontology of the self, to be sketched out in the tenth study.

Context

Toward the end of the passage, in summing up the third aporia and the Kantian antinomy, Ricoeur reframes the power to act as a primitive datum grounded in the lived assurance of the 'I can' and the lived body, connects this assurance to his central notion of attestation, and anticipates an ontology of the self in Study Ten where this constellation of primitive data will be thematized.