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The Concept of Second Naiveté in the thought of

Ernst Simon and Paul Ricoeur

By Elie Holzer

Published in

Languages and Literatures in Jewish Education, Studies in

Honor of Michael Rosenak, J. Cohen, E. Holzer & A. Isaacs, Hebrew

University and Magnes Press, Jerusalem, (2006), pp. 325-344.

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The Concept of Second Naiveté in the thought of

Ernst Simon and Paul Ricoeur

Elie Holzer

Introduction

The term Temimut (Naiveté1) appears as early as in biblical language as an

adjective describing a quality of three biblical characters.2 It also appears in

Deuteronomy, chapter 18, v. 13 in the following general prescription: “תמים תהיה עם ה '

You shall be wholehearted with the Lord your God.”3 Texts by medieval“ – ”אלהיך

Jewish commentators reflect two orientations in the interpretation of Temimut. Rashi

interprets Tamim as the trait of an individual who adopts a stance of acceptance

towards whatever befalls him, with no attempt to inquire into his or her destiny.

According to Rashi, in its textual context, the above verse from Deuteronomy implies

that people should rely exclusively on God rather than sorcery to provide for their

needs. Another interpretation suggests Temimut as a total orientation to God: Even

when one wishes to know the future, one should turn to prophets elected by God

rather than to sorcerers. Temimut relates, therefore, to a single and sole orientation to

God, to the exclusion of other gods and false prophets.4

Neither the Bible nor these commentators, however, elucidate what Temimut

actually entails or its potential significance as a mode of religious life. Although it

implies some quality of religious attitude, the concept of Temimut has failed to attract

serious attention of Jewish thinkers over the centuries, with the exception of Rabbi

Judah Loew, known as the Maharal of Prague (1525-1609), who developed the

concept of Temimut as a rich mode of active spiritual engagement in life.5

1 I translate Temimut as Naiveté instead of innocence or integrity. 2 See Noah (Genesis, 6,8); Jacob (Genesis 25, 27); Job (1,1). 3 Translation from the Stone edition 4 See Rashbam and Sforno. 5 Maharal of Prague, “Netiv Hatemimut” in Netivot Israel Vol. 2, Jerusalem 1971, pp. 205-208.

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Only in 20th century Jewish thought does the concept of Temimut take an interesting

turn, in the writings of Ernst Simon and later on by Emmanuel Levinas.6 In his

discussion of the attitude of the religious person after having encountered and

assimilated some forms of secular and critical worldviews of life, Simon offers the

concept of Temimut Shniya (Second Naiveté), as a model for both religious thinking

and religious education. “Second Naiveté” appears to express a general state of mind,

characterized by cognitive elements as well as an attitude towards existential

questions. It is used more specifically in the context of religious beliefs and attitudes,

to describe a critically mediated attitude towards the reality claims of religious faith.

More recently, the concept of Second Naiveté has attracted renewed interest

among scholars because of its role in the writings of Paul Ricoeur.7 Despite several

similarities in the use of this concept by Simon and Ricoeur, we believe that a

comparison of the two highlights several differences, which are potentially significant

for the thinking of religious educators. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to

discuss and compare Simon and Ricoeur’s understanding of Second Naiveté.

Before exploring the heart of the matter, I would like to add a more personal

note. The choice of this topic is intimately connected to the book in which it appears,

namely the Festschrift in the honor of Michael Rosenak. It was Mike who introduced

me for the first time to Simon’s concept of Second Naiveté, years ago, when, after the

collapse of my own First Naiveté, I sought alternatives beyond the existential desert

which remained in its wake. Moreover, Mike exemplifies the concept of Second

Naiveté, both in his scholarly work, as well as in his personal life and in his

interactions with people. I can therefore think of no more appropriate title for a

contribution to this book.

6 E. Levinas, La Tentation de la Tentation, Quatre Lectures Talmudiques. Paris: Les Editions the

Minuit, 1968, pp. 67-109. 7 Mark I. Wallace, The Second Naiveté, Barth, Ricoeur, and the New Yale Theology, Macon, GA,

Mercer University Press, 1990.

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Second Naiveté in Ernst Simon’s thought8

Simon discusses the concept of Second Naiveté in his article “Az Eitam,” on

which our analysis here focuses.9 At the outset of the article, Simon distinguishes

between Tom (innocence) and Temimut (naiveté). Tom refers to a situation whereby

an individual holds a clear and coherent worldview, based on firm (and unexamined)

beliefs in a world of good, justice and truth. Such an organized worldview is free of

both engagement in existential questions and experience of existential crises.10 In

terms of religious beliefs, Tom may include faith in a God who rules men’s life

according to norms of good and justice, or belief in revelation as it is presented in the

Holy Scriptures. Thus, in this form of innocence, the language of the Scriptures is

perceived as referential to either empirical or spiritual reality.

Although Simon places the characteristics of the Temimut (naiveté), which he

labels later as Temimut Shniya, Second Naiveté, in contradistinction to Tom, or “First

Naiveté,” he provides no formal definition of the former. Instead, he illuminates

several aspects of Second Naiveté, primarily through a discussion of the writings of

earlier philosophers and theologians.

In general, Simon distinguishes among three different states of being11:

According to Simon, First Naiveté, criticism and Second Naiveté are not only possible

states or attitudes but three distinctive stages of human-religious development. The

first state is a state of innocence (Tom), or First Naiveté, as described above.

8 Ernst Simon was born in Germany in the year 1899. He grew up in an assimilated environment and

became one of Martin Buber’s closest students as a young man. In the aftermath of World War I, he

became a Zionist. In the early 1920s, he was active in the Free Jewish House of Learning, established

by Buber and Rosenzweig. He emigrated to Palestine in 1928 but returned to Germany in 1934 to

participate in the Centre for Jewish Adult Education, founded by Buber. In 1935, he returned to

Palestine and joined the faculty of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Simon was an educator, a

researcher and a philosopher. He died in 1988 in Jerusalem. 9 Simon, “Az Eitam,” in Haim od Yehudim Anahnu?, Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Hapoalim, 1982, pp. 135-169

(Hebrew). Simon takes credit for suggesting the concept of second naiveté. It was Hugo Bergman, who

pointed out to him that the catholic philosopher Peter Wust (1884-1940) had already used this term in

this writings. See “Az Eitam,” p. 135. 10 According to Simon, when this innocence is attributed to a large group, it is labeled as “primitive”

innocence.

11 Simon also talks about three educational stages towards authentic communication, see p. 167-168.

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The second state is one of enlightenment, reflection and critique.12 This state is

obtained when one is exposed to modern critical scientific and philosophical thinking.

Man is then to apply reason in the critical examination of his beliefs. Thus, the

individual establishes his own knowledge of reality by challenging unexamined

beliefs and the authority attributed to traditions in general, and to traditional religious

beliefs in particular.13 This critical activity leads to the collapse of the First Naiveté.

Scientific inquiry and critical thinking have undermined the status of pre-given truths

and norms, either those originating in nature (e.g.,Greek philosophers) or revelation

(e.g., the Bible as source of normative knowledge). In contrast to pre-modern

philosophical and religious worldviews, in which man was conceived as an integral

part of a macrocosm, modern man perceives himself as an autonomous being who

shapes and controls his universe.14

However, such critical reflection brings about a crisis, which, in modern

philosophical writings, is expressed as man’s discovery of the limitations of his own

knowledge. Kant’s philosophy is paradigmatic of man’s inherent inability to know

reality “as it is.” Hegel discusses the raising of historical consciousness, which in its

subsequent developments led man to acknowledge historical relativism and plurality

of forms of life and religious expressions.15 Thus man is sovereign, yet alone, having

lost all former anchors of faith. To resolve this crisis, Simon develops what Ehud Luz

has described as a form of religious humanism.16 Luz characterizes Simon’s religious

thought as an attempt to reconcile religion, which is expected to redeem man from

total relativism, and humanism, which prevents the sacrifice of man’s autonomy and

dignity by religion. It is important to emphasize that, according to Simon, it is reason

and the discovery of the limits of human knowledge which lead man to the threshold

of Second Naiveté. This is the reason why a major part of Simon’s article retraces

12 One cannot infer from Simon’s writings if reflection and critique function more as a cause or rather

as a result of the collapsing of First Naiveté. 13 For an analysis and a critic of Enlightenment’s attack on the authority of traditions, see H. G.

Gadamer, Truth and Method, Second Revised Edition, New York: Continuum, 1996, pp. 271-290.

14 See for example Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1953.

15 Ehud Luz, “Hatemimut Hasheniya, Al Hahumanism Hayehudi shel Akiva Ernst Simon,” Mehkarei

Yerushalyim beMahshevet Israel, Vol. 2 (4), Jerusalem, 1983, pp. 613-644. 16 Ibid.

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how various philosophers and theologians have discussed the concept of docta

ignorantia as recognition of the limitations of one’s knowledge.17

The result is Second Naiveté, a concept which Simon adopts from Wust, a 19th

century catholic thinker. According to Wust, the main characteristics of Second

Naiveté are man’s capacity for adopting a stance of both wonder and fear of the

world.18 For man, wonder is the origin of philosophy and detached analysis, while

fear is the impetus for religion and practical engagement.19 The state of Second

Naiveté is also characterized by man’s optimistic future-oriented approach to life. On

one hand, having assimilated a reflective and critical state of mind, she or he is

realistic about the realities of life, yet refuses to “identify what there is and what could

potentially be.”20 “Belief is anticipation, drawing the future into the present.”21

At the same time, Second Naiveté is a state of being, a readiness to revisit one’s

childhood experiences, for example to use the name of God again and to pray. In

Second Naivete, the sources of song and of faith are reopened, making it possible for

man to reconnect to prayer, in some way.22

Thus, Second Naiveté entails two simultaneous “moves”: on the one hand the

person goes back to his initial First Naiveté; he uses religious language again, he is

again capable of praying. On the other hand he crafts his overall orientation beyond

(but not on behalf of) science and rationality. In Second Naivete, the person actively

seeks a meaning of life that lies behind the here and now of his/her personal existence.

Although he fully acknowledges the significance of the reflective criticism of life,

reality and of what appears to be a meaningless existence, the newfound positive

orientation allows him/her to resist the total claim of critical thinking, to go beyond

the conclusions of his rational self and explore new realms of meaning.

17 “Az Eitam” , pp. 142-152. Simon discusses Socrates, Plato, Philo, Augustinus, Nicolas of Cusa.

18 P. 139. 19 Pp. 139-140. 20 P. 167. 21 “Shabbat anticipates redemption, prayer anticipates its being answered. The Ten Commandments

anticipate a society where justice will reign,” p. 168.

22 P. 169.

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Overall, Simon seems to consider all three stages as essential elements in a

chronological, biographical process.23 In the introduction to his article, while

discussing the person who has attained Second Naiveté, he says:

one will recognize the signs of the long transitional period between the Tom

[first naiveté] and the Temimut [second naiveté], a period of shocking

doubts about faith and achievements of critical philosophy and science”. 24

In the context of education, Simon’s view of Second Naiveté offers a

productive language for educators’ thinking about religious education. Thus,

educators of adolescents might consider adolescents’ religious crises constructively,

in terms of a collapse of their First Naiveté, rather than in terms of a problem.

Educators might also reflect and explore possible pedagogical and curricular elements

designed to facilitate the collapse of forms of First Naiveté or the development of a

Second Naiveté for adolescents. Overall, the concept itself has the potential to engage

educators’ thinking about religious education in more subtle terms of overall attitudes

and orientations to be nurtured, rather than as knowledge or practices. However,

Simon’s use of the concept appears to be limited in at least two ways. First, as we

said, Simon’s discussion of Second Naiveté is presented in general and occasionally,

even suggestive language. This undermines its possible uses and expressions in the

practices of teaching because it does not explicitly relate to any particular aspect of

teaching. One, however, may claim that the very nature of Second Naiveté precludes

its treatment in discursive language.

A more important limitation concerns Simon’s attempts to resolve the crisis

and reach Second Naiveté through the use of means which are still grounded in the

rational philosophical tradition/paradigm whose total claim on man he tries to

overcome. Simon’s sense of the “remedy” appears to be intimately linked to his

diagnosis of the problem. The employment of critical reason provides modern man

with a sense of autonomy by which he or she establishes knowledge and values.

According to Simon, it is by the use of reason that reason’s limitations are recognized,

opening up the possibility for a Second Naivete to appear. Thus the use of reason

23 Although he stresses that most people might remain at the second stage, see p. 135. For a slightly

different description of these three stages, see pp.167-168. 24 P. 135. My translation and my emphasis.

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brings about the collapse of First Naivete because religious language is understood to

compete with scientific and historical knowledge. Religious language and views

disintegrate in the presence of the fruits of critical thinking, modern scholarship and

modern consciousness. It is, however, in a subsequent use of reason, when it

discovers its own limits, that a potential for a Second Naiveté is created. However,

what if man cannot rely on either reason and its very foundations or on religious

language and faith experience because his/her motivations seem to involve more than

what s/he is conscious of?

Second Naiveté in Paul Ricoeur’s Thought

Unlike Simon, Ricoeur uses the concepts of First and Second Naiveté

sporadically and wrote no specific essay on the topic of naiveté. Nonetheless, we

believe that these concepts do capture a major aspect of his philosophical work. To

highlight the meaning of these terms in Ricoeur’s thought, we shall discuss the role

they play as a frame of reference in Ricoeur’s agenda. We begin by discussing

Ricoeur’s core idea that the engagement with symbols and texts, in general, and

narratives and religious texts in particular, is a philosophical activity par excellence.

The concept of Second Naiveté assumes its full meaning when interpretations of

(religious) texts and symbols are confronted and challenged.

From philosophy to hermeneutics

In one of his earlier volumes, The Symbolism of Evil, Ricoeur points out that

the interpretive work on symbols gives rise to thought.25 This insight leads him to

investigate the broader connection between the interpretation of symbols, on one

hand, and philosophical reflection, on the other. How can the interpretation of

symbols, which are man’s signs in the world including myth, language, rituals,

metaphors and narratives, contribute to one’s reflection on existence? Ricoeur is

willing to speculate as follows: In the to-and fro of interpretation with “the gift of

meaning from symbol, the philosopher profits in understanding.”26 In order to better

understand the human capacity for meaning and understanding, Ricoeur turns to “the

25 Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967, p. 346. 26 Ibid., p. 348.

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fullness of language,” which encompasses symbolic and mythic forms of language, as

well as metaphorical and narrative language. The interpretation of symbols, which

incorporate the fullness of language, therefore requires the investigation of linguistic

expressions. Although the process of interpretation may never end, by engaging in

hermeneutic activity regarding symbols, we “shall have a better understanding of man

and of the bond between the being of man and the being of all beings.”27

In contrast to the excessively generic Cartesian concept of consciousness,

Ricoeur’s hermeneutical turn is based on the assumption that consciousness is neither

the locus nor the origin of meaning. This is well illustrated by the field of

psychoanalysis, as well as the phenomenology of religion. In both cases, immediate

consciousness is not necessarily genuine consciousness: The cogito undergoes a de-

centering and does not constitute the locus of reflection or human self-understanding.

For Ricoeur, man’s original effort to be is not transparent to himself and must be

recovered. Reflection should, therefore, not be confused with immediate intuition (as

with Descartes). Reflection is an “appropriation of our effort to exist and of desire to

be through the works which bear witness to that effort and desire.”28 Reflection which

leads to self-understanding is thus possible only through the engagement with the

expressions of life created by humans.29 In other words, Ricoeur is not preoccupied

with a definitive starting point of philosophy, similar to the Cartesian autonomous

doubting self. For Ricoeur, language is an adequate starting point for meditation on

symbols and the meaning that is inherent in language. It is therefore through what

Ricoeur calls “the long route” of hermeneutical activity concerning symbols (myth,

language, rituals, metaphors and narratives) that man can reach meaning and self-

understanding30:

27 Ibid., p. 355. 28 Paul Ricoeur, Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, , New Haven and London: Yale

University Press, 1970, p. 46.

29 “It is necessary to renounce the chimera of a philosophy without presuppositions and begin from a

full language,” The Symbolism of Evil, p. 19. “The symbol gives; but what it gives is occasion of

thought, something to think about,” ibid., p. 348. In the philosophical hermeneutics of Ricoeur,

knowledge is a gift before it becomes a task; it must be received before it can be doubted. 30 The choice for the long route is one of Ricoeur’s important critiques of Heidegger, see The Conflict

of Interpretations, Don Ihde (ed.), Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974, p. 10.

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In contrast to the tradition of the cogito and to the pretension of the subject to

know itself by immediate intuition, it must be said that we understand ourselves only

by the long detour of the signs of humanity deposited in cultural works.31 This is

man’s single alternative for recovering himself. Hence, philosophical reflection

becomes hermeneutics:

The ultimate root of our problem lies in this primitive connection between the

act of existing and the signs we deploy in our works; reflection must become

interpretation because I cannot grasp the act of existing except in signs

scattered in the world. This is why a reflective philosophy must include the

results, methods and presuppositions of all the sciences that try to decipher

and to interpret the signs of man.32 That appropriation of my desire to exist is

impossible by the short path of consciousness; only the long path of

interpretation of signs is open. Such is my working hypothesis in philosophy. I

call it concrete reflection that is the cogito mediated by the entire universe of

sign.33

“Concrete reflection” is a fundamental philosophical position that Ricoeur adopts,

breaking away from the proud autonomous modern Cartesian self. It has particular

significance in the educational context, because it demands that the learner adopt an

attitude of openness and vulnerability vis-à-vis the text and additional cultural signs.

The reader is required to “de-possess” and “de-center” himself or herself:

It is with Freud and Philosophy that I broke away from the illusions of

consciousness as the blind spot of reflection. The case of the symbolism of

evil is not an exception, one tributary of the gloomy experience of evil. All

reflection is mediated, there is not immediate self-consciousness. The first

truth “I think, I am” remains as abstract and empty as it is invincible; it has to

be “mediated” by the ideas, actions, works, institutions and monuments and

that objectify it. It is in these objects, in the widest sense of the word, that the

Ego must lose and find itself. We can say, in a somewhat paradoxical sense,

31 Paul Ricoeur, The hermeneutical function of distanciation, Hermeneutics and the Human

Sciences, UK Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 143. 32 Freud and Philosophy, p. 46. 33 The Conflict of Interpretations, pp. 264-265.

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that a philosophy of reflection is not a philosophy of consciousness if by

consciousness we mean immediate self-consciousness.34

Instead of a direct access to the self, one must engage in the interpretation of human

beings’ signs in the world, which are repositories of insights about life. This is also

the objective of the study as texts:

What would we know of love and hate, of moral feelings and, in general, of all

that we call the self, if these had not been brought to language and articulated

by literature? Thus what seems most contrary to subjectivity, and what

structural analysis discloses as the texture of the text, is the very medium

within which we can understand ourselves.35

Thus, interpretation is the way by which modern man is to reaffirm life through an

honest act of reflective engagement with symbols. An assessment of reality is attained

through symbolic, communal interpretation, rather than detached rational thought.

However, the very interaction with texts, especially religious texts and symbols,

becomes problematic for this same modern person. No simple and direct access to the

meaning of these religious symbols and texts exists. When he approaches religious

symbols and texts from a stance of “concrete reflection,” modern man cannot revert to

a primitive naiveté:

Does that mean that we could go back to a primitive naiveté? Not at all. In

every way, something has been lost, irremediably lost: immediacy of belief.

But if we can no longer live the great symbolisms of the sacred in accordance

with the original belief in them, we can, we modern men, aim at a second

naiveté in and through criticism. In short, it is by interpreting that we can hear

again.36

34 “Toward a Hermeneutic of the Idea of Revelation,” in Lewis S. Mudge, Paul Ricouer’s Essays on

Biblical Interpretation, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980, p. 106 [my emphasis]. 35 Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, J. Thompson (ed.), UK Cambridge University

Press, 1981, p. 143. 36 Symbolism of Evil, p. 351.

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What Ricoeur refers to as the loss of immediacy of belief is modern man’s awareness

of scientific and historical criticism, namely those sources normally viewed as sources

of man’s knowledge and systematic reflection which render the engagement with

these texts meaningless when they are approached in a mode of “primitive naiveté.”

In a further development of his philosophical work, Ricoeur acknowledges

that serious hermeneutical engagement with texts must also confront what he has

called the hermeneutics of suspicion. Ricoeur points to three major schools of

hermeneutics initiated by Freud, Marx and Nietzsche, who share a reductionist

hermeneutics of false-consciousness. 37 Ricoeur’s concern to find a way to retrieve

religious symbols and texts via hermeneutical engagement must, at the same time,

elucidate how to overcome the reductive explanatory character of the hermeneutics of

suspicion. Ricoeur retraces this part of the journey in his own philosophical work:

Hermeneutics appeared henceforth as a battle field traversed by two opposing

trends, the first tending toward a reductive explanation, the second tending

toward a recollection or a retrieval of the original meaning of the symbol. My

problem was to link these two approaches and to understand their relation as

dynamic and as moving from first naiveté through critique toward what I

called at the time a second naiveté.38

Thus stated briefly, “First Naiveté” signifies a person’s simplistic connection with and

acceptance of the symbolic/mythic foundations of the surrounding culture. “Critical

distance” signifies the reader’s use of various interpretive approaches which create a

distance from mythic symbol systems. “Second Naiveté,” a term used by Ricoeur to

capture the core idea of his philosophical project , signifies a person’s interpretive

stance, informed by the use of critical models, but open to the depth of symbolic

meaning.39

37 Freud and Philosophy, pp. 32-36. 38 “From existentialism to the philosophy of language,” reprinted in Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of

Metaphor, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979, p. 318.

39 See also: “For the second immediacy that we seek and the second naiveté that we await are no longer

accessible to us anywhere else than in a hermeneutics,” The Symbolism of Evil, p. 352.

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Several interesting comparisons with Simon are appropriate at this point. Both

Simon and Ricoeur have a similar conception of a three-phase process: First Naiveté,

Critical Thinking and Second Naiveté. Both attempt to negotiate the challenges posed

by modern consciousness to the religious person. There are, however, two major

differences between them: for Simon, modern manifestations of reason (historical

consciousness, scientific knowledge) are means to knowledge attainment and

responsible for the inevitable collapse of First Naiveté. Only subsequently, when

reason discovers its own limits, does the potential for Second Naiveté emerge.

Ricoeur’s point, however, is more radical: From the masters of suspicion, we learned

that reason itself cannot be relied on, neither from the perspective of the text (when

reason appears in its linguistic expressions in texts), nor from the perspective of the

reader (when he or she engages in reading of a text). The real locus of understanding

resides in possible hidden meanings and motivations, both in the text and of the

reader. Therefore, to attain Second Naiveté, a state in which religious texts “speak”

again to the reader, one must negotiate this uncertainty. According to Ricoeur, the

modern reader wishing to engage in the philosophical process of self-understanding

has no alternative route to Second Naiveté. To some degree, Second Naiveté is not

only a challenge for modern man’s engagement with religious texts, but also for

modern man’s philosophical project in general.

Secondly, as distinct from Simon, we find that the special nature of Ricoeur’s

treatment of Second Naiveté is circumscribed in the very practices of the work of

hermeneutics, particularly the hermeneutics of religious texts.40 Moreover, unlike

Simon, Ricoeur’s concept of Second Naiveté is not vague: It is informed by both a

theory of text and meaning, as well as by the clarification of principles of

hermeneutical engagement with texts. A brief discussion of these elements provides

conceptual insights to Second Naiveté in Ricoeur’s philosophy.

Hermeneutics as appropriation of the world of the text

Ricoeur has devoted much of his work to an analysis of what occurs when

learners engage with text in a manner which contributes to their self-understanding.

40 This is not to say that hermeneutics is peripheral or secondary. As we said in the previous paragraph,

for Ricoeur the very hermeneutical activity of text study is the philosophical activity par excellence by

which man engages in self-understanding.

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For Ricoeur, to understand oneself is to understand oneself “before the text” and to be

understood by the text. This is because texts propose worlds that the reader may

inhabit. Ricoeur’s basic philosophical project is to facilitate an encounter between the

reader and text, beyond reductionism and historical relativism. Let us briefly examine

the meaning of Ricoeur’s statement that interpretation is the appropriation of the

world of the text. According to Ricoeur, a text is a work of discourse, which means

that it is a structured totality and cannot be decomposed into its constituent sentences.

Through the medium of texts, language assumes different forms known as genre

(poetics, plays, etc.). Hermeneutics, then, consists of “the art of discerning the

discourse in the work; but this discourse is only given in and through the structures of

the work.”41

The locus of meaning resides in the text itself and its discourse, rather than in

the author’s mind, due to the fact that texts hold the characteristic of distanciation.

One sense of distanciation is that written discourse permits the “matter” of the text to

free itself from the finite intention of the author, as well as from the social conditions

of the text’s production. The text is then addressed to an unknown reader and to any

reader and is, therefore, “condemned” to become “de-contextualized” from its original

social and historical conditions of production. The reader encounters the “world of the

text” which is what written discourse carries within itself:

Not the intention of the author, which is supposed to be hidden behind the

text; not the historical situation common to the author and his original readers;

not the expectations or feelings of these original readers; not even their

understanding of themselves as historical and cultural phenomena. What has

to be appropriated is the meaning of the text itself, conceived in a dynamic

way as the direction of thought opened by the text.42

Drawing on Heidegger, Ricoeur considers the world of the text as forcing the reader

into a new type of distanciation from his or her everyday real life. It opens for the

41 Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, p. 138. 42 Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory, Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, Fort Worth, Texas

Christian Press, 1976, p. 92. For Ricoeur’s view about the three dimensions of the interpretive process,

see hereunder, note 52.

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reader “new possibilities of being in the world” within everyday reality.43 In

interpretation, man’s imagination is at work. Imagination is a rule-governed activity

that schematizes semantic fields by “reviving former experiences, awakening dormant

memories, irrigating adjacent sensorial fields”.44 Ricoeur distinguishes between two

domains of semantic imagination, poetic language in the form of metaphoric

expressions and narrative language.45 In studying the creative capacity of language

(in metaphorical and narrative discourse), one discovers the ability of language to

reveal various aspects of reality: “Language in the making celebrates reality in the

making.”46 In Ricoeur’s own words, the polysemic nature of words accounts for the

ability of language to hold a “surplus of meaning.”47 Poetry in general, and metaphors

in particular, suspend the functional characteristic use of ordinary language: Instead of

providing information about reality, they propose a “world.” A poem evokes feelings

and challenges us to change our way of looking at things; it can also engage us with

new horizons to explore. Poems feed us existentially by articulating values, goals and

feelings by which we can orient our lives. Metaphor is therefore not merely a

substitution of a word by another word on the basis of a perceived resemblance48:

Live metaphors tell us something more that we did not know before. They suggest

new insights into reality and offer new ways of orienting oneself in the world. By

43 “Philosophy and Religious Language,” in Figuring the Sacred, M. Wallace (ed.), Minneapolis:

Fortress Press, 1995, p. 43; See also “Hermeneutics can be defined no longer as an inquiry into the

psychological intentions which are hidden beneath the text, but rather as the explication of the being-

in-the world displayed by the text. What is to be interpreted in the text is a proposed world which I

could inhabit and in which I could project my own most possibilities,” Hermeneutics and the Human

Sciences, p. 112. 44 Paul Ricoeur, From Text to Action, Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, , p. 173. 45 See The Rule of Metaphor, for the former, and the three volumes of Time and Narrative for the

latter. 46 A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, Mario J. Valdes (ed.), Toronto: University of Toronto

Press, 1991, p. 462. For Ricoeur’s discussion of the relationship between language and reality, see The

Rule of Metaphor, pp. 216-256.

47 As is indicated by the subtitle title of his book, Interpretation Theory, Discourse and the Surplus of

Meaning. 48 See The Rule of Metaphor, Study 3, “Metaphor and the Semantics of Discourse,” pp. 65-100.

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going beyond the world and re-describing reality,49 they enable us to look differently

at reality:

…We cease to identify reality with empirical reality or, what amounts to the

same thing, that we cease to identify experience with empirical experience.50

Metaphors give new ways to talk about things and therefore they change our

sense of reality.51

This, briefly said, is the new dimension of text understanding which Ricoeur

proposes, a dimension by which, as he says, we should be able to “hear” texts again,

even after they have been made distant through the application of critical methods of

interpretation. The ability to hear the text again, the state of Second Naiveté, is not,

however, exclusively related to a theory of text and leads Ricoeur to engage in the

articulation of the process of interpretation. Again, the concept of Second Naiveté

frames his discussion.

A three-fold spiral process of interpretation

What principles does the reader use in the practical engagement of texts, in order to

reach a Second Naiveté, an ability to have these texts speak to him again? Formally,

Ricoeur’s hermeneutic follows a three-stage method. The first phase is the naïve, non-

critical and non-reflective encounter between the reader with the text. In the second

stage, the reader applies various methods of critique (e.g., historical, philological,

sociological, psychoanalytical), both requiring and resulting in his distanciation from

the text. The third stage entails an attempt, despite and beyond the critical

distanciation, to encounter the text again as something that speaks to the reader here

and now. A closer look, however, underlines the need to refine the description of

these stages as a fusion of three moments in the hermeneutical process, rather then

three distinct stages.

These moments have been formulated in different terms. Ricoeur summarized these

moments as “naïve understanding,” “objective explanation” and “appropriation.”52

49 Ibid., p. 240.

50 From Text to Action, p. 11. 51 On the relationship between philosophy and the interpretation of metaphors, see Rule of Metaphor,

Study 8, “Metaphor and Philosophical Discourse,” pp. 257-314.

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David Klemm, one of Ricoeur’s interpreters, refers to Ricoeur’s dimension of

interpretation as “first naiveté,” “critique” and “second naiveté.”53 Lewis Mudge uses

the terms of “testimony in the making,” “critical moment” and “post-critical

moment.”54 David Tracy uses the terms of “understanding,” “explanation” and

“understanding.”55

The first stage of textual interpretation entails recognition of the text as a work

of discourse whose meaning is different than the author’s original intention in its

historical context. The reader draws on its forms of literary production and interprets

the text in light of its semantic structures.56 At this stage, Ricoeur endorses Gadamer’s

view that understanding is always historical, in that a reader’s understanding is pre-

suppositional and assumes a perspective. However, at this stage, the reader seeks to

52 In the context of his later work on time and narrative these stages are discussed as a threefold

mimesis. According to Ricoeur, all understanding follows an arc which begins with an initial pre-

understanding of reality that the reader brings to the text (mimesis 1), the reconstructing and the

configuration of this initial understanding of reality by the text (mimesis 2) and the final intersection

between the world configured by the text and the world of the reader (mimesis 3), Paul Ricoeur , Time

and Narrative, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984-88, Vol. 1, pp. 52-87. See also Mario

Valdes, “Paul Ricoeur and the Literary Theory,” L.E. Hahan (ed.), The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur,

Chicago and Lasalle Illinois:Carus Publishing Company, 1995, 259-280, especially pp. 276-278. For a

discussion of the differences between Ricoeur’s accounts of the different stages of the hermeneutical

process, see Dan R. Stiver, Theology after Ricoeur; New Directions in Hermeneutical Theology,

Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001, pp. 56-78. 53 David Klemm, The Hermeneutical Theory of Paul Ricoeur, Lewisburg, Penn.: Bucknell Press, 1983,

p. 69.

54 Lewis Mudge, “Paul Ricoeur on Biblical Interpretation,” in Lewis S. Mudge (ed.), Essays on Biblical

Interpretation, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980, pp. 18-32. 55 David Tracy, The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism, New

York: Crossroad Press, 1981, pp. 151-2, note 107.

56 See Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning, p. 76. One of Ricoeur’s important

ideas is that the literary forms of religious language cannot be separated from the content they convey:

“It is not enough to say that religious language is meaningful, that it is not senseless, that it makes

sense, that it has a meaning of its own, and so forth. We have to say that its meanings are ruled and

guided by the modes of articulation specific to each mode of discourse,” Paul Ricoeur, “Philosophy and

Religious Language,” Journal of Religion 54, 1974, p. 75. See also his claim that in hermeneutics there

is an “affinity between a form of discourse and a certain modality of the confession of faith,” ibid. 74.

This is one of Ricoeur’s main critiques of Bultman’s hermeneutic of religious text, see P. Ricoeur,

“Preface to Bultman,” Conflict of Interpretations, pp. 381-401.

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discover the text’s message about an object of meaning, while refraining from any

projection of his own beliefs and presuppositions onto the text.57 Thus, at this stage,

the reader attempts to capture something of the literary and theological worlds

represented by the text.

In the second stage, the stage of explanation, various critical explanatory approaches,

such as historical criticism, structural analysis or redaction analysis, are applied to test

the first understanding for adequacy and coherence, which are important to gain an

improved understanding of the relation between the parts and the whole of the text.

Let us emphasize that Ricoeur seeks to combine two dimensions of interpretation,

namely explanation and understanding,58 each of which is inadequate on its own:

Explanation alone becomes reductive, while understanding alone remains vulnerable

to illusions of self-deception. Explanation is critical or socio-critical, but

understanding can also operate at a post-critical level. Explanation entails the

willingness to abolish the idols which are projections of the human will.

Understanding requires willingness to listen with openness to symbols and indirect

(and religious) language. Thus, the reader engages first in skepticism, suspicion and

critique, but is subsequently called into a mode of retrieval, seeking a new possibility

to listen to religious language. In other words, for Ricoeur, suspicion is not the last

word: Text and context, suspicion and belief, faith and understanding are to be

maintained in circular tension. 59

57 “It is necessary for us to struggle also with the presuppositions of modern man himself, with the

presuppositions of his modernity,” P. Ricoeur, “The Language of Faith,” in The Philosophy of Paul

Ricoeur: An Anthology of His Work, Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart (eds.), Boston: Beacon

Press, 1978, p. 227. 58 For the discussion of explanation and understanding, see Schleiermacher and Dilthey in The

Hermeneutics Reader, K. Mueller-Vollmer (ed.), New York: Continuum, 1997, pp. 72-97;148-164. For

Gadamer’s view on the question see Truth and Method, Part II, pp. 171-380. See also Ricoeur’s article

“What is a text? Explanation and understanding,” Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, pp. 145-164. 59 Therefore, Ricoeur sees the work of the masters of suspicion not as a stage to be overcome but as an

actual and critical stage of the interpretive process. In positive terms, the masters of suspicion clear

“the horizon for a more authentic word, for a new reign of Truth, not only by means of a destructive

critique, but by the invention of an art of interpreting… by an exegesis of meaning,” Freud and

Philosophy, p. 33; See also: “’Symbols give rise to thought’; but they are also the birth of idols. That is

why the critique of idols remains the condition of the conquest of symbols.” Freud and Philosophy, p.

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In the third stage of understanding, Second Naiveté occurs at the intersection of the

reader’s world and the world of the biblical text. Having negotiated the two earlier

stages, the reader critically re-appropriates a meaning of a symbol or of a religious

text of the past for the present.60

The reader’s hermeneutical activity in engagement with these worlds culminates in

the reader’s self-interpretation:

By “appropriation,” I understand this: that the interpretation of a text

culminates in the self-interpretation of a subject who thenceforth understands

himself better, understands himself differently, or simply begins to understand

himself. This culmination of the understanding of a text in self-understanding

is characteristic of the kind of reflective philosophy which, on various

occasions, I have called “concrete reflection.” Here hermeneutics and

reflective philosophy are correlative and reciprocal … Thus it must be said…

that reflection is nothing without the mediation of signs and works, and that

explanation is nothing if it is not incorporated as an intermediary stage in the

process of self-understanding. In short, in hermeneutical reflection – or in

reflective hermeneutics - the constitution of the self is contemporaneous with

the constitution of meaning.61

According to Ricoeur, consciousness is not a given but an objective. Hermeneutical

engagement with symbols and texts, therefore, becomes the philosophical activity par

excellence which allows the reader to engage in self-understanding. Let us emphasize:

According to Ricoeur, appropriation is not so much an epistemological act

(assimilation of knowledge) as it is an ontological act, a transformational experience

of the learner with the text. Moreover, with Heidegger, Ricoeur sees in hermeneutics a

mode of being rather than a mode of knowledge. Understanding as interpretation is

the primordial condition of man and hermeneutics becomes therefore tied to the

understanding of being.62

543. In his “Preface to Bultmann,” Ricoeur offers a hermeneutics of faith as a rejoinder to the

hermeneutics of suspicion. 60 The Symbolism of Evil, p. 351. 61 Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences, p. 158. 62 The Conflict of Interpretations, p. 11. Ricoeur’s concepts of language, truth and understanding are to

be understood in light of the ideas of Heidegger and Gadamer on language.

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If indeed true appropriation is a form of Second Naiveté, Second Naiveté in Ricoeur’s

thought ultimately becomes a form of being.

Educational Epilogue

Simon’s concepts of reason and Second Naiveté operate in what appears to be

a typical modern paradigm, in which faith must be redeemed from its silence in the

face of critical and reflective thinking. Ricoeur, on the other hand, also corresponds

with the post-modern paradigm, with an awareness that the true nature of the human

condition is other than (universal) reason and a recognition of man’s limitations. Man

must confront his lack of direct access to himself, to insights about life and to his

inevitable pre-understanding. Thus, as we saw, hermeneutical engagement becomes

the crucial human activity for self-understanding.

The role of Second Naiveté in the overall context of Ricoeur’s thought

contains some engaging views for religious educators today, both because it addresses

the question of human self understanding in a postmodern world and because it is

based on a philosophical argument calling for the need for serious engagement in the

study of religious texts.

Moreover, because it is grounded in the practices of the hermeneutics of texts,

Ricoeur’s treatment of First Naiveté, criticism and Second Naiveté is especially

appealing for educators. Ricoeur’s thought is not limited to philosophical ideas that

might be examined for their implications in practice. Given the fact that Ricoeur’s

core philosophy is the hermeneutical engagement with symbols and texts, the concept

of Second Naiveté can be described as concrete hermeneutical moves, examples of

questions one should ask and eventual pedagogical devices one may employ.63

In addition, Ricoeur’s hermeneutical thinking obliterates the classical means-

ends paradigm that often prevails in education, especially in teachers’ concepts of the

study of texts as a mere means to acquire only knowledge.64 Especially for the study

of texts in the context of religious education, Ricoeur’s insights challenge us to be

63 For a concrete and compelling interpretation of a biblical story, following Ricoeur’s hermeneutical

approach, see Theo L. Hettema, Reading for Good, Narrative Theology and Ethics in the Joseph story

from the perspective of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics, Kampen, Netherlands: Kok Pharos, 1996. 64 See J. Dunne, Back to the Rough Grounds, Indiana: Notre Dame, 1993; see also Elie Holzer,

Educational aspects of hermeneutical activity in text study (forthcoming)

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sensitive to the practices and the processes of interpretation as a central locus for

religious education.65 In this perspective, it is interesting to note that Ricoeur’s view

of Second Naiveté adds a new and important dimension to the ongoing discussion of

the hermeneutical circle in the practice of interpretation, which is precisely what we

find challenging for educators. Whereas Schleiermacher spoke of the hermeneutic

circle as consisting of the relation between the parts and the whole of a text, and

Gadamer (following Heidegger) spoke of the hermeneutical circle as the reader’s

prejudices and the text, Ricoeur speaks of the circularity of understanding and faith:

What we have just called a knot - the knot where the symbol gives and

criticism interprets - appears in hermeneutics as a circle. The circle can be

stated bluntly: “We must understand in order to believe, but we must believe

in order to understand.” The circle is not a vicious circle, still less a mortal

one; it is a living and stimulating circle.66

… the second faith of one who has engaged in hermeneutics, faith that has

undergone criticism, post-critical faith.(…) It is a rational faith, for it

interprets; but it is a faith because it seeks, through interpretation, a second

naiveté (…) “Believe in order to understand, understand in order to believe”-

such is its maxim; and its maxim is the “hermeneutical circle” itself of

believing and understanding.67

65 See also Jonathan Cohen, “Subterranean Didactics: Theology, Aesthetics and Pedagogy in the

Thought of Franz Rosenzweig,” Religious Education, Vol. 94, Winter 1999, pp. 24-38. 66 The Symbolism of Evil, p. 351. 67 Freud and Philosophy, p. 28, my emphasis. See also “The hermeneutic circle can be stated roughly

as follows. To understand, it is necessary to believe; to believe, it is necessary to understand....behind

believing there is the primacy of the object of faith over faith; behind understanding there is the

primacy of exegesis and its method over the naive reading of the text.” Ricoeur, Conflict of

Interpretations, p. 389. And: “The believer in the hermeneut when he is faithful to the community, and

… the hermeneut in the believer when he does his scientific work of exegesis. This is today the dual

condition of modern man in whom struggles both a believer and an atheist; in the believer himself they

confrontone another: an adult critic and a naïve child who listen to the Word,” in The Philosophy of

Paul Ricoeur, ed. by Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), p. 222 . See

also: “Hermeneutics seems to me to be animated by this double motivation: willingness to suspect,

willingness to listen; vow of rigor, vow of obedience. In our time we have not finished doing away

with idols and we have barely begun to listen to symbols,” Freud and Philosophy, p. 27.

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If we are to apply Ricoeur’s insights to the context of education, focus is slightly

diverted from how religious texts can be understood. The ultimate question becomes

how the understanding of religious texts constitutes an activity that enacts as well as

facilitates the emergence of Second Naiveté.

As I have personally discovered from Mike’s living example, Second Naiveté is less a

concept to talk about as it is a concept to be enacted in the practices of life.