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mateand limitedplace, is to substitute one abstraction for another. However laudable the intent, such one-sided fervor ends up by draining away the meaning of the very notion it wishes to uphold. Accordingly we find in Ricoeur's first work, Freedom and Nature, not an assertion of freedom over against nature, in the manner of Sartre's philosophy, but rather a series of patient, concrete descriptions of the manifold ways in which the two aspects of experience interpenetrate and interact. Decision gives direction to the body; the body gives to decision a grip on reality and a source of affective motivation. There is a positive reciprocity; each realizes itself through the other. Similarly, Fallible Man begins with the crucial methodological affirmation that "the development of thought in a philosophical anthropology never consists in going from the simple to the complex, but always moves within the totality itself..." (4). 13 The point is crucial indeed: for once the final coherence of human experience has been surrendered, all the king's horses and all the king's philosophers will not put it together again. The sole remedy is to begin from within the fullness of experience, and to allow the various dimensions to unfold as aspects of that single fullnessever aware that, because of its very fullness, it is a reality which constantly transcends us. This is undoubtedly the cardinal methodological lesson that Ricoeur drew from Marcel; its enduring character is apparent when Ricoeur concludes a recent discussion of his own philosophy with "the modest and uncertain formula that I borrow from Gabriel Marcel: 'I hope to be in the truth.'"14 Ricoeur's second mentor, Edmund Husserl ( 1859-1938), presents on first impression a marked contrast to Marcel. Whereas Marcel couched his insights in loosely textured, quasiliterary essays, Husserl's work is analytic and highly technical. Whereas Marcel warned against construing philosophy as a series of problems, Husserl wished to make of philosophy "a rigorous science." Yet Ricoeur is explicit that Freedom and Nature is to be located "at the meeting point of two demands: those of thought nourished by the mystery of my body, and those of thought concerned with the distinctions inherited from Husserlian descriptive method."15 If Ricoeur has had any success in bridging the often unreconciled worlds of continental and Anglo-American philosophy, the reason may already be suggested in this early, twofold commitment to existential question and rigorous method. Ricoeur thus wishes to accomplish more thoroughly

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