Title:

Value and Normativity: The Institution in the ‘Little Ethic’ of Paul Ricoeur

Abstract:

Drawing on the interplay between a teleological approach and a deontological approach that Ricoeur develops in Oneself as Another this paper explores the nature and function of the institution within Ricoour’s ethic. I identity two constitutive aspects of the institution, commonality and constraining rules, that are then mapped onto the division that forms the basis of Ricoeur’s ethical analysis, that between the ethical and the moral plane respectively. This paper argues that, despite Ricoeur’s contention that the common is primary in conceiving the institution, both the common and the constraining rule aspects must be considered as equally important to the way in which the institution is understood as just. That is, institutions must be viewed as deriving from and promoting shared values, while at the same time providing the limiting framework whereby actions in society make sense. What this means is that, insofar as one is concerned with institutions, the primacy of the ethical and thus the teleological over the moral or deontological is called into question. This is demonstrated most clearly by consideration of the possibility for both the ethical and the moral, as conceived by Ricoeur, to produce unjust institutions. With this concern in mind I close with the suggestion that the rejection of the primacy of either the ethical or the moral may provide more adequately the just institutions that are central to the ethical aim that Ricoeur articlates, “living with and for others in just institutions.”