Paul Ricœur’s hermeneutics as a bridge between aesthetics and ontology

Abstract

Paul Ricoeur's ontology of art is derived from his hermeneutics, and Ricoeur's hermeneutics bridges his idea of aesthetics and ontology. Paul Ricoeur's ontology of art (in which the concept of refiguration plays a central role) sheds a new light in understanding and experiencing works of art. Ricoeur discusses the metaphorical reference of poetic texts that opens up the realm of possible worlds. This idea of metaphoric reference can be extended to works of art as well. Both fictional narratives and artworks may be defined by the formula seeing as, and this formula represents their ontological status that may be defined as being as. Paul Ricoeur argues that non-linguistic symbolic systems such as gestures, sounds and pictures also have the power to make and remake the world. Ricoeur's narrative theory can be applied to both to literature and visual arts as it identifies narrative capacity of artworks. Ricoeur introduces the concept of refiguration that includes the transformation of reality, which is first prefigured in the consciousness of the author (mimesis 1). It is then configured in the artwork (mimesis 2), and finally into the experience of the viewer or listener of the artwork (mimesis 3), which leads to comprehension.