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STUDIA PHNOMENOLOGICA XIII (2013) 297323

Horizons of Expectation.
Ricur, Derrida, Patoka
Eddo Evink
University of Groningen

Abstract: In several texts, Paul Ricur has elaborated different concepts of


horizon: the horizon of tradition that shapes our perspectives, the horizon as
a careful set of determinations of the future, the horizon as a divine call that
comes from the future towards us. However, the connection of these three
views on the horizon, together with the explicitly Christian interpretation of
the third horizon are problematic elements in Ricurs thoughts on this topic.
In this article his views are confronted with the criticism of Jacques Derrida,
who uses a quite different notion of horizon: an enclosing limit that dominates
the understanding of what seems to fit in its circle. Finally, the notions of ho-
rizon and history as formulated by Jan Patoka provide valuable alternatives to
Ricurs problematic versions of the horizons of expectation, while leaving the
underlying thread of his understanding of horizon intact.
Keywords: Ricur, Derrida, Patoka, Horizon, Expectation, Ideology, Eschatology

The term horizon has a long history as a metaphor in philosophy. Already


in ancient Greek texts one can find the term horisdein in its metaphorical
meaning of demarcating or creating a border. In modern philosophy, at least
from Leibniz on, horizon has been frequently used as a metaphor for the de-
marcation of a certain domain of knowledge.
In the Lebensphilosophie of Nietzsche and Dilthey, the term receives a
more outlined meaning, referring to the historical and cultural borders of
finite human life. All human activities are embedded in cultural, historical
structures that cannot be mastered or overlooked. Every effort to reflect on
these cultural horizons is itself always already embedded in other horizons.1
Here the horizon becomes a border by which man himself is limited and

1
Engfer, Jansen and Scherener 1974: 3, 11941206.
298 Eddo Evink

determined. Horizons are determining for the historical and cultural perspec-
tives we can participate in. As the framework of our experience, it is both limit
and condition of possibility. As a demarcation the horizon delimits what we
can see and thereby shows us the finitude and contextuality of our existence.
As a framework it makes it possible for us to see: there is no experience pos-
sible outside of a horizonal context.
These two meanings of horizon will be central in this article that focuses
on Paul Ricurs notion of horizon. The leading question will be: what is the
proper use and understanding of the phenomenological idea of horizon? I
shall start with a short and introductory section on the horizon in Husserl and
Heidegger (1). Then Ricurs view of the horizon will be discussed, with an
emphasis on the horizon of the future, the horizon of expectation (2). This
view will be confronted with Derridas critique (3) after which a discussion
of this criticism will follow that will mainly defend Ricurs point of view, but
will also point at two problems with Ricurs idea of the horizon of expecta-
tion (3.1.). Finally, these problems will be answered and the Ricurian un-
derstanding of the horizon will be reinforced with the help of some suggestions
drawn from the work of Jan Patoka (4).

1. Husserl, Heidegger. The phenomenon of horizon

In Husserls phenomenology, the idea of horizon has reached the status of a


philosophical concept. The Husserlian horizon has the same double meaning
that was given above: limit and necessary framework. There is also a differ-
ence with regard to Nietzsche and Dilthey, who mainly thought of historical
and cultural frames. Husserl often uses horizon with a more abstract meaning
and for the most part in the context of knowledge and experience. We never
experience phenomena purely in themselves, but always as part of a context;
they derive their meaning from their context. As synonym of horizon, Hus-
serl mentions: Hof, Hintergrund, and Wahrnehmungsfeld: courtyard,
background and field of experience.2 In many of his texts, horizon is more or
less similar to world.3
The more abstract use of the metaphor by Husserl can be illustrated by
his distinction between an inner and an outer horizon. The inner horizon
comprises what seems to be absent in the perception of an object: the parts
we cannot see but of which we immediately know they are there. The outer
horizon determines the place of the phenomenon in its context, the way it is
located in space and in networks of references.

2
Husserl 1976: 7173, 186 / 7073, 197; Husserl 1963: 8486, 131133; Husserl 1962:
365386; Husserl 1985: 2635; Husserl 2008: 53143.
3
These two terms are not synonyms, but their range of meanings has a significant overlap.
Horizons of Expectation. Ricur, Derrida, Patoka 299

Horizon recurrently also receives a temporal meaning. Husserl then speaks


of horizon as a set of predelineated potentialities (vorgezeichnete Potential-
itten): every experience has a realm of potentialities that can be further expe-
rienced and examined. In addition, in the phenomenology of time conscious-
ness, Husserl distinguishes a threefold horizon of time: der Horizont vom
Vorhin, der Horizont vom Nachher und der Horizont vom Gegenwartthe
horizons of what has been (what has left its traces), what will be (what can be
expected) and what is now (horizon of several experiences at the same time).
This threefold temporal horizon is also one of the many places where one can
find the tension in the later Husserl between the Cartesian tendency towards
unity in the transcendental ego and the hermeneutical interpretation of the
lifeworld. On the one hand, the three horizons have a common origin as
Originarittshorizont in the pure ego. On the other hand, Husserl speaks of
endless horizons, the unity of which must be thought of as a Kantian Idea.
Both sides are taken together as a streaming horizon: a continuous move-
ment of horizons within the stream of consciousness.4
Another problematic domain of Husserls phenomenology in which the
notion of horizon plays an important role is the recognition of the other ego
in the fifth Cartesian Meditation. Only by the use of the idea of horizon is
Husserl is able to step from the perception of the body of the other to the
immediate recognition of the others consciousness. The consciousness of the
other is only recognizable as the necessary horizon of her body.5
In the later genetic phenomenology the horizon becomes more and more
a cornerstone of Husserls project. The historical development of scientific
knowledge presupposes the horizons of a language community and of human-
ity as such, in which it is embedded. The life-world is the ultimate background
of any judgment and ideal object as the horizon of all possible substrates of
judgments.6 Here we reach the idea of the world as a horizon of horizons,
the ultimate idea of order and coherence as such.
The phenomenological horizon is also an important element in the thought
of Heidegger, although he, like Husserl, usually prefers the term world. The
status of the horizons, however, is different. Whereas Husserl seeks to find
the origin of all horizons in the subject, Heidegger insists that Dasein always
finds itself within horizons. Heidegger also distinguishes a threefold horizon
of time: Gewesenheit, Gegenwart and Zukunft. The future receives a greater
emphasis in Heidegger, since Dasein is always directed towards the coming
future as being-able-to or Sein-knnen. Likewise, the horizon of the future,
i.e. the horizon of expectancy, becomes one of the most important horizons.
On the one hand, this horizon of expectation is very open and receptive, for

4
Husserl 1966.
5
Husserl 1963: 89150.
6
Husserl 1985: 36 / 39.
300 Eddo Evink

we can never know or control the future; on the other hand, Heidegger takes
all horizons of the future together in the concept of care (Sorge), in order to
secure the unity and wholeness of Dasein.
Heidegger mostly uses the metaphor of the horizon as a methodical term:
In Being and Time he is in search of an understanding of time as the horizon
from where we may find an understanding of Being, or at least the horizon of
time from within which we can ask the question of Being.7 This horizon is not
already there, as the contingent historical and cultural horizon in which we are
thrown; it is a starting position that has to be developed methodically.8
In Heidegger, therefore, several notions of horizon go together that will
be divided by the second generation of phenomenologists. By now we have
found three distinctions:
1/ horizon as an enclosing limit and as condition of possibility, i.e. as
openness;
2/ horizon as a framework of the past and the present and as an expectancy
of the future;
3/ horizon as a framework that has already been given and as a framework
that has to be developed methodically.

2. Ricur

Paul Ricur does not discuss the term horizon very often explicitly, but
one can find passages with remarks on the notion of horizon scattered over his
oeuvre. In this section, I shall first discuss a few observations in From Text to
Action, then a passage in Time and Narrative, before finally going to the per-
haps most significant remarks on the horizon in Freud and Philosophy. In these
texts, Ricur elaborates on different aspects of the horizon. He takes over
the distinctions that were mentioned above and also adds other distinctions,
which, as will be demonstrated, leads to contradictions between the different
meanings of horizon.

2.1. Horizon as framework and as methodical projection


In several passages in his work, Paul Ricur refers with approval to the
way Hans-Georg Gadamer uses the concept of horizon. Gadamer takes up
again the hermeneutic notion of horizon that can be found in, among others,
Dilthey: the horizon as the historical and cultural background that shapes
our perspective. Gadamer emphasizes the way in which horizons can restrain
us from becoming too narrow minded. As a cultural phenomenon it always
includes other points of view and different perspectives. The finitude of our

7
Heidegger 1927: 39.
8
Staudigl 2004: 264267.
Horizons of Expectation. Ricur, Derrida, Patoka 301

culturally determined point of view is compensated by the openness to and


inclusion of other angles:

The horizon is the range of vision that includes everything that can be seen
from a particular vantage point. Applying this to the thinking mind, we speak
of narrowness of horizon, of the possible expansion of horizon, of the opening
up of new horizons, and so forth. Since Nietzsche and Husserl, the word has
been used in philosophy to characterize the way in which thought is tied to its
finite determinacy, and the way ones range of vision is gradually expanded.9

We always share horizons with others, and therefore they are never closed.
For the same reason, the horizon is also a border that we cannot control, we
are more shaped and moulded by our culture and history than that we can
shape them. Horizons are ever moving and changing borders, that cannot be
localized or objectified:

Just as the individual is never simply an individual because he is always in un-


derstanding with others, so too the closed horizon that is supposed to enclose
a culture is an abstraction. The historical movement of human life consists in
the fact that it is never absolutely bound to any one standpoint, and hence can
never have a truly closed horizon. The horizon is, rather, something into which
we move and that moves with us. Horizons change for a person who is moving.10

The horizon, in short, is a flexible, moving, implicit and open demarcation


that cannot be objectified and that always already surrounds us. Gadamer
uses these characteristics of the horizon in re-establishing the old notion of
the hermeneutic circle with his famous idea of a fusion of horizons (Hori-
zontverschmelzung). He does not only speak here of a fusion of the horizon of
the interpreter with the horizon of the interpretandum, but also, in terms of
historiography, of a fusion of the horizon of the present with the horizon of
the past. The interpreter, e.g. a historian, enters into a dialogue with the in-
terpretandum, e.g. the past, and the horizons within which they function, are
involved in this dialogue as well. The presuppositions of the interpreter form
the point of departure and guiding focus at the start of the interpretation,
but can be disputed and refuted in the course of the interpretation. Horizons
change in their fusion. The distinction between horizons, before and in their
fusion, is, however, according to Gadamer, a methodological distinction that
should not hide the fact that there actually is only one horizon: one horizon to
which the interpreter and the interpretandum always already belong.11

9
Gadamer 1960: 307 / 301.
10
Gadamer 1960: 309 / 303.
11
Gadamer 1960: 307310 / 301304.
302 Eddo Evink

In many respects Ricur follows Gadamer in the way he brings into play
the notion of horizon. In his view the theory of fusion of horizons finds the
right balance between fixed objectivity and absolute understanding, as well
as between Hegelian absolutism and a Nietzschean radical pluralism.12 The
fusion of horizons neither leads to incommunicado nor to absolute knowledge.
It combines the finiteness of specific perspectives with the necessary guidance
of their focus. Horizon thus stands for the combination of coherence and
openness, unity and ambivalence, guidance and free imagination. According
to Ricur, we exist neither in closed horizons nor within a horizon that is
unique. [] The very word horizon indicates an ultimate repudiation of the
idea of a knowledge wherein the fusion of horizons would itself be grasped.13
But with regard to several elements of Gadamers hermeneutics and his
view on horizons, Ricur is critical as well. In Gadamers thematization of the
cultural tradition as one horizon, he discerns a tension between alienation and
belonging.14 This tension is made explicit by Ricur with an emphasis on the
distanciation of author and text. In four steps, he analyses the way in which
a text distances itself from its author: discourse, structural work, writing and
world. The analysis of this process of distanciation allows him to combine a
hermeneutical interpretation with the methodological approach of, among
other methods, structuralism.15 Here we find an important difference between
Gadamer and Ricur. Whereas Gadamer rejects the view that interpretation
within the humanities would need a specific method or methodological reflec-
tionone of the main statements of Truth and Method, Ricur thinks that
the inclusion of methodological analyses in interpretation is essential for the
further development of hermeneutics.
The introduction of such a methodological approach of texts and inter-
pretation also changes the features of the horizon, although Ricur does not
mention this explicitly. It implies a distinction between the cultural and tradi-
tional horizon that always already surrounds us and the horizon as a coherent
view that we project on the text or cultural object that we try to understand.
This distinction can be compared with Heideggers use of the concept of
world: we are already in the world and we also construct worlds, we are an In-
der-Welt-sein as weltbildend. In other words, Ricur introduces in Gadamers
idea of a fusion of horizons the third distinction inherent in the notion of
horizon, that I discerned in Heideggers usage of it: the distinction of horizon
as a framework that has already been given and as a framework that has to be
developed methodically.

12
Ricur 1986c: 383384 / 282283.
13
Ricur 1986c: 384 / 282283. With regard to the openness of hermeneutics compared
to the closed language system in structuralism, cf. the first three articles in Ricur 1969: 3197 /
2796.
14
Ricur 1986a: 106111 / 7074.
15
Ricur 1986a: 113131 / 7588.
Horizons of Expectation. Ricur, Derrida, Patoka 303

2.2. Horizon as an opening limit


The second horizon in this distinction, the horizon that shapes the ex-
pected coherence that we project on the text, work of art, etc., which we try
to interpret, can also be called a horizon of expectation.16 It is the first step in
the process of interpretation that takes place through the hermeneutic circle.
The difference between the horizon we come from and the horizon that we
envisage, is further developed by Ricur in the fourth part of Time and Nar-
rative, with the help of a terminological distinction that he borrows from the
German historian Reinhart Koselleck. Koselleck makes a division between the
space of experience (espace dexprience, Erfahrungsraum), which equates the
horizon of the past and the present, and the horizon of expectation (horizon
dattente, Erwartungshorizont).17
Both Kosellecks terminological distinction and Ricurs use of it take
place in the realm of historiography. In a large historiographical project, Ko-
selleck has traced the changes in the historical and political vocabulary in late
18th century German. The word Geschichte, e.g., has replaced Historie and is
also being used in singular instead of only in plural. In order to understand
changes like these, Koselleck distinguishes between the space of experience
the realm that the past and tradition delivers us as our framework of refer-
encesand the horizon of expectationthe open perspective that is directed
towards the future. On the one hand, expectations of the future cannot be
thought without emerging from out of the horizon that a tradition gives us.
But on the other hand, the space of experience does in no way determine the
horizon of expectancy because the expectations are far too open and undeter-
mined to be controlled by any tradition or experience. In short, the space of
experience and the horizon of expectation are mutually dependent. Ricur
follows Koselleck in these analyses:

As for the expression horizon of expectation, it could not have been better
chosen. For one thing, the term expectation is broad enough to include hope
and fear, what is wished for and what is chosen, rational calculation, curios-
ityin short, every private or public manifestation aimed at the future. []
If, for another thing, we speak here of a horizon rather than of space, this is to
indicate the power of unfolding as much as of surpassing that is attached to
expectation. In this way, the lack of symmetry between the space of experience
and the horizon of expectation is underscored. This opposition between gath-
ering together and unfolding implies that experience tends toward integration,
expectation tends toward the breaking open of perspectives. [] In this sense,
expectation cannot be derived from experience. [] Conversely, there is no
surprise for which the baggage of experience is too light [] Hence the space

16
Ricur 1986a: 314317 / 172173.
17
Ricur 1986a: 376377 / 208209; cf. Koselleck 1979: 349375.
304 Eddo Evink

of experience and the horizon of expectation do more than stand in a polar


opposition, they mutually condition each other.18

But Koselleck and Ricur have a different agenda. Koselleck is interested


in showing the changes in the semantic history that accompany the develop-
ment of modern political thought. One of the characteristic changes in the
modern terminology of history and politics that Kosellecks conceptual his-
tory is able to show, is the growing distinction between the space of experience
and the horizon of expectation. In the historical and political thought of the
Enlightenment the idea of a new era, Neue Zeit, came up accompanying the
belief that the past and its traditions were to be left behind and the world of
the future to be created anew.
Although this is important for Ricurs point of view, he prefers to detach
these two categories from this modern historical development and to see them
as having a universal value.19 Therefore he gives them, in line with Kosellecks
own remarks, a meta-historical, philosophical-anthropological and transcen-
dental status:

Koselleck is perfectly justified in taking them as metahistorical categories, ap-


plicable at the level of philosophical anthropology. In this way, they govern all
the ways in which human beings in every age have thought about their exis-
tence in terms of history []. In this sense, one can grant them the vocabulary
of conditions of possibility, that qualify them as transcendental.20

The recognition of the tension between space of experience and horizon of


expectancy is, according to Ricur, exactly the sign of the threat that they might
be separated. We only start to see the connection between past and future, once
they tend to be taken apart and to be unconnected. Here we can see the rise of
utopian thought that threatens to change the distinction into a schism.

If the newness of the Neuzeit was only perceived thanks to the growing dif-
ference between experience and expectation [] then the tension between
experience and expectation could only be recognized at the moment when
its breaking point was already in sight. The idea of progress which still bound
the past to a better future [] tends to give way to the idea of utopia as soon
as the hopes of humanity lose their anchorage in acquired experience and
are projected into an unprecedented future. With such utopias, the tension
becomes a schism.21

18
Ricur 1985: 376377 / 208209.
19
Ricur gives a detailed argumentation to defend this shift from historical to universal
categories; cf. Ricur 1985: 379389. I leave a discussion of this argumentation aside here.
20
Ricur 1985: 386 / 214[surprisingly, the last sentence of this quotation and a few that
follow, are entirely missing in the translation].
21
Ricur 1985: 388 / 215.
Horizons of Expectation. Ricur, Derrida, Patoka 305

Thus, the two categories of space of experience and horizon of expectation


have important ethical and political implications. They should not be sepa-
rated by regarding the past as over, closed and determined, and by looking at
the future as radically indeterminate and open for new and pure creations. In
order not to let the expectations not be too vague and unpractical, they need
to be regulated at least to a certain extent by the facts and developments of
past and present. At the same time, the past needs to be reopened so that we
can recognize its hidden and unaccomplished potentialities.

The permanent ethical and political implication of these metahistorical cat-


egories of expectation and experience is thus clear. The task is to prevent the
tension between these two poles of thinking about history from becoming a
schism. [] On the one hand, we must resist the seduction of purely uto-
pian expectations. They can only make us despair of all action, for, lacking
an anchorage in experience, they are incapable of formulating a practical path
directed to the ideals that they situate elsewhere. [] On the other hand,
we must also resist any narrowing of the space of experience. [] We have to
reopen the past, to revivify its unaccomplished, cut-offeven slaughtered
possibilities. In short, when confronted with the adage that the future is open
and contingent in every respect but that the past is unequivocally closed and
necessary, we have to make our expectations more determinate and our experi-
ence less so.22

In other words, only by combining the different aspects of the notion of


horizonthe horizon as both enclosing limit and as openness; the horizon as
a framework of the past and the present and as an expectancy of the future
the dangers of utopian ideologies can be prevented.

2.3. Horizon as projection and as unexpected future.


This point of view has received a specific elaboration in an earlier work of
Ricur, Freud and Philosophy, again in terms of horizon, but with significant
differences. Here Ricur develops a notion of horizon as that which comes to
us from beyond any projection, as entirely other, even as Holy Other. At the
end of his long essay on Freud, in which he has searched for the character-
istics and rules of the interpretation of symbols, Ricur focuses his attention
on the religious symbol. On the basis of extended readings of Freud, Ricur
has unfolded the dialectics between archeological and teleological interpreta-
tions. He places the Freudian inclination to interpret personal behavior and
cultural expressions by reducing them to traces of the psychological-econom-
ical system over against the Hegelian idea of interpretation as a gathering
of meaning within a historical context of growing self-understanding. These

22
Ricur 1985: 389390 / 215216.
306 Eddo Evink

two approaches have appeared to be not only competitive but also and even
more supplementary, and to go together in a dialectical tension. In Ricurs
view they are combined in an exemplary manner in the symbol: We now
know that the key to the solution lies in the dialectic between archeology and
teleology. It remains to find the concrete mixed texture in which we see the
archeology and teleology. This concrete mixed texture is symbol.23
After having demonstrated this dialectics at work in sublimation and in the
cultural object, Ricur turns to the religious symbol. He starts by stating that
the problematic of faith lies beyond the reach of philosophical reflection. Its
source is beyond philosophical reflection as well, in the revelation that addresses
the religious individual. The origin of faith lies in the solicitation of man by
the object of faith.24 Both the archeological and the teleological interpretation
fall short of a sufficient understanding of the religious symbol. An archeologi-
cal interpretation can only reach what is already there in the cogito and its (un)
consciousness; the teleological interpretation can only project an ultimate sense
that can always be understood as a self-projection. Beyond these extrapolations
Ricur senses another source that we can never control or supervise, but to
which we can only answer: Compared to this archeology of myself and to this
teleology of myself, genesis and eschatology are Wholly Other.25
This Wholly Other [Tout-Autre] turns out to be a Holy Other as well.
One can only speak of such a Wholly Other after the Holy Other has revealed
itself. In this revelation the Wholly Other ceases to be Wholly Other and
enters into a relation with the believer that can only be a relation of dialogue
and interpretation:

To be sure, I speak of the Wholly Other only insofar as it addresses itself to me;
and the kerygma, the glad tidings, is precisely that it addresses itself to me and
ceases to be the Wholly Other. Of an absolute Wholly Other I know noth-
ing at all. But by its very manner of approaching, of coming, it shows itself
to be Wholly Other than the arch and the telos which I can conceptualize in
reflective thought. It shows itself as Wholly Other by annihilating its radical
otherness.26

By revealing itself, the Wholly Other makes itself immanent in human dis-
course, as Wholly Other. It enters the dialectics of archeology and teleology,
but only as genesis and eschatology, as that which lies beyond both. It is here
that Ricur introduces the term horizon. The horizon stands for that which
appears without becoming an object. It is that which approaches reflection
while always remaining unreachable and beyond:

23
Ricur 1965: 516/ 494.
24
Ricur 1965: 547 / 525.
25
Ricur 1965: 548 / 525.
26
Ricur 1965: 548 / 525.
Horizons of Expectation. Ricur, Derrida, Patoka 307
Creation and eschatology present themselves as the horizon of my archeology
and the horizon of my teleology. Horizon is the metaphor for what approaches
without ever becoming a possessed object. The alpha and omega approach re-
flection as the horizon of my roots and the horizon of my intendings or aims;
it is the radical of the radical, the supreme of the supreme.27

According to Ricur, a phenomenology of the sacred has to go together


here with a kerygmatic theology in the style of Barth and Bultmann. Why
does Ricur introduce this element of revelation and faith that leads be-
yond philosophical reflection? He brings only one argument to the fore:
every teleological reflection, even if it has the pretention of absolute knowl-
edge, finds its failure in the problem of evil. The symbol, the concrete mix-
ture of archeology and teleology also leads beyond both, in the form of the
symbolism of evil. Symbols give us food for thought, they are in need of
rational interpretation, but they are also the witnesses of the limits of ratio-
nal reflection, they lead beyond thought as well. What comes from beyond,
is, however, exclusively thematised by Ricur as a Christian revelation, in
terms of genesis, eschatology, kerygma, faith, and with references to the
theology of Barth and Bultmann.
In this section of Freud and Philosophy, horizon refers to this beyond. It
is not anymore the projection of a future, but it is, in a way, its exact opposite.
The horizon of expectation is beyond any teleological projection, it cannot be
grasped by it, it interrupts every teleology; teleological reflection can only be
understood as an answer to this horizon that comes to us:

It is solely through its relation to the immanent teleology of the figures of


culture that the sacred concerns this philosophy; the sacred is its eschatology;
it is the horizon that reflection does not comprehend, does not encompass, but
can only salute as that which quietly presents itself from afar [ce qui vient elle
sur des pattes doiseaux].28

The symbol testifies of this tension between rational understanding and


its beyond. It always tends to let itself be objectified and resists this objectifi-
cation at the same time: It seems that such a horizon, by a kind of diabolic
conversion, inevitably tends to become transformed into an object.29 Fol-
lowing Kant, Ricur speaks of a necessary illusion that accompanies every
thinking of the unconditional. In this process of problematic objectification
Ricur finds the birth of metaphysics and religion. Both tend to objectify the
Wholly Other and to create new spheres of objects and institutions, without

27
Ricur 1965: 548549 / 526.
28
Ricur 1965: 552 / 529.
29
Ricur 1965: 552 / 529.
308 Eddo Evink

which no testimony of the Other would be possible. Every testimony of the


Holy Other, however, runs the risk of turning into an idol. Comparably, every
careful exploring of a future justice may turn into an enclosing ideology.

Faith is that region of the symbolic where the horizon-function is constantly


being reduced to the object-function; thus arise idols, the religious figures of
that same illusion which in metaphysics engenders the concepts of a supreme
being, first substance, absolute thought. An idol is the reification of the ho-
rizon into a thing, the fall of the sign into a supernatural and supracultural
object. [] Thus the idols must dieso that symbols may live.30

In summary, Ricur takes over the characteristics of the horizon that were
distinguished before, but adds two distinctions that complicate the use of the
notion of horizon. Horizon can also be taken as that which comes to us from
the future; and as originating from an absolute alterity that can only be spo-
ken of in religious terms. The short list of distinctions that was found in the
work of Heidegger, can be supplemented with two tensions:
1/ horizon as an enclosing limit and as condition of possibility, i.e. as
openness;
2/ horizon as a framework of the past and the present and as an expectancy
of the future;
3/ horizon as a framework that has already been given and as a framework
that has to be developed methodically;
4/ horizon as a rational projection of the future and as a given and unpre-
dicted future that comes to us and interrupts every projection;
5/ horizon as a mundane expectation of the future and as a religious, i.e.
Christian, revelation of a Wholly and Holy Other.
These additions raise two questions:
1/ This list of characteristics of horizons of expectation does not only men-
tion tensions, but seems to contain contradictions as well, e.g., horizon as a,
perhaps methodical, projection of the future, and as that which comes to us
from an absolute beyond and interrupts any projection. Can these character-
istics be combined in one notion of horizon?
2/ The introduction of a Christian horizon of expectancy beyond rational
reflection is problematic within philosophy. How can this step be justified
philosophically? Does this idea of horizon have characteristics that can be
adopted by a philosophical approach without leaving the philosophical realm
of radical critical questioning and without subjecting to a religious revelation?
These are the main questions that we need to keep in mind, when we take
a look at what Jacques Derrida has to say about horizons of expectation.

30
Ricur 1965: 553554 / 530531.
Horizons of Expectation. Ricur, Derrida, Patoka 309

3. Derrida

In Derridas work, we can find a different view on the idea of the horizon.
An examination of his use of the term has to go back to his first texts from the
1950s and 60s. The phenomenology of the late Husserl is his primary subject
in these texts. As we have seen above, in Husserls later genetic phenomenol-
ogy the concept of horizon receives a crucial position. In his dissertation Le
problme de la gense dans la philosophie de Husserl as well as in his introduction
to The Origin of Geometry, Derrida underlines the importance of the horizon
as one of the basic presuppositions of Husserls philosophy. The justification
of scientific knowledge that Husserls phenomenology tries to guarantee pre-
supposes regulative idea of science, as well as a linguistic community and an
idea of humanity in general, as the necessary background for intersubjective
understanding and for an openness for new theoretical determinations. Hus-
serl calls this the horizon of all possible substrates of judgments.31 According
to Derrida, this horizon functions as a Kantian regulative idea. It is less neutral
than Husserl suggests. Within the horizon of this consciousness of fellow
mankind, it is mature, normal mankind that is privileged, both as the ho-
rizon of civilization and as the linguistic community.32 In Derridas reading
this implies [] the index of an ideal normativity which is on the horizon of
de facto normal adults.33 The Husserlian horizon thus serves as an openness
for new theoretical knowledge, but also as a normative principle that decides
what does and what does not belong to theoretical knowledge:

We are clearly dealing with a primordial knowledge concerning the totality of


possible historical experiences. Horizon is the always-already-there of a future
which keeps the indetermination of its infinite openness intact. [] As the
structural determination of every material indeterminacy, a horizon is always
virtually present in every experience; for it is at once the unity and the incom-
pletion for that experiencethe anticipated unity in every incompletion. The
notion of horizon converts the abstract condition of possibility of criticism
into the concrete infinite potentiality secretly presupposed therein. The notion
of horizon thus makes the a priori and the teleological coincide.34

This view of the horizon as a regulative Kantian Idea has turned out to
be decisive in Derridas use of this metaphor. In Derridas opinion, the open-
ness of the horizon always remains subordinate to the normative guidance
of the presupposed coherence. The openness necessarily finds its limits in a

31
Husserl 1985: 36 / 39; quoted in Derrida 1990a: 186 / 109.
32
Derrida 1962: 74 / 79.
33
Derrida 1962: 75/80.
34
Derrida 1962: 123 / 117 [translation slightly changed]; cf. Derrida 1990b: 110111 /
56; Derrida 1990c: 218221, 232234 / 120122, 128129.
310 Eddo Evink

totalizing unity that has to make all its elements understandable. In addition,
Derrida regards the use of such a horizon as a strategy, an effort to dominate
and control, that only makes a strategic use of the indeterminacy that it also
implies.
In terms of the three Heideggerian distinctions that were made above,
Derrida views the horizon rather as an enclosing limit than as openness (1),
rather as a methodically developed framework than as a coherence that has
already been given (3), regardless whether we speak of the past, present or
future (2).
In Derridas view, such a strategic role of the horizon is characteristic for phi-
losophy in general. In Tympan, the introductory text of Margins of Philosophy,
he describes philosophical understanding as an attempt to dominate and control
its object. This domination considers its own limit as a being and as something
of its own, thus including its own limit. Philosophy, according to Derrida, is
[] the infinite mastery that the agency of Being (and of the) proper seems to
assure it; this mastery permits it to interiorize every limit as being and as being its
own proper.35 In several ways this strategy dominates its object by surrounding
it with an encompassing circle, regardless [] whether it is a question, finally,
of Heideggers hermeneutical circle or of Hegels ontotheological circle.36 In
Derridas view, both circles are examples of logocentrism.37 Of course Derrida is
well aware of the differences between hermeneutics and Hegelian dialectics, but
he underlines their familiarity as movements of understanding that try to grasp
and seize their objects, even to grasp entire Being. In his view, the hermeneutic
horizon is a circle of enclosure that tries to maintain multiplicity and variation
within the field of a meaningful coherence.
The same view on the horizon is expressed in Derridas explanation of
the difference between hermeneutics and his own deconstructive approach of
texts. In several works, Derrida has discussed this difference in terms of poly-
semy and dissemination. He regards polysemy, the multiplicity of meanings
of one word or utterance, as part of a hermeneutic strategy that acknowledges
differences of meaning as long as they can be kept within a coherent unity,
within a horizon. Polysemy is thus seen as fitting in the circular movement of
thought. Polysemy, Derrida writes in Dissemination,

[] always puts out its multiplicities and variations within the horizon, at
least, of some integral reading which contains no absolute rift, no senseless
deviationthe horizon of the final parousia of a meaning at last deciphered,
revealed, made present in the rich collection of its determinations.38

35
Derrida 1972a: xiv / xix.
36
Derrida, 1972a: xv / xx.
37
Derrida, 1972a: xvii / xxi.
38
Derrida 1972d: 389 / 384.
Horizons of Expectation. Ricur, Derrida, Patoka 311

It will be clear that a complete and unequivocal understanding cannot be


reached, but the horizon serves as an attempt and a promise of such a total
comprehension and assured presence of meaning in clear coherence:

[] polysemy, as such, is organized within the implicit horizon of a unitary


resumption of meaning, that is, within the horizon of a [] teleological and
totalizing dialectics that at a given moment, however far off, must permit the
reassemblage of the totality of a text into the truth of its meaning39

According to Derrida, this teleological and totalizing dialectics of the


rational effort to understand, is always undermined and interrupted by dis-
semination, the diffusion of meanings beyond control. Dissemination is the
uncontrollable effect of writing, it is inherent in the functioning of language.
The differential relations between words generate meanings that cannot be
held within a planned coherence, but only have their semantic results within
fluctuating and instable contexts.
The horizon, in Derridas point of view, is a tool in the scheme of the her-
meneutic circle to keep the meanings of language in its bounds. Dissemina-
tion is the process of expansion of meaning that breaks through any horizon
that was supposed to hold it within reach. Dissemination fractures the limits
of the text, [] the force and form of its disruption explode [crvent] the
semantic horizon.40 In short, the horizon is always broken through by the
working of diffrance and dissemination. Derrida makes the same move in
Spurs, when he criticizes Heideggers interpretation of Nietzsche as a herme-
neutic effort to fix the versatile meanings of Nietzsches many-sided oeuvre:
Reading, which is to relate to writing, is to perforate this horizon or this
hermeneutic veil, to reject all the Schleiermacher, all the veilmakers, according
to the word of Nietzsche, cited by Heidegger.41
Exploding or perforating a horizonthis would be unthinkable for Ga-
damer and Ricur. They see the horizon not as a strategic instrument, but as
a background or context that is always already given; and not as a fixed border
that can be broken through, but as an open border that cannot be objectified
or located.42
This difference in the usage of the metaphor comes again to the fore when
Derrida writes about horizons of expectation. He does so in his later work, where
he gives more explicit attention to ethics and religion, for example in Force of
Law, where he discusses the relation between deconstruction and justice. Both
deconstruction and justice cannot be fixated. Deconstruction is at work in the
critical questioning of laws and rules without which their amelioration would

39
Derrida 1972c: 62 / 45.
40
Derrida 1972c: 61 / 45; cf. Derrida 1972c: 376 / 316.
41
Derrida 1979: 127 [translation changed].
42
Evink 2012.
312 Eddo Evink

not be possible. Laws have to be problematized and opened up to make space


for justice, which can never be defined or determined but always remains to-
come. Deconstruction is at work between justice and law and it finds itself
confronted with aporias.43 Deconstruction, Derrida writes,

[] operates on the basis of an infinite idea of justice, infinite because it is


irreducible, irreducible because owed to the other []. This idea of justice
seems to be irreducible in its affirmative character, in its demand of gift with-
out exchange, without circulation []. This kind of justice, which isnt law, is
the very movement of deconstruction at work in law and the history of law.44

Justice cannot be determined, but remains to-come, not as a future pres-


ence, but as always calling and imminent. The expectation of justice, however,
should not be thought as a horizon, a horizon of whatever type, because that
would be too determinate. Derrida mentions many sorts of horizonmes-
sianisms, Kantian ideas, eschatologies, etc.and prefers to question them as
such, as well as the concurrence among them.

I would hesitate to assimilate too quickly this idea of justice to a regulative idea
(in the Kantian sense), to a messianic promise or to other horizons of the same
type. I am only speaking of a type, of this type of horizon that would have numer-
ous competing versions. [] One of the reasons Im keeping such a distance
from all these horizons [] is that they are, precisely, horizons. As its Greek
name suggests, a horizon is both the opening and the limit that defines an infi-
nite progress or a period of waiting. But justice, however unrepresentable it may
be, doesnt wait. It is that which does not wait. To be direct, simple and brief, let
us say this: a just decision is always required immediately, right away.45

In this passage, Derrida describes the horizon as both a limit and an open-
ing. Instead of choosing between the two or emphasizing one of them, as he
seemed to do in the earlier quoted passages, he tries to show here how the
horizon is always already broken through. Justice is not an ideal to be awaited
in the future, it is already calling here and now, urgently. But it cannot be
determined in a presence and therefore remains to-come, always again:

Paradoxically, it is because of this overflowing of the performative, because of


this always excessive haste of interpretation getting ahead of itself, because of
this structural urgency and precipitation of justice that the latter has no hori-
zon of expectation (regulative or messianic). But for this reason, it may have
an avenir, a to-come, which I rigorously distinguish from the future that can

43
Derrida 1994a: 4950 / 960.
44
Derrida 1994a: 5556 / 965.
45
Derrida 1994a: 5657 / 965967.
Horizons of Expectation. Ricur, Derrida, Patoka 313
always reproduce the present. Justice remains, is yet to come, venir, it has an,
it is -venir, the very dimension of events irreducibly to come.46

Justice, in Derridas reflection, is called for here and now, but it will never
be entirely realized; it will always be approaching, but not as a future present; it
therefore is to be awaited, but as unpredictable, uncontrollable, indeterminate.
Laws can be planned, determined and applied; justice is different, but still needs
to be anticipated as to come, it can only be approached through aporias.
Derrida has elaborated this strange form of expectation in terms of mes-
sianism. There are many sorts of messianism: Jewish, Christian, Marxist, etc..
In all of them, the promised Messiah, is to be awaited and will always remain
to come, while at the same time he (she, it) has to be expected any moment.
For Derrida it is crucial that the Messiah has to be as indeterminate as possible.
Messianic justice is always other than the current legislation and the common
ethical norms and values. Every determination of justice is dangerous because it
will exclude aspects of justice that might be important. It is alterity in itself that
has to guarantee the calling and appealing power of justice. Every stipulation of
the Messiah might change the Messiah into a devil. Derrida wants to hold on
to the messianic structure, but without clarity about the Messiah and messianic
justice. In his deconstructive readings of messianisms, he tries to excavate the
messianic traditions as far as possible, until he reaches, if possible, the pure and
formal messianic structure without content. The messianic, thus, is a strictly
formal structure of a promise of and openness and receptivity for the other.
Derrida is very well aware, of course, that such a formal structure without any
content cannot be given or thought, that there will always be a tension between
form and content, between the structure of the messianic and the specific Mes-
siah that is expected. Also his own thought of the messianic in itself is already in-
scribed in specific traditions. Derrida tries to open them up towards the radical
openness of the formal messianic structure for the other.47 The messianic []
would be the urgency, the imminence, but, irreducible paradox, an expectation
without horizon of expectation.48
A paradoxical consequence of this radical excavation is the formal status
of otherness as such. Derrida has stated this in a famous formula: tout autre
est tout autre, every other is wholly other, which also implies God is every
other and every other is God.49 Paradoxically, all otherness is taken together
here as the same, the same otherness. This otherness cannot be integrated in
total systems or understandable coherences, it undermines them, perforates

46
Derrida 1994a: 60 / 969.
47
Derrida 1993a: 265268; Derrida 1994b: 3536, 55, 197; Derrida 1997: 2324. For a
critical discussion of Derridas own messianic stance, see Evink 2009.
48
Derrida 1993a: 267.
49
Derrida 1999: 109157 / 77115; cf. Derrida 1993: 273; Derrida 1994b: 40, 259;
Derrida 1993b: 92, 9596.
314 Eddo Evink

the horizons that enclose these coherent unitiesa tension that is thought in
the very general terms of totality versus otherness.

3.1. Horizons and Otherness


A comparison between Ricur and Derrida shows a few remarkable agree-
ments and disagreements. Both state that an expectation of justice cannot
be thematized without a reference to the Wholly Other. Justice cannot be
reached through the accomplishment of general rules and political measures.
In a world of finite human beings and finite social arrangements the ideal of
justice needs to be approached as a call that can never be entirely answered.
Our relation to this call, however, is understood quite differently by
Ricur and Derrida. In Ricur we found three ways of speaking about the
horizon. In several texts in From Text to Action, firstly, he describes the horizon
as a methodical projection. In Time and Narrative Ricur, secondly, empha-
sizes that he wants to avoid a too utopian design of the future that completely
detaches itself from the past. This implies that justice, despite its otherness,
is in need of a practical determination of its horizon of expectation. In Freud
and Philosophy, thirdly, he is sensitive for the limits of a planned teleology and
introduces the notion of horizon as a call that comes from beyond any teleol-
ogy, as an otherness outside methodical calculation and projection.
Although Ricur makes a different use of the metaphor of horizon in dif-
ferent texts, it is possible to recognize a coherent point of view within the dif-
ferent terminology. Some determination of justice is necessary, but every regu-
lation needs to be understood as an interpretation of what comes from beyond
any rational planning. In this way the otherness of justice can only appear as
otherness within a horizon. We have to recognize, interpret and respond to the
call for justice as anticipated but incalculable. The problem and danger here is
that the horizon of expectation in which justice announces itself, always tends
to be objectified, by diabolic conversion, into an idol. Philosophical reflection
should always make efforts to change fixated idols into living symbols again.
This is the way to respect the otherness of messianic justice without making it
too indeterminate for a necessary practical application.
Derrida has developed a different view on our relation to the alterity of
justice. A call from the other is a call from the Wholly Other, that can never
be approached without being contaminated by our response. In the end, it
doesnt matter much whether this approach is a calculating blueprint or a
flexible horizon. Every horizon is regarded by Derrida as a totalizing effort to
dominate otherness, to reduce it to the same. However subtle or imperfect a
horizon may be, it is nevertheless the promise of a strategy of domination by
an encompassing circle. Every beginning of an understanding of justice is a
determination that is basically equal to a totalizing dialectics that may change
the Messiah into a devil.
Where Ricur places a decisive difference between teleology and ho-
rizon, between idol and symbol, Derrida sees a crucial tension between an
Horizons of Expectation. Ricur, Derrida, Patoka 315

encompassing horizon and an alterity that interrupts the horizon. Whereas


Ricur distinguishes himself from Hegelthere is no closed or unique hori-
zon, the notion of horizon resists absolute knowledgein Derridas perspec-
tive Ricurs horizon and a Hegelian totalizing dialectics are ultimately one
and the same. Ricur recognizes the requirement of an interpretation of the
Wholly Other, in which this otherness loses its absolute alterity; he also ac-
knowledges the need to translate the promise of justice in practical rules and
measures. Derrida emphasizes the radical alterity of justice, the tout autre of
all otherness that interrupts every effort to understand and apply it, in order
to save it from the diabolic conversion that will inevitably accompany every
understanding and application. Finally, there is a difference between Ricur
and Derrida with regard to the relation between faith and knowledge. Ricur
carefully tries to explore a sense of the Wholly Other beyond a calculative
teleology and then takes refuge in a revelation that leads beyond a critical
rational questioning attitude. Derrida stresses the obligation to subject this
move towards religion beyond philosophy to a rational philosophical critique.
How should we assess these different approaches of the horizons of ex-
pectation? Before reaching a balanced evaluation, a few considerations need
to be made:
1/ The different uses Ricur makes in different texts of the metaphor of
horizon seem to justify Derridas reservations with regard to determinations of
justice and otherness within a horizon. Sometimes a horizon is presented as
a methodically developed framework, and sometimes as a revelation and call
that interrupts such an instrumental approachis it still possible to make a
clear difference here? Isnt it possible that the horizon that is supposed to come
from afar easily changes into an enclosing interpretation of it?
It is also possible, however, to regard the horizon in both cases as a flex-
ible, moving and open border that can let the other appear as other without
equating this horizon with a Hegelian absolutism. A methodically construct-
ed horizon of expectation is meant by Ricur as the opening of a dialogue
with other horizons that implies a critical evaluation of the presuppositions
of the horizon of expectation. This is also the case in the relation between the
teleologically constructed horizon and the horizon of a revelation in which
the Wholly Other enters into a dialogue while giving up its radical other-
ness. A horizon of anticipating expectation thus opens itself for an otherness
that announces itself as a call and then can only appear as otherness within
such a horizon. Both horizons, constructed and calling, are to be understood
as moving, versatile and impossible to localize or dominate. In this dialogue
between horizons one needs to be aware of the tension between horizon and
objectification, between symbol and idol.
2/ Otherness can only appear and be recognized as otherness when it shows
itself, as otherness, within a horizon. This is exactly the criticism that the early
Derrida in the 1960s had brought to the fore against the idea of absolute
316 Eddo Evink

alterity in Levinas.50 In his later work in the 1980s and 90s, however, Derrida
has moved in the direction of Levinas, emphasizing the absolute alterity of
the other and of justice beyond any horizon. But the argumentation of the
young Derrida is still valid. Even if we want to underscore the absolute alter-
ity of justice, it still needs to be recognized as justice, so it is in need of some
determination anyway. In Specters of Marx, Derrida describes the messianic
structure as an absolute hospitality for a future that cannot be anticipated, but
that also is not nimporte quoi, and therefore in anticipation of the event
as justice.51 Even the justice that is supposed to be inanticipable, demands to
be anticipated as justice. Derrida, however, approaches the difference between
self and other in a radical way. He tries to keep alterity as pure, absolute and
indeterminate as possible, but at the same time to regard it as always already
undermining the structures and coherences that attempt either to encompass
or to exclude it. In my point of view, this determination is better understood
as a partial determination of what also remains other within a flexible and
uncontrollable horizon than as a definition that is first presupposed to be pure
and then happens to be contaminated and undermined because it can never
be absolutely pure. The hermeneutic use of the metaphor of horizon turns out
to be much more convincing here than Derridas approach of the horizon as
a totalizing dialectics.
3/ A related problem comes to the fore if we focus on the applicability of
the notions of justice that are related to the horizons of expectation. Ricur
wants our expectation to be more determined in order to make a suitable
application of justice possible. At the same time the horizon of expectancy
should not be objectified to an ideology or an idol. In opposition to this at-
titude, and despite his emphasis on the urgency of justice here and now, Der-
rida underlines the inapplicability of justice, because of its absolute otherness.
In combination with the idea that every other is wholly other, tout autre est
tout autre, this not only leads to an impasse that makes justice impossible, but
also to a radical leveling of judgments. There is no criterion left to decide what
is righteous and what is not, what is more just and what is less just. Derridas
strategy with regard to horizons of expectation can function well as a criticism
of the objectifications that threaten the anticipation of justice, but not as a
positive political strategy in itself.
4/ In his effort to understand religious symbols, Ricur reaches beyond
philosophy and its finite perspectives by seeking refuge in a Christian revela-
tion. Although the Christian eschatology gives up its absolute otherness by
entering a philosophical teleology and thus makes itself subject to interpreta-
tion and criticism, the choice for the Christian tradition is rather arbitrary.
Ricurs reference to the critical theology of Barth and Bultmann does not

50
Derrida 1967.
51
Derrida 1993a: 266267.
Horizons of Expectation. Ricur, Derrida, Patoka 317

change this arbitrariness. From a philosophical point of view, it would be


better to find a philosophical answer to the problem of the shortcomings and
dangers of a rational teleology. This does not mean that a philosophical point
of view should free itself from any religious influence, but it does mean that
religious influences should be answered with a profound critical attitude, that
does not take for granted the validity of a specific revelation in any way. Der-
rida tries to give such an answer by exploring the religious messianismsbut
we have seen above that his view on the relation between horizons and other-
ness is quite problematic.
Derridas critique of the hermeneutic horizon has not solved the problems
that were found at the end of section 2.2, in Ricurs view on horizons of ex-
pectation. But it does underscore the problem of the relation between the dif-
ferent horizons and the problem of the introduction of religious revelation in
a philosophical discourse. The main question at the end of this article thus is:
is there a philosophical account of the problematic relation between teleology
and its limits, that shows a good use of the philosophical-hermeneutical idea
of horizon without being supported by a religious revelation beyond rational
critique? In my view, the philosophy of Jan Patoka is a very good candidate
to fulfill this task.

4. Jan Patoka

Jan Patoka mainly follows Husserl in his ideas on the horizon. In his lec-
tures of 196869 he gives clear descriptions of the metaphor of horizon and of
its importance for phenomenology. The horizon is designated as a demi-phe-
nomenon, because it is the appearance of what does not appear as an object.

A fixed horizon is the self-presence of what is not present, a limit that shows
that it can be transcended. [] The horizon belongs to all manifestation, ev-
erything manifests itself within some horizon. Yet a horizon does not manifest
itself in the same sense as the givens we encounter within a horizon.52

Horizons are permanent, in the sense that every experience takes place
within a broader horizon that is always already presupposed. Horizons can
never be fixated, they move with us and cannot be exactly localized. The no-
tion of horizon plays an important role in Patokas existential phenomenol-
ogy. He has not analyzed this notion, however, in terms of a horizon of expec-
tation. Nevertheless, a significant element of his phenomenology, his idea of
the three movements of human life, can be very helpful in finding solutions
for the two problems we came across in Ricurs use of the horizon. Patoka
did not use this term in his description of the three movements, but I shall

52
Patoka 1998: 34, 39.
318 Eddo Evink

show that this notion implicitly plays a main role in his theory of the three
movements of existence. In addition, this theory will be linked to his thoughts
on the philosophy of history. In combination this will shed a new light on the
idea of a horizon of expectation.
Movement is an essential notion in Patokas phenomenology. He intro-
duces the Aristotelian concept of entelecheia, a purposeful development, in a
Heideggerian framework, in which human life is pictured as always character-
ized by open possibilities. Patoka has discerned three major movements in
human existence, that are always entwined and cannot be untied from each
other, but may receive a specific emphasis.53
The first movement is the movement of anchoring or rooting in a natural
and social environment, where one can feel at home. Affection is an impor-
tant element in this layer of existence. The past is its basic mode of time. The
second movement is the movement of prolongation and work: one has to
stay alive and develop a living by work. An instrumental engagement with
the environment, as well as concurrence and conflict, are typical features of
this movement. Its time mode is the present. These first two movements are
bound to what Patoka calls the Earth. They are bound to fixed structures of
the world and of society, that cannot be questioned. Life is fragmented in the
sense that one cannot yet overlook existence as a whole.
The third movement is the movement of breakthrough or truth. The rule
of the Earth is broken through, when humans begin to consciously relate to
the world as a whole and to their existence as such. The traditional worldview,
opinions and rules are questioned, and a search for rational understanding of
life and of the world is started, a search for truth. The world and ones entire
life, however, cannot be surveyed. They are not given as an object. Therefore
they remain problematic; we will never find definitive answers to our ques-
tions about life and the world in their entirety. Nevertheless we do have to give
answers, and although they are finite, restricted and always tied to a specific
perspective, they try to give coherence to what used to be fragmented opin-
ions. These old opinions are shaken forever, and there is no way back to their
nave acceptance. Since one can no longer rely on conventions and authori-
ties, ones opinions and choices have to be accounted for. The third movement
is the source of responsibility. Thus, we cannot but have general insights in
life and in the world, but we also have to realize that these insights are fragile,
one-sided and debatable. We must look for firm ground under our feet, but
we must also have the courage to question this firm ground again.54
This third movement has a specific start in history, but is also the start
of history. Patoka makes a distinction between mythical or prehistoric cul-
ture, in which the first two movements, bound to the Earth, are dominant, and

53
Patoka 1998: 143161; Patoka 1990: 241267.
54
Patoka 2002; Patoka 2007: 3242.
Horizons of Expectation. Ricur, Derrida, Patoka 319

history, which finds its beginning with the development of the third move-
ment, for the first time in ancient Greece. The cyclic time of mythical culture
is also broken through, now something entirely new can start. The basic time
mode of the third movement is the future.
All this can be translated in terms of horizon. The first and second move-
ments are tied to fixed horizons: structures and worldviews that are not ques-
tioned. The third movement breaks through these rigid horizons, and then
one can discover the real nature of horizons, namely that they can never be
fixed, but are versatile, moving, dynamic. By breaking through these stiffed
horizons of prehistoric cultures, the third movement shows us that a hori-
zon, well understood, is an open limit and background that is impossible to
break through, because it moves with us and cannot be exactly localized.
History has as a typical feature that it has an open future. In his Heretical
Essays in the Philosophy of History, to be more precise, in the third essay, Patoka
discusses the question whether history has a meaning. He states that the ques-
tion of meaning presupposes both the experience of meaninglessnessother-
wise the question could not have come upand the experience of meaning
otherwise meaninglessness could not have been experienced as such. Thus, there
must be some meaning of life and of history, but they cannot be simply defined.
We can have meaningful experiences, but they are finite and fragmented. They
presuppose a general principle of meaning, a belief in an absolute meaning, that,
however, can never be sufficiently justified. We cannot live without ideas of life
and the world in their totality, but we can also not be completely sure of these
worldviews. We have to question them again and again. This attitude is what
Patoka calls the care of the soul. The third movement makes us aware that we
have the freedom and responsibility to lead our own life and that it is not certain
how we have to do thisin this uncertainty lies our freedom.55
History is the temporal development in which we have to realize this life.
The care for the soul is the core of history. History is the history of the soul:
Precisely because history first means this inner process, the emergence of hu-
mans who master the original dilemma of human possibilities by discovering
the authentic, unique I, that history is foremost a history of the soul.56
The relation to the future in history is first of all one of openness. There
is no final goal or meaning of history. If the meaning of history can be put
into words, it is exactly the fact that human beings are free to care for their
own life, in a responsible way. The meaning of history lies in the openness of
the care for the soul: History is nothing other than the shaken certitude of a
pre-given meaning. It has no other meaning or goal. [] Yet the problem of
history may not be resolved, it must be preserved as a problem.57

55
Patoka 1996: 5377.
56
Patoka 1996: 103.
57
Patoka 1996: 118.
320 Eddo Evink

In the fifth heretical essay Patoka sketches a history of the care of the soul,
i.e. a historical development of the main phases in the reflection on what the
care of the soul is about. This history finds its beginning in ancient Greece, in
the fifth essay represented by Plato; the next phase is Christianity, which is fol-
lowed by modernity, the period in which the care of the soul goes down and gets
out of sight. Patoka describes a quite pessimistic course of history, especially of
modern technological culture, but he also wants to preserve hope. There is the
possibility, that the meaning of history, the care of the soul, can be found again.
This openness of history can be understood very well in terms of a horizon
of expectation. This is not a horizon of eschatology or messianism. In this re-
gard, Patoka has a different understanding of history than that of both Ricur
and Derrida. But there is in Patokas view the hope of a return to the care for
the soul. This is the horizon of history, that can only be discovered, if the too
fastened horizons of the first two movements are broken through. In Patokas
conception of modernity, human life falls back in a state that is dominated by
the second movement: by calculation, instrumental reason, conflict and self-
interest. In such a technological culture, the openness of history can only be
approached with calculating ideologies, projections that leave not much space
for change and free choice. These ideological stances with regard to history
and the future are too encompassing and can even become totalitarian.
This is the objectifying of the horizon of the future that Ricur, Derrida
and Patoka are all critical of. Ricur wants to solve this problem by relying
on a call from a Christian revelationthereby taking a problematic step away
from philosophy towards theology. Derrida takes both horizons, the fixating
ideologies as well as the open horizon of an indeterminate history together, by
interpreting every small articulation of the future as a potential ideology, that
might dominate or exclude pure otherness. With Patokas philosophy of his-
tory I try to show here how two possible horizons of the future can be seen as
related to each other: modern ideologies objectify the open horizon and thus
create an enclosing horizon that needs to be broken through, in order to find the
true openness of the horizon of time, that can never be stifled, but also needs its
humble and careful determinations. Patoka has developed this perspective on
history without recourse to a Christian eschatology or other sort of messianism.
His philosophy of history is not messianic at all, but still leaves place for hope.58

58
There is a clear influence of Christianity in Patokas philosophy, but that does not lead to
a messianic philosophy of history. As far as his thought can be labeled as Christian, it is an en-
tirely secularized form of Christian philosophy; cf. Hagedorn 2011: 245261. In Donner la mort,
Derrida suggests that Patoka was a Christian philosopher, ascribing Patokas description of the
Christian phase in the history of the care for the soul to Patoka himself, followed by the remark
that it doesnt matter much if Patoka was a Christian or not. This is at least a misleading account
of the Christian elements in Patokas work. His remark that Patokas Christianity is messianic, is
clearly wrong; cf. Derrida 1999: 1578/152; cf. Evink 2006: 307321.
Horizons of Expectation. Ricur, Derrida, Patoka 321

Conclusions

The horizon is a rich metaphor that has become an important concept in


phenomenology. If we look at the future as a horizon, a horizon of expecta-
tion, it is possible to think of the future in terms of hope and justice. The
status of the political understanding of these ideas is dependent on a good
estimation of the horizon. In several texts Paul Ricur has developed different
notions of horizon that are very valuable and helpful: the horizon of tradition
that shapes our perspectives, the horizon as a careful set of determinations of
the future, the horizon as a divine call that comes from the future towards us.
However, the connection of these three views on the horizon, together with
the explicitly Christian interpretation of the third horizon were shown to be
problematic elements in Ricurs thoughts on the horizons of expectation.
The attention was shifted, therefore, to Jacques Derridas criticism of the
hermeneutic understanding of the horizon. It turned out that Derrida uses
a quite different notion of horizon: an enclosing limit that dominates the
understanding of what seems to fit in its circle. This approach appeared to be
even more problematic, because of its too pure and absolute understanding of
justice. Derridas critique, however, underscored the two problems that were
mentioned before.
Finally, in the philosophy of Jan Patoka, a view on the horizon and on
history was found that gave valuable alternatives for the problematic elements
in Ricurs horizons of expectation, while leaving the convincing points of
his understanding of horizon intact. The result is that a phenomenological
horizon of expectation can discard false ideologies and sketch the necessity
of balanced pre-determinations of the future that are solid enough to prac-
tically work with, but also open enough to let themselves be corrected and
changedin a genuine philosophical reflection that can do without religious
revelations.

Eddo Evink
De Ranitzstraat 11a
9721 GG Groningen
The Netherlands
c.e.evink@rug.nl

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