Ricoeur, a disciple of Greimas ? : a case of paradoxical Maïeutic

Abstract EN

In January 1963, Paul Ricoeur praised structuralism in Rome (Ricoeur 1963).

In June 1963, during a confrontation with Claude Levi-Strauss that he had organised, on the premises of the journal Esprit, the same Paul Ricoeur entered into a violent rejection of that structural philosophy and then kept the same resentment seemingly forever.

At first, his anathema encompassed Greimassian semiotics until 1979 (see the famous Seminars of rue Parmentier on Narrativity and on History).

Then, thanks to a period of private encounters and public debates with Greimas (1980– 1989), Ricoeur radically changed his opinion about the achievements of Greimas to the point of not allowing him to step aside (outside? ) of what would come to be known as standard semiotics in which he recognised an admirable device for explaining and, hence, understanding, more, the symbolic force of narratives.