Cont Philos Rev

DOI 10.1007/s11007-017-9424-6

Ricoeur’s askēsis: textual and gymnastic exercises

for self-transformation

Brian Gregor1

 Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017

Abstract This essay examines what the philosophy of Paul Ricoeur can contribute
to current debates on the role of spiritual exercise, or askēsis, in philosophical life.
The influential work of Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault has sparked a widespread
interest in the ancient model of philosophy, variously described as a way of life, art
of living, or care of the self. Ricoeur’s potential contribution to this conversation has
been overlooked, largely because he does not discuss these themes explicitly or
often. However, Ricoeur’s early phenomenology of embodiment in The Voluntary
and the Involuntary offers valuable insights regarding the exercises of self-trans-
formation. After a brief survey of Ricoeur’s concept of askēsis, this essay draws on
Ricoeur to demonstrate the merits of physical exercise, or gymnastic, in ethical and
spiritual formation. Gymnastic, Ricoeur shows, can be a form of spiritual exercise.
The final section of the paper then makes a similarly counterintuitive claim: namely,
that reading is an embodied practice that can facilitate the ethical formation of the
lived body.

Keywords Paul Ricoeur
Care of the self
Philosophy as a way of

life
Reading
Embodiment

1 Introduction

Over the past few decades there has been a surge of interest in philosophy as a way
of life. The ancient Greco-Roman model of philosophy was not a mere classroom
discipline, but an art of living. Philosophy was likewise conceived as a kind of

& Brian Gregor

bgregor@csudh.edu
1
LCH A341 – Philosophy Department, California State University, Dominguez Hills, 1000 E.
Victoria St, Carson, CA 90747, USA

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therapeutic, or care of the self, aimed at curing the soul of its faulty judgments and
disordered passions. In order to reach these noble goals, the philosopher would
engage in spiritual exercise, or askēsis, aimed at self-transformation.
Recent interest in this model of philosophy owes a lot to Pierre Hadot,1 who has
shown perhaps better than anyone what it means to describe philosophy as a way of
life. Hadot is not, however, alone in making this point, as scholars of ancient
philosophy have long recognized that the Greeks and Romans pursued philosophy
as an art of living. Others who have explored this theme include Martha Nussbaum,2
Alexander Nehamas,3 John M. Cooper,4 Peter Sloterdijk,5 and of course Michel
Foucault, who was deeply influenced by Hadot in the second and third volumes of
his History of Sexuality, as well as his lectures and seminars on the hermeneutics of
the subject.6 For these thinkers, the ancient model of philosophy as a way of life is
not merely a historical curiosity, but a live option for us here and now as we ask
after the good life in late modernity. It is not surprising that this model of
philosophy has attracted wide interest, since it highlights one of the things that
attracts many people to philosophy in the first place: namely, a concern with how to
live. In this essay I would like to consider what Paul Ricoeur might contribute to the
conversation.
Although Ricoeur does not discuss this theme in a sustained way, his work on the
hermeneutics of the self suggests particular parallels to Foucault, who characterizes
philosophical life with phrases like ‘‘the care of the self’’ and ‘‘the hermeneutics of
the subject.’’ Ricoeur himself notes this affinity in Oneself as Another, citing his
affection for Foucault’s ‘‘magnificent title’’—le souci de soi, i.e. The Care of the
Self,7 and in a late interview he cites Foucault alongside Deleuze as one of the
thinkers he most admired.8 Beyond mere admiration, however, there is a basis for
more substantive dialogue, as a few scholars have recently shown by bringing
Ricoeur into dialogue with Foucault. Johann Michel’s book Ricoeur and the Post-
Structuralists devotes a chapter to reading Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology
through a Foucauldian lens,9 and essays by Annie Barthélémy and Simon
Castonguay also bring Ricoeur into dialogue with Foucault, comparing their
respective conceptions of the ontological and epistemological conditions of
subjectivity.10

1
Hadot (1995; 2002).
2
Nussbaum (1994).
3
Nehamas (1998).
4
Cooper (2012).
5
Sloterdijk (2013).
6
Foucault (1985; 1988; 2005).
7
Ricoeur (1992, p. 2).
8
Michel (2015, p. 76).
9
Ibid., p. 103.
10
Barthélémy (2010) and Castonguay (2010). Foucault’s later work on the disciplines of subjectivity
arose from his growing recognition that ethics and politics requires a more robust model of the subject
than his earlier genealogical work could provide. In this regard Foucault comes closer to Ricoeur, who
insists on the importance of the subject throughout his work. Like Foucault, Ricoeur’s work branches out

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My goal here, however, is not to compare Ricoeur with Foucault (or Hadot, or
Sloterdijk) but rather to consider what the care of the self would actually look like
for Ricoeur. Most specifically, what sort of exercise (askēsis) would belong to a
Ricoeurian hermeneutics of the self? What disciplines help to form and transform
the self? This is an important but heretofore unanswered question in Ricoeur
studies. Ricoeur does not address it directly, and the essays of Barthélémy and
Castonguay do not explore this theme. Michel even claims that ‘‘one does not find
any trace in Ricoeur’s philosophy of demands for purification or askesis in order to
shed more light on oneself, others, or the world.’’11 I will argue to the contrary that
Ricoeur’s philosophy contains not only a trace, but some genuinely rich resources.
These resources, however, lie in an unexpected place—namely, in Ricoeur’s early
phenomenological work on embodiment and the will in The Voluntary and the
Involuntary.
I will begin, however, by looking at Ricoeur’s more general concept of askēsis.
Despite his claim that Ricoeur’s philosophy makes no demand for askēsis, Michel
does hear ‘‘an echo’’ of the Socratic tradition of self-care in Ricoeur’s thesis that the
self is a task rather than a given.12 As it turns out, this is precisely the context in
which we find Ricoeur using the language of askēsis.

2 The role of askēsis in Ricoeur’s hermeneutics

One of Ricoeur’s earliest references to askēsis appears in his introduction to

Husserl’s Ideas I, where he describes the phenomenological epochē—the bracketing
of the natural attitude—as a spiritual discipline (ascèse). This ascetic discipline has
an ancient pedigree, since the epochē originated with the ancient skeptics as a
practice of withholding judgment in the face of dubious beliefs. The goal of this
exercise was to achieve a state of ataraxia—an inner tranquility, a freedom from the
disturbances that arise with the desire to know (or perhaps, to be correct). The
phenomenological epochē is also a response to the apparent uncertainty of all
knowledge, but rather than retreating into skepticism phenomenology brackets the
truth claims of the natural attitude in order to achieve transcendental consciousness.

Footnote 10 continued
expansively into the human and social sciences; unlike Foucault, however, Ricoeur’s continually roots his
inquiry in philosophical anthropology. Thus in his Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, Ricoeur cites
Foucault alongside Althusser and French structuralism as united by the conviction that ‘‘the ‘philo-
sophical…myth of man’ must be reduced to ashes.’’ Ricoeur’s objection is that this anti-humanism does
not provide a sufficient basis for defending human rights. See Ricoeur (1986b, p. 131).
11
Michel (2015, p. 105).
12
Ricoeur argues that the cogito cannot be known directly through psychological evidence, intellectual
intuition, or ‘‘mystical vision.’’ Instead, reflection must strive to recapture ‘‘the ego cogito in the mirror of
its objects, its works, its acts,’’ since these objectify the ego. Thus a ‘‘reflective philosophy is the contrary
of the immediate. The first truth—I am, I think—remains as abstract and empty as it is invincible; it has to
be ‘mediated’ by the ideas, actions, works, institutions, and monuments that objectify it. It is in these
objects, in the widest sense of the word, that the Ego must lose and find itself.’’ There is therefore no
immediate self-consciousness. ‘‘Consciousness … is a task because it is not given.’’ Ricoeur (1970,
pp. 43–44). Cf. Michel (2015, p. 105).

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The ultimate goal of this phenomenological therapeia is to cure the psychic

maladies of skepticism, historicism, and psychologism, so it is fitting that Ricoeur
identifies the phenomenological method as a ‘‘spiritual discipline (ascèse).’’13 The
ascetic discipline of the epochē is a means of transforming the subject to make it
capable of truth. For Husserl, this self-transformation meant becoming a transcen-
dental idealist,14 but Ricoeur will eventually part ways with Husserl on this point by
moving in the direction of a decidedly hermeneutical model of phenomenology.
More on this in a moment.
For Ricoeur, the phenomenological epochē is an ascetic discipline for the
philosopher. Something similar is true of psychoanalysis. Unlike phenomenology,
however, psychoanalysis has the effect of displacing the origin of meaning from
consciousness—transcendental or otherwise—to the unconscious, locating this
origin in ‘‘the transcendence of speech or the emergence of desire.’’15 Psychoanal-
ysis thus functions as a ‘‘decided antiphenomenology’’ that destroys the manifest
sense of reality as given in and to consciousness.16 This poses a serious challenge to
reflexive philosophy from Descartes to Kant to Fichte to Husserl, but Ricoeur argues
that philosophy must confront psychoanalysis as a kind of ascetic purification:
The philosopher who surrenders himself to this strict schooling is led to
practice a true ascesis of subjectivity, allowing himself to be dispossessed of
the origin of meaning. This abandonment is of course yet another turn of
reflection, but it must become the real loss of the most archaic of all objects:
the self. It must then be said of the subject of reflection what the Gospel says
of the soul: to be saved, it must be lost. All of psychoanalysis speaks to me of
lost objects to be found again symbolically. Reflective philosophy must
integrate this discovery with its own task; the self [le moi] must be lost in order
to find the ‘I’ [le je]. This is why psychoanalysis is, if not a philosophical
discipline, at least a discipline for the philosopher…17
For Ricoeur, the discipline of psychoanalysis is necessary for philosophy because it
exposes the pretensions of thinking consciousness. This ascetic work is also
beneficial since the renunciation prepares the way for more authentic self-
understanding.18

13
Ricoeur (1967a, p. 16).
14
For more detailed discussion of this point, see Jacobs (2013). Also note Michel’s point that Ricoeur
‘‘feels closest’’ to Husserl’s later phenomenological project in the Krisis, which ‘‘seeks to establish new
pathways between knowledge of oneself and the transformation of the self, and in that respect, there is
still a form of spirituality provided by the father of phenomenology.’’ Michel (2015, pp. 106–07).
15
Ricoeur (1970, pp. 422, 494).
16
Ibid.
17
‘‘Existence and Hermeneutics,’’ p. 20.
18
‘‘A Philosophical Interpretation of Freud,’’ in Ricoeur (1974, p. 172). This theme of ascetic
renunciation recurs throughout Ricoeur’s engagement with psychoanalysis. Ricoeur refers to an ‘‘ascesis
of reflection,’’ and a ‘‘discipline of reflection,’’ since ‘‘it brings about that dispossession of consciousness
and governs the ascesis of that narcissism that wishes to be taken for the true Cogito.’’ Ricoeur (1970,
pp. 27, 54, 60, 422, 494). To be dispossessed of the origin of meaning in this way is a difficult process,
just as it is painful to embrace the principle of Ananke, or Necessity, and also to renounce the nostalgia

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Displaced and dispossessed, consciousness now confronts itself as a task rather

than a given. ‘‘There are no longer ‘immediate givens of consciousness.’ There is,
rather, a task, the task of becoming-consciousness.’’19 But how to go about this task
of self-recovery? It is not possible by simply resolving to think more clearly and
carefully, so that one constitutes oneself as finally responsible for one’s own
thinking. That was Descartes’ strategy in his Meditations, but the psychoanalytic
critique of the subject undermines any attempt of consciousness to found itself. Nor
can this lost meaning be recovered through an act of will or a project of self-
creation. Instead, meaning must be given, and received as a gift. For Ricoeur, the
limit of psychoanalysis, with its ‘‘discipline of the real’’ and ‘‘ascesis of the
necessary,’’ is that it lacks ‘‘the grace of imagination, the upsurge of the possible.’’
This grace, Ricoeur suggests, is given in ‘‘the Word as Revelation.’’20 Ricoeur is not
appealing to a naı̈ve embrace of religious consciousness, since that too must be
purified ascetically. Instead, he suggests that after the iconoclastic destruction of its
idols, religious symbols and narratives might speak anew.21 This is a wager, not a
posture of certainty, but Ricoeur argues that this ‘‘ascesis’’ is the condition for
authentic, mature faith. The displacement of meaning means that the self can no
longer seek to save itself, but it can be open and receptive to transcendence. This
transcendence is mediated by the text. ‘‘The exegete is not his own master; to
understand is to place himself under the object which is at stake in the text.’’22 Or as
Ricoeur will put it in a later essay: ‘‘I exchange the me, master of itself, for the self,
disciple of the text.’’23 The moi thereby gives way to the soi.
These two cases—the phenomenological and psychoanalytic—illustrate
Ricoeur’s general concept of askēsis as a kind of self-denial or renunciation
required by the pursuit of authentic understanding. This idea has a rich heritage in
ancient thought. A recurring theme among Greek, Roman, Jewish, and Christian
thinkers of antiquity is that truth and wisdom come at a price. In order to become
capable of the truth, the self must undertake spiritual exercises aimed at
transforming the self. As Foucault puts it, truth requires askēsis.24 Similarly,
Ricoeur insists that self-understanding requires the detour through self-renunciation.
This principle returns throughout Ricoeur’s work, whether in the form of Freudian
psychoanalysis, Nietzschean genealogy, Marxist ideology critique, or structuralist
analysis. Each form of critique exposes the pretenses of consciousness. Where
modern philosophies of consciousness ‘‘exalt’’ the cogito, the hermeneutics of
suspicion ‘‘shatter’’ the cogito. Neither of these approaches, however, provide a
satisfactory portrait of the self, so Ricoeur suggests a ‘‘wounded cogito,’’ which is

Footnote 18 continued
for a primordial father, who provides consolation and comfort amidst our fears and an object for our
desires. See ‘‘Religion, Atheism, and Faith,’’ in Ricoeur (1974, pp. 458–59).
19
Ricoeur (1974, p. 172).
20
Ricoeur (1970, p. 36).
21
‘‘The Critique of Religion,’’ in Ricoeur (1978, p. 219).
22
Ibid., p. 222.
23
Ricoeur (1991, p. 37).
24
Foucault (2005, p. 522).

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no longer sovereign master of meaning but is nevertheless capable of identifying

itself in speech, action, self-narration, and by assuming ethical and moral
responsibility.25 For Ricoeur the critique of subjectivity need not lead to its
outright abolition, but instead to a more modest, chastened affirmation—or
attestation—of the self. Ricoeur thus reconceives the traditional reflexive concept of
the subject as a hermeneutics of the self. And within this hermeneutics of the self,
the practice of ascetic self-renunciation is necessary for any genuine self-
understanding.26

3 Askēsis and embodiment

As we have seen, for Ricoeur the term askēsis usually connotes renunciation or self-
denial, whether in the phenomenological epochē or the psychoanalytic critique of
the subject. This renunciatory sense of askēsis is also evident in Ricoeur’s later
work on mourning and preparation for death, where he continues a distinguished
philosophical tradition: Philosophy is training for death, as Socrates says in Phaedo
(64a) and many philosophers have said since. Ricoeur offers a distinctly
hermeneutical approach to this tradition by showing how reading27 and writing28
can transform one’s being-toward-death by facilitating a renunciation of oneself,
one’s attachment to one’s life, even one’s individual ipseity.
Yet if askēsis often involves denial or renunciation of the self, this negative sense
is only one of its aspects. For the ancients askēsis also had a broader, more positive
sense of forming new habits of being, seeing, and acting in the world.
Transformation not only renounces the vice and error, but instills virtue and truth.
In the remainder of this essay, I will show that Ricoeur does indeed recognize this
more positive role of askēsis in the ethical and religious formation of the self. Much
of this formation revolves around texts, but Ricoeur also has to helpful things to say
about forms of askēsis beyond reading and writing. It turns out that some of
Ricoeur’s most significant insights regarding ethical and spiritual formation arise in
his phenomenology of embodiment.
25
For Ricoeur’s discussion of the exalted, humiliated, and wounded cogito, see his introduction to
Ricoeur (1992).
26
Ricoeur also presents Kant’s critical philosophy as having this sort of purifying intent. ‘‘The
paralogisms and antinomies thus become for critical reason the ascetic instruments by which it is led back
to itself within those boundaries where its knowledge is valid.’’ Ricoeur (1995, p. 223).
27
In Oneself as Another, Ricoeur shows how reading literary narratives can transform our being-toward-
death by providing a sort of consolation ‘‘in the face of the unknown, or nothingness’’ by giving the
imagination particular examples to anticipate what dying might be like. Fiction can thereby guide us ‘‘in
the apprenticeship of dying,’’ facilitating a certain ‘‘mourning for oneself.’’ Ricoeur (1992, p. 162).
Similarly, Ricoeur observes that ‘‘meditation on the Passion of Christ has accompanied … more than one
believer to the last threshold’’ (ibid).
28
Like reading, writing can likewise aid in the work of mourning, as Ricoeur demonstrates in Living up
to Death, a text that collects his own attempts at the work of mourning in writing. Ricoeur quotes Claude-
Edmonde Magny to this effect: ‘‘‘No one can write unless his heart is pure, unless he has sufficiently cast
off his own personality’ … ‘Writing, if it claims to be more than a game, or a gamble, is but a long,
endless labor of ascesis, a way of casting off by keeping a firm hold on oneself through recognizing and
bringing into the world the other one always is.’’’ Quoted in Ricoeur (2009, p. 39).

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There is an ancient precedent for connecting ethical formation with the formation
of the body. For the Greeks, philosophical askēsis was analogous to the physical
askēsis practiced in the gymnasium. Just as gymnastic exercise aimed at cultivating
the virtues of the body (such as strength, coordination, balance, and proportion), so
the spiritual exercise of philosophers aimed at cultivating virtues of the soul (such as
wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice). What is remarkable is that Ricoeur helps
us to see how these two types of askēsis—exercise or training—are not merely
analogous, but also interweave. We find this insight in Ricoeur’s early work on the
Philosophy of the Will—in particular, his discussion of habit in The Voluntary and
the Involuntary (a.k.a. Freedom and Nature). There Ricoeur provides a phe-
nomenological account of the way bodily effort aids in the discipline of the passions
and contributes to the formation of virtue. These insights help us to envision how
bodily exercise—or gymnastic—can be spiritually transformative.
In The Voluntary and the Involuntary, Ricoeur turns his attention to the discipline
of the passions. In keeping with the ancient conception of philosophy as therapeia,
he is concerned with the rational cure of the soul’s maladies. One of Ricoeur’s
primary interlocutors in this discussion is Descartes, in particular the treatise on The
Passions of the Soul. While Ricoeur draws numerous insights from Descartes, he
disagrees with his identification of passion and emotion.29 Descartes claims that the
passions ‘‘are all by nature good, and that we have nothing to avoid but their misuse
or their excess.’’30 By contrast, Ricoeur insists on a distinction: Emotion belongs to
the fundamental nature or possibilities of the human being, whereas passion is a
distortion of these possibilities. Further, unlike emotion, passion does not arise out
of the body but from the soul—i.e., from consciousness, and most specifically the
will. This does not mean that passion is purely voluntary. Rather, passion is an
‘‘intimate involuntary’’ in which the will binds itself. When passion is stirred, it
encounters possibilities from the involuntary—the body, the emotions—‘‘but the
spell comes from the soul.’’31 Passion only gains its hold through the power of the
will. In Ricoeur’s words, ‘‘passion is in its essence wholly mental’’; it is ‘‘an entirely
spiritual power.’’32 The will thereby binds itself. The voluntary reduces itself to the
involuntary. Such is the paradox of passion.
Emotion is not, however, a simple or straightforward phenomenon. Like passion,
it is fundamentally ambiguous. On the one hand, emotion is a ‘‘corporeal form of the
involuntary’’33—a bodily involuntary that provides us with an excuse or ‘‘alibi.’’
Our emotions are not up to us. In this regard the Stoics were mistaken. They were,
however, correct to recognize that emotion is not merely a reflex. Emotions can
surprise us, to be sure, but they emerge in relation to consciousness and as such they
are ‘‘partly subject to wisdom.’’ The soul can recognize emotions as the embryonic

29
Ricoeur (1966, p. 20).
30
Descartes (1985, p. 403).
31
Ricoeur (1966, p. 21).
32
Ibid., pp. 276–77.
33
Ibid., p. 279.

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form of passions, and by grasping them ‘‘from above’’ it becomes possible to work
on them.34
One way of curing the passions is to work on the thoughts and evaluations that
underlie them. For instance, regarding anger Ricoeur writes: ‘‘I do not cure myself
of anger without curing myself of excessive self-esteem and of the susceptibility to
injury deriving from it; these are the bad imaginations, oppressors of the will which
constitute the combustible matter of emotion.’’35 Thoughts, evaluations, and ‘‘bad
imaginations’’ give the emotions their power. As Ricoeur puts it: ‘‘if in emotion the
body deprives me of my control, it is because first some thoughts—and almost
always passions—have preceded this revolt.’’36 This revolt takes place through the
imagination. Emotion projects its beliefs, thoughts, and judgments onto the
imagination, which gives these representations ‘‘a vitality, flesh, and a quasi-
presence.’’ Imagination gives me a rendition of myself as the one who is rightly
angry. I see myself as the wronged, mistreated, offended one. In order to neutralize
these ‘‘bad imaginations,’’ I need to correct the representations on which they are
founded, and this is possible by turning ‘‘my attention to values higher than my
threatened values or my insulted reputation,’’ or by ‘‘forcefully imagining the
reasons opposed to anger or fear.’’ This process of alteration ‘‘engenders a
revolution in the imagination.’’37 I begin to see the world in a different way; new
meanings show themselves to me, and new possibilities present themselves.
This revolution also alters my response at the corporeal level. In Ricoeur’s words,
‘‘this action on the level of representation has repercussions right down to the
visceral level,’’ insofar as it ‘‘engenders a contrary emotion.’’ Ricoeur credits
Descartes with recognizing this, and showing ‘‘admirably that the art of living lies in
part in playing one ‘passion’ against another.’’38
In order for these strategies to be consistently effective, though, the self needs the
mediating role of habit.39 The art of living requires habituation. The formation of
habit is a way of changing ourselves through our acts, so that we acquire new
‘‘capabilities for willing.’’40 Habit provides new structures, new schemata of
meaning and movement. Habit changes what we are responsive to, what
possibilities suggest themselves, and how we are disposed to respond. These new
schemata are adaptable, and can be ‘‘transposed’’ to different situations,41 allowing
us to ‘‘launch an act with a minimum of effort.’’42 Habit inclines us to some
possibilities and disinclines us to others: ‘‘Habit fixes our tastes and aptitudes and
thus shrinks our field of availability; the range of the possible narrows down; my life

34
Ibid., p. 278.
35
Ibid.
36
Ibid., p. 279.
37
Ibid., pp. 313–14.
38
Ibid., p. 314.
39
Ibid.
40
Ricoeur (1986a, p. 57; 1966, p. 292).
41
Ricoeur (1966, p. 288).
42
Ibid., p. 302.

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has taken shape.’’43 In other words, habit gives the self a definite form. The self-
formation of habit takes place not only in the soul, but in the body as well. Virtuous
habits are a matter of taming emotion and taking ‘‘possession of my body.’’44

4 Gymnastic as a spiritual exercise

According to Ricoeur’s phenomenological description, virtue consists in part in

appropriating my body, coming to know it as my own, and gaining a proper kind of
bodily control. Ricoeur outlines three ways in which habit does this. Most basically,
habit renders consciousness ‘‘less affective,’’45 so that the self gains emotional
equilibrium; it becomes more durable and less vulnerable to emotional impulse.
Secondly, habits also involve the ‘‘regularity and order’’ of discipline, as found in
family life, school, work. Discipline provides rhythm, which attenuates the
convulsive power of emotion. Third, habit also develops through the ‘‘active
exercise of the body.’’ ‘‘Gymnastics,’’ Ricoeur writes, ‘‘is related to ethics.’’
This intriguing claim deserves further consideration. How does gymnastic—i.e.,
bodily exercise—have an impact on ethics? According to Ricoeur, emotion is
‘‘convulsive.’’ By contrast, exercise involves deliberate, measured control of the
body. It makes me more attentive and deliberate in my movements. Ricoeur
describes it as follows: ‘‘In unknotting my muscles, in leading to a kind of muscular
introspection, gymnastic habituates the body to respond in a docile way to
differentiated, impelling ideas. It makes the body better known and more available.
There is a great deal of clumsiness in anger.’’46 Gymnastic helps me to recognize
my body as my own, and helps establish the self-possession of the ‘‘I can.’’ In this
way gymnastic has the potential to be ethically formative. The ancients understood
this. For instance, Diogenes the Cynic argued that we need two types of askēsis in
order to live virtuously: exercise of the soul to form the right kind of
representations, and exercise of the body for good health and strength. They are
both essential. They are also interconnected. According to Diogenes, gymnastic
training can help us to arrive at virtue. The same applies to ‘‘manual crafts and other
arts’’: The only way to develop these skills is through ‘‘strenuous practice’’ and
‘‘incessant toil.’’ These techniques require effort, and the self becomes accustomed
to exerting effort in a disciplined way. This sort of training can prepare the way for
ethics, as these habits can be transferred to the training of the soul.47
We find a similar point in Plato’s Republic. Socrates is discussing the best
pedagogy for the guardians, and argues that it will require both music and
gymnastic. At first it seems that music (which includes poetry and speeches)
concerns the soul and gymnastic concerns the body (376e). As the conversation
unfolds, however, Socrates argues that gymnastic also plays an important role in
43
Ricoeur (1986a, p. 57).
44
Ricoeur (1966, p. 315).
45
Ricoeur (1966, p. 314).
46
Ricoeur (1966, p. 314).
47
Diogenes Laertius (Book VI.70–72).

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forming the soul. Music, poetry, and good speech form the right habits and
affections in the soul, instilling good harmony, grace, rhythm, and disposition
(400e). Music by itself, however, leaves the soul soft, temperamental, and irritable.
The problem is that the spirited element of the soul—thumos—has not been
properly formed. Without gymnastic, thumos starts to melt, and is eventually
liquefied (411b).
The right formation of thumos is central to this Platonic pedagogy because
thumos is the part of the soul that lies between reason and sensuous desire. Or as
Ricoeur argues in Fallible Man, thumos is ‘‘the median function par excellence in
the human soul.’’48 It is the intermediary between the vital and the spiritual, the
transition from bios to logos.49 But it is not only an intermediary; it is a more
ambiguous ‘‘mixture’’ of the vital and the spiritual.50 As such it is attracted to both,
and can ally itself with either.51 If thumos sides with reason, it takes the form of
courage, righteous indignation, or endurance; if it sides with desire, it takes the
forms of irritation or fury.52 Given this ambiguity, it is important that thumos is
formed in the best way possible. Thus in the Republic the goal of gymnastic is not
merely to increase physical strength or force. People who pursue strength alone, to
the neglect of music, end up with savage, brutal souls lacking in rhythm and grace.
Instead, the goal is to arouse the thumos so that it becomes an ally of reason rather
than the appetites and desires (410b-d). The result is the virtue of courage rather
than the vice of rage. For Plato, gymnastic is a spiritual exercise insofar as it both
arouses and directs thumos, the spirited element of the soul. The soul thereby gains
the resilience and vigor it needs in order to exhibit the virtues of courage,
moderation, and justice.
Plato’s point here intersects with Ricoeur’s discussion of effort. One reason
exercise is formative is that it requires effort. Effort is an exertion against resistance,
whether that resistance is in the world, in one’s body, or in one’s own spirit. By
exerting effort against resistance, the will becomes stronger. Likewise, thumos is
nourished and brought over to the side of reason. I do not get frustrated or angry,
lashing out at whatever resists me; instead, I develop persistence, the spirit to
struggle against opposition. It is entirely appropriate that Ricoeur translates thumos
with the word heart. Gymnastic helps to form the heart. And as Diogenes points out,
the results of this kind of gymnastic training can be transferred to ethical and
spiritual formation.
With all of that said, we also need to note Ricoeur’s caution regarding the limits
of ethical and religious habituation. He makes this point right at the beginning of his
trilogy on The Philosophy of the Will, cautioning against drawing any ‘‘premature
ethical conclusions’’ from the eidetic analysis in The Voluntary and the Involuntary.
Ethical or religious wholeness—the reconciliation of body and soul, the harmo-
nization of that which passion distorts—requires ‘‘a long detour.’’ In his words: ‘‘At
48
Ricoeur (1986a, p. 81).
49
Ibid., pp. 81–82, 126.
50
Ibid., p. 127.
51
Ibid., p. 129.
52
Ibid., p. 8.

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first it seems that the Greek ideal of measure and harmony is within our grasp. But
such harmony is possible only at a point beyond our reach.’’53 New disciplines, new
forms of askēsis, new habits are not sufficient in themselves. The Greeks didn’t have
a deep enough grasp of sin, or what Ricoeur calls fault. They also didn’t have as
high of a sense of transcendence. The bound will can only be liberated by grace, by
the superabundant logic of gift, excess. But this transcendence lies beyond the limits
of a purely eidetic phenomenology. This is why Ricoeur had originally planned to
conclude his trilogy with a volume on the Poetics of the Will, which would give an
account of how the will is liberated and transformed.
Although Ricoeur never completed this volume, he did explore this issue in his
subsequent work on the hermeneutics of religion.54 Ricoeur’s work in this area
focuses on the poetic power of ethical and religious discourse to transform, or
refigure, the self and its world. We might ask, then, how askēsis and habituation fit
into Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of religion. Can such refiguration become a habit?
Strictly speaking, Ricoeur’s answer would be no. Refiguration depends on the
reception of transcendence or grace. It does not arise from the activity of an
immanent capacity or power in my control. It depends on the transformative power
of a word given prior to my own activity. The self is liberated and its world is
refigured by a word that it cannot initially speak to itself. Thus refiguration cannot
become a habit.
With that said, I would like to suggest that we can develop certain (bodily) habits
that make us more receptive to the refiguring power of transcendence. Ricoeur
provides a cue for this in Fallible Man:
…the body is a node of powers, of motor and affective structures, of
interchangeable methods whose spontaneity is at the disposal of the will. It is
enough to watch our familiar gestures in action to see how the body leads the
way, tries out and invents, answers our expectations or eludes us…. The
practical mediation of the body extends beyond motor habits in the strict
sense. Our skills are also a kind of body, a psychical body, as it were: through
rules of grammar and arithmetic, through social sophistication and moral
knowledge we learn and form new skills. In all ways of learning, bodily and
intellectual, there is this relation of an action to an enacted body, of a will to a
power set in motion.55
Intellectual skills become what Ricoeur calls an ‘‘enacted body.’’ This would
include our hermeneutical skills, habits, or virtues, which become an enacted body
that can be more receptive to refiguration. These hermeneutical virtues would
include habits of attention, contemplation, patience, responsiveness, courage, and
endurance.

53
Ricoeur (1966, p. 22).
54
Currently the best source for this aspect of Ricoeur’s thought are the essays collected in Ricoeur
(1995). According to Ricoeur’s most mature work on the topic, the goal of religion is the liberation of
human capability—the capable human being (l’homme capable).
55
Ricoeur (1986a, p. 66).

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 B. Gregor

These habits belong to the ‘‘enacted body’’ of the self. But what about the
exercise of the physical body? That may seem like a bit of a stretch. Does gymnastic
really have an impact on hermeneutics? In an indirect way, the answer is yes.
Gymnastic arouses and directs thumos. It also increases our self-possession and
helps to discipline the passions. But if we think about bodily exercises more
broadly, it becomes clear how important bodily comportment is for spiritual
formation. This is evident if we look from the gymnasium to the monastery, the
temple, and the church and consider the importance of embodiment in liturgy. There
are both Eastern and Western examples to illustrate this point. Certain postures,
gestures, and movements are crucial for making us more attentive and receptive.
When we kneel, when we bow our heads, when we raise our hands, we are adopting
bodily modes of heightened receptivity. The same is true for the voice, which is an
enacted body of its own. Certain acts of speech, singing, and chanting are also
embodied practices that make us more open and available to transcendence. In these
ways, bodily exercise does indeed have significance for hermeneutics; it helps
prepare the way for the refiguration of the self and its world.

5 Reading as embodied practice

It is somewhat surprising, even disappointing, that Ricoeur’s phenomenology of

embodiment seems to disappear after this early work. This disappearance coincides
with his shift from the eidetic phenomenology of his early work to the linguistic-
hermeneutical focus on symbols, metaphors, and narratives that began with The
Symbolism of Evil.56 The body does not, however, disappear from his thought
altogether. It shifts to the background, and then comes back into view in Oneself as
Another, where Ricoeur offers a brief phenomenology of ‘‘one’s own body, or the
flesh.’’57 In a description of the sense of touch, Ricoeur observes how the lived
body—Leib—mediates between me and the world. This is an intriguing develop-
ment, since Ricoeur’s hermeneutics typically emphasizes the role of the text in

56
Ricoeur (1967b). Lamenting this shift in Ricoeur’s thought, Richard Kearney has recently noted how
Oneself as Another helps to reconnect Ricoeur’s early phenomenology of the body with his subsequent
hermeneutical turn. In discussing Husserl’s account of intersubjectivity, which is founded on
appresentation, analogical apprehension, and pairing, Ricoeur notes that for Husserl I understand the
other not on the basis of reasoning to a conclusion, nor in a primordial intuition, but in an immediate
interpretation of indications, ‘‘much as the reading of symptoms.’’ Ricoeur (1992, p. 334, n.39). I can
never achieve a perfect union with the other, experiencing her there as my here. Instead, Kearney writes,
‘‘I can only respond by ‘reading’ their transcendence in immanence, across distance and difference.’’
Kearney, (2015, p. 54). As Kearney shows, touch—along with each other mode of embodied affectivity—
is an interpretive event. My encounter with the world, with its objects therein, and most significantly with
other selves, is itself hermeneutical. Hermeneutics does not subsist on purely intellectual sense, because
so much of the meaning we encounter and understand has a thoroughly fleshly nature. As such, the
idealist tendencies of hermeneutics must give way to a thoroughly carnal hermeneutics.
57
The title of the subsection in Ch.10 of Ricoeur (1992, p. 319). He notes that actively touching
something other than oneself establishes a certainty regarding my own existing, insofar as I extend effort
to touch, as well as the existence of otherness, which offers resistance—i.e. solidity, texture—to my
effort. In touching, ‘‘one’s own body is revealed to be the mediator between the intimacy of the self and
the externality of the world.’’ Ricoeur (1992, p. 322).

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mediating between self and world. It is also true that I do not encounter my body as
a neutral fact, an interpretation-free thing in itself, since my relation to my own
body is also mediated textually, by the signs, symbols, images, and narratives that
have shaped how I understand the significance of my body.
The text mediates self and world. The body mediates self and world. The text
mediates self and body. With all of this mediation going on, we might also ask how
the body mediates the self and the text. As Ricoeur shows, the text reveals a world I
might inhabit—a world charged with meaning and possibility. We must add that
these possibilities are possibilities for me as body. It is because I am an embodied
self—both agent and patient, with all of my particular desires and aversions rooted
in my flesh—that these possibilities matter to me. Moreover, my response to the text
is also embodied, whether in surges of interest, arousal, distress, or flagging
attention. In this final section I would like to consider how Ricoeur’s early
phenomenology of the body can illuminate the bodily dimension of reading, and
how reading might exercise the body in addition to the soul. We have seen how
gymnastic can be a spiritual exercise, so let’s consider how reading can be a bodily
exercise.
It is, of course, counterintuitive to think of reading as exercising the body. After
all, we usually read when we are sitting still. Some people may read on a treadmill
or stationary bike, but their reading is externally related to their exercise. They are
getting physical exercise, and they happen to be reading while they do it. The
reading is not what constitutes their workout. Likewise, after long periods of
reading, we often feel the need to get up and move around—to ‘‘get some exercise,’’
as we say.
As much as we might wish that reading a book could substitute for going to the
gym, it would require a good deal of sophistry to make that case. Yet in the ancient
world it was the physicians, not the sophists, who made this argument. And they
were sincere in making it. As Ivan Illich points out, ‘‘throughout antiquity reading
was considered a strenuous exercise. Hellenistic physicians prescribed reading as an
alternative to ball playing or a walk. Reading presupposed that you be in good
physical form; the frail or infirm were not supposed to read with their own
tongue.’’58 The reason for this, of course, is that reading was done for the ears of
others. Reading was not something one did alone and silently; people read aloud,
and in that form reading is a practice that ‘‘engages the whole body.’’59 Throughout
the first millennium, the practice of reading—and often singing—the text was seen
as a thoroughly bodily affair. Memorization of the text is facilitated by
‘‘psychomotor nerve impulses,’’ in which the text is enacted through one’s bodily
posture and motion. Illich notes:
Even today, pupils in Koranic and Jewish schools sit on the floor with the book
open on their knees. Each one chants his lines in a singsong, often a dozen
pupils simultaneously, each a different line. While they read, their bodies sway
from the hips up or their trunks rock gently back and forth. The swinging and

58
Illich (1996, p. 57).
59
Ibid., p. 58.

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 B. Gregor

the recitation continue as if the student is in a trance, even when he closes his
eyes or looks down the aisle of the mosque. The body movements re-evoke
those of the speech organs that have been associated with them. In a ritual
manner these students use their whole bodies to embody the lines.60
The pedagogical function of these practices is one of ‘‘fixing the spoken sequence in
the flesh,’’ since memory often ‘‘means the triggering of a well-established sequence
of muscular patterns to which the utterances are tied.’’61 This link between memory
and patterns of movement can also arise in relation to music, as dance so nicely
illustrates.
The bodily aspect of reading is easier to identify when we are reading aloud. The
body is engaged more fully because oral reading involves posture, breathing,
projection, volume, tone of voice, rhythm, pacing. All of these bodily aspects are
significant to how I enact the text. The bodily aspect of silent reading, by contrast, is
more obscure, since our speech and thought seem to move inward. But as Drew
Leder notes in his book The Absent Body, even these seemingly disembodied,
‘‘inner’’ acts of language and thought are accompanied by minute movements of the
vocal apparatus.62 We also tend to forget that our eyes are active—at least until they
get too tired or dry and become uncomfortable. And what do our eyes see?
Language embodied in markings on the page, or perhaps on the screen. This, too, is
easy to overlook, since the written word typically becomes transparent as we look
through the physical markings to their intended meaning. Even the written marking
of a problematic word like Derrida’s ‘‘différance’’ becomes transparent as we see
through its physical embodiment to the ambi-valent meaning(s) it denotes.
The embodied aspects of silent reading are also evident in our physical
engagement with the text: my relation to the object, whether in bound paper or on a
screen; my bodily posture; the way I inscribe myself into the text and its margins by
underlining and adding marginalia. Each of these points indicates the importance of
the body to an aesthetics of reading. But the body is also relevant to an ethics of
reading insofar as the bodily dimension of reading is bound up in the ethical
transformation of the self. The practice of reading transforms our bodily
comportment in and to the world, and transforms the embodied ‘‘I can.’’
When I read, what Ricoeur calls ‘‘the world in front of the text’’ begins to take
shape. The text presents a world of possible meaning and action—a world I might
inhabit. As we have seen, Ricoeur argues that the body mediates between the self
and the world. This is true for the actual world around us, but it is also true for the
possible world revealed in front of the text. As I begin to read, I encounter
possibilities that present themselves for me: projects, courses of action, capabilities.
These are possibilities for me as body. But the body needs to be made capable of
recognizing these possibilities. At the beginning, Ricoeur writes, ‘‘corporeal
existence is a principle of disorder and of indetermination.’’ I do not—I cannot—
discern a determinate project or self. My reasons are obscured, and I am

60
Ibid., p. 60.
61
Ibid., pp. 60–61.
62
Leder (1990, p. 122).

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‘‘submerged in the essential passivity of existence which proceeds from the body.’’
Consequently, my projects are ‘‘confused’’ and my self is ‘‘unformed.’’63 I cannot
grasp the totality of needs, desires, and ideas that are circulating in me at the present
moment, nor is there an evident hierarchy that would allow me to prioritize them as
good. I cannot perform a coherent act of willing, because I do not really know what
I want, what I need, or what I should do. My motives and values are inarticulate.
Reading is one of the ways by which we articulate motive and value. The most
basic source of motive is the body.64 It is the affective medium of all motives. These
motives ‘‘issuing from the body’’ are given a ‘‘common form’’ and ‘‘conventional
value judgments’’ by the imagination. Imagination helps to give flesh, even a certain
fullness, to such motives as desire and fear.65 These images are like an ‘‘advance
emissary’’ for presence. Imagination is an ‘‘affective anticipation’’—the anticipation
of some desired pleasure, some feared pain.66 And in anticipating some affect,
imagination also anticipates some value, whether good or bad. This valuation is
largely implicit rather than an explicit or abstract judgment, but the image
nevertheless gives a ‘‘virtual knowledge of value.’’67
This is how reading engages us as bodies. Reading gives a vast array of
possibilities to the imagination, allowing us to anticipate things that we need, want,
fear, and dislike. By presenting these possibilities in the mode of the as if, I undergo
this affective experience in my imagination. This experience affects me not just in
my thoughts, but in my body. The text can motivate, inspire, provoke, arouse,
lighten, and sadden. I feel these things in a quickened pulse, a surge of indignation,
and in the chills that pass through my body at something frightening. And by
allowing me to undergo these affective images, the text organizes and focuses my
motives. My body is no longer a mess of confused motives; instead, my motives
become more familiar, more intelligible. Through the imagination, reading gives
greater articulacy to my motives. I understand them better, and this in itself is
ethically beneficial.
The imagination also prepares me to form more explicit value judgments about
my motives. I can better understand what is to be desired, what temptations I must
resist, what is to be feared, what I am willing to undergo in service to my
convictions and commitments, and how I might respond to the consequences of a
particular action. Thus Ricoeur will later write in Oneself as Another that reading
sets up an ethical laboratory ‘‘in which we experiment with estimations, evaluations,
and judgments of approval and condemnation through which narrativity serves as a
propaedeutic to ethics.’’68
By helping us to focus our motives, reading helps precipitate decision.
Imagination anticipates these affective possibilities, so that when I decide ‘‘I feel
charged with the action to be done, I experience myself as its force as well as its
63
Ricoeur (1966, p. 143).
64
Ibid., p. 85.
65
Ibid., p. 101.
66
Ibid., p. 107.
67
Ibid., pp. 103–04.
68
Ricoeur (1992, p. 115).

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intention.’’ I recognize that I can carry out this project proposed to my body: ‘‘I feel
capable, as an incarnate being situated in the world, of the action which I intend in
general.’’69
In addition to initiating the action, I must also be capable of maintaining control
of my body. ‘‘If the first effect of the will is to move an initially immobile body, its
first task is to keep the recalcitrant body from carrying us away, from vibrating and
starting to escape.’’70 Consequently, the body must be tamed, domesticated, and
directed toward its intended goal. The body is only able to motivate the will if the
will has control of the body. This bodily control requires the capacity to initiate and
move the body, and also to stop moving and keep the body still. The body is subject
to wild, undisciplined and uncoordinated movements. As we saw above, one of the
ethical benefits of gymnastic is to increase my control over my body and its
movements, rendering them more smooth and graceful and making me better
acquainted with my body, so that I am less susceptible to emotional upheaval.
Similarly, one of the benefits of reading lies in the formation of bodily habits that
bring the body under the control of the will. It takes discipline to sit still and pay
attention, such that I overcome the restlessness and discomfort that arise when I am
not used to reading. Reading is a kind of immobile action. As Ricoeur observes,
‘‘[e]ven in the most immobile project the feeling of power, of being able, presents
the world to me as horizon, as theater, and as matter of my actions.’’71 But in order
for the world in front of the text to take shape, I must pay attention. This world
depends on my attention, and attention is rooted in corporeal habits. It takes
physical discipline to read—to sit still, stay awake, stay focused. As Ricoeur writes,
there is also a ‘‘muscular component’’ in attending to an idea. Attention is ‘‘an effort
of a set of muscles.’’72 ‘‘Even the most abstract thought is also physical.’’73
As we saw above, emotion acquires the destructive, binding power of passion
through our thoughts, evaluations, and ‘‘bad imaginations.’’ What we need,
according to Ricoeur, is a ‘‘revolution in the imagination’’ in which new
possibilities are given and disordered emotions can be reordered. This requires
the mediating role of habit, which reorders the self at the level of soul as well as
body. This is true for gymnastic, and it is true for reading. Reading requires a whole
ensemble of bodily habits that make me better acquainted not only with my thoughts
but also with my body and its affective dimension.
In sum, reading serves as an askēsis—an exercise or discipline—of affectivity.
Reading enables my imagination to organize and focus my desires, fears, hopes and
indignations by allowing me to undergo them in the mode of the as if. This gain in
articulacy aids in the transition to motive, and increases my capacity for
discernment and evaluation of my motives. The imagination then charges up my
capacity to decide, so that I feel myself as capable of acting in the world. And the
body is engaged at each step of the way, as I move from text to action.
69
Ricoeur (1966, p. 203).
70
Ibid.
71
Ibid., p. 212.
72
Ibid., p. 237.
73
Ibid., p. 255.

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6 Conclusion

Everything we have considered suggests that Ricoeur’s early work on the

philosophy of the will can help to flesh out, so to speak, his later hermeneutics of
the self, and give us a fuller picture of what it might look like to speak of Ricoeurian
askēsis. Although Ricoeur primarily refers to askēsis in the sense of a
methodological renunciation or self-denial, his authorship also gives clear indicators
for a more positive conception of askēsis as self-transformative exercises. Ricoeur is
well known for showing how reading refigures the self and its being in the world. As
we have seen, Ricoeur can also help us to see that in refiguring the world, reading
also transforms my relation to my body. The practice of reading can have a
transformative effect that goes all the way down into the flesh and its habits. It may
be counterintuitive to think of reading as an embodied practice, just as it is
counterintuitive to think of gymnastic as a spiritual exercise. However, these
insights cease to be counterintuitive the more we grasp the fundamental unity of the
self as body and soul, or what Ricoeur calls ‘‘incarnate freedom.’’ The practice of
philosophical askēsis is a spiritual exercise insofar as it exercises the self in both
body and soul.

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