On the author's intention in Ricoeur: a perspective from testimony and autobiography

Abstract

This article examines the reconfiguration of the notion of authorial intention in the hermeneutical philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, situating it within the modern debate between the romantic sacralization of authorship and its structuralist and post-structuralist dissolution. Against the alternatives represented by Schleiermacher and Dilthey, on the one hand, and by Barthes and Foucault, on the other, the study argues that Ricoeur proposes a critical and affirmative mediation that avoids both psychologism and the exclusion of the author. Drawing on the categories of testimony and autobiography, the article shows that authorial intention should not be understood as a psychological datum external to the text, but rather as an original interpretive gesture inscribed in the very act of writing. In particular, the analysis of autobiography reveals intention as a radical form of self-testimony, in which the author constitutes himself simultaneously as narrator, character, and witness of his own life, projecting a narrative identity marked by ethical responsibility and the search for coherence. Thus, the article argues that, in Ricoeur, intention inaugurates the interpretive chain by organizing the world of the text and opening a horizon of meaning for the reader, without denying textual autonomy or the plurality of interpretations. Ricoeur’s proposal is therefore presented as a relevant contribution to contemporary debates on authorship, interpretation, and narrative identity.