ABSTRACT
Ricoeur's important contribution to hermeneutic thought centres on his theory of the conflict of interpretations; that is to say, Ricoeur mediates between theories of hermeneutics so far advanced by considering the reconstructive determination of objective sense and the existential appropriation of traditioned meaning as equally justified and operating on different strategic levels. Bultmann's focus on theological hermeneutic had led him to consider the interpretation of myth as dependent upon man's self-understanding. Ricoeur's phenomenological starting-point leads to an amplification of this view and to the reconsideration of the relationship between phenomenology and hermeneutics, especially in its ontological-existential form. Ricoeur can follow Lacan's structuralist psychoanalysis that considers the unconscious as a language. Psychoanalysis mediates existential concerns and the absolute knowledge of Hegelian Reason by considering man as a creation of language, as a linguistic being. Language as disclosure, choice, actualization, remains outside the perspective of structural linguistics.
