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February 27, 1913

 

Paul Ricœur (February 27, 1913 to  May 20, 2005) was a French philosopher whose principles include a fidelity to man's experience and a rejection of the reductionistic. His masterpiece may be the three volume series, Time and Narrative, (1984-1988) which, one reviewer said, "knits together the Anglo analytic and Continental critical theories of history."

Ricouer in Time and Narrative, Volume 1, discusses various theoretical approaches to the differences between positivistic science and the work of the historian. He summarizes the ideas of Louis O. Mink, who suggests the results of the historian's work is a presentation of a various chronologies such that the reader can, get a total impression of events and their outcomes, with a glance which like a glance at a landscape takes in a variety of elements all at the same time. 

Ricoeur objects to this presentation in which temporal succession is a vanished element, or vanishing, as "the smile of a Cheshire cat." Could I grasp the complexities I might side here with Ricouer, since as I tried to gracefully phrase the fact that Mink had used that cat metaphor, and Ricouer used it in his text quoting Mink, I had to realize the fact Carroll used it first, meant that we have an issue of succession of events here, and conveying the succession is relevant. 

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