Should we renounce Hegel? From Existentialism to Hermeneutics

Renoncer à Hegel is the motto that defines Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutics in his Time and Narrative. This sort of “parricide” draws the boundaries between hermeneutical rationality and Hegelian reason. Ricoeur’s words capture very well how philosophical hermeneutics understood itself in the 1980s, a historical phase in which that tradition showed its fully disruptive power towards modernity. This was the case with Italian hermeneutics which, much more than its French counterpart, found a positive resonance in reflections on postmodernism. The present essay deals with some of the most relevant representatives of that debate: Luigi Pareyson, Valerio Verra, and Gianni Vattimo. The aim is to show that the chapter on Hegel is fully part of the origin and history of Italian philosophical hermeneutics, far beyond the narrow limits of early twentieth–century Hegelianism.