The Concept of the Person as “Subject” and “Place” of Morality According to Paul Ricoeur

The concept of the subjectivity of a person presented in this article has shownthat man as a subject appears in constant references and relations in which hisexistence is embedded. On the one hand, it escapes the determinism of nature,on the other hand, it reveals a certain crack between its nature and action. isleads to the conclusion that even if a person is characterised by individuality, itis not a separate existence. It seems justified to return to the question of whatmakes a person, in spite of both external and internal variability; they remain thesame or otherwise what builds and what destroys the subjectivity of the person?e question thus posed reveals the first threat to human subjectivity whichis the fact of the existence of evil. For it is not only something external to manbut also something that makes man both the “place” of the appearance of evil and responsible for evilB8. While staying in Ricoeur’s philosophy characterisedby a dialectical movement one can already see in the language discussing evila threat to certain “deposits of hope” present in his thoughtB<. For the religiouslanguage to which Ricoeur ultimately reduces the problem of evil is the languageof hope and eschatology. Freedom also takes on a new meaning in this context.It is no longer just something that has been enslaved but above all somethingthat is a “desire for the possible.” A possible freedom is the Resurrection. In thisperspective, even evil and suffering can find their ultimate meaning, and thesubjective character of morality does not threaten to fall into subjectivism.Moreover, it is in the name of such subjectivism that morality demands for thesubject this “otherness,” the hope that comes from the Resurrection.