Though I agreed with a great deal of Ricoeur’s work in Hermeneutics and the human sciences, I throughout felt that he put too much emphasis on literature’s influence on contemporary people and society. He seemed to stress that we are the way we are and that we function and feel the way we do because we have literature to tell us this.

I know that literature has shaped who I am. I would be a different person today if I hadn’t begun to read at age four and inhale everything I could get my hands on. I would be different if I had not had that period when I was ten where I adored horrible teen horror novels (ala Christopher Pike), and felt badass for reading them. I have felt like I could identify with a book many times, but I know that in the question of what came first, the book or the person, it was the person. Life experiences are primary to what we read in novels.

Many people, as shocking as this may come to Ricoeur, do not read novels. I have heard many people boast (unfortunately) that they have never read an entire book not assigned in school. Therefore, I think that Ricoeur’s assumption is undeniably false. He cannot write, “What would we know of love and hate, moral feelings and, in general, of all that we call the self, if these had not been brought to language and articulated by literature?” (143).

It is important for us to feel as though novels can identify the human experience, for what else is the purpose of the novelist if not that? It is impossible for anyone to make claims like the above statement if they have ever lived in the real world. I think Ricoeur just needs a reading break.

Also, I realize that this critique is focusing on a very small aspect of Hermeneutics and the human sciences. The reason I am focusing on this is simply because I really enjoyed his criticism, particularly his work in discourse.
-Melissa