Barnabas Aspray’s first book, Ricœur at the Limits of Philosophy: God, Creation, and Evil, is an investigative reading of Paul Ricœur’s early works and influences to reveal an implicit non-systemic metaphysical program, directly applicable to debates in philosophy of religion and theological studies. This investigative reading argues that these implicit metaphysical themes were operative before his turn to hermeneutics in the Symbolism of Evil (1960) and are an integral part to understanding Ricœur’s philosophical anthropology. Aspray argues that this implicit metaphysical view gives a stronger foundation to Ricœur’s own view of his 50-year corpus as a ‘continuation’ through a diversity of academic disciplines, such as myth, psychoanalysis, structuralism, language philosophy, and action theory (Ricœur, Reference Paul and Blamey1998, p. 83). While most scholars of Ricœur seem to agree that this ‘continuation’ exists, they agree it exists as a ‘continuation’ of methodological evolutions fuelled by his unwavering investigative commitment to philosophy as ‘not the possession of truth but the search for truth’ (Aspray, Reference Barnabas2022, p. 53). It is this commitment to philosophy as an open ‘search’ that Ricœur’s phenomenological and existentialist beginnings become ‘hermeneutical’, thereby seeking to interpret the meaning of Being through the ‘long route’ of ‘an endless process of interpretations’ (Kearney, Reference Richard2004, p. 1). Aspray, rather, provides an elucidation of the concepts of hope, finitude, creation, transcendence, and evil in the early Ricœur works to emphasize this ‘search for truth’ has a metaphysical direction, applicable to philosophical theology. Aspray’s central concept that supports this move is Ricœur’s account of infinitude as a necessary dialectical compliment to humanity’s finite existence. Thus, Aspray argues that it is this desire to ‘search for truth’ beyond boundaries of finitude, towards infinitude, as the grounding for Ricœur’s philosophical connection to metaphysics which is a connection that becomes harder to find after Ricœur’s hermeneutic turn. This view, Aspray argues, is the result of his attempts to reconcile his diverse set of influences with his confessional Christian faith and his commitment to philosophy as inhabiting a ‘fraternal tension’ with theology (Aspray, Reference Barnabas2022, p. 219).

Aspray’s book can be divided into two parts: in each of the Chapters 1 to 4, he pairs an influence with a certain theme, such as the combination of Gabriel Marcel and Karl Jaspers’s existentialism in Chapter 1, ‘Rage Against the System’ and in Chapter 2, ‘A Philosophy of Hope’. In Chapters 3, ‘Absolutely no Absolutes?’ and 4, ‘Finitude and Infinitude’, Aspray explores the theological influence of the Swiss Barthian theologian, Pierre Thévenaz, as well as the French reflexive tradition of Jean Nabert. The thorough research into the various unpublished letters, biographical notes, and summaries of these formative figures in Ricœur’s philosophy is a tremendous asset to engaging with the complexity of Ricœur’s intricate approach to philosophy.

In the second half of the book, Chapters 5 to 9, Aspray makes a methodological shift and dives deeper into the implicit metaphysical themes themselves. He proceeds by beginning from finitude as prior to the occurrence of evil, where he emphasizes Ricœur’s view of creation as having an ontological goodness, thus holding the unity of existence, characterized by the balance between finitude and infinitude. The vehicle for this philosophical-theological commuting stems from Ricœur’s account of transcendence.

What follows then is a philosophical justification for a theme not focused on in Ricœur’s corpus: an account of God. The reason Ricœur avoids a philosophical and theological account of God is referenced by Aspray:

This quote here indicates one of the major tensions of the book, for Aspray is aware of the precarious ground he is entering by engaging with the implications of these concepts in his analysis of the early Ricœur. This aversion to overt theological claims is seen throughout Ricœur’s corpus, and the clearest instance of this ‘bracket’ occurs in his Symbolism of Evil (Ricœur, Reference Paul and Buchanan1967, p. 269). That being said, Aspray acknowledges this commitment to silence regarding a theological reflection on God; however, he affirms that this exploration of God, as a philosophical limit-phenomena, is well within the bounds of a Ricœurian influenced approach. Aspray asserts that approaches to God can be pursued via an exploration of symbols which inhabit the boundary of conceptualization, and are thus productive for thinking, in a Ricœurian sense. This is seen in Ricœur’s usage of infinitude to frame his discussion of finitude, rather than the reverse, and asserting an ontological goodness of creation prior to a ‘fall’ via a productive imagination of the ‘believing consciousness’ (Ricœur, Reference Paul and Buchanan1967, p. 8).

Aspray’s larger approach in the second half of the book is less trepidatious of disciplinary rigidity and boldly engages with these limit concepts. The reference to the collapsing divide between theology and philosophy, through Immanuel Falque’s phrase (‘crossing the Rubicon’), indicates Aspray’s approach to reading the early Ricœur, who was committed to the disciplinary divide between philosophy and theology. The question remains that if Ricœur’s implicit Christian metaphysical views are so prevalent, yet hidden, why did Ricœur depart from them in his later works? Aspray affirms that the difference between Ricœur’s openness to these themes in his early works is because of ‘the pragmatic concerns of safeguarding his career’ in the 1960s in France (Aspray, Reference Barnabas2022, p. 88). Yet, by pursuing the Falqueian line, Aspray is departing methodologically from Ricœur, and considers his argument for these implicit metaphysical themes to be within the spirit of Ricœur’s concern for investigating these ‘limit ideas’. However, in my view, I would argue it is not because of fear of the intellectual climate or disciplinary rigidity, but because of his strong Kantian commitments to what can be said philosophically. This is seen with his ‘aporetic’ conclusion to his later book, Oneself as Another (Ricœur, 1992, pp. 355-56). Despite this, Aspray does not consider Ricœur to have hidden his true convictions or changed his beliefs. Ricœur sees this ‘fraternal tension’ as not an obstacle to either discipline, but as necessary and productive because he is committed to a philosophically neutral and rigorous methodology that does not wish to be misconstrued as a Christian apologetic technique.

Now the question that is raised by this dissolving of the philosophy-theology divide and the introduction of the concept of God is whether it places Aspray’s work into more of a Christian apologetic tone, in contrast to both the book’s explicit claim and Ricœur’s view of philosophy as ‘search’ for truth? I find that even though Aspray methodologically departs from Ricœur, and voyages into areas where Ricœur exercised more philosophic caution, he avoids this accusation of an apologetic by the quantity of evidence that indicates an undeniable influence of Marcel, Jaspers, Thévenaz and Nabert in conjunction with these themes within the early Ricœur. Therefore, Aspray’s work does an excellent job at situating the early Ricœur, as having a more distinct focus than the later works by way of an existentialism friendly to the infinite, and by not merely providing a historical analysis of his early works. Further, Aspray’s work provides a strong invitation to rethink this ‘continuation’ between Ricœur’s work before 1960, and his subsequent hermeneutic turn away from these existentialist influences.

It cannot be doubted that Ricœur argues for a philosophy in ‘search’ of the infinite, transcendence, hope, and a response to evil, and these themes are oriented by a philosophy ultimately able to be in dialogue with Christian theological pursuits. However, Ricœur does his best not just to keep an arbitrary disciplinary division, but instead to model a true allegiance to the ‘long route’ of ‘deciphering indirect meaning.’ (Kearney, Reference Richard2004, p. 1) Aspray acknowledges this, but his argument seems to indicate a deeper allegiance between the two disciplines contained in Ricœur’s corpus than Ricœur would admit himself. However, Aspray’s own methodological difference, as more Falquian than Ricœurian, push farther into the boundaries between philosophy and theology, and in effect continues his own direction into the metaphysical, rather than the hermeneutical. Thus, Aspray makes an original argument regarding these implicit metaphysical themes by reading Ricœur’s theology-philosophy division as ultimately not a division, but an innovative expression of his own Ricœurian existentialism.