The Excellence Award at the Fonds Ricœur’s Summer Workshop 2024

This paper assesses the possibility of interpreting Ricœur’s notion of representation as a form of Darstellung in the Kantian sense of exhibition (presentation). The aim is to emphasize the ontological significance of representation as Darstellung, through the consideration of the paradigmatic case of historical representations. Indeed, the necessity to adequately interpret the relationship between representation and the represented becomes more compelling when dealing with the representation of history. On the one hand, history becomes objective insofar as it is depicted in historical representations, but on the other, this depiction remains the presentation of an underlying reality that demands to be spoken of. The notion of Darstellung thus helps ensure the demand of historical representations to stand for past reality, without being reduced to mere copies of a supposedly pre-given original. This allows for a transition from the epistemological reflection upon historical representations to the ontological consideration of historicity as such.