The Significance of Catharsis by Paul Ricoeur for the Discussion of Legal Recognition

The article aims to reconstruct Paul Ricoeur’s interpretation of katharsis to demonstrate its ongoing significance and relevance to the processes of grasping the volatile everyday life around us, as well as the attendant changes of ourselves and who we are. By means of reconstructing his views, we will propose our own reading of Aristotle’s katharsis, stressing the innovative approach of the French philosopher. While this article will first and foremost examine a literary work of art, we must remember that, from the perspective of interest for us here, there is no other reality than everydayness and all the rest is but its modification. This everydayness is the true subject of philosophical reflection, especially in terms of the individual’s full legal recognition, impossible without this individual’s development of an identity as an outcome of a specific narrative process. We are convinced that narrative, as conceptualised by Ricoeur, is an essential element of the institutional construction of legal recognition in the twenty-first century.