Semantics of action I: On Ricoeur's distinction between linguistic and phenomenological analysis

From the beginning of his book Le discours de l’action (1977), Paul Ricoeur emphasised the fact that a ‘philosophy of action’ is not a ‘science of action’. He underlines that the practical ethical dimension is the specific kind of discourse that the question of action has had since the ancient era in philosophy. The dialectics between the practical dimen-sion both as a ‘physical’ dimension and as an ‘ethical’ dimension have not only been the basis for the rationalisation and differentiation of philosophy in Aristotle. It has been maintained until Kant, who puts the polarity between physics and ethics as the bases of the distinction between the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Rea-son. In fact, the Critique of Practical Reason is defined as a theory of principles consid-ered as the determinant of will. And precisely, the (a priori) determinant principle of will is moral law. Thus, the entire theory of practical reason is reduced to the relation-ships between freedom and moral law. In philosophy, the comprehension of human ac-tion would have a practical ethical reference. However, it contradicts the scientific ap-proach to the comprehension of human action, as in the case of Alain Touraine’s socio-logical theory. This theory, in fact, focuses social systems and the mechanisms of social control (it is different from Talcott Parsons’ research, which is more sensitive to individ-ual motions and choices). Ricoeur originally approaches this theme by trying to inter-twine it with a parallel dialectics developed between phenomenology and hermeneutics. He declares his intention to explore the contribution of language to philosophy of action. Without a doubt, he wants to offer even specific and concrete advancements for sci-ence, from the perspective of a research (which is not simply an ‘exercise’ of interpreta-tion and phenomenological description). This paper aims to explore Ricoeur’s orientation to profile a new theoretical speculative model of philosophy of action which is realised on the one hand through a methodology articulated between linguistics, phenomenology and hermeneutics and, on the other, through a philosophy practically ethically oriented.