Daily Inspiration Quote by Paul Ricoeur

Ricoeur’s line is a philosophical pressure valve: it releases the steam of absolutism without letting interpretation drift into anything-goes relativism. Yes, texts generate multiple meanings because language is elastic, histories accumulate, and readers arrive with different horizons of experience. But Ricoeur refuses the comforting cynicism that treats every reading as interchangeable, as if interpretation were just a mirror for personal mood.

The intent is methodological and moral at once. Methodological, because Ricoeur is staking out a disciplined hermeneutics: interpretations compete, and some win. They win by accounting for more of the text’s details, fitting its genre and context, respecting its internal tensions, and surviving critical challenge. Moral, because the stakes of reading are never purely literary. In politics, law, scripture, and memory, “all interpretations are equal” is an alibi for bad faith: a way to smuggle power in while pretending to be tolerant.

The subtext is a critique of two temptations Ricoeur watched harden in the 20th century. On one side, the authoritarian claim that a text has one final, possessable meaning (often enforced by institutions). On the other, the postwar drift toward a shrugging pluralism where rigor looks like oppression. Ricoeur’s middle path recognizes that meaning is made in the encounter between text and reader, yet insists that the text pushes back. Interpretation is not free play; it’s an argument, with evidence. That’s why the sentence lands: it grants plurality, then immediately demands standards.