Paradoxes of the 1968 Events in the Interpretation of Paul Ricœur’s Student

Abstract

The author considers the reasons and problems of civil unrest in France in the end of the 1960s. The author analyzes sources of revolutionary movement and comes to a conclusion that initially spontaneously developed events had no concrete political plan and organized guidance, its purposes had utopian character, methods of fight were mainly anarchical. Activity was motivated with romantic aspiration to freedom, reforming society, counteraction to totalitarianism, commercialism, social injustice, obsolete rules of life. Participants of events fondly believed that the spontaneous protest and refusal of submission to any established order automatically will lead to awakening of consciousness and transformation of social life. As a result, they faced an inevitable paradox of revolutionary movement. Approving need of use of violence for the purpose of opposition to violence from the government, revolutionaries destroy public order and a legal state for creation of the new world of freedom that leads to the enormous growth of violence, chaos, and unfreedom and causes in society fear and nostalgia of order. The author examines Ricœur’s position during revolutionary events in France. The philosopher evaluates the experience of his own work for the reorganization of education system (aiming to strengthen horizontal relations) as a fundamental failure. Nevertheless, as the author of the article claims, in the sphere of philosophy Ricœur created the profound and far-sighted conception of criticism of transformation, this conception is based on the principle of the conflict of interpretations and allows to resist destruction, to constructively rethink and improve society management system.