History's writing and the action as "open work" in the face of the "crossed perspectives"

Abstract

The present article discusses the open character that Ricœur, in his book Memory, History, Forgetting (2001), keeps to the question of the validity of history as scientific knowledge. The fact that Ricœur does not aim for a consensus that validates historiography, in the epistemological sense, may discourage a historian reader. However, the dissensus that is reflected in the lack of a paradigmatic method, univocal meaning and a fundamental category of historiographical inquiry, in Ricœur, does not condemn historiography to impossibility. Instead, the present text aims to justify the “open” character of historiography, exposed by Ricœur in the work cited here, presenting the need of “crossed perspectives” for the relationship of historiography with the public debate. This discussion leads to the ethical and political implications of historiographic discourse.