Abstract:

Paul Ricoeur rejects the Structuralist view of language as a closed system of symbols, and maintains, from the perspective of semantics, that language inherently possesses a dynamic structure of signification. This signification structure implies the discourse, in linguistic domain, is realized as an event and understood as meaning. But meaning is not wholly subjective, as it is substantialized in linguistic forms during the process of externalization, which to a certain degree enables the comprehensibility of human experience. The act of externalization culminates in literary works. With the cancellation of the realistic context, literary texts are allowed the capacity to refer to existence as a proposition and expand the horizon of being. Therefore, meaning is inevitably directed to the objective understanding of the subject itself.

Key words:

Paul Ricoeur, discursive event, textual meaning, reference, objective understanding, subject