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Opposed to the Cartesian notion of the self, Ricoeur posits a notion of the self as indirect, which characterises hermeneutics as a philosophy of “detours”...

...according to Ricoeur... A human does not find herself having immediate, direct access to a world, using language as a layer on top of this world to refer to it. Instead, her experience and understanding of the world are mediated through lan- guage and can therefore only be understood by means of a detour through language, involving aspects such as symbols, metaphors and narrative.
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For both Simmel and Ricoeur, therefore, humans are intermediate beings whose access to the world, to others, and to themselves, is in each case mediated.


--- Wessel Reijers, Mark Coeckelbergh. Narrative and Technology Ethics.