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Reviewer: J Milburn (talk · contribs) 15:53, 25 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]


I am a philosopher, and happy to support the development of philosophical articles on Wikipedia. That said, I can't promise any particular knowledge of Freud or Ricoeur, so I'm sure I'll learn a lot. Josh Milburn (talk) 15:53, 25 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • You should probably be providing citations for the quotes in the lead, even if you aren't citing the rest of it.
Regarding the point about citations for the quotes in the lead, we need to be clear about exactly what we are talking about. There are only two places in the lead where quotation marks are used - around the word "energetics" and around the phrase "school of suspicion". Although it could be done, I am not sure what the rationale is for providing a citation for one word and another for a short phrase. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 09:53, 26 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If you're quoting, you should be citing, whether it's one word or a paragraph. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Symbolism of Evil is surely notable; don't be scared of redlinks.
I added a link, as per your suggestion. However, I removed it again, when I realized that The Symbolism of Evil redirects to Paul Ricœur, and thus linking it does not result in a redlink. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:29, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Probably not a great redirect. I'd still link, in case someone creates an article on the book. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The description of the Lacan/Ricœur dispute in the lead feels like it's more on Ricœur's side than Lacan's - and that's not very NPOV!
Per WP:NPOV: "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic." Following the significant views that have been published by reliable sources is what I have done, as far as possible. The description of the dispute between Lacan and Ricœur follows what the reliable sources available to me say about the subject, which is that Lacan's accusation that Ricœur stole his ideas was baseless. See the comments by Ihde, Roudinesco, and Dufresne. The only author the article notes as supporting Lacan on this is Valabrega. The account of his views is based on Roudinesco, not directly on the article by Valabrega himself, which I have no access to. With the article mentioning only one author supporting Lacan, and three clearly indicating that Lacan was wrong, I don't think the lead's description of the issue is unreasonable. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:26, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I understand your concerns, but I am worried about the way you seem to separate "scholars" from "followers of Lacan", and the way you frame the criticism of Ricoeur as "attacks" rather than criticism. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
The "concerns" in question simply amount to an awareness of the need to follow WP:NPOV and base the article on reliable sources. To repeat it: every single source available to me dismisses Lacan's accusation against Ricœur. Of course these are sources either written, or translated into, English. I have not attempted to look at sources in French, and it is entirely possible that there are French-language sources (besides only Valabrega) siding with Lacan. Yet the article's presentation of the issue cannot be based on assumptions on what French-language sources may exist or what they might claim; it can only be based on sources that have actually been added to the article, and this requires that the article note that Lacan's accusation has been rejected. The way I have discussed the issue is therefore neutral; you offer no reason to believe otherwise. You suggest that the term "attack" in the lead is not neutral: again, no. It follows the article; see the comments on the issue by Ihde and Reagan. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 19:51, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The final sentence of the lead is a little "tacked on". Could it be better incorporated into the lead?
It occurred to me some time ago that someone might object to that sentence ("Ricœur's interpretation of Freud has been criticized by Adolf Grünbaum in The Foundations of Psychoanalysis (1984)"). Your criticism of it thus doesn't come as a surprise, and I understand the point you are making. Rather than expand on that reference, which would involve going into material that would be overly technical for a brief summary, I have removed it. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:22, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Perhaps you could consider merging the publication history and background sections? A little on Ricœur's previous work would also be good. Neither of these are essential for GAC purposes.
Merged the sections as per your suggestion. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:20, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would advise always following a quote with a reference. Again, I won't insist on it for GAC, but I could definitely see the demand being made at FAC.
I've made a series of edits that address this point. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 08:53, 3 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Seeking an appropriate definition of symbolism" Italics, perhaps? See WP:WORDSASWORDS.
"Symbolism" is never in italics in the original work. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 08:54, 27 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's not my point - take a look at WP:WORDSASWORDS. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Need to stop there for now, but I'll be back soon. Josh Milburn (talk) 16:22, 25 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for reviewing the article.

Could I suggest that you reply directly to my comments above - i.e., that your reply to a particular bullet immediately follows it? It'll be much easier to follow conversations if you do this! Josh Milburn (talk) 16:23, 26 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Fine. I'll move my comments. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 06:37, 27 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "He argues that it was important for Freud's theory that he decide whether identification involves the desire to possess something, or whether it involves a desire to be like something that is different in nature from the desire to possess it, since only the former could be traced to oral origins." I'm afraid you've lost me.
The text you quoted is an attempt by me to explain an effort by Ricœur to explain a fairly complicated aspect of Freud's psychoanalytic theory. I do not have any interest in going into complicated aspects of psychoanalytic theory for the sake of it. It might help if I explained exactly why the article includes that material. Freud and Philosophy is a long and complicated book, and naturally it is not possible to cover everything in it and at the same time to keep the article within a reasonable length. There are many arguments and ideas in the book that I have made no effort to summarize in the article, and that is as it must be. In deciding exactly what to include, I have had to employ my own judgment. My decisions have partly been based on my personal interests, but to a rather larger extent, they have been guided by secondary sources. The specific reason that I have included Ricœur's comments about the role of identification in Freud's theory is that they are discussed by Malcolm Macmillan in his book Freud Evaluated.
You will note that the "reception" section states that Macmillan endorsed Ricœur's "questioning of the idea that identification has an oral origin." Obviously it serves no purpose to mention that Macmillan endorsed Ricœur's "questioning of the idea that identification has an oral origin" without discussing what Ricœur actually says about identification and its oral origins according to Freud. Hence, the inclusion of that complicated material about the subject, which otherwise I would not have bothered with, since it is not of such great interest to me personally. I freely grant that it can be argued that I could and should have done a better job of explaining what Ricœur says about identification. Perhaps the material can be revised to make it better. I am open to suggestions. Honestly, however, I don't think it is that obscure in principle. What Ricœur is saying is that Freud, in developing his theory, found it important to decide whether identification is one of two different things: either A) a desire to possess something, or B) a desire to resemble something, as distinct from a desire to posses it (and that the reason that this was important for Freud is that only option A) allows identification to be traced to oral origins). It is complicated, but it should not be considered some incomprehensible subtlety, or something that cannot be explained in such a way that a reader of at least average intelligence can understand it. If the problem is that what I wrote is ungrammatical, the grammar can be corrected. Again, I welcome any suggestions on how to make it clearer. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 08:42, 27 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Changed the sentence to, "He argues that it was important for Freud that he decide whether it [narcissism] involves a desire to possess something or a desire to be like something, since only the former could be traced to oral origins", which I hope solves the problem. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 11:22, 27 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's better! My concern was that, as written, it was very difficult to understand what was being said, not so much that you had chosen to discuss that particular part of the book. Incidentally, I would strongly advise against making judgements about what to include based on your own interests, but I realise that this is much easier said than done. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
No, actually it's humanly impossible. But that is a larger issue that takes us away from the article review. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 19:28, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Do we have a wikilink for "death instinct"? Otherwise, I think we are probably going to need an explanation.
Good point. Linked. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 09:59, 27 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "which were published in the anthology Psychoanalysis, Scientific Method, and Philosophy (1958)" I think it's more of an edited collection than an anthology; and it seems odd to credit the collection when he contributed a single chapter.
Shortened the passage as per your suggestion. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 11:22, 27 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • A link to falsifiability somewhere in the description of Nagel's position would be good.
Added link. There were a couple of different places where it could have gone; I chose one of them. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 11:39, 27 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Could we have a link for the University of Louvain? (I appreciate that this is relatively tricky.) Also, what does it mean to give a lecture "at the Cardinal Mercier Chair"?
  • It's perhaps a little odd that the first mention of the Christian element of the text comes in the discussion of the reception. It should really be in the synopsis - and perhaps the lead.
    • I appreciate your point. The article does not read as it does for no reason, however. Although Ricœur was a Christian philosopher, he does not approach Freud in a very obviously "Christian" manner. Nowhere in the book does Ricœur say things such as, "As a Christian, I believe that...", and nor does he make statements such as, "My approach to understanding Freud's texts is Christian." I have not emphasized the Christian aspect of the book because it is neither a very prominent nor a very explicit aspect of Freud and Philosophy, and to some extent it is an arguable point. Just because one reviewer, Tort, says that the book presents a "Christian" approach to understanding Freud's texts, that does not make it true. You will note that another commentator on the book dismissed Tort's review. If I were to emphasize the "Christian" aspect of the book in the synopsis, as you suggest, I think that would be too much like engaging in original research, or presenting editorial commentary on the book, which is just the kind of thing that would disqualify the article from good article status. In any case, precisely what kind of mention of the "Christian element of the text" do you think I should add? Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 22:07, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
      • Based solely on my reading of your summaries of the commentary on Freud and Philosophy, I get the impression that Ricoeur's Christianity has some significance to his interpretation/criticism of Freud. Point taken that there's a dispute about this point; if so, then it belongs in the article, but perhaps not the synopsis. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • I won't insist on any changes for GAC purposes, but it's a little jarring that you say "the philosopher" or "the psychiatrist" or whatever only for some of the people you introduce, and not all of them.
  • "He credited him with carefully distinguishing between different aspects of Freud's work, convincingly criticizing Freud's hypotheses about language and views about religion, revealing Freud's "lack of a broad view of symbolic functioning", exposing confusions in Freud's thought, such as that between "force" as a metaphorical term and "force" as a reference to observable phenomena, and with showing that psychoanalysis resembles historical science and phenomenology rather than science as understood by positivism" This sentence is very long.
  • The section "Scientific and academic journals", I fear, is too long. I think it should probably be trimmed, or at least broken up somehow (sections, images, even wikilinks... Perhaps some of the lists of authors could be dropped to explanatory footnotes...) I don't know if going through reviews one by one is the best way to present the response to a book - especially when there are so many reviews!
I have removed some less-important material as per your suggestions below, and also divided the section into two shorter sections to make the remaining material more readable. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:49, 2 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "and provide an intellectual counter-weight to it" What does this mean?
    • It was an attempt to summarize the portion of the original review by Ihde that states, "Ricoeur is not retracing already covered ground; he is using the Freudian "hermeneutics of suspicion" as a corrective and counter-balance for phenomenology." I agree that it was unclear, and I have simply changed the relevant passage to, "He credited Ricœur with using the Freudian "hermeneutics of suspicion" to correct phenomenology." Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 21:50, 1 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • "He suggested that Ricœur's view of the interactions between psychoanalysts and their patients could be understood to imply the questionable view that there is no way for third parties to determine the truth or untruth of the claims made by the analysts about their patients, meaning that they could "be properly advised not to pay the slightest attention" to those claims." Another very long, complicated sentence.

Just to note that I am yet to look at your responses above - I'm just ploughing through. I hope you'll forgive the bittyness; I'm trying to read it closely, and it's a case of finding a few minutes here and there. Josh Milburn (talk) 16:32, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

  • Again, the section "Discussions in scientific and academic journals" seems to just be a list of what was said. Would it not be more logical to arrange it thematically - certain particular debates, reviews from particular perspectives, comments on particular aspects of the book, that sort of thing - than chronologically? And it doesn't really matter whether assessment was in a book or peer-reviewed article; that's not a useful way to split up the analysis. For example, there's lots of discussion about the extent to which Ricoeur is indebted to Lacan. This warrants a paragraph or two (a section?) of its own, but kicking off a section with "According to Roudinesco, Valabrega accused Ricœur of having drawn on Lacan's ideas despite claiming to be original" isn't the best.
  • No, it would not be more logical to arrange the "Discussions in scientific and academic journals" section thematically, because the content of that section was not added on a "thematic" basis in the first place. Such content as is susceptible to a "thematic" arrangement at all would have to be shifted elsewhere. There are no "debates" about the book, if by that you mean back-and-forth exchanges between people with different views of it that the article could report, and thus no possibility of organizing the "Reception" section around "debates". The reviews the article discusses are almost uniformly positive; since they are so similar, arranging them in terms of "particular perspectives" is hardly possible. One could divide the reviews into different sections for positive reviews and negative reviews; I do not see what that would accomplish (the two negative reviews, one by Tort and the other by Hems, are quite different from each other, written from different perspectives; it would be senseless to place them together).
  • One concession which I will make to your criticism of the current arrangement of the "Reception" material is that it would be possible to re-arrange it into different sections concerning the book's reception in France and its reception in the English-speaking world (which was very different). That would make some sense, and in my opinion is the main way that one might profitably go about re-ordering the material (a separate section dealing with Lacan's, apparently entirely baseless, accusations against Ricœur would not benefit the article, but the issue would fit neatly into a section on the book's overall reception in France). Let me know what you think of the suggestion.
  • You say that it "doesn't really matter whether assessment was in a book or peer-reviewed article" - no, indeed it doesn't matter, in terms of the intrinsic relevance or importance of the assessment. But readers of the article who want to investigate Ricœur's work have a legitimate interest in knowing where exactly - in a book or an article - an assessment appeared. It makes it easier to look things up. So dividing the reception section into subsections for journals and subsections for books can be considered a "useful way to split up the analysis" - useful for readers, whom we shouldn't be forgetting. This approach is compatible to some degree with other approaches. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 10:27, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
1) It doesn't really matter whether content was added to the article "on a thematic basis" (is that what you meant?), as we're exploring whether it's worth rearranging the article.
2) You say that there are no debates about the book, but I'm afraid I'm not sure I understand you. There's very clearly a debate that's been had about the extent to which Ricoeur borrowed from Lacan, for instance.
3) When I talked about "particular perspectives", I meant more disciplinary perspectives: Psychoanalysts; Lacanians; etc. Just a thought.
4) I do like your suggestion of splitting the article to talk about the English-speaking world on one hand and the French-speaking world on the other.
5) "But readers of the article who want to investigate Ricœur's work have a legitimate interest in knowing where exactly - in a book or an article - an assessment appeared. It makes it easier to look things up. So dividing the reception section into subsections for journals and subsections for books can be considered a "useful way to split up the analysis" - useful for readers, whom we shouldn't be forgetting." I'm afraid I just don't understand this claim. Readers should certainly know where information's coming from, but that's why we include citations. I am certainly concerned with what's useful for readers, but I'm not sure that this is useful for readers.
Your suggestion that there is "clearly a debate that's been had about the extent to which Ricoeur borrowed from Lacan" is incorrect. What happened was that Lacan made an accusation against Ricoeur, one that every reliable source available to me describes as false. Someone making an accusation and other people noting that it is incorrect does not amount to a "debate". Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 23:17, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Citations are one way of making it clear where information comes from, but they are not the only way. Not every reader even looks at citations. Arranging the "reception" section into different sections for journals and books is perfectly reasonable, in the absence of a better alternative, and can make things clearer for readers. To some extent it is compatible with other ways of organizing the material. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 23:32, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I do not believe that reorganizing the material around "disciplinary perspectives" would work well at this article (perhaps it might at another article, but not here). Effectively what you have done is to utterly reject the current writing and organization of the "Reception" section without offering alternative for proposals about how it should be written that are anything more than unhelpful generalities. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 00:39, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • Another example: "The critic Frederick Crews wrote in Out of My System (1975) that "school of suspicion" was an apt term for Ricœur's grouping of Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud.[73] Lowe discussed Freud and Philosophy in Mystery and the Unconscious: A Study in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur (1977).[74]" Unless you're discussing the school of suspicion specifically, the quote from Crews isn't really adding anything. Meanwhile, it's not really important (or surprising!) that Lowe mentions the book in a book on Ricoeur; we'd be interested in hearing about what he says, perhaps, but readers don't gain much by being told that he says it.
  • I'll remove the reference to Crews, as per your suggestion. As for the material concerning Lowe, that reads as it does because I don't happen to have access to Lowe's book. I was able to look up just enough of it online to see that it mentions Freud and Philosophy and as such is relevant to the article. What readers gain from its being mentioned is the knowledge that the book discusses Freud and Philosophy - enabling those interested in learning more to look up the book if they so wish. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 20:24, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I think that's a legitimate thing for an article like this to do, but it would be more common for it to do it via a "further reading" section. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
    I see no reason to remove the reference to Lowe, because it simply isn't Wikipedia practice to remove article content because it is less than absolutely perfect. It's perfectly acceptable to have something less than ideal just so long as an editor can in principle improve or expand on it. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 19:50, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
  • The closing lines are a great example of the worry I have about this article:

The critic Rita Felski wrote in The Limits of Critique (2015) that while Freud and Philosophy has often been claimed to have introduced the phrase "the hermeneutics of suspicion", this attribution is a mistake, and Ricœur in fact introduced the term at a later date.[103] The philosopher Joseph Bien described Freud and Philosophy as one of Ricœur's best-known books in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy.[104] The psychoanalyst Joel Whitebook argued in Freud: An Intellectual Biography (2017) that Freud and Philosophy disproved the view that clinical experience is necessary for understanding psychoanalytic theory, writing that the book was "unsurpassed".[105]

These are three unrelated mentions of the book in unrelated works. There's no narrative.
True. In general, I do not write narrative. I have done so at articles about books only to a rather limited extent. It is proper to do it only if the subject matter naturally suggests such an approach; doing it when the material itself does not suggest it is not called for. Either a "narrative" emerges logically from the available material or it doesn't. In this case, the main, if not the only, way the article could be shifted toward something that you would favor would be to re-arrange the material into sections on the book's reception in France and its reception elsewhere. That would move the article somewhat closer to a "narrative" approach. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 10:51, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If there's no "narrative" in the sense I mean it, the article veers dangerously close to one long "trivia section" - just a list of unrelated facts. If you think that the appropriate way to introduce a "narrative" is to split it into English-speaking and French-speaking reception, then I would recommend going with that. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That is a baseless suggestion. The fact that information is not arranged into a single continuous narrative does not make it trivial. It is simply false to claim otherwise. If your claim had any merit, you should be able to explain why the absence of a connected narrative makes the information "trivial"; I see no such explanation. The material in the "reception" section is self-evidently of intrinsic importance in relation to the book whether it is arranged into continuous prose or not. It would be impossible to arrange all the information in the "Reception" section into one continuous narrative and nothing in the good article criteria suggests that it would be appropriate to attempt this. As I noted, I believe the reception section could be shifted somewhat in the direction you propose, but only to a certain extent. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 02:05, 23 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This article's a tough read. This is not due to poor writing; grammatically, the article is very good. It is in part due to the complexity of the subject matter, and I commend you for cutting through such dense material to provide readable summaries. However, the readability challenge is also due (in a small part) to the article's length and (in a large part) to the "list-y" way you approach responses to the work - effectively just listing people who discuss the book by period and by type of publication. This isn't really a constructive way to report a historical legacy and/or debates about a work. I'm certainly not saying that it's easy to write an article about a book like this, but I'm not convinced this looks how it should. Josh Milburn (talk) 16:32, 4 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

You appear to be saying that you are going to fail the article. You seem to have your own preconceived idea of what an article like this should be and how it should read. That's fine; of course you're perfectly entitled to your views, and to fail the article because it doesn't meet your standards. But I think there are other and at least equally legitimate views of how the article should be written, and a different reviewer might have a completely different view from you, in regards to readability issues, as well as in regards to other matters. So I will simply nominate the article again if you fail it. I expect you probably will. However, I have suggested a possible way of remedying things, which would require compromise, and patience to work out the details. I have considered what you have to say and reconsidered my position; you might extend me the same courtesy. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 08:55, 5 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
To which I would add that if, after further discussion, you are still not satisfied with the article, then I recommend that you fail it, to give me more time to work on it, and eventually nominate it a second time. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 03:37, 15 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
You are right that I am leaning towards "failing" the article (though I am yet to do so), but I reject any suggestion (if this is what you meant to say) that I came in with ideas about how this article had to be written on which I am unwilling to compromise. I feel I have been both reasonable and constructive in my comments, but I get the impression that you feel otherwise. If I have offended you, I can only apologise, as that was not my intention. If anything, I really want to support people who are writing articles about academic philosophy. Anyway: If this review is closed as a fail, then I certainly encourage you to renominate it once changes have been made - or, if you genuinely believe that I have gone drastically wrong in my assessment (such as by overstepping my role as a reviewer by forcing a particular controversial vision of what the article should be), renominate with few changes. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:51, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
This review process has become incredibly boring and frustrating and I would much rather that you fail the article (even for less-than-entirely-fair reasons that aren't clearly based on the good article criteria, but on personal views about how the article should be written) than let it continue for much longer. However, I will make some further replies soon. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 19:55, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
If you would much rather I fail the article, I will do so. Your accusations are as puzzling as they are unwarranted, and I am afraid I have little interest in engaging with you further. Josh Milburn (talk) 21:17, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
What I was suggesting was that you should fail the article if further discussion proved unproductive. It is unfortunate that you misunderstood that as a suggestion that you immediately fail the article. I was suggesting no such thing. Many, if not all, of your comments have been helpful, and it would have been useful to discuss the article further. You obviously have your own view of how an article of this kind should be written. As I noted, you are entitled to that view (even if it is not based on the good article criteria). Why you would describe my pointing this out as an "accusation", I do not know. I am sorry it has come to this. If you do not wish to engage with me further, then you do not have to. Alternatively, if you want to engage in reasonable discussion that might improve the article, that is still possible. Freeknowledgecreator (talk) 23:29, 22 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]
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