Testimony should be a philosophical problem and not limited to legal or historical contexts where it refers to the account of a witness who reports what he has seen.
From Paul Ricoeur
For my own part, I abandon the ethics of duty to the Hegelian critique with no regrets; it would appear to me, indeed, to have been correctly characterized by Hegel as an abstract thought, as a thought of understanding.
Testimony gives something to be interpreted.
On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise.
The narrative constructs the identity of the character, what can be called his or her narrative identity, in constructing that of the story told. It is the identity of the story that makes the identity of the character.
If it is true that there is always more than one way of construing a text, it is not true that all interpretations are equal.
If the Resurrection is resurrection from the dead, all hope and freedom are in spite of death.
It is always possible to argue against an interpretation, to confront interpretations, to arbitrate between them and to seek for an agreement, even if this agreement remains beyond our reach.
Narrative identity takes part in the story's movement, in the dialectic between order and disorder.
Testimony demands to be interpreted because of the dialectic of meaning and event that traverses it.
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