Abstract

This article explores the intellectual relationship between Paul Ricœur and Karl Marx, focusing on the metaphor of the camera obscura used by Marx to describe ideology in The German Ideology. It provides an overview of Ricœur’s significant references to Marx, which began with a critical appropriation of Marxism in an attempt to reconcile it with a Christian worldview, continuing throughout the 1960s and beyond with the exploration of concepts such as “false consciousness” and ideology. After this overview, the article examines three presuppositions inherent in this metaphor, which implies an inversion of reality. First, it analyzes the notion of “false consciousness” within Ricœur’s hermeneutics, situating Marx among the “masters of suspicion.” Second, the article examines the conditions that make this inversion of reality possible, framed within Ricœur’s broader examination of ideology and the symbolic constitution of the social bond. Third, it discusses the idea of an original state to which one can return by reversing the inversion, drawing parallels with Husserl’s method of retrospective questioning applied to Marx’s reduction in The German Ideology. The metaphor of the camera obscura illustrates the complex relationships between reality and its distorted representations. The discussion around the metaphor used by Marx leads Ricœur to underline the fundamental role of imagination to broaden understanding and overcome interpretative reductionisms.