EN
Abstract In his essay The Hermeneutic Function of Distance Paul Ricoeur describes the fundamental concepts of theory of language and text. He criticizes some thesis of Hans Georg Gadamer, but also refers to the notion of “game”, which is essential to Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics. That gives a chance to interpret Ricoeur’s essay through category of “game” as a basis of human activity. The Hermeneutic Function of Distance has two sources: hermeneutics and structuralism, which is already visible in the nivel of words used by Ricoeur (understanding, disclosure of world, but on the other hand: structure or system). There we can find a possibility of use the notion of “game” in interpreting Ricoeur’s essay: the game is a combination of accident (every move in game) and necessity (rules, conventiones), of system and player’s free will. Ricoeur recognizes the distance, which is fundamental mark of the discourse, as the dialectics of event and meaning: the meaning actualizes itself in the event, and event becomes fill of meaning. In this way the language constitutes it’s reference to the world. Using the notion of “game”, as Gadamer did, one can say, that the world is disclosed through language in the area of self-presenting game. Moreover, being the medium of every experience and every understanding game makes possible to distinguish what is already known and what stays outside the game and needs to be understood. According to Ricoeur the same process appears in the creation and perception of literary works. Both author and lector are the players of this special game, which constitutes the basic relation, questioned by Derrida, between the sender and the receiver of text. At the same time, the literary work loses the reference of the first degree and profit by other reference – to Lebenswelt, the area of literary game. The game-text, through it’s self-presenting activity, attains to predominate over the consciousness of lector and makes possible to experience a text. The basic condition of this process is the distance between the real-self and the player’s-self, the fundamental distance of every communication.