In this paper, Olivier Abel first recalls how both German and French Neo-Kantism are committed in favour of an open conception of symbolism; then he shows how the fact that the early Ricœur is rooted in this tradition – especially in his teaching orientation at the Faculté de théologie protestante in Paris – partly explains his opposition to Heidegger’s hermeneutics. Meanwhile he underlines how strongly the critical paradigm of the passage from closeness to openness has later been radically undermined by Lévi-Strauss and Derrida as well as by Ricœur himself.