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Like Husserl and Heidegger, Ricoeur offers a powerful and original account of what the “world” is and how it conditions our thinking. But it is difficult to recognize Ricoeur’s contributions unless we view them in relation to another aspect of his work: his post-Hegelian Kantianism. Ricoeur tries to steer a middle course between Kant’s and Hegel’s views on this topic. He thinks the idea of the world plays a crucial role in regulating experience, but he tries to understand this idea in a way that is concrete without being totalizing. Ricoeur’s theory of narrative does exactly this. It describes how narratives open up worlds for their readers:sets of specific existential possibilities that may be incorporated into readers’ lives. When Ricoeur’s account of narrative is viewed in relation to Kant and Hegel, itsheds valuable new light on many aspects of his work.

While it is clear that the Gadamer–Habermas debate has had a major influence on Paul Ricoeur, his commentators have had little to say about the nature of this influence. I try to remedy this silence by showing that Ricoeur''s account of tradition is a direct response to the Gadamer–Habermas debate. First, I briefly explain the debate''s importance and describe Ricoeur''s reaction to it. Next, I show how his discussion of tradition in Time and Narrative steers a middle course between Gadamerian hermeneutics and Habermasian Ideologiekritik. Finally, I raise some critical questions about the adequacy of Ricoeur''s middle course. Specifically, I argue that it rests on an implausible distinction between the form and the content of tradition.

Introduction -- Part I: The main road -- Fundamental loyalties -- Theology, hermeneutics, and Ricoeur's double life -- Part II: Detour -- Prefiguration : the critical arc and descriptive identity -- Configuration : the narrative arc and narrative identity -- Refiguration : Ricoeur's "little ethics" -- Part III: Return -- Chalcedonian hermeneutics -- Theological anthropology : removing brackets -- Conclusion.

In this chapter I discuss Charles Taylor's and Paul Ricoeur's theories of narrative identity and narratives as a central form of self-interpretation.1 Both Taylor and Ricoeur think that self-identity is a matter of culturally and socially mediated self-definitions, which are practically relevant for one's orientation in life.2 First, I will go through various characterisations that Ricoeur gives of his theory, and try to show to what extent they also apply to Taylor's theory. Then, I will analyse more closely Charles Taylor's, and in section three, Paul Ricoeur's views on narrative identity.

Written in the aftermath of the deaths of the French philosophers Jacques Derrida (19302004) and Paul Ricoeur (19132005), this book is an important and ...

This is a collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur which presents a comprehensive view of his philosophical hermeneutics, its relation to the views of his predecessors in the tradition and its consequences for the social sciences. The volume has three parts. The studies in the first part examine the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and the outstanding issues it has to confront. In Part II, Ricoeur's own current, constructive position is developed. A concept of the text is formulated as the implications of the theory are pursued into the domains of sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Many of the essays appear here in English for the first time; the editor's introduction brings out their background in Ricoeur's thought and the continuity of his concerns. The volume will be of great importance for those interested in hermeneutics and Ricoeur's contribution to it, and will demonstrate how much his approach offers to a number of disciplines.

Paul Ricoeur is one of the most wide-ranging of thinkers alive today. Although nominally a philosopher, his work also cuts across the subjects of literary criticism, psychoanalysis, history, religion legal studies and politics. Its implications are even broader. Ricoeur works out a 'theory of reading' or hermeneutics, which extends far beyond the reading of literary works to build into a theory for the reading of 'life'. This volume looks at the contexts for Ricoeur's thought, his key ideas and their impact. These key ideas include: good and evil' hermeneutics, psychoanalysis, metaphor, narrative, ethics, politics and justice.

This major volume assembles leading scholars to address and explain the significance of Paul Ricoeur's extraordinary body of work. Ricoeur's work is of seminal importance to the development of hermeneutics, phenomenology, and ideology critique in the human sciences. Opening with three key essays from Ricoeur himself--on Europe, fragility and responsibility, and love and justice--this fascinating volume offers a tour of his work ranging across topics such as the hermeneutics of action, narrative force, and the other and deconstruction, while discussing his work in the context of such contemporary thinkers as Heidegger, Levinas, Arendt, and Gadamer. Offering a very useful overview of Paul Ricoeur's enormous contribution to modern thought, Paul Ricoeur will be invaluable for students and academics across the social and human sciences and philosophy.

On Paul Ricoeur examines the later work of Paul Ricoeur, particularly his major work, Time and Narrative. The essays in this volume, including three pieces by Ricoeur, consider Time and Narrative, extending and developing the debate it has inspired. Time and Narrative is the finest example of contemporary philosophical hermeneutics and is one of the most significant works of philosophy published in the late twentieth century. Paul Ricoeur's study of the intertwining of time and narrative proposes and examines the possibility that narrative could remedy a fatal deficiency in any purely phenomenological approach. He analyzed both literary and historical writing, from Proust to Braudel, as well as key figures in the history of philosophy: Aristotle, Augustine, Kant, Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger. His own recognition of his limited success in expunging aporia opens onto the positive discovery of the importance of narrative identity, on which Ricoeur writeshere. An essential companion to Time and Narrative, this collection also provides an excellent introduction to Ricoeur's later work and to contemporary works in philosophical hermeneutics. It will be of major interest to philosophers, literary theorists, and historians.

Although Paul Ricoeur's writings are widely and appreciatively read by theologians, this is the first book to offer a full, sympathetic yet critical account of Ricoeur's theory of narrative interpretation and its contribution to theology. Unlike many previous studies of Ricoeur, Part I argues that Ricoeur's hermeneutics must be viewed in the light of his overall philosophical agenda, as a fusion and continuation of the unfinished projects of Kant and Heidegger. Particularly helpful is the focus on Ricoeur's recent narrative theory as the context in which Ricoeur deals with problems of time and the creative imagination; and it becomes clear that narrative stands at the crossroads of Ricoeur's search for the meaning of human being as well as his search for the meaning of texts. Part II examines the potential of Ricoeur's narrative theory for resolving certain theological problems, such as the dichotomy betweens the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith. In so doing Vanhoozer relates Ricoeur's work to that of theologians such as Barth, Bultmann, Tillich, Pannenberg, Frei and Tracy.