Despite his enormous bibliography of written works, Ricoeur has never devoted an entire tome to either moral philosophy or ethics per se. Three chapters of one work, Oneself as Another, do, however, encompass what he calls summarily his “little ethics.” To understand Ricoeur’s ethical project, it is important to see its genesis in his earlier anthropological studies and to follow its evolving nature into a hermeneutical poetics. Ricoeur’s ethical orientation is teleological. He makes a strong distinction between ethics and morality, (...) with ethics being comprised of three inseparable components: the “good life,” the other, and justice. The essential hermeneutical nature of his ethics becomes fully apparent in his discussion of practical wisdom. (shrink)

At best, silence is a slippery topic. On the surface, silence might be easily explained as merely the absence of noise or the cessation of speech. Yet, these are only the dispositions for the experience of silence. Where silence can express itself in a solitary walk, the sadness of death, or in the calm of a serious argument, we are able to attribute various layers of meaning to the experience of silence as well as distinguish its presence qualitatively by employing (...) such terms as deep silence, true silence, or open silence. (shrink)

Bergson, Merleau-Ponty and Ricoeur represent approximately one hundred years of French Continental philosophical thought. Each of these authors has a decisively different definition of self and meaning that stems, as argued, from their equally different definitions of human time. Under close inspection, it seems that the common thesis that ties all three philosophers together is that a particular notion of the temporal present begets a particular notion of self that begets, in turn, a particular form of meaning that authenticates that (...) self. (shrink)