Books in the Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur series

The international contributors to this volume discuss Paul Ricoeur's Freedom and Nature.They cover important influences on Ricoeur's early thought and connecting it to current issues in embodied cognition and the philosophy of will, the companion promotes a renewed appreciation of the contemporary relevance of this groundbreaking work.

In Paul Ricoeurs Renewal of Philosophical Anthropology: Vulnerability, Capability, Justice, Marc de Leeuw argues that Ricoeur's philosophical project integrates the anthropological tradition while renewing its importance as a hermeneutic anthropology of human capability. Ricoeur posits that our cogito is neither its own absolute master, nor fully transparent to itself, inflicting a ';wound' (brise) and fracturing the center of Cartesian self-certainty. But the Nietzschean disillusionment that ensues does not simply amount to a victorious anti-cogito; it opens another path towards self-understanding. In place of the direct route of intuition is found a more complex way forward, one guided by interpretation. The task of philosophical anthropology is to understand the human through its interpretative, critical, and imaginative ability as well as its capacity to act towards, with, and for others; the interpretation of the world in front of us, the interpretation of ';who we are,' and the interpretation of what it means to be among others (as other selves) coalesces in an anthropology that binds the question of the self to a moral, ethical, and political project, one aiming to reflect our existence-in-common. For Ricoeur, the basic question of our subjective and normative ';standing' demands a fundamental responsea response toward our own otherness and to responsibilities triggered by the appeal of Others. In both cases, our vulnerability is inescapable: we can never have an absolute self-knowledge nor an absolute knowledge of Others. Ricoeur turns this fundamental aporia into an affirmative philosophical anthropology of human action, attestation, and justice.

Paul Ricoeur and the Lived Body's explorations into the ethical, social, cultural, and affective dimensions of our corporeal existence draw on Paul Ricoeur's reflection on the lived body. Starting with the fact that one's own body is irreducible to an object, these essays critically contribute to discourses on the body.

Paul Ricoeur's most widely read book, The Symbolism of Evil, examines the structure of a will that has succumbed to evil and discloses its meaning through a study of symbols and myths. This edited collection explores a wide range of themes that resonate with topics in contemporary philosophy and religion.

Adam Graves presents a new framework for understanding the importance of the concept of revelation in the development of phenomenology while also charting a path towards a more fruitful understanding of the relationship between reason and revelation, one that is rooted in a deeper appreciation of the complexities of our linguistic inheritance.

The stresses of the 21st century have exposed the fault lines in Higher Education, both as an instructional space that facilitates student growth and as a social space that shapes our economic, political, and religious institutions. This book uses Paul Ricoeur's rigorous writings to envision a Just University necessary for the years ahead.

Combining rigor and originality, Ricoeur's Fallible Man locates the possibility of evil in a self that is fundamentally in conflict with itself. The contributors to this volume shed light on an impressive range of themes from the most accessible of Ricoeur's early writings that resonate with contemporary debates in philosophy and religion.

This is the first volume to consider the relevance of hermeneutical philosopher Paul Ricoeur's thinking for feminist theory. Fourteen renowned scholars, including some young promising ones, critically investigate the gendered aspects of Ricoeur's main conceptions and explore new possibilities and opportunities for feminist thinking with the help of his philosophy. Among the themes addressed are justice, recognition, critique, discourse, imagination, the capable subject, and universalism.

The apocalyptic discourse of Mark 13 predicts that cataclysmic events will occur within the generation of Jesus' contemporaries, but readers today know these events have not taken place. Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutics enables a reader to understand this text as a presentation of truth rather than as a failed prediction. Ricoeur argues that the meaning of a text is not defined by the author's intention nor by the reader's reception, but by the text itself. Therefore, although Mark 13 was originally understood literally, today's reader is able to read it as metaphor, and to discern latent meaning that is present in the text. As Ricoeur explains, metaphor associates previously unrelated concepts and creates new, multiple meanings. In doing, metaphor is able to present truth, not as a verifiable presentation of the world, but as a novel manifestation of the world. Mark 13 functions as metaphor because of a double dissonance: first between the configured world of the text and the lived world of the reader, and second between claim that Jesus is able to predict when the events will take place (v. 30) and the assertion that he is not able to do so (v. 32). One option for the metaphorical meaning that Mark 13 offers for today's reader is the perception of the presence of forces that challenge and subvert powers which appear to be dominant, and which deceive, destroy, and persecute.This book will appeal to two sets of readers. First, scholars who study New Testament apocalyptic texts and the eschatological expectations of the early church will appreciate a new approach to a challenging subject matter. Second, Ricoeur scholars who focus upon the religious aspects of his work will enjoy the employment of his interpretive approach on a Biblical genre that has heretofore receive only cursory attention.

Narrative Medicine in Hospice Care argues that the models of selfhood and care found in the work of Paul Ricoeur can serve as a framework for clinicians, caregivers, and end-of-life patients regardless of the patients' verbal and cognitive capabilities.

In this important new book, Brian Gregor gives a comprehensive account of Paul Ricoeur's philosophy of religion, which focuses on the regeneration of human capability. Gregor documents the thinkers, movements, and themes that shaped Ricoeur's thought and gives a critical examination of Ricoeur's philosophical interpretation of religion.

Paul's Ricoeur's Lectures on Ideology and Utopia are more pertinent than ever forty years later. The chapters in this book reflect the lectures' original intricacy as the authors not only insightfully analyze them but also creatively apply them.

Paul Ricoeur's most widely read book, The Symbolism of Evil, examines the structure of a will that has succumbed to evil and discloses its meaning through a study of symbols and myths. This edited collection explores a wide range of themes that resonate with topics in contemporary philosophy and religion.

This book examines Paul Ricoeur's moral anthropology. It shows that his hermeneutical approach to responsibility and justice, focusing on the analysis of the singularity of lived existence, complements recent developments in moral philosophy that tend toward moral relativism and understand responsibility and justice in naturalistic terms.

This book explores Ricoeur's philosophical anthropology and political philosophy. It is unique in its emphasis on the personalist perspective in the work of Paul Ricoeur and on the existence of a distinct, personalist branch of republicanism.

Imagination and Postmodernity addresses the role of the imagination in philosophy today. By focusing on philosophy at the boundary of reason with constant reference to Kant's view of the boundary-limit, it is possible to advance a viable alternative to deconstructing the imagination. Patrick L. Bourgeois puts forth the claim that by refocusing the imagination in the postmodern conversation, a far-reaching contemporary position can be reached that reestablishes the position of the humanities as central against the anti-humanism of deconstruction. This work addresses some of the challenges and problems that emerge in conflicting positions within contemporary philosophy, including a concentration on the role of the imagination in the work of Paul Ricoeur in contrast and in opposition to its role in such postmodern thinkers as Derrida and Lyotard. This treatment requires going back to the role of the imagination in the period of Kant and his immediate followers in order to clarify the various ways of seeing the imagination then and now, for the role today is anticipated in the nineteenth century. Finally, this work, as a creative appropriation of the position of Paul Ricoeur, presents a role for the imagination today that is more encompassing than most thinkers allow for.

Ricoeur, Culture, and Recognition: A Hermeneutic of Cultural Subjectivity presents Paul Ricoeur's workfrom its beginning to its endas a form of a cultural theory. Timo Helenius proposes a cultural hermeneutic that clarifies the cultural facilitation in a person's process of attaining a sense of being a human. Incorporating insights from Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger, this exploration of human beings as being profoundly formed and influenced by the cultural condition also enables a new understanding of intercultural questions by revealing the common human condition that the various cultures manifest. Ricoeur, Culture, and Recognition will be of interest not only to philosophers, but also to scholars in theology, linguistics, cultural studies, and the social sciences.

This volume brings together eleven essays that address a range of issues extending from broader questions of social justice to the sexual intimacy that bears the mark of our fleshly existence. Collectively, these essays extend the reach of Paul Ricoeur's early to late works by taking up some of the major social, political and religious challenges facing us in a postmodern, ultrapluralistic world.

This book offers a sustained engagement with the political philosophy of Paul Ricoeur and demonstrates both the significance of the political in his own thinking throughout his career, and how his understanding of the political offers something valuable to current discussions of issues in political philosophy.

The past fifty years has seen the emergence of an energetic dialogue between religion and the natural sciences that has contributed to a growing desire for interdisciplinarity among many constructive theologians. However, some have also resisted this trend, in part because it seems that the price one must pay for such engagement is much too high. Interdisciplinary work appears overly abstract and methodologically restrictive, with little room for systematic theologians self-consciously operating within a particular historical tradition. In Interdisciplinary Interpretation: Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Theology and Science, Kenneth A. Reynhout seeks to address this concern by constructing an alternative understanding of interdisciplinary theology based on the hermeneutical thought of Paul Ricoeur, generally recognized as one of the most interdisciplinary philosophers of the twentieth century. Appealing to Ricoeur's view of interpretation as the dialectical process of understanding through explanation, Reynhout argues that theology's engagement with the natural sciences is fundamentally hermeneutical in character. As such, interdisciplinary theologians can faithfully borrow meaning from the sciences through a process of ';interdisciplinary interpretation,' a process that can honestly attend to the legitimate challenges posed by the natural sciences without automatically requiring the evacuation of theological norms and convictions. Reynhout's creative appropriation of Ricoeur's hermeneutics succeeds in providing a novel interdisciplinary vision, not only for theology but also for interdisciplinary work in general.

Neuropsychiatrist Michael T. H. Wong argues that the notions of soul, mind, brain, self and consciousness are no longer adequate on their own to explain humanity. He formulates a "third discourse" that brings philosophy neuroscience theology and psychiatry together as an innovative multilayered narrative for the person in the twenty-first century.

Paul Ricoeur and the Lived Body's explorations into the ethical, social, cultural, and affective dimensions of our corporeal existence draw on Paul Ricoeur's reflection on the lived body. Starting with the fact that one's own body is irreducible to an object, these essays critically contribute to discourses on the body.