Paul Ricœur (27 February
1913 in Valence, Drôme – 20 May 2005 in Chatenay
Malabry, France) was a French
philosopher
best known for combining phenomenological de......ion with hermeneutic
interpretation. As such, he is connected to two other major
hermeneutic phenomenologists, Martin
Heidegger and Hans-Georg
Gadamer.
Biography Ricœur was born in a devout Protestant
family, making him a member of a religious minority in Catholic
France.
Ricœur's father died in a 1915 World
War I battle when Ricœur was only two years old. He was raised by
his paternal grandparents and an aunt in Rennes,
France, with a small stipend afforded to him as a war orphan. Ricœur,
whose penchant for study was fueled by his family's Protestant emphasis
on Bible study, was bookish and intellectually precocious. Ricœur
received his
licence in 1933 from the University
of Rennes and began studying philosophy at the Sorbonne
in 1934, where he was influenced by Gabriel
Marcel. In 1935, he was awarded the second-highest agrégation
mark in the nation for philosophy, presaging a bright future.
World
War II interrupted Ricœur's career, and he was drafted to serve in
the French army in 1939. His unit was captured during the German
invasion of France in 1940 and he spent the next five years as a
prisoner of war. His detention camp was filled with other intellectuals
such as Mikel Dufrenne, who organized readings and classes
sufficiently rigorous that the camp was accredited as a degree-granting
institution by the Vichy government. During this time he read Karl
Jaspers, who was to have a great influence on him. He also began a
translation of Edmund Husserl's
Ideas I.
Ricœur taught at the University of Strasbourg between 1948 and 1956, the
only French university with a Protestant faculty of theology.
In 1950, he received his doctorate,
submitting (as is customary in France) two theses: a "minor" thesis
translating Husserl's
Ideas I into French for the first time,
with commentary, and a "major" thesis that he would later publish as
Le
Volontaire et l'Involontaire. Ricœur soon acquired a reputation as
an expert on phenomenology, then the ascendent philosophy in
France.
In 1956, Ricœur took up a position at the Sorbonne
as the Chair of General Philosophy. This appointment signaled Ricœur's
emergence as one of France's most prominent philosophers. While at the
Sorbonne, he wrote
Fallible Man and
The Symbolism of Evil published in 1960, and
Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on
Interpretation published in 1965. These works cemented his
reputation. Jacques Derrida was an assistant to Ricœur during
this time.
From 1965 to 1970, Ricœur was an administrator at the newly founded University of Nanterre in suburban Paris. Nanterre
was intended an experiment in progressive education, and Ricœur hoped
that here he could create a university in accordance with his vision,
free of the stifling atmosphere of the tradition-bound Sorbonne and its
overcrowded classes. Nevertheless, Nanterre became a hotbed of protest
during the student uprisings of May
1968 in France. Ricœur was derided as an "old clown" and tool of
the French government.
Disenchanted with French academic life, Ricœur taught briefly at the
Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium, before taking a position at
the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1970 to
1985. His study culminated in
The Rule of ....phor:
Multi-disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning of Language published in 1975 and the three-volume
Time and Narrative published in 1984, 1985, and 1988. Ricoeur gave the Gifford
Lectures in 1985/86, published in 1992 as
Oneself as Another.
This work built on his discussion of narrative identity and his
continuing interest in the self.
Time and Narrative secured Ricœur's return to France in 1985 as
an intellectual superstar. His late work was characterised by a
continuing cross-cutting of national intellectual traditions; for
example, some of his latest writing engaged the thought of the American
political philosopher John Rawls.
In 1999 he was awarded the Balzan
Prize for Philosophy "For his capacity in bringing together all the
most important themes and indications of 20th century philosophy, and
re-elaborating them into an original synthesis which turns language -
in particular, that which is poetic and ....phoric - into a chosen
place revealing a reality that we cannot manipulate, but interpret in
diverse ways, and yet all coherent. Through the use of ....phor,
language draws upon that truth which makes of us that what we are, deep
in the profundity of our own essence".
On 29 November 2004, he was awarded with the second John W.
Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences (shared
with Jaroslav Pelikan).
Paul Ricœur died on 20 May 2005 in his home, of natural causes. French
Prime Minister Jean
Pierre Raffarin declared that "the humanist European tradition is
in mourning for one of its most talented exponents".
[edit] View Overzee (1992: p.4) states that:
"Paul Ricœur speaks of the
theologian as a hermeneut, whose task is to interpret the multivalent,
rich ....phors arising from the symbolic bases of tradition so that
the symbols may 'speak' once again to our existential situation."[1]
[edit] Bibliography
- Gabriel Marcel and Karl Jaspers. Philosophie du mystère et
philosophie du paradoxe. Paris: Temps Présent, 1948.
- Entretiens sur l'Art et la Psychanalyse (sous la direction de
Andre Berge, Anne Clancier, Paul Ricoeur et Lothair Rubinstein
(1964), Mouton, Paris, La Haye 1968.
- Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans.
Erazim Kohak. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966 (1950).
- History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley. Evanston:
Northwestern University press. 1965 (1955).
- Fallible Man, trans. Charles A. Kelbley, with an introduction
by Walter J. Lowe, New York: Fordham University Press, 1986 (1960).
- The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan. New York:
Harper and Row, 1967 (1960).
- Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans.
Denis Savage. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970 (1965).
- The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, ed.
Don Ihde, trans. Willis Domingo et al. Evanston: Northwestern
University Press, 1974 (1969).
- Political and Social Essays, ed. David Stewart and Joseph
Bien, trans. Donald Stewart et al. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1974.
- The Rule of ....phor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies in the Creation
of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny with Kathleen
McLaughlin and John Costello, S. J., London: Routledge and Kegan Paul
1978 (1975).
- Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning.
Fort Worth: Texas Christian Press, 1976.
- “Patocka, Philosopher and Resister”. Telos 31
(Spring 1977). New York: Telos Press.
- The Philosophy of Paul Ricœur: An Anthology of his Work, ed.
Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart. Boston: Beacon Press, 1978.
- Essays on Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress
Press, 1980)
- Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action
and Interpretation, ed., trans. John B. Thompson. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1981.
- Time and Narrative (Temps et Récit), 3 vols. trans.
Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1984, 1985, 1988 (1983, 1984, 1985).
- Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed., trans. George H.
Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
- From .... to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II, trans.
Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. Evanston: Northwestern University
Press, 1991 (1986).
- À l'école de la philosophie. Paris: J. Vrin, 1986.
- Le mal: Un défi à la philosophie et à la théologie. Geneva:
Labor et Fides, 1986.
- Oneself as Another (Soi-même comme un autre), trans.
Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 (1990).
- A Ricœur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J.
Valdes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.
- Lectures I: Autour du politique. Paris: Seuil, 1991.
- Lectures II: La Contrée des philosophes. Paris: Seuil, 1992.
- Lectures III: Aux frontières de la philosophie. Paris: Seuil,
1994.
- The Philosophy of Paul Ricœur, ed. Lewis E. Hahn (The Library
of Living Philosophers 22) (Chicago; La Salle: Open Court, 1995)
- The Just, trans. David Pellauer. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2000 (1995).
- Critique and Conviction, trans. Kathleen Blamey. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1998 (1995).
- Thinking Biblically, (with André LaCocque). University of
Chicago Press, 1998.
- La mémoire, l'histoire, l'oubli. Paris: Seuil, 2000.
- Le Juste II. Paris: Esprit, 2001.
- Reflections on the Just, trans. David Pellauer. University of
Chicago Press, 2007.
- Living Up to Death, trans. David Pellauer. University of
Chicago Press, 2009.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Overzee, Anne Hunt (1992). The body
divine: the symbol of the body in the works of Teilhard de Chardin and
Rāmānuja. Issue 2 of Cambridge studies in religious traditions.
Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521385164, 9780521385169. Source: [1] (accessed: Monday April 5, 2010), p.4
[edit] Further reading
- Pamela Sue Anderson, 1993. Ricœur and Kant:
philosophy of the will. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
- Larisa Cercel (ed.), Übersetzung und Hermeneutik / Traduction et
herméneutique (Zeta Series in Translation Studies 1), Bucharest,
Zeta Books 2009, ISBN 978-973-1997-06-3 (paperback),
978-973-1997-07-0 (ebook).
- Bernard P. Dauenhauer, 1998. Paul Ricœur: The Promise and Risk of
Politics. Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield.
- François Dosse, 1997. Paul Ricœur: Les Sens d'une Vie. Paris:
La Découverte.
- W. David Hall, 2007. Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Imperative.
Albany: SUNY Press.
- Don Idhe, 1971. Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul
Ricœur. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
- David M. Kaplan, 2003. Ricœur's Critical Theory. Albany, SUNY
Press.
- David M. Kaplan, ed., 2008. Reading Ricoeur. Albany, SUNY
Press.
- Richard Kearney, 2004. On Paul Ricœur: The Owl
of Minerva. Hants, England: Ashgate.
- David E. Klemm, 1983. The Hermeneutical Theory
of Paul Ricoeur: A Constructive Analysis. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell
University Press.
- Gregory J. Laughery, 2002. Living Hermeneutics
in Motion: An Analysis and Evaluation of Paul Ricoeur's Contribution to
Biblical Hermeneutics. Lanham: University Press of America.
- Charles E. Reagan, 1996. Paul Ricœur: His Life and Work.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Karl Simms, 2002. Paul Ricœur, Routledge Critical Thinkers.
New York: Routledge.
- Dan Stiver, 2001. Theology after Ricœur, Louisville:
Westminster John Knox Press.
- Henry Isaac Venema, 2000. Identifying Selfhood: Imagination,
Narrative, and Hermeneutics in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur (Mcgill
Studies in the History of Religions), SUNY Press.
الخميس أبريل 15, 2010 9:43 am
