Studies in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur

"Studies in the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur is a collection of original critical essays by an international group of Ricoeur scholars. The essays are detailed and critical discussions devoted to particular concepts, problems or developments in Ricoeur's work and are not expositions or accounts of a single book. Among the contributors is Robert Solomon, who gives a very critical review of Ricoeur's remarks on emotion and passion. David Stewart's engaging article on Ricoeur's 'humanism' compares him with Sartre and contradicts the common misconception that humanism must be atheistic and that Sartre is the sole representative of modern French humanism. Richard Zaner challenges Ricoeur's deviations from a more orthodox phenomenology and Mary Schaldenbrand traces the importance of imagination as mediator in a number of Ricoeur's works. Patrick Bourgeois discusses the progress of Ricoeur's philosophy of language from the rather limited concern with symbols to his more recent hermeneutics of texts. David Pellauer focuses on the importance of the text in Ricoeur's hermeneutical theory while Beatriz Melano Couch devotes her article to the interpretation of religious symbols in his work. Michel Philibert, a long-time friend of Ricoeur, writes about his method, and more importantly, his attitude, and his way of approaching philosophy. The editor has written an explanation of what Ricoeur means by psychoanalysis as hermeneutics and has worked out the thesis of 'The Model of the Text' on psychoanalysis. Finally, Francois Lapointe and Franz Vansina have contributed revised and up-dated versions of their bibliographies, the first a bibliography of secondary sources and the second an abridged bibliography of Ricoeur's philosophical writings. This collection will be of interest to anyone working in contemporary French philosophy and will be especially useful to those specializing in Ricoeur's philosophy." -- Book jacket.