From Ricoeur to action : the socio-political significance of Ricoeur's thinking

289 Pages·2012·1.71 MB·English

by  Ricœur

From Ricoeur to Action
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy
Series Editor: James Fieser, University of Tennessee at Martin, USA
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy is a major monograph series from
Continuum. The series features first-class scholarly research monographs across
the field of Continental philosophy. Each work makes a major contribution to the
field of philosophical research.
Adorno’s Concept of Life, Alastair Morgan
Badiou, Marion and St Paul, Adam Miller
Being and Number in Heidegger’s Thought, Michael Roubach
Deleuze and Guattari, Fadi Abou-Rihan
Deleuze and the Genesis of Representation, Joe Hughes
Deleuze and the Unconscious, Christian Kerslake
Deleuze, Guattari and the Production of the New, edited by Simon O’Sullivan
and Stephen Zepke
Derrida, Simon Morgan Wortham
Derrida and Disinterest, Sean Gaston
Derrida: Profanations, Patrick O’Connor
The Domestication of Derrida, Lorenzo Fabbri
Encountering Derrida, edited by Simon Morgan Wortham and Allison Weiner
Foucault’s Heidegger, Timothy Rayner
Gadamer and the Question of the Divine, Walter Lammi
Heidegger and a Metaphysics of Feeling, Sharin N. Elkholy
Heidegger and Aristotle, Michael Bowler
Heidegger and Logic, Greg Shirley
Heidegger and Nietzsche, Louis P. Blond
Heidegger and Philosophical Atheology, Peter S. Dillard
Heidegger Beyond Deconstruction, Michael Lewis
Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change, Ruth Irwin
Heidegger’s Early Philosophy, James Luchte
Idealism and Existentialism, Jon Stewart
Kant, Deleuze and Architectonics, Edward Willatt
Levinas and Camus, Tal Sessler
Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Kirk M. Besmer
Nietzsche’s Ethical Theory, Craig Dove
Nietzsche, Nihilism and the Philosophy of the Future, edited by Jeffrey Metzger
Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra, edited by James Luchte
The Philosophy of Exaggeration, Alexander Garcia Düttmann
Sartre’s Phenomenology, David Reisman
Time and Becoming in Nietzsche’s Thought, Robin Small
Who’s Afraid of Deleuze and Guattari? Gregg Lambert
Žižek and Heidegger, Thomas Brockelman
Žižek’s Dialectics, Fabio Vighi
From Ricoeur to Action
The Socio-Political Significance
of Ricoeur’s Thinking
Edited by
Todd S. Mei and David Lewin
Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy
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© Todd S. Mei, David Lewin and Contributors 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: HB: 978-1-4411-5973-1
e-ISBN: 978-1-4411-5546-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
From Ricoeur to action : the socio-political significance of Ricoeur’s thinking/
edited by Todd S. Mei and David Lewin.
p. cm. -- (Continuum studies in Continental philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4411-5973-1 (hardcover)
1. Social conflict--History--21st century. 2. Social sciences--Philosophy.
3. Political science--Philosophy. 4. Ricoeur, Paul. I. Mei, Todd S. II. Lewin, David.
HM1121.F76 2012
300.92--dc23 2011036468
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Acknowledgements xi
Chapter 1. Introduction 1
Todd S. Mei
Part One: Capability I
Chapter 2. From Ricoeur to Life: ‘Living Up to
Death’ with Spinoza, but also with Deleuze 19
Pamela Sue Anderson
Chapter 3. From Metaphor to the Life-World: Ricoeur’s
Metaphoric Subjectivity 33
Fiona Tomkinson
Chapter 4. Ricoeur and the Capability of Modern Technology 54
David Lewin
Part Two: Capability II
Chapter 5. The Course of Racial Recognition:
A Ricoeurian Approach to Critical Race Theory 75
L. Sebastian Purcell
Chapter 6. The Long Road to Recognition: Paul Ricoeur
and Bell Hooks on the Development of Self-Esteem 96
Scott Davidson
vi Contents
Part Three: Utopia
Chapter 7. To Think Utopia With and Beyond Paul Ricoeur 113
Vicky Iakovou
Chapter 8. Ricoeur versus Ricoeur? Between the Universal
and the Contextual 136
George H. Taylor
Chapter 9. Turn Around and Step Forward: Environmentalism,
Activism and the Social Imaginary 155
Brian Treanor
Chapter 10. States of Peace: Ricoeur on Recognition and the Gift 175
Christopher Lauer
Interlude
Chapter 11. Ricoeur’s Atemwende: A Reading of ‘Interlude:
Tragic Action’ in Oneself as Another 195
David Fisher
Part Four: The Theological
Chapter 12. The Unsurpassable Dissensus: The Ethics
of Forgiveness in Paul Ricoeur’s Work 211
Olivier Abel
Chapter 13. Examining Canonical Representations:
The ‘Exceptionalism’ of Ricoeur’s
Hermeneutics and the Bid for an Ethical Canon 229
Colby Dickinson
Bibliography 247
Index 259
Notes on Contributors
Olivier Abel is professor of philosophy and ethics at the Faculté Protestante
de Théologie of Paris (France) and a former student of Michel Henry,
Emmanuel Levinas and Paul Ricoeur. He is president of the Conseil scien-
tifque du Fonds Ricœur. His books include Paul Ricœur, la promesse et la règle
(Paris: Michalon, 1996), L’éthique interrogative (Paris: Presses Universitaires
de France, 2000) and La juste mémoire, Lectures autour de Paul Ricœur (Genève:
Labor et Fides, 2006).
Pamela Sue Anderson is reader in philosophy of religion, University of
Oxford (UK). Her publications include: A Feminist Philosophy of Religion: the
Myths and Rationality of Religious Belief (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998) and Kant
and Theology, co-authored with Jordan Bell (London: Continuum, 2010).
She does research on ethics, feminist philosophy, Continental philosophy
of religion, as well as the philosophies of Kant, of Ricoeur and of Michèle
Le Doeuff. She wrote her doctorate on Kant and Ricoeur, at the University
of Oxford, in the 1980s when she also had the good fortune of meeting with
Ricoeur in Paris discussing how to bridge the ‘analytic’ and the ‘Continental’
divide in philosophy – which was one of his own deepest desires. She is
greatly indebted to Ricoeur for her career in Oxford and research in France,
even though she is often critical of and has moved beyond him in certain
ways, notably in her feminist philosophy of religion.
Scott Davidson is associate professor and chair of the department of phi-
losophy at Oklahoma City University (US). He is the co-editor of the jour-
nal Études Ricoeuriennes/Ricoeur Studies (ricoeur.pitt.edu) and author of
Ricoeur Across the Disciplines (Continuum, 2010).
Colby Dickinson is a doctoral researcher of the K.U. Leuven Research Fund
and a member of the research group ‘Theology in a Postmodern Context’
viii Notes on Contributors
within the faculty of theology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium)
(http://www.theo.kuleuven.be/page/rgtpc/). His research currently focuses
on the philosophical usage of the term ‘messianic’ in the writings of Walter
Benjamin, Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben. He is the author of
several articles as well as the recent monograph, Agamben and Theology
(London: T&T Clark, 2011).
David Fisher is professor of philosophy, Ruge Distinguished Teaching
Fellow at North Central College (US). His research specializes in ethics,
philosophy of law and the history of ideas. His writings on Ricoeur
include: Doing justice to justice: Paul Ricoeur, Work of mourning, Waiting on
Ricoeur: Ricoeur on tragedy, Ricoeur’s clinamen, Just Ricoeur, and Is Phron¯esis
Deinon? He is on the editorial board of the journal of the Association for
the Study of Law, Culture and the Humanities.
Vicky Iakovou is lecturer in political philosophy at the University of the
Aegean (Greece). Her main research and teaching interests involve
contemporary political philosophy and the critical theory of the Frankfurt
School. She has published articles in French, Greek and English edited
volumes and journals. Her recent publications include: ‘Totalitarianism as
a Non-State. On Hannah Arendt’s Debt to Franz Neumann’, European
Journal of Political Theory, 8(4), 2009, and ‘Leo Strauss’ Interpretation of
Modern Political Philosophy: The Case of Machiavelli’, Hypomnema, 10,
2010 (in Greek). Ricoeur’s Soi-même comme un autre figures among the books
she has translated into Greek (Polis, Athens, 2008).
Christopher Lauer is assistant professor in philosophy at the University of
Hawaii at Hilo (US). He works primarily in German idealism and the ethics
of recognition and is the author of The Suspension of Reason in Hegel and
Schelling (Continuum, 2010). He is currently at work on a book on
intimacy.
David Lewin is lecturer in philosophy of education at Liverpool Hope
University (UK). His current research addresses the religious and philo-
sophical implications of modern technology. In addition to publishing sev-
eral articles on the philosophy of technology and its relation to religious
philosophy, his first monograph Technology and the Philosophy of Religion was
published in 2011 (Cambridge Scholars Publishing).
Notes on Contributors ix
Todd Mei is lecturer in philosophy and religious studies at the University of
Kent (UK). His current research involves a hermeneutical approach to
understanding political economy, particularly relations to land and ground
rent as well as the relation between analytic and Continental philosophy.
His most recent book is Heidegger, Work, and Being (Continuum, 2009), and
he has several articles applying hermeneutics to such areas as ancient Greek
philosophy and theories of impartiality. He is currently the director of
European Relations of the Society for Ricoeur Studies.
L. Sebastian Purcell is an assistant professor of philosophy at the State
University of New York (SUNY) at Cortland (US). He has published numer-
ous articles on social and political theory, Latin American philosophy and
phenomenology and hermeneutics. Beyond his interest in recognition the-
ory, his current research has aimed at taking a hermeneutical approach to
logic and mathematics.
George H. Taylor is a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh (US).
A former student of Ricoeur, he has edited Ricoeur’s Lectures on Ideology and
Utopia (1986). He is co-editor with Francis J. Mootz III of Gadamer and Ricoeur:
Critical Horizons for Contemporary Hermeneutics (Continuum, 2011). His articles
applying Ricoeur’s hermeneutics have appeared in both legal and philosoph-
ical journals. He is the Past President of the Society for Ricoeur Studies.
Fiona Tomkinson is assistant professor at Yeditepe University (Turkey),
where she lectures in the English Language and Literature and Philosophy
Departments. She holds a BA and an MA in English from Oxford University
and an MA and a PhD in Philosophy from Boğaziçi University. Her doctoral
dissertation (2008) was entitled ‘From Ricoeur’s Theory of Metaphoric
Reference towards a Phenomenological Ontology of Metaphor.’ She has
published over thirty articles in the areas of literature and philosophy,
including an article on Ricoeur published in Turkish as ‘Ricoeur’ün Eğrilme
Kavramı’ (‘Ricoeur’s theory of metaphor’) in Cogito, No. 56, October 2008.
She met Ricoeur in Istanbul in 2003 at the conference ‘Why freedom?’ at
Boğaziçi University, where she made a translation of his paper from French
to English in order to assist simultaneous translation.
Brian Treanor is associate professor of Philosophy and Director of
Environmental Studies at Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles (US).
He is the author of Aspects of Alterity: Levinas, Marcel, and the Contemporary