Paul Ricoeur

Paul Ricoeur was a French philosopher who sought to find positive integrations to opposites. This process of synthesis had been well-known since Hegel but binary opposites had become a base doctrine of structuralism within postmodernism, and Ricoeur found this too simplistic and wanted ways of resolving opposites. He also wanted a way out of scepticism, since if we believe nothing, life loses its point. A key word is dialectics, the discussion and debate between opposites or different points of view. He was interested in self understanding, memory and forgetting, use of language (his original job was as translator), and religion.

This is to follow up my review of Alison Scott-Baumann's Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutic of Suspicion with a link to an interview with her by Theory, Culture and Society at http://theoryculturesociety.blogspot.com/2010/10/interview-with-alison-scott-baumann-on.html. The site http://theoryculturesociety.blogspot.com is itself well worth visiting.

My review will soon be on http://eprints.worc.ac.uk/1071. An edited version is on http://learnlivethrive.blogspot.com/2010/03/paul-ricoeur-and-hermeneutics-of.html