Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This is a collection in translation of essays by Paul Ricoeur which presents a comprehensive view of his philosophical hermeneutics, its relation to the views of his predecessors in the tradition and its consequences for the social sciences. The volume has three parts. The studies in the first part examine the history of hermeneutics, its central themes and the outstanding issues it has to confront. In Part II, Ricoeur's own current, constructive position is developed. A concept of the text is formulated as the implications of the theory are pursued into the domains of sociology, psychoanalysis and history. Many of the essays appear here in English for the first time; the editor's introduction brings out their background in Ricoeur's thought and the continuity of his concerns. The volume will be of great importance for those interested in hermeneutics and Ricoeur's contribution to it, and will demonstrate how much his approach offers to a number of disciplines.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgements
• EditorG++s introduction
• Notes on editing and translating
• A response Paul Ricoeur
• Part I Studies in the History of Hermeneutics
• 1 The task of hermeneutics
• 2 Hermeneutics and the critique of ideology
• 3 Phenomenology and hermeneutics
• Part II Studies in the Theory of Interpretation
• 4 The hermeneutical function of distanciation
• 5 What is a text? Explanation and understanding
• 6 Metaphor and the central problem of hermeneutics
• 7 Appropriation
• Part III Studies in the Philosophy of Social Science
• 8 The model of the text: meaningful action considered as a text
• 9 Science and ideology
• 10 The question of proof in FreudG++s psychoanalytic writings
• 11 The narrative function
• Notes
• Select bibliography
• Index

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Professor of philosophy at the University of Paris and the University of Chicago, Paul Ricoeur has been described as "possibly the only younger philosopher in Europe whose reputation is of the magnitude of that of the old men of Existentialism---Marcel, Jaspers, Heidegger and Sartre . . . ." His work has been characterized as "the most massive accomplishment of any philosopher of Christian faith since the appearance of Gabriel Marcel." A practitioner of the phenomenology of Edmund Husserl mediated by a return to Immanuel Kant---in that things in themselves, though unknowable, are not excluded by bracketing existence but are acknowledged as the necessary conditions for the possibility of human experience---Ricoeur has examined those parts of experience---faulty, fallible, and susceptible to error and evil---that other phenomenologists, interested primarily in the cognitional, have neglected. In this respect he follows in the footsteps of Heidegger and Sartre, but he goes beyond them in his discovery of principles transcending human subjectivity that are amenable to spiritual interpretation. Here Ricoeur steps within the contemporary hermeneutic circle of Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, on whom he has written. Ricoeur's hermeneutical method, however, has much in common with the methods of biblical exegesis, and in this respect his works should be especially appealing to seminarians and the clergy. (Bowker Author Biography)