Paul Ricœur
The twentieth century saw philosophy in France grapple seriously with questions of interpretation, meaning, and the human subject in ways that crossed disciplinary lines and drew on traditions from across Europe. Paul Ricœur, born on 27 February 1913 in Valence, became one of the French thinkers working at the centre of those conversations.
Ricœur was educated at the Émile Zola school in Rennes, then went on to study at the University of Rennes, the Faculty of Arts of Paris, and the University of Paris. He worked as a philosopher, theologian, translator, and university teacher, conducting his work in both French and English. That combination of roles gave his output a range that moved across the boundaries separating academic philosophy from theology and literary theory. As a translator as well as a thinker, he engaged closely with texts and traditions that might otherwise have remained separate conversations.
The honors Ricœur accumulated over his career reflect the range of fields that took his work seriously. He received the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy, the Balzan Prize, the Hegel Prize, and the Dr. Leopold Lucas Prize. He was also awarded the Gordon J. Laing Award and was named a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. France recognized him with the rank of Commander in the Order of Academic Palms. These awards came from institutions in Japan, Europe, and North America, spanning philosophy, theology, and the humanities more broadly.
Ricœur died on 20 May 2005 in Châtenay-Malabry. The recognition he received during his lifetime — from the Kyoto Prize to the Balzan Prize to his fellowship at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences — points to the extent to which his work, carried out across more than seven decades, earned sustained attention from institutions and disciplines well beyond the country where he was born and educated.
Quotes by Paul Ricœur
Narrative identity takes part in the story's movement, in the dialectic between order and disorder.
But myth is something else than an explanation of the world, of history, and of destiny. Myth expresses in terms of the world – that is, of the other world or the second world – the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence. Hence to demythologize is to interpret myth, that is, to relate the objective representations of the myth to the self-understanding which is both shown and concealed in it.
But myth is something else than an explanation of the world, of history, and of destiny.
Myth expresses in terms of the world – that is, of the other world or the second world – the understanding that man has of himself in relation to the foundation and the limit of his existence.
We are not capable of producing a concept of time that is at once cosmological, biological, historical and individual.
Time becomes human time to the extant that it is organized after the manner of a narrative.
Testimony demands to be interpreted because of the dialectic of meaning and event that traverses it.
Narrative identity takes part in the story’s movement, in the dialectic between order and disorder.
