Ricoeur on Moral Religion
Author | : James Carter |
Publisher | : Oxford Theology and Religion M |
Total Pages | : 193 |
Release | : 2014 |
ISBN-10 | : 9780198717157 |
ISBN-13 | : 0198717156 |
Rating | : 4/5 (57 Downloads) |
Book excerpt: In Ricoeur on Moral Religion, James Carter argues that Paul Ricoeur's later philosophical writings provide a highly instructive interpretive key with which to assess his philosophical project as a whole. This first systematic study of the "later Ricoeur" offers a critical yet sympathetic reconstruction of Ricoeur's hermeneutics of ethical life, which demonstrates his significant contribution to contemporary philosophy of religion and moral philosophy. What emerges is a clear and distinctive moral religion that binds humans together universally on the basis of the life they share as capable beings. Carter also uncovers a hitherto unforeseen thread in Ricoeur's writings concerning ethical life, pulled through his own readings of Spinoza, Aristotle, and Kant. Ricoeur's hermeneutics is structured by a Kantian architectonic informed at different levels by these three philosophers, who ground a rich, holistic, and ultimately rationalist account of ethical life and religion that resists the trappings of both positivism and postmodernism.