R Paul

Beginning with the paradoxical fact of the plurality of philosophical systems, the irrationality of this situation is examined, first, from the point of view of two solutions — the Hegelian solution and that which dissolves the paradox by denying that systems are exclusive of one another — judged to be inadequate; and then from the viewpoint of the contrast between the claims of genuine philosophy and its actual historical practice. The idea of system is examined from the perspective of Spinoza's Ethics and, finally, M. Gueroult's idéalisme intégral serves as a guide in exploring the result of subordinating the historical features of philosophical activity to its systematic features.

Bis zum Ende leben. Überleben. Im Anderen. Dies ist das letzte große Thema, welches Ricœur beschäftigt hat. Die in dieser Ausgabe erstmals in deutscher Übersetzung vorgelegten Fragmente aus dem Nachlaß sind weniger eine Auseinandersetzung mit dem Tod als mit dem Leben und Überleben. Es ist das große Trauma des 20. Jahrhunderts, jener, die die Vernichtungslager überlebt haben und die Jorge Semprun in seinem Buch "Schreiben oder Leben", mit dem Ricœur sich auseinandersetzt, als Wiedergänger bezeichnet, weder tot noch lebend, jene, die scheinbar ihren eigenen Tod überlebt, sich selbst überlebt haben. Aber es steht auch für ein ganz persönliches Trauma, nämlich den Tod seiner Frau Simone, dessen Etappen Catherine Goldenstein im Nachwort skizziert. Der Gedanke der Trauer oder Trauerarbeit wird inspiriert von dieser Verlusterfahrung, dem Verlust eines geliebten Menschen. Beide Traumata halten einander dabei die Waage. Gegen den anonymen Massentod, dem kein Sinn mehr abzuringen ist, für den es keine wirkliche Trauerarbeit gibt, stellt sich der Verlust eines geliebten, einem nahestehenden Menschen. Das Bindeglied zwischen beiden stellt die Vorstellungs- oder Einbildungskraft dar. Sie ermöglicht eine Antizipation, eine Vergegenwärtigung sowie eine Anstelle-von-Substitution. Es ist die Antizipation des eigenen Todes in der Vergegenwärtigung der anderen Toten, an deren Stelle wir uns projizieren.

The purpose of this research endeavor was to determine the status of dying, death, and bereavement as topics within the curricula of the 28 veterinary medicine schools in the United States. Data were obtained via a mailed questionnaire (100% return rate). Results revealed that over 96% of the schools have offerings related to end-of-life issues, with 80% of students exposed to these offerings. The average number of hours students devote to end-of-life issues is 14.64, about the same as for U.S. medical and baccalaureate nursing schools. Topics covered most often are “euthanasia” and “communication with owners of dying animals.” Veterinary schools over-whelmingly note that dying, death, and bereavement are important topics. It might be helpful to veterinary medicine students if their own feelings regarding dying and death were addressed early in the curriculum and throughout class activities and clinical work. Veterinarians would likely relate better to animal guardians and to nonhuman animals themselves if they felt more comfortable with dying and death.

Since the last decade of the twentieth century, there has been talk of a return of religion in Western societies - the very societies that were regarded by many people as undergoing an irreversible process of secularization. Paul Ricoeur's philosophical writings on religion are contemporaneous with this movement of secularization and return, while at the same time his work complicates the schema. In Ricoeur's view, religion is part of the universe of convictions in which subjects live concretely, convictions that deserve to be heard and placed under the lights of argumentation and discussion. For Ricoeur, religion is the other of philosophy, the non-philosophical par excellence. He did not write a systematic philosophy of religion, but he wrote extensively about religion as a meeting place for language and conviction. The essays in this volume, written between 1953 and 2003, attest to the coherence, richness, and variety of Ricoeur's secular and philosophical approach towards religion. They range over the problem of guilt, the legitimacy or otherwise of Freudian, Marxist, and other critiques of religion, the relation between experience and language in religious discourse, the study of biblical hermeneutics, the nature of religious belief, and reflections on sacrifice, gifts, and debt. Ricoeur draws on religion to think, while not neglecting the analysis of religion itself. These texts by one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy and theology and to anyone concerned with the enduring role of religion in the modern world.

Many of us wonder what we could possibly do to end oppression, exploitation, and injustice. People have studied revolutions and protest movements for centuries, but few have focused on prefigurative politics, the idea of 'building the new society within the shell of the old'. Fed up with capitalism? Get organised and build the institutions of the future in radical unions and local communities. Tired of politicians stalling on climate change? Set up an alternative energy collective. Ready to smash racism and the patriarchy? Root them out in all areas of our lives, not just in 'high politics'. This is the first book dedicated to prefigurative politics, explaining its history and examining the various debates surrounding it. How can collective decision-making be inclusive? In what ways are movements intersectional? Can prefigurative organisations scale up? It is a must-read for students of radical politics, anarchism, and social movements, as well as activists and concerned citizens everywhere.

Many of us wonder what we could possibly do to end oppression, exploitation, and injustice. People have studied revolutions and protest movements for centuries, but few have focused on prefigurative politics, the idea of 'building the new society within the shell of the old'. Fed up with capitalism? Get organised and build the institutions of the future in radical unions and local communities. Tired of politicians stalling on climate change? Set up an alternative energy collective. Ready to smash racism and the patriarchy? Root them out in all areas of our lives, not just in 'high politics'. This is the first book dedicated to prefigurative politics, explaining its history and examining the various debates surrounding it. How can collective decision-making be inclusive? In what ways are movements intersectional? Can prefigurative organisations scale up? It is a must-read for students of radical politics, anarchism, and social movements, as well as activists and concerned citizens everywhere.

In this series of interviews and dialogues which took place between 1981 and 2003, Paul Ricoeur addresses some of the central questions of political philosophy and ethics: justice, violence, war, the environmental crisis, the question of evil, ethical and political action in the polis. Philosophical issues are brought to bear on present-day concerns and the practical realities of contemporary politics. How can the philosopher speak about politics without claiming superior insight or a higher order of knowledge? Ricoeur distinguishes three levels of society: ‘tools’ (modes of production and the accumulation of technology), ‘institutions’ (which are tied to national cultures) and ‘values’ (which claim to be universal). The philosopher’s task is to probe each of these levels and open up spaces for reflection, criticism and democratic deliberation. It is to explore the paradoxes of the political rather than invoking certainties dictated by conscience. Just as there no longer exists a grand narrative about the past, so too there is no longer any utopia capable of projecting the desired future. What remains is human creativity, which marks the source common to the institutional frameworks that are already present and the horizons that extend beyond them. The philosopher’s engagement lies in the promise to revive this source at the very moment it appears to dry up under the weight of the real. This volume of interviews and dialogues with one of the most important French philosophers of the post-war period will be of interest to anyone interested in the great political and ethical questions of our time.

The philosophy of Paul Ricoeur is rarely viewed through the lens of political philosophy, and yet questions of power, and of how to live together in the _polis_, were a constant preoccupation of his writings. This volume brings together a selection of his texts spanning six decades, from 1958 to 2003, which together present Ricoeur’s political project in its coherence and diversity. In Ricoeur’s view, the political is the realm of a tension between “rationality” (the attempt to provide a coherent explanation of the world) and “irrationality,” which manifests itself in force and repression. This “political paradox” lies at the heart of politics, for the claim to explain the world generates its own form of violence: the more one desires the good, the more one is inclined to impose it. Ricoeur warns citizens, the guardians of democracy, against any totalizing system of thought and any dogmatic understanding of history. Power should be divided and controlled, and Ricoeur defends a form of political liberalism in which states are conscious of the limits of their power and respectful of the freedom of their citizens. Ranging from questions of power and repression to those of ethics, identity, and responsibility, these little-known political texts by one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy, politics, and theology and to anyone concerned with the great political questions of our time.

Paul Ricœur held the conference on attention at Rennes, on the 2nd of March 1939, before the Philosophical Circle of the West. At the time, Ricœur, aged 26, was a teacher of philosophy at Lorient, in the south of Brittany. The text published here, which is available in the Paris Archives, is Ricœur’s extended version of this conference. His careful analysis of attention is impressive in its phenomenological emphasis: from the first lines, he draws relations between attention and perception, considering their intentional character, and continues by distinguishing attention from anticipation, preperception and waiting. A particular concern is given to the relation between attention and temporal duration – a question that will be reworked later in his philosophy of the will. After questioning how attention implies the notion of truth (not without reminding the contributions of Descartes, Thomas, Malebranche and Berkeley), he concludes by meditating upon the relation between attention and liberty.

The first volume in the eminent philosopher’s three-part examination of time and narrative, exploring their relationship in the context of historical writing. Time and Narrative builds on Paul Ricoeur’s earlier analysis, in The Rule of Metaphor, of semantic innovation at the level of the sentence. Ricoeur here examines the creation of meaning at the textual level, with narrative rather than metaphor as the ruling concern. Ricoeur finds a “healthy circle” between time and narrative: time is humanized to the extent that it portrays temporal experience. Ricoeur proposes a theoretical model of this circle using Augustine’s theory of time and Aristotle’s theory of plot and, further, develops an original thesis of the mimetic function of narrative. He concludes with a comprehensive survey and critique of modern discussions of historical knowledge, understanding, and writing from Aron and Mandelbaum in the late 1930s to the work of the Annales school and that of Anglophone philosophers of history of the 1960s and 1970s. “This work, in my view, puts the whole problem of narrative, not to mention philosophy of history, on a new and higher plane of discussion.” —Hayden White, History and Theory.