Paul Ricœur facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Paul Ricœur
|
|
|---|---|
Ricœur, c. 1999
|
|
| Born |
Jean Paul Gustave Ricœur
27 February 1913 |
| Died | 20 May 2005 (aged 92) Châtenay-Malabry, Hauts-de-Seine, France
|
| Education |
|
| Spouse(s) |
Simone Lejas
(m. 1935; died 1998) |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Continental philosophy Hermeneutic phenomenology Psychoanalysis Christian theology Christian existentialism |
| Institutions | |
| Notable students |
|
|
Main interests
|
Phenomenology Hermeneutics Philosophy of action Moral philosophy Political philosophy Philosophy of language Personal identity Narrative identity Historiography Literary criticism Ancient philosophy |
|
Notable ideas
|
Psychoanalysis as a hermeneutics of the Subject, theory of metaphor, metaphors as having "split references" (one side referring to something not antecedently accessible to language), criticism of structuralism, productive imagination, social imaginary, the "school of suspicion" in philosophy |
|
Influenced
|
|
Paul Ricœur (born February 27, 1913 – died May 20, 2005) was a famous French philosopher. He was known for bringing together two big ideas in philosophy: phenomenology (studying experiences) and hermeneutics (the theory of interpretation).
His ideas were similar to other important philosophers like Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. In 2000, he won the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy. This award recognized how he changed the way people studied texts and ideas. He looked at everything from myths and the Bible to psychoanalysis, the meaning of metaphors, and how stories work.
Contents
Life of Paul Ricœur
Early Life and Education (1913–1945)
Paul Ricœur was born in 1913 in Valence, France. His family were Huguenots, a group of French Reformed Protestants. This made them a religious minority in France.
Paul's father, Jules, was a soldier in World War I. He went missing in 1915 and was later declared killed in battle. Paul was only two years old when his father died. He was then raised by his grandparents and aunt in Rennes, France. They received a small payment because Paul was a war orphan.
Paul loved to study, partly because his family's Protestant faith encouraged reading the Bible. He discovered philosophy at the Lycée de Rennes. He earned his first degree in 1932 from the University of Rennes. Then, he studied philosophy at the University of Paris (Sorbonne) from 1933 to 1934. There, he was influenced by the philosopher Gabriel Marcel.
In 1935, Paul got the second-highest score in the national exam for philosophy teachers. This showed he had a very bright future ahead. In August 1935, he married Simone Lejas. They had five children together.
World War II and Captivity
World War II put a pause on Ricœur's career. He joined the French army in 1939. His unit was captured during the German invasion of France in 1940. He spent the next five years as a prisoner of war.
His prison camp had many other smart people, like Mikel Dufrenne. They organized readings and classes that were so good, the camp was recognized as a place where people could earn degrees. During this time, Ricœur read the philosopher Karl Jaspers, who greatly influenced him. He also started translating a major philosophical book by Edmund Husserl.
Career and Later Life (1946–2005)
After the war, Ricœur taught at the University of Strasbourg from 1948 to 1956. In 1950, he earned his advanced doctorate degree. His main thesis was published as Philosophy of the Will I: The Voluntary and the Involuntary. Ricœur quickly became known as an expert in phenomenology, a popular philosophy in France at the time.
In 1956, Ricœur became a professor at the University of Paris (Sorbonne). This showed he was becoming one of France's most important philosophers. While there, he wrote three famous books: Fallible Man and The Symbolism of Evil (1960), and Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation (1965). The famous philosopher Jacques Derrida was his assistant in the early 1960s.
From 1965 to 1970, Ricœur worked as an administrator at the new University of Nanterre near Paris. He hoped to create a new kind of university there, free from the old rules of the Sorbonne. However, Nanterre became a center for student protests in May 1968 in France. Ricœur was criticized during these protests.
Feeling disappointed with French universities, Ricœur taught for a short time in Belgium. Then, he took a job at the Divinity School of the University of Chicago in the United States. He taught there from 1970 to 1985. In 1971, he was chosen as an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
His studies in Chicago led to important books like The Rule of Metaphor (1975) and the three-volume Time and Narrative (1983, 1984, 1985). In 1985-1986, he gave the Gifford Lectures, which were later published as Oneself as Another. This book explored his ideas about how people understand themselves through stories.
Time and Narrative helped Ricœur become a well-known thinker back in France in 1985. In his later years, he continued to combine ideas from different countries. For example, he studied the work of American political philosopher John Rawls. In 1995, he received an honorary degree from a university in Ukraine.
In 1999, he won the Balzan Prize for Philosophy. The award praised his ability to bring together many important ideas from 20th-century philosophy. It noted how he used language, especially poetry and metaphors, to show a deeper reality. That same year, he and his co-author André LaCocque won an award for their book Thinking Biblically.
In 2004, he shared the John W. Kluge Prize for his lifetime achievements in the humanities.
Paul Ricœur passed away on May 20, 2005, at his home in France, at the age of 92. The French Prime Minister said that "the humanist European tradition is in mourning for one of its most talented exponents." He was buried in Châtenay-Malabry.
Ricœur's Philosophical Ideas
Understanding Through Interpretation (Hermeneutic Phenomenology)
One of Ricœur's main contributions was connecting hermeneutics (the study of interpretation) with phenomenology (the study of experiences). He believed that understanding isn't just about reading texts. It's also about how we understand ourselves in relation to everything outside of us.
For Ricœur, interpretation is about finding the connection between ourselves and symbols. It's not just about the things themselves, but how we engage with them. He believed that the goal of interpretation is to help us understand ourselves better.
He said that philosophy is like reading a hidden meaning within an obvious text. He thought that we truly become ourselves by understanding the meanings found in culture, like in books, traditions, and movements.
Ricœur also said that understanding is a reflective process. The main point isn't just the meaning of an outside text. It's the insight we gain about ourselves by engaging with that text or another person. This self-knowledge is gained indirectly.
Ricœur believed that the goal of interpretation is to find and bring back meaning. He looked at how religion and psychoanalysis try to understand things. He stressed that they focus on the object of study, like the sacred in religion.
In his book Freud and Philosophy, Ricœur famously called Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud the "masters of suspicion." He meant that these thinkers questioned common beliefs and tried to find hidden motives. For example, Marx thought society was mostly about economics. Nietzsche focused on the "will-to-power." Ricœur's ideas have been important in modern literary studies.
Language and Meaning (Philosophy of Language)
In his books The Rule of Metaphor and Time and Narrative, Ricœur argued that language has a creative power. He believed that we can create new meanings through metaphors. Metaphors are figures of speech where a word or phrase is applied to an object or action to which it is not literally applicable.
He thought that language allows us to say things in new ways. Because of this, language itself has the power to be used in very creative ways.
See also
In Spanish: Paul Ricoeur para niños
- Metaphor in philosophy
- Postmodern theology
- Theopoetics
- Esprit
