Paul ricoeur hermeneutics and the human sciences

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At the same time, many of the essays in this collection are not merely concerned with methodological and epistemological questions. And the same applies to human action in history. What makes this difference particularly problematic is that interpretation, unlike explanation, seems to involve a circularity whose hypothetical viciousness would affect the validity of its results. Such is the way in which history, precisely because it seeks to be objective, partakes of fiction. But how is this possible? It is in allowing itself to be carried off towards the reference of the text that the ego divests itself of itself.

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 ExistentialismMarcel, Jaspers, Heidegger and Sartre. 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. Paul Ricoeur. 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.