Paul Ricoeur and the Lived Body extends the scope of Paul Ricoeur’s reflections and analyses of the body as one’s own through explorations into the ethical, cultural, and affective dimensions of our corporeal existence. Starting with the fact that each of us has a place in the world by reason of our mode of incarnation as flesh, the contributors to this volume address a range of diverse themes in which the lived body figures. Edited by Roger W. H. Savage, this book investigates the constru...

The military's focus on innovation and problem-solving has led to the creation of numerous items and technologies that have transcended the battlefield and become commonplace in our daily lives.This accessible reference volume explores 46 of these innovations, from duct tape to microwaves, focusing on the people and events that made each possible. Entries follow a standardized format that covers both the development and initial military applications of each innovat...

Fallible Man is the second book in Paul Ricoeur’s early trilogy on the will and the most accessible of his early writings. While the descriptive approach of Freedom and Nature set aside all normative questions, Fallible Man removes those brackets to examine the bad will, asking what makes evil a possibility. Combining rigor and originality, Ricoeur locates the possibility of evil in a self that is fundamentally in conflict with itself. Edited by Scott Davidson, A Companion to Ricoeur's Fal...

Paul Ricoeur’s first book, Freedom and Nature, introduces many themes that resurface in various ways throughout his later work, but its significance has been mostly overlooked in the field of Ricoeur studies. Gathering together an international group of scholars, A Companion to Freedom and Nature is the first book-length study to focus exclusively on Freedom and Nature. It helps readers to understand this complex work by providing careful textual analysis of specific arguments in the book ...

Reframing Twentieth-Century French Philosophy: The Roots of Desire, edited by Elodie Boublil, investigates the works of French philosophers who have been relegated to the margins of the canon, even if their teachings and writings have been recognized as highly influential. The contributions gather around the concept of “desire” to make sense of the French philosophical debate throughout the twentieth century. The first part of the volume investigates the concept of desire by quest...

The Symbolism of Evil is the final book in Ricoeur’s early trilogy on the will. While Freedom and Nature sets aside normative questions altogether and Fallible Man examines the question of what makes the bad will possible, here Ricoeur takes up the question of evil in its actuality. What is the nature of the will that has succumbed to evil? The question of evil resists reflection and remains inscrutable, leading Ricoeur to proceed indirectly through a study of the abundant resources contai...

Developed countries throughout the world are experiencing population ageing and the new challenges that arise from this change in the national demographic. The phenomenon of an ageing population has necessitated policy reform regarding the role of the state in providing income in retirement and the whole wider social meaning of later life. The politics of ageing have become a key issue for young and old voters alike as well as those who seek to represent them. Politicians carefully conside...

Pathos and Praxis presents a new and original framework for an integrated phenomenology of life. It provides the first comparative study of two influential French philosophers, Paul Ricoeur and Michel Henry, and shows that their debates over the interpretation of Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx signal two rival approaches to the phenomenology of life.Author Scott Davidson demonstrates that while Henry reveals the phenomenological meaning of life through an inward turn to a pur...

This book reveals how hermeneutics has experienced unprecedented attention under the leadership of Heidegger, Gadamer and Ricoeur, after long being confined to a restricted field of disciplines focused on understanding discourse. The author confronts the following questions: What is understanding? How to interpret a work of art? Can we decipher nature? How to orient yourself in space?This monograph reveals how hermeneutics leaves the refuge of erudition to become a new field of phi...

In this important and original book, Johann Michel paves the way for a greater understanding of Paul Ricoeur's philosophy by exploring it in relation to some major figures of contemporary French thought—Bourdieu, Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault and Castoriadis.Although the fertile dialogue between Ricoeur and various structuralist thinkers is well documented, his position in relation to the post-structuralist movement is less-widely understood. Does Ricoeur's philosophy stand in opposit...

Barbarism represents acritique, from the perspective of Michel Henry's unique philosophy of life, ofthe increasing potential of science and technology to destroy the roots ofculture and the value of the individual human being. For Henry, barbarismis the result of a devaluation of human life and culture that can betraced back to the spread of quantification, the scientific method andtechnology over all aspects of modern life. The book devel...

Both a unique witness of transformative events in the late 20th century, and a prescient analysis of our present economic crises from a major French philosopher, Michel Henry's From Communism to Capitalism adds an important economic dimension to his earlier social critique. It begins by tracing the collapse of communist regimes back to their failure to implement Marx's original insights into the irreplaceable value of the living individual. Henry goes on to apply this same critici...