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Patient-centred care has gained ground in health service following a health policy initiative aimed at changing the paternalistic culture towards one with more patient involvement. Development of knowledge relating to people's lived experiences of illness is important in this context. Literature in the field of health science describes methods for exploring what is at stake for people affected by illness, and the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur has been a significant source of inspiration. Especially, Ricoeur's interpretation theory has been construed and applied in different, often schematic, methodological variations, whereas his narrative philosophy is a little used source of inspiration. Health science has been characterized by a biomedical awareness of method and the idea that there is a direct and immediate path to patients' experiences, a viewpoint that can be traced back to Descartes and the philosophy of subjectivism. Opposed to Descartes, Ricoeur says that we are already embedded in a world of traditions and meanings over which we have no control. According to Ricoeur, we leave traces when we express ourselves, and traces are formed by the world of meanings and traditions to which we belong. Often, the sense in the traces is hidden, making it impossible to directly understand individual's experiences. Reflection on an individual's lived experiences must take place via the narratives in which the individual expresses themselves. The centrepiece of Ricoeur's narrative philosophy is the threefold mimesis, which is an approach to understanding the meaning of peoples' lived experiences. The philosophical hermeneutics of Gadamer plays an important role in Ricoeur's theory of interpretation, although he has criticized Gadamer for failing to include one dimension in his philosophy; he finds this dimension in Habermas' ideology critique. Ricoeur's ideology critique is absent in health science research, which is why it has been made a focal point in this article., (© 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.)

Although there have been some studies that explore the meaning of aging and give voice to older people, the impact that the aging experience can have on them justifies continued research in this area. In this study, with a hermeneutic phenomenological design and an interpretation method inspired by the philosophy of Ricoeur, we conducted in-depth interviews with 14 elderly people at a social day center in Rome (Italy). The analysis revealed three central themes associated with the experience of being old: changes and limitations related with being aged, the experience that comes from having lived a long life, and an awareness of death. The findings could help health professionals, families and caregivers to achieve a deeper understanding of what old age entails, and may also serve as a platform for interventions that seek to enable older people to experience aging as a meaningful and positive process., (Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

This article contends with Dietrich Bonhoeffer that Christian ethics does not hinge on the concept of “good” but instead emphasizes “history” as the focal point. Within this context Paul Ricoeur’s concept of hermeneutics emerges as a promising approach to reinterpreting Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, especially the relationship between simple obedience and decisive judgment. In addition, while making decisions in extraordinary situations poses challenges to Bonhoeffer, Ricoeur’s narrative framework may serve to connect the fragmented dot-like moments of ethical agents in concrete situations. It elucidates why judgment invariably occurs post simple obedience in ethical action and how Christian formation can be effectively undertaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This text argues that psychoanalytic philosophy is a valuable tool for the Philosophy of Sport. To situate it within the philosophical tradition, I place Freud's ideas as an heir to the Philosophy of Impulse of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Then, I explain how psychoanalytic philosophy can be understood as a form of hermeneutics, which aligns well with the interests of the field. I also recognise the importance of questioning whether we can consider sports and their events as analysable psychoanalytic facts. To this purpose, I use Paul Ricoeur's methodological approach, which proposes to analyse collective and common phenomena hermeneutically as psychoanalytic facts. I demonstrate the consistency of this method and adapt it to the Philosophy of Sport. The method involves a triangular operation that analyses psychoanalytic facts by articulating their relationships of meaning (narratives, manifest content, memories and objects), their relationships of force (resistances, neurotic repetitions, symptoms, latent contents and transfers), and psychoanalytic theory. As an example, I apply this method to conduct a micro-psychoanalytic analysis of Brazil's defeat to Germany in the 2014 FIFA World Cup, which the Brazilian coach referred to as a 'blanked out' moment. I observe that the destiny of drives, which Freud understood as the tendency of unconscious material to return to consciousness in the form of commitments to objects and symptoms, is prominent in sports reality. This may encourage us to see the potential of promising interpretations grounded in the Psychoanalytic Philosophy of Sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on some research work by the French theologian Emmanuel Falque, his theological hermeneutics is analyzed and described in a Catholic key, marked by a review of the concepts of body and voice applied to the biblical text. It is an update of the Christian message through prior philosophical reflection, with a clear phenomenological and existential orientation, and through the final theological decision anchored in the foundations of Catholicism. We verify, finally, that in the catholic hermeneutics proposed by the author there underlies a theological anthropology based on corporeity with roots in tradition and the ecclesiastical magisterium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Several scholars have observed the constructive possibilities in approaching sport as cultural liturgy. In what follows, I turn to hermeneutic resources in Paul Ricoeur and Augustine to elucidate the means of sports' liturgical appropriation and the capacity of this appropriation to mediate values of ideological and religious significance. Drawing on Ricoeur's analysis of Aristotelian mimesis, I approach sport as embodied metaphor and so locate metaphor as a central problem in sport hermeneutics. Following Ricoeur, I address this problem primarily by way of the 'surplus of meaning' within metaphor and its reference, and the role of Wittgensteinian 'seeing-as' in metaphor's interpretation. Following Augustine, I observe the pivotal roles of desire and tradition within 'ways of seeing' and their outworkings in Augustine's liturgical interpretation of ancient spectacles. Translating these considerations into sport, I argue that sport's liturgical appropriation similarly proceeds through 'ways of seeing' or experiencing the embodied metaphor of sport, and that these ways are deeply informed by particular desires and cultural and ideological traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article briefly presents the relationship between philosophy and religion in the work of Paul Ricœur, demonstrating how he established a dialogue between both languages, both methodologies – that of philosophy and that of religion – in his philosophical and biblical hermeneutics. The article briefly recaps Ricœur’s personal and intellectual trajectory and the way he dealt with this double allegiance, showing the differences between biblical and philosophical hermeneutics but also their relation in Ricœur’s works

Copyright of Tradução em Revista is the property of Faculdades Catolicas - Pontificia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The diverging approaches that are nowadays united under the name “phenomenology” might make us think that this movement is mostly and maybe only unified by the reference to a shared tradition of certain texts. But if this is so, is the interpretation of texts not an alienation of the very object of phenomenology, a phenomenology that started out as the search for the “things themselves”? The article argues for the idea that the interpretation of texts belongs to the very core of phenomenology as such, to a phenomenology that truly fulfills its critical ambition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The book of Job apparently ends happily ever after, with the restoration of the protagonist's family and fortune (42:7–17). Juxtaposed with the rest of the book, however, this epilogue may appear incongruent and deeply problematic. In light of that, this article argues that a double reading is warranted. On the one hand, the epilogue may be read with a hermeneutic of suspicion, which resists superficial worldviews and protests against injustice. This reading will unmask troubling features in the representation of Job's God, Job's restoration, and Job's speech. On the other hand, though—and drawing on Paul Ricœur—the text can be approached with "second naivety." The audience is thereby welcomed to inhabit the symbolic wholeness of the textual world. The text invites both these readings and does not adjudicate between them. By holding them in dialectic tension, both hermeneutics and theology are enriched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Ricoeur Studies / Etudes Ricoeuriennes is the property of University of Pittsburgh, University Library System and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ricoeur Studies / Etudes Ricoeuriennes is the property of University of Pittsburgh, University Library System and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ricoeur Studies / Etudes Ricoeuriennes is the property of University of Pittsburgh, University Library System and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Kultura i Wychowanie is the property of Akademii Humanistyczno-Ekonomicznej and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Critical Hermeneutics: Biannual Journal of Philosophy is the property of Universita degli Studi di Cagliari and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Several scholars have observed the constructive possibilities in approaching sport as cultural liturgy. In what follows, I turn to hermeneutic resources in Paul Ricoeur and Augustine to elucidate the means of sports’ liturgical appropriation and the capacity of this appropriation to mediate values of ideological and religious significance. Drawing on Ricoeur’s analysis of Aristotelian mimesis, I approach sport as embodied metaphor and so locate metaphor as a central problem in sport hermeneutics. Following Ricoeur, I address this problem primarily by way of the ‘surplus of meaning’ within metaphor and its reference, and the role of Wittgensteinian ‘seeing-as’ in metaphor’s interpretation. Following Augustine, I observe the pivotal roles of desire and tradition within ‘ways of seeing’ and their outworkings in Augustine’s liturgical interpretation of ancient spectacles. Translating these considerations into sport, I argue that sport’s liturgical appropriation similarly proceeds through ‘ways of seeing’ or experiencing the embodied metaphor of sport, and that these ways are deeply informed by particular desires and cultural and ideological traditions.

In this explorative paper, I propose that relatively recent trends in Western continental philosophy can provide a much more commensurate access to Chinese philosophy than found in most mainstream Western philosophy. More specifically, I argue that three prominent European philosophical approaches to interpretation can offer meaningful parallels to classical Confucian views of interpretation. These are Paul Ricoeur’s term “distanciation”, Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophy of hermeneutics and, finally, Jacques Derrida’s deconstructive notion of “différance”. While the last two approaches have had their internal clashes, I see them in this specific case as mutually reinforcing by stimulating the continuous reinterpretation of tradition, advancing the view that Western and Chinese philosophies cannot be reduced to the other in conceptual terms, and stipulating that a finalized meaning or interpretation of each is a priori unattainable. In this way, they provide a future opening for—and even integration of—a Chinese-Western philosophical dialogue.

Trolley cases are widely used in both ethics research and teaching. We investigate the use of trolleys as 'cases' i.e. in guiding reflection on right and wrong in individual and concrete - albeit hypothetical - choice situations (so-called dilemmas). There is something elusive about judging individual cases and we argue that important intricacies are overlooked when trolley cases are used. We claim that reflection on so-called dilemmas using trolley cases is methodologically flawed (in ways worse than the familiar complaint that using trolley cases is 'abstract'). This flaw also affects the use of trolleys as 'problems', i.e. in philosophical research comparing and making sense of the various intuitions people have when reflecting on trolleys as cases. We distinguish ourselves from other critics of 'trolleyology' by placing our criticism on using trolleys in the context of a philosophical understanding of the intricacies of judging singular cases. Our philosophical understanding is grounded in the works of Kant and Ricoeur. Following Ricoeur, we demonstrate that proper judgment of concrete cases involves a complex interplay of two different kinds of judgments: a normative judgement and a judgment on the narrative. Proper judgment of cases therefore also critically depends on constituting the case as a narrative. Using trolley cases in this kind of reflection obstructs this possibility and thus affects the art of judgment. In developing our position, we distinguish between casuistic and demonstrative use of cases. We argue that reflection on cases should be casuistic, while trolley cases can only be used demonstratively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims, on the one hand, to seek and present an enriched dialogue between the concepts of attestation and suspicion in the hermeneutics developed by the philosopher Paul Ricoeur, and, on the other hand, to try to show that this model or dialogic paradigm is capable of serving as a transversal hermeneutic source to the humanities, and specifically to literature. This is so insofar as it would imply a valid gnoseo-epistemological tool of analysis in which doubt and suspicion are assumed, but at the same time they are traversed and transcended towards a renewed, decisive and restored ontological-existential affirmation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social interaction as the middle phase of the morphogenetic sequence described by Margaret Archer presupposes that interpretative activities go on between individuals and collectivities. Novel meanings emerge in social interaction and spur the processes of structural elaboration. The hermeneutics of actors (or agents) should be part of the morphogenetic explanatory framework. Narratives as a distinctive species of interpretation will then become more susceptible to a mode of analysis based in realism. By adopting Paul Ricoeur's concept of narrative figuration (or threefold mimésis) for use in sociology, it is possible to embark on this task at the rudimentary level of intersubjective communication. The stories and anecdotes in which we describe episodes, events, and processes to others articulate and give order to our experience of time. When we are searching for concord in narratives to cope with discordant elements, we are participating in morphogenesis via the transformation of meaning. The complementary nature of Archer's and Ricoeur's conceptualisations provides an alternative to one‐sided social constructionist accounts of narrative [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hermeneutics encounters three current challenges: by more quantitative orientations, by stances that reject pluralism, and by criticism that the hermeneutic field is elitist and esoteric. The article offers a response through Ricœur. The hermeneutic “choice in favor of meaning” insists upon the ontological value of the human condition. It shows the insufficiency of the quantitative approach, the remaining value of pluralistic consideration of what human meaning entails, and the real world consequences of interpretation. Examples in Ricœur show how a hermeneutic choice in favor of meaning is not passive but instead reads texts with a particular orientation even when the text seems engaged in another project. The article’s final part undertakes an internal critique, raising the adequacy of Ricœur’s emphasis on meaning as an affirmation of “being.” The example of Buddhist insistence on “emptiness” is offered as one counterexample. The article concludes by arguing that in our contentious times hermeneutics confirms its contemporary vitality through its choice in favor of meaning even as it retains pluralistic consideration of what that meaning entails.

Imagination is most traditionally assumed as something that is a contradiction of reality. Accordingly, it is considered as a faculty that is merely able to evoke our emotions and feelings and implies unreal things that do not contribute to cognition. This is one of the most important themes of Paul Ricoeurˊs theory. By analyzing and criticizing other theories, he tries to go over this contradiction and emphasizes the functional aspect of imagination and its contribution to reality. By exploring through various texts of Ricoeur, in order to achieve an organized framework, this article seeks to show how imagination can play a main role in the construction of reality. Therefore, by taking up Ricoeurˊs claims, first of all, we explain his verbal turn which has two functions and also significant consequences. These functions include schematizing synthesis and projecting new meanings, which elaborated on three levels. In this way, it can be seen how a poetic schema creates a picture by inventing a new meaning, which indirectly refers to reality and hence defamiliarizes it. Finally, we try to point out the most key consequences of this new understanding.

"Narrative Theology" has often been construed in contrast to broader humanistic discourse. Protestant and particularly Reformed Christianity has often set the "Old, Old Story" apart from humanism and the humanities. This chapter explores the juxtaposition of humanism and reformed thinking in Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur's hermeneutics is compared with the Reformed "covenant theology" of 17th Century Puritanism. Covenant theology balanced the belief that God exceeds our powers of knowing and language and the conviction that God consents to be known within the limits of human understanding, as developed through the liberal arts. Similarly, Ricoeur sees God as limiting and disrupting human language, but while, for Ricoeur, encounter with God may begin as impossible dialogue, it develops by dispersing the names and signs of the divine throughout the tropes and genres of human discourse, narrative chief among them. Ricoeur's thought is interpreted as a Christian humanism in which religious inquiry and secular humanistic thought coexist and mutually enhance one another. Ricoeur's humanism will be preferred over approaches to narrative that set the Christian story and its hearers apart from the broader conversation of culture; a solipsism of faith is inadequate to the challenges of a modern pluralist culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an attempt to outline, from a mainly typological and partly historical perspective, what the author considers the most important varieties of the relationship between philosophy and literature (which is, of course, understood here in a working and broad sense, as poesis). In the first of these varieties, for which the fundamental significance is Plato's gesture of excluding poets from the state, the philosophical logos defines itself in opposition to literature, or mythos. In the second, which appears to predominate from Aristotle to the 18th century, the relationship between philosophy and literature takes on a more neutral character: the former provides the latter with motifs, themes, topics, mainly related to moral philosophy in the broadest sense, while the latter provides the former with discursive modes, such as genre. Modern aesthetics and the philosophy and theory of literature (fundamentally different from the tradition of the great poets and rhetoricians of the 16th and 17th centuries), which emerged together with transcendental philosophy and its reception in German Romanticism, contributed both to the increased interest among philosophers in literature and to a clear embedding, or even closing, of literature in philosophical notions, which originated mainly in the tradition of transcendentalism and dialectical thought. Finally, the beginning of the twentieth century is distinguished, in most of the major continental philosophical traditions, by a tendency to seek, or to find, in literature the most important partner of philosophical thinking, and sometimes even the identity of philosophy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on Paul Ricoeur's "little ethics" and Chung-ying Cheng's work on Confucian and Kantian ethics, this essay reinforces the broad outlines of a cross- cultural framework for reconciling conflicts between the good and the right, teleology and deontology, and perfectionism and liberalism so that we can recognize dynamic concerns across the grand sweep of moral life. Ricoeur and Cheng describe roughly parallel sets of relations and highlight similar dynamics among three planes of ethical life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul Ricœur’s ontology of art is derived from his hermeneutics, and Ricœur’s hermeneutics bridges his idea of aesthetics and ontology. Paul Ricœur’s ontology of art (in which the concept of refiguration plays a central role) sheds a new light in understanding and experiencing works of art. Ricœur discusses the metaphorical reference of poetic texts that opens up the realm of possible worlds. This idea of metaphoric reference can be extended to works of art as well. Both fictional narratives and artworks may be defined by the formula seeing as, and this formula represents their ontological status that may be defined as being as. Paul Ricœur argues that non-linguistic symbolic systems such as gestures, sounds and pictures also have the power to make and remake the world. Ricœur’s narrative theory can be applied to both to literature and visual arts as it identifies narrative capacity of artworks. Ricœur introduces the concept of refiguration that includes the transformation of reality, which is first prefigured in the consciousness of the author (mimesis 1). It is then configured in the artwork (mimesis 2), and finally into the experience of the viewer or listener of the artwork (mimesis 3), which leads to comprehension.

Walter Brueggemann offers an important approach to preaching that he describes as ‘reimagining the world’. He suggests that such imagining must be Spirit-led. It is argued that this homiletic strategy requires a fuller hermeneutic description than Brueggemann offers. A Spirit-Word-Community hermeneutic is commended. The Spirit leads and inspires. ‘Word’ is taken to mean the canonical witness to divine revelation. It is assumed to be normative for the belief and practice of the Christian Church. The way the world is reimagined needs to correlate with the Word. The act of checking the accuracy of the correlation, however, is not left to the individual preacher; it is the work of community. Contribution: The article contributes to the focus and scope of the journal through providing a correlation of hermeneutic theory – especially that of Paul Ricoeur – and homiletic thought. The aim is to provide a rigorously developed hermeneutic for preaching with suggestions as to how it can be used in practice.

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Copyright of Escritos is the property of Escritos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Escritos is the property of Escritos and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Cuestiones Teológicas is the property of Cuestiones Teologicas and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

After reviewing the recent publications of Richard Kearney, appearing between 2017 and 2021, including an anthology of his essential writings over his career, and covering topics such as hospitality, God, religion, anatheism, theopoetics, hermeneutics, and touch, there follows a critical engagement with Kearney's work, one that sets out in particular how, despite the very considerable overlap in our work, as fellow travelers in continental philosophy of religion and hermeneutics, our positions differ on what we mean by God and by welcoming the tout autre. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teachers' worldviews may impact their practice in terms of pedagogy, curriculum choices, and the value they assign to, or enthusiasm for, a curriculum subject. In England, Religious Education (RE) involves the teaching of religious and non-religious worldviews. RE teachers often lack training, subject knowledge, confidence or even desire to teach the subject. This article develops a working definition of 'worldview' as an individual's frame of reference, held consciously and subconsciously, that evolves due to life experiences, enabling them to make sense of the world. Hermeneutical tools employed in training sessions with teachers enabled them to identify aspects of their worldviews and the narratives which have formed these. Research was undertaken through semi-structured interviews with 10 Primary school teachers in the South West of England. Findings revealed variations between teachers' worldview-consciousness and the impact of their worldviews on their teaching of RE: notions of 'good life' varied and determined their teaching of, choices within and rationale for RE alongside growing confidence. Depth of understanding was facilitated for some by overseas travel or working and living in an ethnically diverse area. Greater self-understanding for teachers was evident in their acknowledgement of the impact of their own worldviews on their teaching of RE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the ways in which Transcendence and the question of God appear in the philosophy of Paul Ricœur. Taking stock of the debate on the theological turn of French phenomenology, the paper aims to show the unique position held by Ricœur among French phenomenology and hermeneutics, in that in spite of his Christian faith, Ricœur strove to put forward a philosophy of limits 'without absolute' while, at the same time, developing inquiries in phenomenology and hermeneutics of religion. The paper follows the development of Ricœur's thought on this matter, from his early phenomenological works, through the hermeneutical turn and until the essay of fundamental anthropology of Oneself as Another, unpacking the Kantian and Hegelian influences, the approach on religion 'within the limits of reason alone' and also the way in which the Kantian undertones of hermeneutics as philosophy of finitude at the same time open the space to hope and imagination. Ricœur's philosophy therefore appears as a rigorous descriptive and interpretive effort that strives not to mix the genres of discourse, while, at the same time, we can still find some ethical and supra-ethical traits in his practical philosophy that do stem from his Christian faith -- but whose status is inspirational and therefore does not dent the overall theoretical framework of his philosophy of limits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hermeneutic philosophy, and Paul Ricoeur’s formulation of hermeneutics in particular, faces a serious challenge, not from external sources, but from internal proponents of the program. In what might be called the Collapse Challenge, Ricoeur’s understanding of the hermeneutic circle is criticized for making use of structuralist methods that are no longer considered viable. Rather than look to replace Ricoeur’s work with an external model, the present essay draws on his late model of translation to suggest two viable paths forward beyond the Collapse Challenge. To develop these paths, the essay gives two concrete cases, one using Confucian philosophy, which is comparative, another using Aztec philosophy, which is syncretic.

“Narrative Theology” has often been construed in contrast to broader humanistic discourse. Protestant and particularly Reformed Christianity has often set the “Old, Old Story” apart from humanism and the humanities. This chapter explores the juxtaposition of humanism and reformed thinking in Paul Ricoeur. Ricoeur’s hermeneutics is compared with the Reformed “covenant theology” of 17th Century Puritanism. Covenant theology balanced the belief that God exceeds our powers of knowing and language and the conviction that God consents to be known within the limits of human understanding, as developed through the liberal arts. Similarly, Ricoeur sees God as limiting and disrupting human language, but while, for Ricoeur, encounter with God may begin as impossible dialogue, it develops by dispersing the names and signs of the divine throughout the tropes and genres of human discourse, narrative chief among them. Ricoeur’s thought is interpreted as a Christian humanism in which religious inquiry and secular humanistic thought coexist and mutually enhance one another. Ricoeur’s humanism will be preferred over approaches to narrative that set the Christian story and its hearers apart from the broader conversation of culture; a solipsism of faith is inadequate to the challenges of a modern pluralist culture.

Copyright of Ricoeur Studies / Etudes Ricoeuriennes is the property of University of Pittsburgh, University Library System and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Ricoeur Studies / Etudes Ricoeuriennes is the property of University of Pittsburgh, University Library System and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)