Paul Ricœur was born in 1913 inValence,Drôme, France, to Léon "Jules" Ricœur (23 December 1881 – 26 September 1915) and Florentine Favre (17 September 1878 – 3 October 1913),[8] who were married on 30 December 1910 inLyon.[9] He came from a family of devoutHuguenots (FrenchReformed Protestants), a religious minority in France.[10]
Paul's father Jules, who served as a sergeant in the 75th Infantry Regiment of the French army duringWorld War I, went missing in Perthes-lès-Hurlus near the beginning of theSecond Battle of Champagne (25 September – 6 November 1915). On 26 September 1915, French military authorities declared that Jules had probably been killed in the battle. His body was not found until 1932, when a field was being ploughed, and the body was identified by its tags.[11][12] Some writers have stated that before World War I began, Paul's father (Léon "Jules" Ricœur) was a professor of English at the Lycée Emile Loubet in Valence. However, it was a different person (Jules Paul Ricœur (1887–1918)) who held that position.[13][14][15][16] Paul's father's death occurred when Paul was only two years old. Subsequently, Paul was raised inRennes, France by his paternal grandparents Louis Ricœur (1856–1932) and his wife Marie Sarradet (1856–1928), and by his father's sister Juliette "Adèle" Ricœur (20 December 1892 – 1968),[17][18][19] with a smallstipend afforded to Paul as a war orphan.
In 1934 he completed a DES thesis (diplôme d'études supérieures [fr], roughly equivalent to anM.A. thesis) titledProblème de Dieu chez Lachelier et Lagneau (The Problem of God in Lachelier and Lagneau),[21][26] concerning some of the theological views of French philosophersJules Lachelier (1832–1918) andJules Lagneau (1851–1894). In 1935, Paul was awarded the second-highestagrégation mark in the nation for philosophy, presaging a bright future.
On 14 August 1935, in Rennes, Paul married Simone Lejas (23 October 1911 – 7 January 1998),[27][28] with whom he had five children: Jean-Paul (born 15 January 1937), Marc (born 22 February 1938), Noëlle (born 30 November 1940), Olivier (10 July 1947 – 22 March 1986), and Étienne (born 1953).[29][8] In 1936–37, he fulfilled his military service.[21]
World War II interrupted Ricœur's career, and he was drafted to serve in the French army in 1939. His unit was captured during theGerman invasion of France in 1940 and he spent the next five years as a prisoner of war inOflag II-D.[21] His detention camp was filled with other intellectuals such asMikel Dufrenne, who organized readings and classes sufficiently rigorous that the camp was accredited as a degree-granting institution by theVichy government. During that time he readKarl Jaspers, who was to have a great influence on him. He also began a translation ofEdmund Husserl'sIdeas I.
Ricœur taught at theUniversity of Strasbourg between 1948 and 1956, the only French university with a Protestant faculty oftheology. In 1950, he received hisState doctorate, submitting (as is customary in France) two theses: a "minor" thesis translating Husserl'sIdeas I into French for the first time, with commentary, and a "major" thesis that he published the same year asPhilosophie de la Volonté I: Le Volontaire et l'Involontaire (Philosophy of the Will I: The Voluntary and the Involuntary).[30] Ricœur soon acquired a reputation as an expert on phenomenology, then the ascendent philosophy in France.
In 1956, Ricœur took up a position at theSorbonne as the Chair of General Philosophy. This appointment signaled Ricœur's emergence as one of France's most prominent philosophers. While at the Sorbonne, he wrote three works that cemented his reputation:Fallible Man andThe Symbolism of Evil published in 1960, andFreud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation published in 1965.Jacques Derrida was an assistant to Ricœur during that time (early 1960s).[31]
From 1965 to 1970, Ricœur was an administrator at the newly foundedUniversity of Paris X: Nanterre in suburban Paris.[b] Nanterre was intended as an experiment inprogressive education, and Ricœur hoped that he could create a university in accordance with his vision, free of the stifling atmosphere of the tradition-bound Sorbonne and its overcrowded classes. Nevertheless, Nanterre became a hotbed of protest during the student uprisings ofMay 1968 in France. Ricœur was derided as an "old clown" (vieux clown) and tool of the French government.[33]
Disenchanted with French academic life, Ricœur taught briefly at theUniversité catholique de Louvain in Belgium, before taking a position at theDivinity School of the University of Chicago,[34] where he taught from 1970 to 1985. He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1971.[35] His study culminated inThe Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language published in 1975 and the three-volumeTime and Narrative published in 1983, 1984, 1985 Ricœur gave theGifford Lectures in 1985/86, published in 1990 asOneself as Another. This work built on his discussion of narrative identity and his continuing interest in the self.
In 1985, he awarded theHegel Prize.[36]Time and Narrative secured Ricœur's return to France in 1985 as a notable intellectual. His late work was characterised by a continuing cross-cutting of national intellectual traditions; for example, some of his latest writings engaged the thought of the American political philosopherJohn Rawls. In 1995 he received anhonorary doctorate from theNational University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
In 1999, he was awarded theBalzan Prize for Philosophy, the citation being "[f]or his capacity in bringing together all the most important themes and indications of 20th-century philosophy, and re-elaborating them into an original synthesis which turns language – in particular, that which is poetic and metaphoric – into a chosen place revealing a reality that we cannot manipulate, but interpret in diverse ways, and yet all coherent. Through the use of metaphor, language draws upon that truth which makes of us that what we are, deep in the profundity of our own essence".[37] That same year, he and his co-author André LaCocque (professor emeritus of Hebrew Bible at Chicago Theological Seminary) were awarded theGordon J. Laing Award by the University of Chicago's Board of University Publications for their bookThinking Biblically: Exegetical and Hermeneutical Studies.
Ricœur died on 20 May 2005, aged 92, at his home inChâtenay-Malabry, France, of natural causes.[39][40] French Prime MinisterJean-Pierre Raffarin declared that "the humanist European tradition is in mourning for one of its most talented exponents". Paul Ricœur was buried in the Châtenay-Malabry New Cemetery, Châtenay-Malabry, Department des Hauts-de-Seine, Île-de-France, France.
One of Ricœur's major contributions to the field ofhermeneutics was the entwining of hermeneutical processes withphenomenology. In this union, Ricœur applies the hermeneutical task to more than just textual analysis, but also to how each self relates to anything that is outside of the self. For Ricœur, hermeneutics is understanding the link between the self and the symbol—neither things in themselves, but the dialectical engagement between the two. Moreover, Ricœur, on the goal of hermeneutics, puts emphasis upon self-understanding as the outcome of the hermeneutical process:
"In proposing to relate symbolic language to self-understanding, I think I fulfill the deepest wish of hermeneutics. The purpose of all interpretation is to conquer a remoteness, a distance between the past cultural epoch to which the text belongs and the interpreter himself. By overcoming this distance, by making himself contemporary with the text, the exegete can appropriate its meaning to himself: foreign, he makes it familiar, that is, he makes it his own. It is thus the growth of his own understanding of himself that he pursues through his understanding of others. Every hermeneutics is thus, explicitly or implicitly, self-understanding by means of understanding others."[41]
Ricoeur maintains that the hermeneutical task is a coming together of the self and an other, in a meaningful way. This explication of self-meaning and other-meaning is principally bound up and manifested in existence itself. Thus, Ricoeur depicts philosophy as a hermeneutical activity seeking to uncover the meaning of existence through the interpretation of phenomena (which can only emerge as) embedded in the world of culture:
"This is why philosophy remains a hermeneutics, that is, a reading of the hidden meaning inside the text of the apparent meaning. It is the task of this hermeneutics to show that existence arrives at expression, at meaning, and at reflection only through the continual exegesis of all the significations that come to light in the world of culture. Existence becomes a self – human and adult – only by appropriating this meaning, which first resides "outside," in works, institutions, and cultural movements in which the life of the spirit is justified."[41]
Furthermore, the process of hermeneutics, and extracting meaning, is a reflective task. The emphasis is not on the external meaning, but the meaning or insight of the self which is gained through encountering the external text—or other. The self-knowledge gained through the hermeneutical process is, thus, indirectly attained. This is in opposition to theCartesian cogito, "which grasps itself directly in the experience of doubt," and is "a truth as vain as it is invincible."[41] In point of fact, the difference Ricœur aims to distinguish is the means by which the self is discovered, which for him is only by means of interpreting the signified.
According to Ricœur, the aim of hermeneutics is to recover and to restore the meaning. The French philosopher chooses the model of the phenomenology of religion, in relation to psychoanalysis, stressing that it is characterized by a concern about the object. This object is the sacred, which is seen in relation to the profane.[42]
InThe Rule of Metaphor[46] and inTime and Narrative, vol. 1,[47] Ricœur argues that there exists a linguistic productive imagination[48] that generates/regenerates meaning through the power of metaphoricity by way of stating things in novel ways and, as a consequence, he sees language as containing within itself resources that allow it to be used creatively.[49]
Gabriel Marcel et Karl Jaspers. Philosophie du mystère et philosophie du paradoxe [Gabriel Marcel & Karl Jaspers: Philosophy of mystery & Philosophy of paradox] (in French), Paris, Temps Présent, 1947{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link).
History and Truth, trans. Charles A. Kelbley. Evanston, Northwestern University Press, 1965 [1955]{{citation}}: CS1 maint: others (link).
Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary, trans. Erazim Kohak. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966 (1950).
Husserl: An Analysis of His Phenomenology. Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1967
The Symbolism of Evil, trans. Emerson Buchanan. New York: Harper and Row, 1967 (1960).
Entretiens sur l'Art et la Psychanalyse (sous la direction de Andre Berge, Anne Clancier, Paul Ricoeur et Lothair Rubinstein, Paris, La Haye: Mouton, 1968 (1964).
Le Conflit des interprétations. Essais d'herméneutique I, Le Seuil, 1969.
Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation, trans. Denis Savage. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970 (1965).
The Conflict of Interpretations: Essays in Hermeneutics, ed. Don Ihde, trans. Willis Domingoet al. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974 (1969).
Political and Social Essays, ed. David Stewart and Joseph Bien, trans. Donald Stewartet al. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1974.
The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello, S. J., London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1978 (1975).
Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian Press, 1976.
The Philosophy of Paul Ricœur: An Anthology of his Work, ed. Charles E. Reagan and David Stewart. Boston: Beacon Press, 1978.
Essays on Biblical Interpretation (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980)
Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences: Essays on Language, Action and Interpretation, ed., trans. John B. Thompson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Time and Narrative (Temps et Récit), 3 vols. trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984, 1985, 1988 (1983, 1984, 1985).
Lectures on Ideology and Utopia, ed., trans. George H. Taylor. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985.
Du texte à l'action. Essais d'herméneutique II, Le Seuil, 1986.
From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1991 (1986).
À l'école de la phenomenologie. Paris: J. Vrin, 1986.
Le mal: Un défi à la philosophie et à la théologie. Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1986.
Fallible Man, trans. Charles A. Kelbley, with an introduction by Walter J. Lowe, New York: Fordham University Press, 1986 (1960).
A Ricœur Reader: Reflection and Imagination, ed. Mario J. Valdes. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.
Lectures I: Autour du politique. Paris: Seuil, 1991.
Lectures II: La Contrée des philosophes. Paris: Seuil, 1992.
Oneself as Another (Soi-même comme un autre), trans. Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992 (1990).
Lectures III: Aux frontières de la philosophie. Paris: Seuil, 1994.
^Marcelino Agís Villaverde [gl],Knowledge and Practical Reason: Paul Ricoeur's Way of Thinking, LIT Verlag Münster, 2012, p. 20.
^Don Ihde,Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, Northwestern University Press, 1971, p. 198.
^P. Ricœur,The Rule of Metaphor: The Creation of Meaning in Language, Routledge, 2003, pp. 5, 265ff., 362ff.
^Carl R. Hausman,Metaphor and Art: Interactionism and Reference in the Verbal and Nonverbal Arts, CUP Archive, 1989, pp. 105–6; Kaplan 2003, pp. 48–9.
^Ricœur, P., "L'imagination dans le disocurs et dans l'action", in Ricœur, P.,Du texte à l'action. Essais d'herméneutique II, Paris, Seuil (translated as "Imagination in Discourse and in Action," in Ricoeur, P.,From Text to Action, Blamey K and Thompson J (trans.), Northwestern University Press, Evanston, Illinois).
^David M. Kaplan (ed.),Reading Ricoeur, SUNY Press, 2008, p. 151.
^"Paul Ricœur". Inamori Foundation. Archived fromthe original on 23 May 2013. Retrieved15 December 2012.
^abcEncyclopedia of World Biography: 20th century supplement, vol. 13, J. Heraty, 1987:"Paul Ricoeur".
^Paul Ricoeur –La critique et la conviction: entretien avec François Azouvi et Marc de Launay (Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1995), p. 11.
^Munkholt, Cherine Marie Veronique (16 April 2016)."On an impact of WWI".craftinghistoryblog. Retrieved17 July 2022.
^Jules Paul Ricoeur (April 28, 1887 – November 7, 1918) was a son of Paul Lucien Auguste Ricoeur (a.k.a. Paul Lucien Augustin Ricoeur) and Elisabeth "Mina" Elzer, who were married on 4 December 1886 in Poussay. Jules was born in Montbéliard, Doubs, and died from gas poisoning in World War I at Baccarat, Meurthe-en-Moselle. He was a Private in the 356th Infantry Regiment (2nd Class) of the French army. Before fighting in World War I he was a professor of English in the Lycée Emile Loubet in Valence. He had a brother named Louis Charles Adrien Ricoeur (1 October 1889 – 20 August 1914) who was born in Épinal, Vosges. Louis was a Private in the 153rd Infantry Regiment of the French army. He was killed in WWI in 1914 at Morhange, Moselle.
^"La Guerre et le lycée Loubet" (The War and Lycée Loubet)Archived 27 April 2017 at theWayback Machine – These are photos of commemorative plaques in the entrance hall of the Lycée Emile Loubet in Valence. The lycée started operating and enrolling students about 1904. The plaques list all the professors and students from the lycée who died in various wars (including WWI and WWII) in which France was involved. Scroll down the page to the chart which is titled "Ancien Professeurs" (Former Professors) in the upper left-hand corner of the chart. At the bottom of the chart, there is information on Jules Paul Ricœur (1887–1918), who was not the same person as Paul Ricœur's father Léon "Jules" Ricœur (1881–1915).
^Charles E. Reagan,Paul Ricoeur: His Life and His Work (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), pages 6, 8, 15, and 20.
^A second volume under the titlePhilosophie de la Volonté II: L'homme faillible et La symbolique du mal (Philosophy of the Will II: Fallible Man and The Symbolism of Evil) appeared in 1960.
^Geoffrey Bennington (1991),Jacques Derrida, University of Chicago Press, p. 330.
^abcRicœur, Paul, Charles E. Reagan, and David Stewart. "Existence and Hermeneutics." InThe Philosophy of Paul Ricœur: An Anthology of His Work. Boston: Beacon Press, 1978, pp. 101 and 106.
^Eliade, Mircea (1987),The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, translated by Willard R. Trask. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc.
^Paul Ricœur (1965),Freud and philosophy: an essay on interpretation, Book I:Problematic, section 2: 'The conflict of interpretations', title: 'Interpretation as exercise of suspicion', p. 32
^Waite, Geoff (1996).Nietzsche's Corpse, Duke University Press, 1996, p. 106.
^abFelski, Rita (2015).The Limits of Critique. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 6.
^Ricœur, P.,The Rule of Metaphor: Multi-Disciplinary Studies of the Creation of Meaning in Language, trans. Robert Czerny with Kathleen McLaughlin and John Costello, S. J., London: Routledge and Kegan Paul 1986[1975], p. 4.
^Ricœur, P., 1984[1983],Time and Narrative, vol. 1, McLaughlin, K. and Pellauer, D. (trans.), University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois, p. 109.
^This concept is based onImmanuel Kant's distinction between productive imagination which explains the possibility of cognition ofa priori, and the reproductive imagination which explains the synthesis of empirical laws (KrV B152); see Ricoeur 1986[1975], p. 223 and Kaplan 2008, p. 175.
Don Ihde, 1971.Hermeneutic Phenomenology: The Philosophy of Paul Ricœur. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.
David E. Klemm, 1983.The Hermeneutical Theory of Paul Ricoeur: A Constructive Analysis. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press.
Pamela Sue Anderson, 1993.Ricœur and Kant: philosophy of the will. Atlanta: Scholars Press.
Bernard P. Dauenhauer, 1998.Paul Ricœur: The Promise and Risk of Politics. Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield.
Richard Kearney, ed., 1996.Paul Ricoeur: The Hermeneutics of Action. SAGE.
Kuruvilla Pandikattu, 2000.Idols to Die, Symbols to Live: Dynamic Interaction between Language, Reality, and the Divine. New Delhi: Intercultural Publications.
Henry Isaac Venema, 2000.Identifying Selfhood: Imagination, Narrative, and Hermeneutics in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur (Mcgill Studies in the History of Religions), SUNY Press.
Dan Stiver, 2001.Theology after Ricœur, Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.
Karl Simms, 2002.Paul Ricœur, Routledge Critical Thinkers. New York: Routledge.
Gregory J. Laughery, 2002.Living Hermeneutics in Motion: An Analysis and Evaluation of Paul Ricoeur's Contribution to Biblical Hermeneutics. Lanham: University Press of America.
Richard Kearney, 2004.On Paul Ricœur: The Owl of Minerva. Hants, England: Ashgate.
John Wall, 2005 "Moral Creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the Poetics of Possibility". New York: Oxford University Press.
Salvioli, Marco, 2006, "Il Tempo e le Parole. Ricoeur eDerrida a "margine" della fenomenologia", ESD, Bologna.
W. David Hall, 2007.Paul Ricoeur and the Poetic Imperative. Albany: SUNY Press.
Gaëlle Fiasse, 2008.Paul Ricœur. De l'homme faillible à l'homme capable. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France.
Alison Scott-Baumann, 2009.Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion. Continuum.
Fredric Jameson, 2009. "The Valences of History." InValences of the Dialectic. London and New York: Verso. 475–612.
Boyd Blundell, 2010.Paul Ricoeur between Theology and Philosophy: Detour and Return. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Haggag Ali, 2011. Paul Ricoeur and the Challenge of Semiology. Saarbrücken:VDM Verlag Dr. Müller.
William C. Dowling, 2011.Ricoeur on Time and Narrative: an Introduction to Temps et Recit. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press (online excerpt).
Francis J. Mootz III and George H. Taylor (eds.), 2011.Gadamer and Ricoeur: Critical Horizons for Contemporary Hermeneutic. Continuum.
Kuruvilla Pandikattu, 2013.Between Before and Beyond: An Exploration of the Human Condition Inspired by Paul Ricoeur. Pune: CreatiVentures.
Scott Davidson, 2025.Pathos and Praxis: An Integrated Phenomenology of Life. Indiana University Press.
Adam J. Graves, 2022. "The Phenomenology of Revelation in Heidegger, Marion, and Ricoeur". Lexington Books.
Gaëlle Fiasse,Paul Ricœur et le pardon comme au-delà de l'action, Laval théologique et philosophique 63/2 363–376, 2007.
Gaëlle Fiasse,The Golden Rule and Forgiveness. In A Passion for the Possible. Thinking with Paul Ricœur, ed. Brian Treanor and Henry Venema, Series: Perspectives in Continental Philosophy, New York: Fordham University Press, 77–89, 2010.
Gaëlle Fiasse,Ricœur's Medical Ethics: the Encounter between the Physician and the Patient, in Reconceiving Medical Ethics, ed. by C. Cowley, New York: Continuum Press, 30–42, 2012.
Gaëlle Fiasse,Ricœur's Hermeneutics of the Self. On the In-Between of the Involuntary and the Voluntary, and Narrative Identity, Philosophy Today, 58, 39–51, 2014.
Adam J. Graves "'Freedom & Resentment' and Ricoeur: Toward a Normative-Narrative Theory of Agency", in A Companion to Ricoeur's 'Freedom and Nature', ed. by Scott Davidson, London: Lexington Books, 207-226, 2018.
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