Paul Ricoeur
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The social contract is imaginary. That’s why it’s so powerful
What is the point of a national anthem? Does it accurately portray the history of the nation it adorns? Seldom. Does it reflect current values and priorities? Hardly. Is it set to a rousing melody? Almost never. Is it achingly repetitive? In the case of the British national anthem, most certainly yes. And yet anthems
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Guest Post: Sylvia Plath, Paul Ricoeur and the language of madness
Sylvia Plath’s first and only novel The Bell Jar was published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in 1963 and released just weeks before she committed suicide in her London home.[1] The novel is a first-person account of Esther Greenwood, a nineteen-year-old aspiring writer who whilst on a writing internship in New York begins to feel
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My article on Michel Serres, Biosemiotics and the “Great Story” of the Universe published in SubStance
My article “Michel Serres’ Great Story: From Biosemiotics to Econarratology” has just been published in SubStance. It is available from institutions with a subscription to Project Muse here. Abstract: In four key but as yet untranslated texts from 2001-2009, Michel Serres builds on his earlier biosemiotics with an econarratology he calls the ‘Great Story’ (Grand
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A table showing who is part of the new materialism, and an argument as to why it is not a “turn”
I’m currently writing the introduction to The Human Remains, discussing the figure of the human in the new materialism. I thought I would share the table I drew up of all the thinkers identified as part of the new materialism in different monographs and collected volumes. I have excluded individual journal articles from the list
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Paul Ricœur: Philosophy must have a foot outside philosophy, and must not end its dialogue with science
Je crois que la philosophie doit avoir un pied hors de la philosophie ; si on cesse ce dialogue avec les sciences, on produit alors une philosophie de la philosophie qui est répétitive d’elle-même, et prend par là même conscience de sa vanité. Paul Ricœur, ‘De la volonté à l’acte. Un entretien de Paul Ricœur
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Paul Ricoeur and the Autonomy of Philosophy: A Reappraisal
My article “Ricœur and the Autonomy of Philosophy: A Reappraisal” has just been published online in Philosophy Today. Abstract: Paul Ricœur repeatedly maintained that his philosophical reflection was autonomous from theological influence. Those who seek to contest this view have hitherto sought to deny the autonomy of philosophy from theology, but this article makes a
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Deep Sustainability: Narrative, Religion and Ethics
Drafting the latter chapters of The Human Remains has given me occasion to think in a sustained way about the possibilities and limits of narrative identity, including how the notion can be employed beyond humanity. In addition to revisiting Paul Ricœur’s work on narrative identity I have been grappling with the way in which Michel Serres
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Current Research: The Human Remains
I am currently working on a book provisionally entitled The Human Remains: French Philosophy in the Image of God. The first part of the book looks at the ways in which the imago dei motif is explicitly taken up in contemporary French thought. The second, longer part takes debates from the philosophical reception of the
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The Pantasm: Heraclitus, Michel Serres, and the Changeux-Ricœur exchange. On naming the human
The Heraclitean panta In Plato’s Cratylus, Heraclitus is quoted as holding that ‘πάντα χωρεῖ’ (panta chōrei, everything changes), a reality he sees symbolised in the element of fire: All things are an exchange for fire, and fire for all things, as goods for gold and gold for goods. (Heraclitus, Fragment 22 in the Diels-Kranz collection of
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Paul Ricoeur in Dialogue with Theology and Religious Studies
In September I will have the great pleasure of taking part in a symposium at the University of Lund, Sweden, entitled “Paul Ricœur in Dialogue with Theology and Religious Studies.” In addition to looking forward to hearing what is set to be a fantastic array of papers, I hope to be able to contribute something to