The trajectory of Paul Ricoeur’s thought from the fallible to the capable human person offers a hopeful vision of human nature constitutive of our shared political life. Yet, by necessity, hope arises in response to the tragic, which also features in Ricoeur’s work at the existential and ethical levels. At the same time hope and tragedy represent concepts at the limit of philosophical reasoning, introducing meeting points with religious discourse. Exploring those meeting points reveals the contribution of religious thinking to (...) the understanding of hope and tragedy and establishes Ricoeur’s political thinking as ultimately shaped by their interplay. (shrink)

Meu objetivo é refletir sobre a lógica do perdão como manifestação da justiça a partir da contribuição filosófica de Paul Ricoeur. Pretendo igualmente refletir sobre o papel da tradição cristã nas leis e na política a partir da perspectiva da justiça. Para tanto, esse debate será articulado em torno de três pressupostos fundamentais: primeiro, a lógica do perdão está para além do esquecimento e da vingança; segundo, o perdão se insere na perspectiva do dom e da gratuidade; enfim, a ideia (...) de reabilitação do ser humano capaz de ser bom e justo que está presente nas lógicas do perdão e da justiça judiciária. Em minha opinião, esta é uma maneira de dar sentido ao discurso religioso em nossa cultura secular. (shrink)

This essay develops an approach to a phenomenology of shame by taking recourse to different notions of shame found in various humanistic disciplines and in the history of phenomenology. The first part of this paper analyzes some of the central ideas on the nature of shame to be found in cultural anthropology, pedagogy, history and psychoanalysis. The second part discusses the phenomenological theories of shame proposed by Sartre and Levinas. Since their approaches are opposite to each other in crucial respects, (...) the third part of this paper returns to the analyses of shame undertaken in the first part in order to resolve this apparent conflict and advance a coherent theory of shame. The essay’s final thesis is that shame is neither fundamentally destructive nor fundamentally constructive but that it can assume both guises. While it can threaten the subject up to the point of destruction triggering it in aggressive defensive mechanisms, it can also contribute to the development of the subject into a fully free individual capable of acknowledging and answering to others. (shrink)