Theory of Literature was originally published in 1949. It is not a textbook introducing the young to the elements of literary appreciation nor a survey of the techniques employed in scholarly research. The authors have sought to unite "poetics" (or literary theory) and "criticism" (evaluation of literature) with "scholarship" ("research") and "literary history" (the "dynamics"of literature, in contrast to the "statics" of theory and criticism).

Disturbed by these acrimonious arguments, the authors - former colleagues and university-press board members - embarked on an ambitious project to reexamine a number of major literary and philosophical works dealing with the liberal arts and education. With their discussions ranging from Plato to Rousseau, from Cicero to Vico, from Erasmus to Matthew Arnold, Sousa and Weinsheimer offer not a history of education philosophy but an examination of the present.

Traces the decentered formulation of self at the heart of Paul Ricoeur's philosophy from his earliest works to his most recent.

The Introduction sets the contributions to this special issue in the context of existing scholarship on Dugald Stewart. The main points are the great advance in our understanding of Stewart's intellectual development, his complicated relationship to his predecessors and contemporaries in Scottish philosophy, and his important role in the European republic of letters.

Hayden White probes the notion of authority in art and literature and examines the problems of meaning - its production, distribution, and consumption - in different historical epochs. In the end, he suggests, the only meaning that history can have is the kind that a narrative imagination gives to it. The secret of the process by which consciousness invests history with meaning resides in the content of the form, in the way our narrative capacities transforms the present into a fulfillment (...) of a past from which we would wish to have desceneded. (shrink)

Paul Ricœur laisse comme testament une œuvre immense.Elle est justement saluée aujourd'hui pour s'être confrontée aux principaux enjeux intellectuels du XXe siècle, sans jamais cesser de dialoguer pour autant avec le "grand livre de la philosophie". A travers la diversité des thématiques abordées par le philosophe, cet ouvrage nous éclaire sur ce qui fait la trame et le moteur de cette pensée en mouvement : une réflexion sur l'homme en tant qu'être agissant.L'auteur propose de reconfigurer le parcours de cette philosophie (...) de l'agir humain en suivant trois perspectives à la fois distinctes et complémentaires. Selon une première perspective, il s'agit de retracer la genèse d'une anthropologie philosophique qui porte sur les fondamentaux de l'agir humain. Selon une deuxième perspective, l'auteur cherche à resituer l'épistémologie de Paul Ricœur, ressourcée dans la tradition herméneutique, au contact des sciences de l'homme.Selon une troisième perspective, il s'agit de reconstituer les jalons d'une philosophie normative qui ouvre la morale, le politique, la justice et le droit à l'horizon de l'universalité, sans dénier l'incarnation de l'agir humain dans un "monde de la vie" déjà structuré par des valeurs. A l'opposé d'une rhétorique hagiographique ou d'une critique systématique, la "juste distance" prise par l'auteur permet de restituer l'unité profonde de l'œuvre ricoeurienne et d'en dévoiler en même temps les tensions et les paradoxes.Cet ouvrage accorde une large place à la réception philosophique du travail de Paul Ricœur sur l'agir humain en le présentant comme une "œuvre ouverte", élevée au "conflit des interprétations". C'est dire qu'après la mort du penseur, sa pensée ne fait que commencer, que renaître dans l'esprit de chaque nouveau lecteur. (shrink)

Written in the aftermath of the deaths of the French philosophers Jacques Derrida (19302004) and Paul Ricoeur (19132005), this book is an important and ...

Paul Ricoeur’s contribution to the theory of interpretation, or hermeneutics, is considerable: he ranks among the masters of this discipline alongside Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger and Gadamer. In addition to major works like _The Conflict of Interpretations_, he wrote many articles and shorter texts which deserve to be discovered and rediscovered. These allow us to gain a deeper understanding of the development of his work over time and to appreciate the full range of his contribution. Some of the texts examine the (...) nature of metaphor while others guide the reader through the many challenges of the hermeneutic problem - from the symbol to the text, then to the text as action, taking full account of the ethical implications. Here one encounters Ricoeur’s reflections on the future of hermeneutics and his abiding concern to explore the relations between hermeneutics and analytical philosophy. Ricoeur’s contribution to biblical hermeneutics has also been decisive. Two masterful studies in this volume attest to Ricoeur’s attempt to explore the relations between revelation and truth, on the one hand, and between myths of salvation and reason, on the other. This book - the second volume of Ricoeur’s writings and lectures - brings together texts which appeared between 1972 and 2006. It is published under the auspices of Le Fonds Ricoeur. (shrink)