Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophical Anthropology as Hermeneutics of Liberation: Freedom, Justice, and the Power of Imagination

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This book offers a unique account of the role imagination plays in advancing the course of freedom’s actualization. It draws on Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology of the capable human being as the staging ground for an extended inquiry into the challenges of making freedom a reality within the history of humankind. This book locates the abilities we exercise as capable human beings at the heart of a sustained analysis and reflection on the place of the idea of justice in a hermeneutics for which every expectation regarding rights, liberties, and opportunities must be a hope for humanity as a whole. The vision of a reconciled humanity that for Ricoeur figures in a philosophy of the will provides an initial touchstone for a hermeneutics of liberation rooted in a philosophical anthropology for which the pathétique of human misery is its non- or pre-philosophical source. By setting the idea of the humanity in each of us against the backdrop of the necessity of preserving the tension between the space of our experiences and the horizons of our expectations, the book identifies the ethical and political dimensions of the idea of justice’s federating force with the imperative of respect. Paul Ricoeur’s Philosophical Anthropology as Hermeneutics of Liberation will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in hermeneutics, phenomenology, ethics, political theory, and aesthetics. Cover Half Title Title Copyright Dedication Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Aesthetic Experience and the Wager of Imagination The Poetics of the Will and a Philosophical Anthropology of the Capable Human Being Summary Outline 1 Philosophical Anthropology, Poetics, and the Philosophy of the Will Poetics and the Philosophy of the Will Intermediacy, Fallibility, Fault Finitude and Infinitude Transcendental Reflection Metaphor and Metaphysics 2 The Practical Synthesis: Character, Happiness, and Respect Practical Synthesis Practical Finitude Happiness Respect 3 Affective Fragility, Vulnerability, and the Capable Human Being The Restless Heart Reason and Happiness Fragility and Fallibility: Having, Power, Worth 4 The Wager of Imagination Ideology, Violence, and Power An Eschatology of Nonviolence Negative Dialectics and the Principle of Hope The Temporalization of History The Force of the Present and the Horizon of the Process of Freedom’s Actualization 5 Singularity, Exemplarity, Universality Aesthetic Experience Mimesis and Truth Singularity, Exemplarity, Communicability Reason, Judgment, and Imagination 6 Toward a Hermeneutics of Liberation The Idea of Humanity and the Aporia of the Oneness of Time Exemplarity and the Hermeneutics of Testimony The Imperative of Justice 7 Conclusions Conviction and Belief Is Freedom Possible? Hospitality and Justice Bibliography Index