Knowra Paul Ricœur Paul Ricœur Paul Ricœur (1913–2005) was a French philosopher whose work connected phenomenology and hermeneutics to interpretation, narrative, memory, and personal identity.
Hermeneutics : The theory and practice of interpreting texts, symbols, actions, and other expressions of meaning. Ricœur made interpretation central to philosophy, treating understanding as a passage through symbols and texts.
Hermeneutics of suspicion : A mode of interpretation that seeks concealed motives or forces behind apparent meanings. Ricœur grouped Marx, Nietzsche, and Freud as interpreters who unmask surface consciousness.
Narrative identity : The conception of personal identity as formed and revised through stories about a life. Ricœur uses narrative to mediate between sameness over time and selfhood expressed in promises and action.
Edmund Husserl : A German philosopher who founded phenomenology as a systematic study of structures of experience. Ricœur translated Husserl's Ideas I into French and drew deeply on phenomenological method.
Selfhood : The condition of being a person with a distinctive identity and relation to oneself. Ricœur's reflexive philosophy treats self-knowledge as mediated by language, action, and others.
Phenomenology : A philosophical approach that examines structures of experience as they appear to consciousness. Ricœur began within phenomenology and reshaped it through attention to interpretation and language.
Text : A durable sequence of signs organized so that it can be read and interpreted. For Ricœur, writing distances discourse from its original speaker and situation, opening new readings.
Time and Narrative : A three-volume work by Ricœur examining how narrative configures human experience of time. This study develops his central claim that stories make temporal experience intelligible.
Karl Jaspers : A German philosopher and psychiatrist whose work explored existence, communication, and philosophical faith. Ricœur's early engagement with Jaspers helped shape his existential and philosophical concerns.
Testimony : An account offered by a witness as evidence about an event or experience. Ricœur treats trust in testimony as essential to memory and historical knowledge, though open to scrutiny.
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