Religion For Thought

Since the last decade of the twentieth century, there has been talk of a return of religion in Western societies - the very societies that were regarded by many people as undergoing an irreversible process of secularization. Paul Ricoeur's philosophical writings on religion are contemporaneous with this movement of secularization and return, while at the same time his work complicates the schema. In Ricoeur's view, religion is part of the universe of convictions in which subjects live concretely, convictions that deserve to be heard and placed under the lights of argumentation and discussion.

For Ricoeur, religion is the other of philosophy, the non-philosophical par excellence. He did not write a systematic philosophy of religion, but he wrote extensively about religion as a meeting place for language and conviction. The essays in this volume, written between 1953 and 2003, attest to the coherence, richness, and variety of Ricoeur's secular and philosophical approach towards religion. They range over the problem of guilt, the legitimacy or otherwise of Freudian, Marxist, and other critiques of religion, the relation between experience and language in religious discourse, the study of biblical hermeneutics, the nature of religious belief, and reflections on sacrifice, gifts, and debt. Ricoeur draws on religion to think, while not neglecting the analysis of religion itself.

These texts by one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century will be of interest to students and scholars of philosophy and theology and to anyone concerned with the enduring role of religion in the modern world. Editor's Introduction
Note on this edition


I
Guilt, the Intersection
of Philosophy and Religion
1. Tragic Guilt and Biblical Guilt
I. Finitude and Guilt
II. ""Tragic Fault""
III. ""Biblical Sin""
IV. Subterranean Affinities

II
Confronting the Modern Critique
of Religion
2. Freudian Psychoanalysis and Christian Faith
I. Rules for Reading Freud
II. Religion and Instinct
III. Religion and Fantasy
IV. Value and Limits of the Psychoanalysis of Religion
3. The Hermeneutics of Secularization
Faith, Ideology, Utopia
Introduction: Secularization as a Hermeneutical Question
I. The Dialectic of Utopia and Ideology
II. Faith Between Ideology and Utopia


III
Hermeneutics of Religious Language
4. Manifestation and Proclamation
I. Phenomenology of Manifestation
II. The Hermeneutics of Proclamation
III. Towards What Mediation?
5. The interpretive Narrative
Exegesis and Theology in the Narratives of the Passion
I. From Kerygma to the Narrative
II. Narrative Articulation
III. Sketch of the Literary Analysis of the Narratives of the Passion in the Gospel of Mark
6. Experience and Language in Religious Discourse
I. Difficulties of a Phenomenology of Religion
II. Interlude: The Great Code
III. The Bible, a Polyphonic Text

IV
The Kantian Line
7. Theonomy and/or Autonomy
I. Thinking Theonomy
II. From Theonomy to Autonomy
8. Religious belief. The Difficult Path of the Religious
I. The Capable Human Being, the Addressee of Religion
II. The Difficulties of the Religious
III. Consequences

V
Final Dialogues on the Overabundance of the Gift
9. ""Considerations on the Triad: Sacrifice, Debt, Grace""
According to Marcel Hénaff
I.
II.
III.
10. Paul the Apostle. Proclamation and Argumentation
Recent Readings
I. Proclamation and Rupture
II. Aporetic Transition
III. Strategies of Argumentation


Origin of the Texts
Notes
Index Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005) is widely recognized as one of the most distinguished philosophers of the twentieth century. He taught for many years at the University of Chicago. His many works include Freud and Philosophy, Time and Narrative, and Oneself as Another.