Reading Ricoeur /

The scope of Paul Ricoeur's thought is breathtaking: a corpus of more than 500 articles and 30 books dispersed over a 60-year career that simultaneously welds a philosophical anthropology to a hermeneutical phenomenology and opens a vital existential space for the animating force of religious conviction. At the core of this massive enterprise, as 14 accomplished Ricoeurian scholars demonstrate in this collection of uniformly incisive and accessible essays, lies the unifying notion of the capable self laboring to be and to endure, striving to achieve the good life with and for others in just institutions amid the vicissitudes of a metaphorically fallen yet inherently redeemable world. Anyone with an interest in Ricoeur will profit from this exceptionally well-conceived and well-crafted compilation; it touches on every significant aspect of the thinker's oeuvre. Internationally acclaimed for his extensive contributions to Continental and Anglo-American philosophy, the Ricoeur that emerges here embodies all that his audience esteems in the engaged intellectual's efforts to forge a living connection between critical reflection and responsible action. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. H. I. Einsohn Middlesex Community College