Much has been written about animals in applied ethics, environmental ethics, and animal rights. This book takes a new turn, offering an examination of the 'animal question' from a more fundamental, philosophical-anthropological perspective. The contributors in this important volume focus on how the animal has appeared and can be used in philosophical argumentation as a metaphor or reference point that helps us understand what is distinctively human and what is not. A recurring theme in the essays is the existence of a zone of ambiguity between animals and humans, which puts into question comfortable assumptions about the uniqueness and superiority of human nature. While the chapters straddle the boundaries of historical-philosophical and systematic, continental and analytic approaches, their thematic unity knits them together, presenting a rich, broad, and yet cohesive perspective. The first part of the book offers general explorations of the relation between animal and human nature, and of the concomitant existential and ethical dimensions of this relationship. The chapters in the second part address the same theme, but, in so doing, focus on specific aspects of animal and human nature: imagination, the political, historicity, shame, finitude, and joy.

Fallible Man is the second book in Paul Ricoeur’s early trilogy on the will and the most accessible of his early writings. While the descriptive approach of Freedom and Nature set aside all normative questions, Fallible Man removes those brackets to examine the bad will, asking what makes evil a possibility. Combining rigor and originality, Ricoeur locates the possibility of evil in a self that is fundamentally in conflict with itself. Edited by Scott Davidson, A Companion to Ricoeur's Fallible Man clarifies and contextualizes the central arguments developed in Ricoeur’s philosophy of the will, providing insight into his formative influences and themes. The collection gathers an international group of scholars who specialize in Ricoeur’s thought to shed light on an impressive range of themes from Fallible Man that resonate with contemporary debates in philosophy and religion.

Fallible Man is the second book in Paul Ricoeur’s early trilogy on the will and the most accessible of his early writings. While the descriptive approach of Freedom and Nature set aside all normative questions, Fallible Man removes those brackets to examine the bad will, asking what makes evil a possibility. Combining rigor and originality, Ricoeur locates the possibility of evil in a self that is fundamentally in conflict with itself. Edited by Scott Davidson, A Companion to Ricoeur's Fallible Man clarifies and contextualizes the central arguments developed in Ricoeur’s philosophy of the will, providing insight into his formative influences and themes. The collection gathers an international group of scholars who specialize in Ricoeur’s thought to shed light on an impressive range of themes from Fallible Man that resonate with contemporary debates in philosophy and religion.

Reading Ricoeur through Law, edited by Marc de Leeuw, George H. Taylor, and Eileen Brennan, is the first collection of essays solely focused on Ricoeur's thinking about law, bringing together both established and emerging scholars to offer a systematic and critical examination of Ricoeur's legal thinking. The chapters not only explore the specific contribution Ricoeur makes to the field of jurisprudence but also examine how Ricoeur's work on law fits, complements, or changes his overall anthropology, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. The book provides a complex insight into how law, ethics, and politics intertwine both from within law as normative rule setting, as well as through the wider social-political and historical context in which law and legal institutions affect our inter-subjective and communal life as lived "with and for others in just institutions." The collection also makes available in English "The Just between the Legal and the Good," a key text in Ricoeur's reflections about law and justice. The core topics of this collection are rights, justice, responsibility, judging, interpretation, argumentation, punishment, and authority, but contributors but also offer original insights in how Ricoeur's philosophical reconceptualization of symbolism, action, ideology, narrative, selfhood, testimony, history, trauma, reconciliation, justice, and forgiveness can be made productive for our understanding of law and legal institutions.

Paul Ricoeur's first book, Freedom and Nature, introduces many themes that resurface in various ways throughout his later work, but its significance has been mostly overlooked in the field of Ricoeur studies. Gathering together an international group of scholars, The Companion to Freedom and Nature is the first book-length study to focus exclusively on Freedom and Nature. It helps readers to understand this complex work by providing careful textual analysis of specific arguments in the book and by situating them in relation to Ricoeur's early influences, including Merleau-Ponty, Nabert, and Ravaisson. But most importantly, this book demonstrates that Freedom and Nature remains a compelling and vital resource for readers today, precisely because it resonates with recent developments in the areas of embodied cognition, philosophical psychology, and philosophy of the will. Freedom and Nature is fundamentally a book about embodiment, and it situates the human body at the crossroads of activity and passivity, motivation and causation, the voluntary and the involuntary. This conception of the body informs Ricoeur's unique treatment of topics such as effort, habit, and attention that are of much interest to scholars today. Together the chapters of this book provide a renewed appreciation of this important and innovative work.

Paul Ricoeur's Moral Anthropology is a guide for readers who are interested in Paul Ricoeur's thoughts on morals in general, bringing together the different aspects of what Geoffrey Dierckxsens understands as Ricoeur's moral anthropology. This anthropology addresses the question what it means to be human, capable of participating in moral life. Dierckxsens argues that Ricoeur shows that this participation implies being a self, living a singular lived existence with others and being responsible in institutions of justice. Through experiencing life one comes to learn taking moral decisions and the reasons for moral life. The wager of Ricoeur's hermeneutical approach to moral anthropology is-so Dierckxsens argues-to understand moral life on the basis of the interpretation of lived existence, rather than on the basis of cultural or natural patterns only, like many contemporary moral theories in analytical philosophy. Ricoeur's moral anthropology is thus particularly timely in that it offers a critical argument against contemporary moral relativism and reductionism. By bringing together Ricoeur's moral anthropology, and recent moral theories this book offers a novel perspective on Ricoeur's already well-established moral theory. Dierckxsens moreover offers a critical perspective by arguing that we should revisit certain moral concepts in Ricoeur's moral anthropology and in contemporary moral theories in analytical philosophy. He evaluates certain concepts in Ricoeur's work, such as the concept of universal moral norms and how it stands against cultural differences in morals. He moreover interrogates certain ideas of contemporary analytical philosophy, such as the idea of cultural moral relativism and whether we can find a common morality across the cultural differences. By placing Ricoeur's ideas on moral life within the context of the contemporary scene of moral theory, this book contributes well to Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur.

Much has been written about animals in applied ethics, environmental ethics, and animal rights. This book takes a new turn, offering an examination of the 'animal question' from a more fundamental, philosophical-anthropological perspective. The contributors in this important volume focus on how the animal has appeared and can be used in philosophical argumentation as a metaphor or reference point that helps us understand what is distinctively human and what is not. A recurring theme in the essays is the existence of a zone of ambiguity between animals and humans, which puts into question comfortable assumptions about the uniqueness and superiority of human nature. While the chapters straddle the boundaries of historical-philosophical and systematic, continental and analytic approaches, their thematic unity knits them together, presenting a rich, broad, and yet cohesive perspective. The first part of the book offers general explorations of the relation between animal and human nature, and of the concomitant existential and ethical dimensions of this relationship. The chapters in the second part address the same theme, but, in so doing, focus on specific aspects of animal and human nature: imagination, politics, history, sense, finitude, and science.

Paul Ricoeur's Moral Anthropology is a guide for readers who are interested in Paul Ricoeur's thoughts on morals in general, bringing together the different aspects of what Geoffrey Dierckxsens understands as Ricoeur's moral anthropology. This anthropology addresses the question what it means to be human, capable of participating in moral life. Dierckxsens argues that Ricoeur shows that this participation implies being a self, living a singular lived existence with others and being responsible in institutions of justice. Through experiencing life one comes to learn taking moral decisions and the reasons for moral life. The wager of Ricoeur's hermeneutical approach to moral anthropology is-so Dierckxsens argues-to understand moral life on the basis of the interpretation of lived existence, rather than on the basis of cultural or natural patterns only, like many contemporary moral theories in analytical philosophy. Ricoeur's moral anthropology is thus particularly timely in that it offers a critical argument against contemporary moral relativism and reductionism. By bringing together Ricoeur's moral anthropology, and recent moral theories this book offers a novel perspective on Ricoeur's already well-established moral theory. Dierckxsens moreover offers a critical perspective by arguing that we should revisit certain moral concepts in Ricoeur's moral anthropology and in contemporary moral theories in analytical philosophy. He evaluates certain concepts in Ricoeur's work, such as the concept of universal moral norms and how it stands against cultural differences in morals. He moreover interrogates certain ideas of contemporary analytical philosophy, such as the idea of cultural moral relativism and whether we can find a common morality across the cultural differences. By placing Ricoeur's ideas on moral life within the context of the contemporary scene of moral theory, this book contributes well to Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur.