From Vulnerability to Promise: Perspectives on Ricoeur from Women Philosophers

From the outset, Paul Ricoeur’s work gives centrality to man’s bodily and sensitive nature--his primordial affectivity and fragility--as sources of free action. From Vulnerability to Promise: Perspectives on Ricoeur from Women Philosophers explores this dimension and its ethical, political, and conceptual implications, focusing on the embodied dimension of existence, its vulnerability, and its possibilities of attestation and recognition. Edited by Sophie-Jan Arrien and Beatriz Contreras, this book examines the relationships--passivity and activity, mind and body, singularity and sociality, finitude and transcendence--that lie at the heart of Ricoeur’s philosophical anthropology, revealing its ontological richness and ethical significance. Within this dimension, the ten contributors approach personal human identity in Ricoeur’s work from multiple perspectives: the narrative dimension of understanding; birth and privacy; freedom and recognition; love and consent; justice and respect in the face of abuse; the vulnerability of our natural environment; our inescapable finitude. These viewpoints are informed by both their vision as women philosophers, empowering their embodied condition in a reflexive way, and the urgency of reflecting on the human condition in order to find continuity between its passionate, affective, and finite forces.

Sophie-Jan Arrien is full professor of philosophy at Université Laval, Québec.

Beatriz Contreras Tasso is tenured professor of philosophy at Pontifical Catholic University.