Ricoeur on Moral Religion

In Ricoeur on Moral Religion, James Carter argues that Paul Ricoeur''s later philosophical writings provide a highly instructive interpretive key with which to assess his philosophical project as a whole. This first systematic study of the ''later Ricoeur'' offers a critical yet sympathetic reconstruction of Ricoeur''s hermeneutics of ethical life, which demonstrates his significant contribution to contemporary philosophy of religion and moral philosophy. Whatemerges is a clear and distinctive moral religion that binds humans together universally on the basis of the life they share as capable beings. Carter also uncovers a hitherto unforeseen thread in Ricoeur''s writings concerning ethical life, pulled through his own readings of Spinoza, Aristotle, and Kant.Ricoeur''s hermeneutics is structured by a Kantian architectonic informed at different levels by these three philosophers, who ground a rich, holistic, and ultimately rationalist account of ethical life and religion that resists the trappings of both positivism and postmodernism.