Ricoeur on Moral Religion : A Hermeneutics of Ethical Life

This book examines the distinctive and significant contribution of the great French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur to contemporary debates in ethics and philosophy of religion. James Carter argues that Ricoeur's later writings in particular offer a vision of ethical life that can be understood as a 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. What emerges 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.