- Shopping Bag ( 0 items )
Other sellers (Paperback)
-
All (6) from $11.00
-
New (4) from $21.23
-
Used (2) from $11.00
More About This Textbook
Overview
Recognition, though it figures profoundly in our understanding of objects and persons, identity and ideas, has never before been the subject of a single, sustained philosophical inquiry. This work, by one of contemporary philosophy's most distinguished voices, pursues recognition through its various philosophical guises and meanings—and, through the "course of recognition," seeks to develop nothing less than a proper hermeneutics of mutual recognition.
Originally delivered as lectures at the Institute for the Human Sciences at Vienna, the essays collected here consider recognition in three of its forms. The first chapter, focusing on knowledge of objects, points to the role of recognition in modern epistemology; the second, concerned with what might be called the recognition of responsibility, traces the understanding of agency and moral responsibility from the ancients up to the present day; and the third takes up the problem of recognition and identity, which extends from Hegel's discussion of the struggle for recognition through contemporary arguments about identity and multiculturalism. Throughout, Paul Ricoeur probes the significance of our capacity to recognize people and objects, and of self-recognition and self-identity in relation to the gift of mutual recognition. Drawing inspiration from such literary texts as The Odyssey and Oedipus at Colonus, and engaging some of the classic writings of the Continental philosophical tradition—by Kant, Hobbes, Hegel, Augustine, Locke, and Bergson—The Course of Recognition ranges over vast expanses of time and subject matter and in the process suggests a number of highly insightful ways of thinking through the major questions of modern philosophy.
Editorial Reviews
Library Journal
Ricoeur (philosophy, emeritus, Univs. of Paris and Chicago; Memory, History, Forgetting) is one of the major French philosophers of the 20th century. In these essays, originally delivered as lectures at the Institute for the Human Sciences at Vienna, he endeavors to connect the various senses of recognition. We speak, for instance, of recognizing physical objects, recognizing other people, recognizing our responsibility for actions, and being recognized by others. Ricoeur finds a transition from an active to a passive voice in these various senses of the verb to recognize and organizes his discussion around this transition. He begins by focusing on the knowledge of objects, with a careful account of Immanuel Kant's move away from the substantial self of Ren Descartes. He then considers Henri Bergson's notion of memory and moves on to an analysis of mutual recognition that heavily stresses the discussions of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. With his characteristic erudition, Ricoeur also surveys the views of sociologist and anthropologist Marcel Mauss as well as those of his successors and critics. He displays a remarkable ability to convey sympathetically the ideas of a widely disparate group of thinkers and makes an excellent case, in readily comprehensible language, for the centrality of recognition in modern philosophy. An essential purchase for all philosophy collections.-David Gordon, Bowling Green State Univ., OH Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.Product Details
Related Subjects
Meet the Author
Paul Ricoeur was Professor of Philosophy at the Universities of Paris and Chicago. He is the author of many books, including Time and Narrative, Oneself as Another, and Memory, History, Forgetting.
Table of Contents