Acknowledgements

Translator's Note

Preface

On Interpretation

Part I: For a Hermeneutical Phenomenology

1. Phenomenology and Hermeneutics

2. The Task of Hermeneutics

3. The Hermeneutical Function of Distanciation

4. Philosophical Hermeneutics and Biblical Hermeneutics

Part II: From the Hermeneutics of Texts to the Hermeneutics of Action

5. What Is a Text?

6. Explanation and Understanding

7. The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text

8. Imagination in Discourse and in Action

9. Practical Reason

10. Initiative

Part III: Ideology, Utopia and Politics

11. Hegel and Husserl on Intersubjectivity

12. Science and Ideology

13. Hermeneutics and the Critique of Ideology

14. Ideology and Utopia

15. Ethics and Politics

Notes

Paul Ricoeur was a leading French thinker best known for combining phenomenological description with hermeneutic interpretation. His first major work was Philosophy of Will published in the UK in 1980.  Other translated works include The Symbolization of Evil and The Conflict of Interpretations.  Born in 1913 he was a professor at Nanterre and Strasbourg.  In 2004, he was awarded the second John W. Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Human Sciences (shared with Jaroslav Pelikan).  Ricoeur died in 2005.

Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago and the University of Paris X, Nanterre, and a leading figure in twentieth-century French philosophy. 
From Text to Action provides an invaluable companion to Ricoeur's classic text, The Conflict of Interpretations. Here he further develops his general theory of interpretation in relation to his own philosophical background and influences: Hegel, Husserl, Gadamer and Weber. This is a hugely important work from a key figure in contemporary philosophy that will be of interest to those starting out in the field of hermeneutics, as well as those already familiar with Ricoeur's work.