Paul Ricœur

French philosopher (1913–2005)

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Lived 1913–2005, aged 92France

France AcademicsAcademic

Wikipedia
48 languages
Cross-language footprint
Era
1913–2005
Aged 92
Awards
18
recognised works

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

He made the interpretation of texts a philosophical method—reading myths, scripture, Freud, and stories not as static meanings but as living acts of understanding that remake both reader and world.

Biography

About

Jean Paul Gustave Ricœur was born on 27 February 1913 in France and trained in a philosophical lineage that included Martin Heidegger, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Gabriel Marcel. He fused phenomenology—the close study of lived experience—with hermeneutics, the art of interpretation, and turned that hybrid toward places philosophy rarely went: mythology, biblical exegesis, psychoanalysis, metaphor, narrative. The method didn't just analyze texts; it treated interpretation itself as a creative, transformative act. In 2000 the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy recognized him for having "revolutioniz…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Paul Ricœur

Paul Ricœur

said1975

People do things, and then they imagine what they are doing in a kind of cloudy realm.

— p. 5

Paul Ricœur

saidundated

I dislike those who present myself as a Protestant philosopher; I am a philosopher and a Protestant.

— Je suis irrité lorsqu’on me présente comme philosophe protestant, je suis philosophe et protestant.

Paul Ricœur

saidundated

The "hermeneutics of suspicion" is a phrase coined by Paul Ricoeur to capture a common spirit that pervades the writings of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche.

— Rita Felski, "Critique and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion", M/C Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1 (2012).

Paul Ricœur

saidundated