Evil: A challenge to philosophy and theology [Paperback]

Paul Ricoeur (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0826494765 | ISBN-13: 978-0826494764 | Publication Date: June 21, 2007 | Edition: 2

Where does evil come from? How is it that we do evil? This book falls into three parts. The fi rst part deals with the magnitude and complexity of the problem of evil from a phenomenological perspective. The second part investigates the levels of speculation on the origin and nature of evil. The third discusses thinking, acting and feeling in connection with evil. The discussion runs in the classic intellectual tradition from Augustine, through Hegel, Leibnitz, Kant, and Nietzsche. But the voice is always that of Paul Ricoeur himself, though he also refers to modern writers like Harold Kushner (When Bad Things Happen to Good People) and John K. Roth (Encountering Evil). Ricoeur considers here man's vulnerability to evil with depth and matchless sensitivity.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"offers rich philosophical resources for theological reflection"
Brian Gregor, Heythrop Journal

Mention in Church Times, January 2009

About the Author

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.

Product Details

• Paperback: 80 pages
• Publisher: Continuum; 2 edition (June 21, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826494765
• ISBN-13: 978-0826494764
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #712,206 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars What good is wisdom if you can't communicate it?, January 16, 2008

By 

Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Evil: A challenge to philosophy and theology (Paperback)

Over the years, I've been to a boatload of academic conferences and listened to dozens of academic, highly professional papers in philosophy and theology. Too often, the papers are so specialized that only a handful of people in the world could possibly follow them. A not uncommon feeling walking out of a lecture room after hearing one of these papers is "huh?"

Reading (and re-reading, and re-reading yet again) Ricoeur's Evil was like walking out of those lecture rooms--which somehow seems appropriate, since the essay is the text of one of his lectures. Ricoeur at his best is irritatingly obscure. Here, he's maddeningly obtuse. I made the mistake of requiring this book in one of my classes, and none of my students--bright young people all--could figure out what Ricoeur was trying to say. Neither could I, actually.

In broad strokes, Ricoeur wants to claim that the experience of evil, either one's own or another's suffering, can never be demythologized, regardless of how strenuously we try to do so. Discourse about evil historically and psychologically has tended toward reductionism, moving from a mythic account, which simply accepts it as a given in life, to theodicy, which tries to explain it away. But the experience remains irreducible.

Okay. But if this is all Ricoeur is saying, it's neither terribly interesting nor original. What's at stake is why the experience of evil is irreducible, and for the life of me I can't figure out what Ricoeur's answer is. Nor is he clear in discussing the different levels of reductionistic discourse about evil. Especially impenetrable are his discussions of what he calls "the stage of gnosticism and anti-gnostic gnosis" (I don't even know what he intends the second term to mean) and Barth's negative dialectic.

In short, a maddening little book. Its subtitle is "A Challenge to Philosophy and Theology." Too right.

0 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Tell your friends not to waste their time or money., May 23, 2009

By 

Thomas J. Catalano (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Evil: A challenge to philosophy and theology (Paperback)

Bored to tears.

It's a wonder that some people develop a reputation as scholarly and profound. I thing people who give them this reputation are fearful of calling them and their works, "boring."

The book is currently on my pile of old newspapers and magazines which are being thrown away.