Reading Ricoeur through Law: (Studies in the Thought of Paul Ricoeur)

Reading Ricoeur through Law, edited by Marc de Leeuw, George H. Taylor, and Eileen Brennan, is the first collection of essays solely focused on Ricoeur’s thinking about law, bringing together both established and emerging scholars to offer a systematic and critical examination of Ricoeur’s legal thinking. The chapters not only explore the specific contribution Ricoeur makes to the field of jurisprudence but also examine how Ricoeur’s work on law fits, complements, or changes his overall anthropology, phenomenology, and hermeneutics. The book provides a complex insight into how law, ethics, and politics intertwine both from within law as normative rule setting, as well as through the wider social-political and historical context in which law and legal institutions affect our inter-subjective and communal life as lived “with and for others in just institutions.” The collection also makes available in English “The Just between the Legal and the Good,” a key text in Ricoeur’s reflections about law and justice. The core topics of this collection are rights, justice, responsibility, judging, interpretation, argumentation, punishment, and authority, but contributors also offer original insights in how Ricoeur’s philosophical reconceptualization of symbolism, action, ideology, narrative, selfhood, testimony, history, trauma, reconciliation, justice, and forgiveness can be made productive for our understanding of law and legal institutions.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements Introduction: Reading Ricoeur Through Law Marc De Leeuw, George H. Taylor, Eileen Brennan Introduction to Paul Ricoeur’s “The Just Between the Legal and the Good” 1.The Just Between the Legal and the Good Paul Ricoeur 2.The Plurality of Instances of Justice Paul Ricoeur Reply to Paul Ricoeur Ronald Dworkin 3.Juridical Precedents and Reflective Judgment Roger W. H. Savage 4.The Subject of Rights and Responsibility in Ricoeur’s Legal Philosophy Guido Gorgoni 5.Symbolism and the Generativity of Justice Antoine Garapon 6.Ricoeur, Narrative, and Legal Contingency George H. Taylor 7.Ricoeur’s Juridical Anthropology: Law, Autonomy, and a Life Lived-in-Common Marc De Leeuw 8.The Unbearable Between-ness of Law Francis J. Mootz III 9.Law and Metadiscourse: Ricoeur on Metaphysics and the Ascription of Rights Geoffrey Dierckxsens 10.Between Truth and Justice. Ricoeur on the Roles and Limits of Narrative in Legal Processes Marie-Hélène Desmeules 11.Law and (Dis)empowerment:

About the Author :
Marc de Leeuw is senior lecturer in legal philosophy at the University of New South Wales. George H. Taylor is emeritus professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh. Eileen Brennan is lecturer of philosophy at the DCU Institute of Education at Dublin City University.

Review :
Reading Ricoeur through Law marks a groundbreaking new development in Ricoeur studies, as the first book to explore Ricoeur’s engagement with questions of jurisprudence. Through a dialogue with influential political thinkers and legal scholars, the contributors to this volume touch on many of the deepest questions of law. They reveal the practical relevance of Ricoeur’s call for law and legal practice to be situated within the broader aim to live 'with and for others in just institutions.' In addition, they make a subtle argument for re-reading his entire work through a legal lens, revealing that concerns about law and justice are woven into the fabric of Ricoeur’s entire oeuvre. The editors and contributors deserve praise for this remarkable accomplishment. Clear, accessible, and thought-provoking, this book would be an excellent choice for an engaging seminar or reading group on present-day issues in law. “Paul Ricoeur’s philosophical reflections on the law represent one of the most complex and important contributions of his writings. Yet until now, these reflections have not been fully examined—or even all translated into English and assembled together for easy reference. This book addresses this challenge with great scholarly care and analytic sophistication, and in a true interdisciplinary manner. Lining up an impressive and diverse array of scholars hailing from philosophy as well as legal theory, the volume probes the tensions and connections between law and morality and the relation between the law and institutional systems, and engages with examples and applications that are highly relevant to our global setting today. The essays presented here will push readers to re-think what we mean by ‘justice,’ with and beyond Ricoeur.” These essays are a valuable addition to the scholarly literature on Paul Ricoeur. Not only do they show that Ricoeur makes important and original contributions to the philosophy of law; they show that Ricoeur’s reflections on law make possible a fuller and richer understanding of the rest of his work. The essays are of uniformly high quality, and the inclusion of several texts by Ricoeur makes the book even more useful.