Companion to Ricoeur's Freedom and Nature

Scott Davidson is professor and chair of the Department of Philosophy and Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University.

• Editor’s Introduction: Freedom and Nature, Then and NowScott DavidsonPart I: Historical Influences1. Ricoeur and Merleau-Ponty: From Perception to ActionMarc-Antoine Vallée 2. Act, Sign and Objectivity: Jean Nabert’s Influence on the Ricoeurian Phenomenology of the WillJean-Luc Amalric 3. Ravaisson and Ricoeur on HabitJakub Capek4. The Influence of Aquinas’s Psychology and Cosmology on Ricoeur’s Freedom and Nature Michael Sohn Part II: Key Themes5. The Paradox of Attention: The Action of the Self upon ItselfMichael A. Johnson6. The Status of the Subject in Ricoeur’s Phenomenology of DecisionJohann Michel7. Volo, ergo sum: Ricoeur Reading Maine de Biran on Effort and Resistance, the Voluntary and the InvoluntaryEftichis Pirovolakis8. On HabitGrégori Jean9. The Phenomenon of Life and its PathosScott DavidsonPart III: New Trajectories10. A Descriptive Science of First-Person Experience: For an Experiential PhenomenologyNatalie Depraz11. Ricoeur’s Take on Embodied Cognition and Imagination: Enactivism in Light of Freedom and NatureGeoffrey Dierckxsens12. Freedom and Resentment and Ricoeur: Towards a Normative-Narrative Theory of Agency Adam J. Graves

Paul Ricoeur was a prolific author. His contributions to philosophy, hermeneutical theology, literary theory, psychoanalysis, ethics, political theory, and so on, span thousands of pages. This may be why some of his earlier work—and his dense but amazingly rich dissertation Freedom and Nature in particular—has not gotten the readership it would clearly merit. Scott Davidson’s A Companion to Ricoeur’s "Freedom and Nature" aims to fill that gap and provide some instruction to lead more scholars to be more knowledgeable of Ricoeur’s crucially important early text that introduces many themes of his later work. . . . Overall, the Companion to Ricoeur’s "Freedom and Nature" is a much needed and welcome contribution that helps in understanding the richness of Ricoeur’s early thought and also its formative role for virtually all of his subsequent work.