Philosophy at the Boundary of Reason

Patrick L. Bourgeois is the William and Audrey Hutchinson Distinguished Professor at Loyola University. He is the author of several books, including Traces of Understanding: A Profile of Heidegger's and Ricoeur's Hermeneutics (coauthored with Frank Schalow) and, most recently, Mead and Merleau-Ponty: Toward a Common Vision (coauthored with Sandra B. Rosenthal), published by SUNY Press.

• Acknowledgments Preface PART I. Philosophy at the Boundary of Reason 1. Ethics as the Limit of Reason 2. Death, End, and Limit of Philosophy 3. Limit, Critique, and Reason 4. Limit and Ground in Practical Reason PART II. Imagination at the Boundary of Reason 5. Imagination at the Boundary 6. Imagination: Postmodern Deconstruction and Ricoeur 7. Sign, Time, and Trace: Semiotics and the Deconstruction of Presence PART III. Ethics and Postmodernity 8. Ricoeur and Levinas 9. Ethics and Postmodernity 10. The Ethics of Good, and the Morality of Obligation 11. Judging in Concrete Situations: The Equitable Notes Index

"For the first time Ricoeur's ethics is developed as it relates to the problematic modern/postmodern context and is presented as an alternative to the current skeptical challenges in postmodern ethics floating around on the likes of Caputo, Derrida, and Levinas. A brilliant critique of Derrida is included." — James L. Marsh, author of Critique, Action, and Liberation and Process, Praxis, and Transcendence"Bourgeois is one of the most insightful interpreters of Ricoeur in America today. Few possess an understanding and appreciation of Ricoeur's entire corpus the way he does. His reading of Ricoeur as a philosopher of limit is original, as is his attempt to show that there are resources within Ricoeur's thought to answer not only the Levinasian critique of ontology and ethics, but also the deconstructive critique of philosophy. No one has contrasted the thought of Ricoeur and postmodern philosophy as rigorously as Bourgeois has done in this work." — David M. Kaplan, Polytechnic University