European University Institute Library

Ricoeur and the negation of happiness, Alison Scott-Baumann

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 173-180) and index

index present

non fiction

Ricoeur and the negation of happiness

bibliography

830370056

Alison Scott-Baumann

Ricœur lectured and wrote for over twenty years on negation ('Do I understand something better if I know what it is not, and what is not-ness?') and never published his extensive writings on this subject. Ricœur concluded that there are multiple forms of negation; it can, for example, be the other person (Plato), the not knowable nature of our world (Kant), the included opposite (Hegel), apophatic spirituality (Plotinus on not being able to know God) and existential nothingness (Sartre). Ricœur, working on Kant, Hegel and Sartre, decided that all these forms of negation are incompatible and also fatally flawed because they fail to resolve false binaries of negative: positive. Alison Scott-Baumann demonstrates how Ricœur subsequently incorporated negation into his linguistic turn, using dialectics, metaphor, narrative, parable and translation in order to show how negation is in us, not outside us: language both creates and clarifies false binaries. He bestows upon negation a strong and central role in the human condition, and its inevitability is reflected in his writings, if we look carefully. Ricœur and the Negation of Happiness draws on Ricœur's published works, previously unavailable archival material and many other sources.--, Provided by Publisher

Acknowledgements Abbreviations and Bibliographic Note Prologue Introduction 1. Reading Ricoeur on Negation 2. The Negation Papers 3. Heraclitus, Parmenides and Plato: Before the Logic of Negation 4. Hegel's Dialectical Dominance 5. Kant: Negation in a Philosophy of Limits 6. Affirmative Negatives: Nietzsche, Sartre, Deleuze, Murdoch <U+0127> and Plotinus 7. Happiness <U+0127> and you, what will you do? Epilogue Notes Bibliography Index