Reviews for Paul Ricoeur: The Promise and Risk of Politics

The average rating for Paul Ricoeur: The Promise and Risk of Politics based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-11-16 00:00:00 Bernd Nitsche Johnson runs through Derrida's idea of deconstruction and his continuation, or rather critique of Claude Levi-Strauss and French structuralism. For Derrida, language is fundamental to everything. And for the philosopher, hermeneutic problems require a deep Nietzschean exploration behind the words and meanings we typically take for granted. Language is about power, and the logocentric systems we set up to explore things in the West are based on domination of the Subaltern folk. In other words, "there is nothing outside the text" as Derrida puts it. Whilst Derrida never gave a simplistic or rounded set theory like Marx and Husserl, he does provide a set of ideas which allow us to examine literature (in the broadest sense of the term) and it's implications for human understanding. Johnson does a good job at explaining a complex thinker. However, it is worth knowing a bit of background about Phenomenology, Existentialism and Structuralism, even if it no more than a biographical or a cursory Wikipedia-level knowledge beforehand.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-06-05 00:00:00 Jos� Figueira More an essay than a book, but a clear summation of one vital part of Derrida's philosophical project: his redefining of "writing" and deconstruction of logocentrism using Derrida's discussion of Levi-Strauss's "A Writing Lesson" from Triste Tropiques.