Paul Ricoeur and the Hope of Higher Education

"As the voice of John Henry Newman was to the nineteenth century university, so perhaps Paul Ricoeur will be to the university of our own time. This remarkable collection of essays speaks immediately to the immediate crisis of a world facing pandemic and potential economic and moral collapse, and within it the role of higher education to sustain human flourishing and humane, ethical, and critical thinking in an age when the liberal arts are in danger of being squeezed from the curriculum. Facing the future in hope requires a rootedness in the philosophical, hermeneutical, and ethical density of Ricoeur’s teaching, and this book, with consummate scholarship, offers a vision to research and education that lies at the very heart of what it is to be fully human in a world where that fundamental element in our society is being threatened. This is a book to be pondered deeply by all teachers and students."

-- David Jasper, University of Glasgow

“The barbarians are no longer at the gates; they have already entered our citadels of higher education, transforming institutions for truth-seeking, cultural memory, critical thought, character formation, and societal flourishing into over-managed factories for functionalist, techno-capitalism. Humanistic and humane literary and philosophical scholarship is one of the university’s few remaining defenses. In Paul Ricouer and the Hope of Higher Education world-class scholars creatively apply Ricouer’s thought to the crisis of the modern university, clearly challenging us to create a more just, transformational, and wise, post-covid world. These illuminating and liberating essays are bright lights of hope in a dark time.”

-- Peter Hampson, University of Oxford

“This book is precisely the thing we need not only to deal with the calamity in higher education but also to set a new agenda for the future of the university. I salute the editors for giving us this rich banquet of thought that can make us not only better teachers, but better thinkers as well as more astute moral agents. Even as we are plagued by our prejudices, we are called to be builders of a better and more just university. Read this book to be inspired, informed, and called forth for our students, our world and ourselves.”

-- Jim Wellman, University of Washington

"This exciting new volume on the thought of Paul Ricoeur opens insights into his work as well as exploring its implications for considering the modern university as a just institution. In good Ricoeurian fashion, the authors, each an important scholar in her or his own right, thinks with Ricoeur but also works to think beyond him on the meaning and purpose of the just university. Scholars interested in Ricoeur’s work, philosophers of education, and anyone interested in the place of institutions in our common life will be excited and instructed by this fine volume. The editors are to be commended for gathering fine scholars in order to address this timely topic."

-- William Schweiker, The University of Chi