Reading Religious Ritual with Ricoeur: Between Fragility and Hope

Reading Religious Ritual with Ricoeur explores the relationship between Ricoeur's hermeneutic philosophy and the interpretation of human ritual practices, highlighting the significance of considering liturgical expression in understanding religion. It demonstrates how Ricoeur's accounts of truth, the world of the text, religious language, imagination, and identity apply to liturgical experience, emphasizing the tension between fragility and hope in religious practices.

Format: Hardback
Length: 300 pages
Publication date: 20 August 2021
Publisher: Lexington Books

Reading Religious Ritual with Ricoeur: Between Fragility and Hope creates a dialogue between Ricœur's hermeneutic philosophy and the interpretation of human ritual practices. In the first part of the book, Christina M. Gschwandtner shows that Ricœur's account of religion would be deepened if it were to take into account not only the biblical texts but also forms of liturgical expression. She challenges Ricœur's early reading of the symbol and second naïveté, extends his interpretation of biblical texts and faith to consider religious actions more fully, and suggests that ritual can enhance human capacities. The second part of the book employs Ricœur's hermeneutics to shed light on the analysis of liturgy, demonstrating that his accounts of truth, of the world of the text, of religious language, of the imagination, and of the formation of identity are all eminently applicable to liturgical experience. Reading Religious Ritual with Ricoeur argues that one of the most significant themes in Ricœur's work—the tension between fragility and hope—is especially helpful for understanding what liturgy does and how it functions. Seeing how liturgy and ritual configure fragility and hope also enriches Ricœur's account of the role and function of religion in human experience.

Weight: 617g
Dimension: 228 x 161 x 28 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781793647177