Review article

Paul Ricoeur’s Interpretation of Freud’s Views of Culture Between Eros and Thanatos

Nikola Skledar

Abstract

A well-known contemporary French philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s wide range of theoretical interests also encompasses Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis, a very influential phenomenon in modern culture. Ricoeur’s interest in Freud is philosophical, it is a phenomenological – hermeneutical approach to psychoanalysis which interprets culture in a way, i.e. in its epistemological status as a hermeneutical discipline belongs to humanities rather than natural sciences. The meaning and the task of psychoanalysis therefore are “to re-interpret the integrity of psychological products derived from culture, from dreams to religion, through art and morality.” Using this philosophical method, Ricoeur debates on Freud’s “speculation” about life and death, about the death instinct and the super-ego destructiveness, about the culture between eros and thanatos.

Keywords

psychoanalysis; hermeneutics; culture; eros; thanatos

Hrčak ID:

17637

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/17637

Publication date:

22.11.2007.

Article data in other languages: croatian

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