Abstract

Paul Ricoeur writes of these essays that they “do not properly speaking constitute the chapters of a book.... Yet these texts do not come down simply to being occasional writings for some particular circumstance”. This is too modest. This short volume limns a comprehensive account of ethics, politics, and the law that “one might call neo-Aristotelian”. What makes Ricoeur’s position neo-Aristotelian is the insistence that “the question what ought I to do? is secondary in relation to the more elementary question of knowing how I might wish to live my life”. When legal push comes to philosophical shove we must acknowledge the priority of the good over the right.