Abstract

While the original statement of Ricoeur’s concept of the ”political paradox’ is disappointingly banal at first sight, this article focuses on his further elaboration of this concept in the final decades of his career. The first restatement focuses on the tension between the constitutional form and the inevitable dimension of force in politics. The second restatement concerns the intersection of the vertical relationship of domination and the horizontal relationship of the will to live together. Finally, the third and last restatement describes the tension between a bounded and a bounding role of the state. These restatements eventually show the richness of the concept of the political paradox as an instrument to understand the political existence of mankind. Remarkably, we find that this richness implies that the third restatement radically shifts the historical perspective and the practical consequence of the original paradox.