The University of Groningen, The Radboud University Nijmegen and The Young Academy organize a conference on the impact of Ricoeur in the Humanities. This conference will take place in Groningen, the Netherlands, June 27-29, 2013.

-           Don Ihde, State University of New York at Stony Brook
-           Richard Kearney, Boston College
-           Paul van Tongeren, Radboud University Nijmegen

In the realm of the humanities, Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005) is widely viewed as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. He published many important books and articles which made an impact on almost all areas of the humanities, including history, linguistics, literary studies, theology and philosophy.

In his works, Ricoeur combined the resources and insights of phenomenology and hermeneutics. In line with this double focus, he came to see ‘the text’ as a paradigm for addressing important historical, ethical and philosophical problems. This enabled him, among other things, to recast the problem of personal identity in terms of narrative emplotment; or to consider human action as a meaningful whole that is structured as a text.

However, in the last decades, the vast expansion of new media (video installations, social networks, games, etc.) is rapidly changing the landscape of the humanities, making it entirely different from the text-oriented culture in which Ricoeur was working. In addition, new research approaches like genetics and cognitive science, penetrate the humanities and introduce alternative paradigms which, at first sight, seem to be more in tune with the spirit of the times. Furthermore, considering the increasing marginalization of the humanities in many countries, their future course is far from self-evident. Under pressure of the financial crisis and a changing political reality, the humanities have to find new arguments for legitimating their existence and proving their importance.

Cultural, scientific and political developments like this, challenge Ricoeur’s perspective, but also create opportunities to keep his work alive and develop it in new and unforeseen directions. By means of this conference, we hope to confront present-day concerns with Ricoeur’s fruitful insights in order to help envision a future for the humanities.