The Symbolism of Evil
by Paul Ricoeur
Buy on Amazon"According to Ricoeur, the most primal and spontaneous symbols of evil are defilement, sin and guilt ... Ricoeur moves from the elementary symbols of evil into the rich world of myths ... and he ends by suggesting that the clue to the relation between philosophy to mythology is to be found in the aphorism 'The symbol gives rise to the thought' ... Ricoeur's method and argument are too intricate and rich to assess in so short a review. Suffice it to say that this is the most massive accomplisment of any philosopher within the ambience of Christian faith since the appearance of Gabriel Marcel" - Sam Keen, The Christian Century
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"Ricoeur’s book is brilliant at teasing out what it means to have taken on this particular myth, as opposed to—going full circle to where we started—the Babylonian myths. Those myths do not explain suffering and death as the consequence of human responsibility and sin. They center instead on the simple fact that human beings are incredibly noisy. Infants in particular make an appalling racket. That’s what the senior god is furious about. Unable to take his afternoon nap, the god reduces the population by introducing death—particularly death in childbirth and infant mortality—to keep the population down. The Bible offers an alternative account, one that involves love and pair bonding. And then in the Bible, a human choice, a deliberate act, brings down the catastrophe. Ricoeur is not saying that freedom is evil. He’s saying you cannot have a conception of responsibility without developing a conception of evil. As opposed, let’s say, to the myth of Philoctetes from Sophocles, where the disaster comes simply from inadvertently wandering into a sacred precinct you’re not supposed to be. Ricoeur teases out the tiny piece of intentionality that needs to be there for the whole tangled philosophical history of evil and responsibility to be developed. You have to make a choice—Eve’s choice."
Adam and Eve · fivebooks.com