Paul Ricoeur - 1913-2005

I, certainly, was not good enough to study with him, but he was on my beloved friend Mark's dissertation committee, and so I hope there was some osmotic influence. Crooked Timber alerted me to his death, John McGowan at Michael Bérubé's site says this:

"Nothing disturbs me more in current intellectual work than contemptuous and peremptory dismissal, which produces a tunnel vision by justifying not paying attention to whole swathes of the intellectual landscape. "That’s not my field" is bad enough, but "those people have nothing of worth or interest to say" is much worse. Ricoeur showed us, again and again, another way of doing our work. His work embodies the conviction that understanding the world is a communal enterprise."

So against the grain right now - deprived of another light, we must take note, remember and do it ourselves.