Good life and action in Paul Ricoeur ́s ethics

Abstract

After presenting a map of Paul Ricoeur’s ethical philosophy, the following pages explore the way in which he adopts the Aristotelian concept of good life, thus to pinpoint its continuity with the contemporary concept of action, proper to the analytical philosophy, though amplified by life’s practices and plans, in order to show a broader framework for ethics’ teleological perspective, according to which all human actions tend to a good that is simultaneously its end. The narrative unity of a life, from the stance of the hermeneutical philosophy developed by Ricoeur, is the working locus of every ethical reflection insofar it is a narrative that presents actions as moments of more complex actions, from which in turn surface increasingly broader teleological schemes.