ABSTRACT
Paul Ricœur’s political phenomenology focuses on the paradoxical nature of politics. This chapter shows how he distinguishes paradoxical combinations of political form and political force, of horizontal and vertical political relationships, and, later on, of the bounded and bounding character of the political sphere. It further shows how institutions in his anthropology bridge the gap between ethics and politics. The attestation of personhood colors ethics as a pursuit of “the good life with and for others in just institutions.” This implies that the political task of a human person is a continuation of his ethical task. In other words, the political task consists of developing and conserving an institutional framework that structurally enables everyone to make full use of their human capabilities, considering both the role and the risk implied by the political paradoxes. The chapter furthermore situates Ricœur in the republican tradition of political philosophy, albeit in a version of his own. The link between his phenomenology of selfhood and alterity and the ensuing conception of civic responsibility allows Ricœur to avoid important shortcomings of other versions of contemporary republicanism, such as Philip Pettit’s civic republicanism or Michael Sandel’s neo-Aristotelean republicanism.
