Ranging across topics in ethics and metaphysics, psychoanalysis and hermeneutics, history, politics and religion, Critique and Conviction provides unique insight into the ideas and sources of influence which have shaped Ricoeur's philosophical approach and defined his core concerns. Ricoeur also discusses in detail a number of topics about which he has not written extensively before, including questions of aesthetics and current affairs.

This remarkable testimony by one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century will be of great interest to students of philosophy, theology, literary theory and social and political theory.