10. Key to Husserl’s Ideas I, by Paul Ricoeur. Translated by Bond Harris and Jacqueline Bouchard Spurlock. Edited and with an Introduction by Pol Vandevelde. ISBN 0-87462-609-9. ©1996. Paperbound. Index. $20
In 1950 Paul Ricoeur published his masterful translation of Edumund Husserl’s most essential work, Ideen I, under the title Ideés directrices pour une phénoménologie. In presenting Husserl’s thought, Ricoeur offered a substantial introduction and copious notes that constitute a running commentary to the text in all its most difficult aspects. As a result we have in these 150 pages what is without doubt the best handbook and key to one of the most original minds of the century, the father of phenomenology and creator of the method that transformed continental from a moribund rationalism of the nineteenth century into a vibrant existetialism that remains in the minds of philosophers today an age of excitement not superseded by postmodernism.
Ricoeur strides across this period as one of its major figures, as an interpreter and teacher, and as an original philosopher in his own right. The combination of Husserl and Ricoeur makes this Key to Husserl’s Ideas I one of the best instruments for professors and students alike.
Marquette University Press
