Moral creativity: Paul Ricoeur and the poetics of possibility

Abstract

John Wall argues that moral life is inherently creative. Creativity, he says, is an element not just in the expression of moral sentiments, the application of moral principles, or the formation of moral cultures, but also the very activity of living morally itself. He supports his argument by means of an examination and critique of the moral thought of the French hermeneutical phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur, especially his poetics of will. Wall places Ricoeur's work in the larger context of historical and contemporary conversations about moral transformation. In the process, he draws new connections between sin and tragedy, ethics and poetics, and the moral life and religious mythology. If moral life is creative at its core, Wall argues, it challenges all of these inherited oppositions and demands some fundamental rethinking of the nature and meaning of moral life itself.