Tact, promise and conviction Ethical combination of tradition and innovation in Paul Ricoeur

The ethics of solicitude in Ricoeur combines a detailed articulation of three polarized moments which spring from fertile traditional sources: Aristotelian phronesis, the Kantian deontological legacy, and the formulation of Hegelian Sittlichkeit. The Ricoeurian over-determination of these models exhibits a careful critical reappropriation, whose hermeneutical originality takes account of its fertility philosophy to address current ethical demands and their more important oppositions. This overdeterminataion proposes a fine distinction of levels of mediation and stages of fulfillment. Practical wisdom is the result of this interpretation and the narrative genre is the most notable mediating element. The creative merit of this ethics proposal is the interpretation of ipseity, a pole of identity that is at the basis of the original ethical relation between oneself and another. Three exemplary moments in this path are: touch, the promise and conviction.