Mootz, Francis. "Ricoeur's Critical Hermeneutics and the Psychotherapeutic Model of Critical Theory." After Ricoeur Conference, October 2006.

Abstract: One of Paul Ricoeur’s enduring legacies is his sophisticated mediation of the famous debate between Hans-Georg Gadamer and Jürgen Habermas regarding the potential for, and scope of, social critique. In this paper, I first recount the Gadamer-Habermas debate, focusing on their competing accounts of the theoretical significance of Freudian psychoanalysis. Next, I sketch Ricoeur’s mediation of the debate in concert with his distinctive reading of Freud. Finally, I extend his approach by looking to psychotherapeutic model of critique. I describe the broad contours of an emerging postmodern account of psychotherapeutic practice that serves as a model of the critical hermeneutics championed by Ricoeur. . . . Download the whole paper here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1315996.