Key Arguments

• Ricoeur announces that 'The present study will be confined to establishing the primacy of ethics over morality — that is, of the aim over the norm.', indicating a structural priority of telos over deontic rule.
• He explicitly raises and rejects the worry that focusing on the ethical aim means giving up meaningful rigor: 'Is our inquiry into the ethical aim, leaving aside the deontological mo- ment, a renouncement of any meaningful discussion, allowing free reign to effusions of "good" sentiments? Not at all.'
• He offers a precise, articulated definition meant to generate systematic work: 'The definition that follows, on the contrary, will, because of its articulated character, give rise to a labor of thinking that will occupy the remainder of this study. Let us de fine "ethical intention" as aiming at the "good life" with and for others in y just institutions.'
• He announces a tripartite analysis: 'The three high points of this definition will be taken, each in turn, as the object of a separate analysis.', and further that these three will remain the 'successive reference points' for relating moral norm and ethical aim in the following studies.
• He notes that by entering ethics via the notion of the good life he avoids an immediate, abstract appeal to selfhood: 'The major advantage of entering into the ethical problematic by way of the notion of the "good life" is that it does not refer directly to selfhood in the figure of self-esteem.'
• He indicates that this definition will structure the entire itinerary of meaning: self-esteem will only assume 'its complete sense only at the end of the itinerary of meaning traced out by the three components of the ethical aim.', showing that the three elements are systematically ordered.

Source Quotes

Aiming at the "Good Life" . . . The present study will be confined to establishing the primacy of ethics over morality — that is, of the aim over the norm. It will be the task of the following study to grant their rightful place to moral norms, without letting them have the final word.

It will be the task of the following study to grant their rightful place to moral norms, without letting them have the final word. Is our inquiry into the ethical aim, leaving aside the deontological mo- ment, a renouncement of any meaningful discussion, allowing free reign to effusions of "good" sentiments? Not at all. The definition that follows, on the contrary, will, because of its articulated character, give rise to a labor of thinking that will occupy the remainder of this study.

The definition that follows, on the contrary, will, because of its articulated character, give rise to a labor of thinking that will occupy the remainder of this study. Let us de fine "ethical intention" as aiming at the "good life" with and for others in y just institutions. The three high points of this definition will be taken, each in turn, as the object of a separate analysis.

Let us de fine "ethical intention" as aiming at the "good life" with and for others in y just institutions. The three high points of this definition will be taken, each in turn, as the object of a separate analysis. The same three components will, in the two studies that follow, form the successive reference points for our reflection on the relation between the moral norm and the ethi cal aim.

The same three components will, in the two studies that follow, form the successive reference points for our reflection on the relation between the moral norm and the ethi cal aim. The major advantage of entering into the ethical problematic by way of the notion of the "good life" is that it does not refer directly to selfhood in the figure of self-esteem. If self-esteem does indeed drawn its initial meaning from the reflexive movement through which the evaluation of certain actions judged to be good are carried back to the author of these actions, this meaning remains abstract as long as it lacks the dialogic struc ture which is introduced by the reference to others.

This dialogic struc ture, in its turn, remains incomplete outside of the reference to just institutions. In this sense, self-esteem assumes its complete sense only at the end of the itinerary of meaning traced out by the three components of the ethical aim. The first component of the ethical aim is what Aristotle called "living well," or the "good life" — "true life," one could say in the wake of Marcel Proust.

Key Concepts

• The present study will be confined to establishing the primacy of ethics over morality — that is, of the aim over the norm.
• Is our inquiry into the ethical aim, leaving aside the deontological mo- ment, a renouncement of any meaningful discussion, allowing free reign to effusions of "good" sentiments? Not at all.
• Let us de fine "ethical intention" as aiming at the "good life" with and for others in y just institutions.
• The three high points of this definition will be taken, each in turn, as the object of a separate analysis.
• The major advantage of entering into the ethical problematic by way of the notion of the "good life" is that it does not refer directly to selfhood in the figure of self-esteem.
• self-esteem assumes its complete sense only at the end of the itinerary of meaning traced out by the three components of the ethical aim.

Context

Opening of subsection '1. Aiming at the "Good Life" . . .', where Ricoeur defines 'ethical intention', outlines the threefold structure of his ethical aim, and states the programmatic primacy of ethics (aim) over morality (norm) while insisting on conceptual rigor.