 Ricoeur’s contributions are notoriously difficult to reduce to a specific position or otherwise categorize, in part because he practiced what he preached. In his career, his route to self-understanding was influenced by reflexive philosophy, Husserl and Heidegger, French structuralism, as well as by contemporary Anglo-American philosophy (see Ricoeur “On Interpretation,” 12–15). Moreover, his inquiries range over topics in areas as diverse as religion, anthropology, psychology, history, and literature. His contributions to hermeneutics are perhaps especially characterized, however, by the concern for possibilities of the mediating role of language to establish critical distance in interpretive experience and by his focus on the significance of interpretive experience for ethical and political agency.