  The French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913–2005), whose philosophy was profoundly influenced by Husserlian phenomenology, while never identifying himself as a personalist, shared many of the concerns and interests dear to personalists, and both benefited from and contributed to the development of personalistic thought in France. Gabriel Marcel was one of Ricoeur’s philosophical mentors, and Ricoeur was also deeply influenced by his contact with Emmanuel Mounier, especially in the postwar years, 1946–1951. He contributed essays to Esprit as well as the journal Le Christianisme social. Ricoeur drew on many of the themes most precious to Mounier, such as the nature of human freedom and the centrality of the human person vis-à-vis the state, though his own later development of these themes departed considerably from Mounier’s. He also shared personalism’s rejection of materialism and of Cartesian dualism, and a rejection of abstractions in favor of concrete human reality. Perhaps the single greatest element of Mounier’s personalism adopted by Ricoeur, in fact, was the impermissibility of withdrawal from political and social engagement.