The “essays and lecture” brought together in this volume scrupulousy respect Ricoeur’s original text in conformity with the policy of the editorial commitee of the Font Ricoeur, the Ricoeur Archive. Any Modifications that have been introduced have to do only with changes in punctuation, or typograpical errors, or evident mistakes that may exist in the manuscripts or the already published versions; the most important of these are indicated by brakets. Other modifications have been made to quoted passages and references (which are often imprecise or incomplete). But we have not thought it necessary to indocate all of these; only the most significant of them are followed by the indication “Editors’ note.”