Antropologiczne uwarunkowania zła specyficznie ludzkiego — namiętności we wczesnej Ricoeurowskiej filozofii woli

The paper presents the Ricoeurian concept of passions which is a minor topic in the early stage of his work. If one considers the place of the examined issue in the intellectual development of the philosopher, it becomes clear that the analyzed question is a part of a larger project which consists firstly in a phenomenological description of human volitional structures, and secondly in a transcendental reflec­tion on human constitutive fallibility. The problems studied in the article relate to some extent to the contemporary debate on the cognitive function of emotions. In this respect, Ricoeur’s view offers a new formulation of a classical matter in practi­cal philosophy, in order to point out the anthropological dimensions that make evil possible. What can be established as a result is that in both approaches passions are a kind of aberration of typically human affective phenomena.