Paul Ricoeur, who died on Friday at age 92, was one of the most distinguished and prolific philosophers of his generation and published extensively on subjects ranging from structuralism, theology, and phenomenology to psychoanalysis and hermeneutics. He was chiefly preoccupied with what is arguably the greatest philosophical theme: the meaning of life.

A traditional philosopher (his work was systematic and continually referred back to the classics of Western philosophy), Ricoeur’s best-known writing was in the field of phenomenology – the study of how perceptions of events shape a person’s reality. He considered two questions to be fundamental to philosophy: “Who am I?” and “How should I live?” In his analyses of these questions, he discussed the nature of language, narrative, interpretation, human action and will, freedom, religion, and evil.

Throughout his studies of human beings – which he came to call a philosophical anthropology of the “capable person” – he aimed to give an account of the capabilities and vulnerabilities that are displayed in all human activities, and he worked to make philosophical sense of the past and of our continuing involvement in it. He was much influenced by Christianity, and made a detailed study of the interpretation of the Bible. We should conduct our lives, Ricoeur wrote, guided by a “practical wisdom” that combines the understanding of universal moral laws with a respect for individuals.

Jean Paul Gustave Ricoeur was born on February 27, 1913 in Valence, in southeast France. His mother died when he was an infant, and after his father was killed in the First World War, Paul and his sister, Alice, were brought up by an aunt and their paternal grandparents. They were devout Protestants, and the children were regularly instructed to read the Bible.

A gifted student, Ricoeur studied Philosophy at the University of Rennes before winning a scholarship to the Sorbonne in 1934, where he first met the philosopher Gabriel Marcel, who became a lifelong friend. Ricoeur then embarked on a career as a schoolteacher, but on the outbreak of the Second World War, he was drafted to serve in the French army. A year later, however, his unit was captured during the German invasion of France, and he spent the next five years as a prisoner of war.

Despite the circumstances, it was an intellectually fruitful period. In “Critique and Conviction: Conversations With Francois Azouvi and Marc De Launay” (1998), Ricoeur described how he and his fellow prisoners organized reading classes and seminars, and he read extensively, notably Jaspers, Heidegger and Husserl, all of whom influenced his later work. Indeed, academic standards were so high in the camp that it was accredited as a degree-granting institution by the Vichy government. Ricoeur was later awarded the Croix de Guerre.

After the war, he returned to teaching before being appointed lecturer in the history of philosophy at the University of Strasbourg, where he remained until 1956. During this period, he published widely, notably a translation and commentary of “A Key to Husserl’s Ideas I,” and “Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary” (1950), which established Ricoeur’s reputation as an expert on the philosophy of the will.

In 1956, he took up the chair of general philosophy at the Sorbonne. During this time, he wrote “The Symbolism of Evil” (1960) and “Freud and Philosophy: An Essay on Interpretation” (1965), one of the most comprehensive accounts of Freud’s theories from a philosophical point of view.

In 1970, he left France to take up a post at University of Chicago. There he became interested in American philosophy and social science and published several books including “The Rule of Metaphor” (1975) and the three-volume “Time and Narrative” (1983-85). He retired in 1985.

Ricoeur continued to publish in retirement, turning his attention in later life to the fields of justice and the law (“The Just,” 1995), neuroscience (“What Makes Us Think,” 1998) and the study of time (“On Memory, History, and Forgetting,” 2000). In November 2004, Ricoeur and the American historian Jaroslav Pelikan were each awarded a share of the Kluge Prize, a $1 million award set up in 2003 to honor achievements in fields not covered by the Nobel Prizes.

At the presentation of the award, the librarian of Congress, James Billington, said that Ricoeur had drawn on “the entire tradition of Western philosophy to explore and explain common problems: What is the nature of a self? How is memory used and abused? What is the nature of responsibility? He is,” Mr. Billington added, “a constant questioner – always pressing to understand the nature and limits of what constitutes our humanity.”

“If I had to lay out my vision of the world,” Ricoeur said in 2004, “I would say: given the place where I was born, the culture I received, what I read, what I learned, [and] what I thought about, there exists for me a result that constitutes, here and now, the best thing to do.”