French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, a greatly influential thinker on both sides of the Atlantic, has died at the age of 92, his friend and fellow philosopher Olivier Abel said.

Ricoeur, who died Friday, was born in 1913 in Valence to a devout Protestant family, making him a member of a religious minority in Roman Catholic France. A widower, he leaves behind five children.

His early life was marked by the death of his father in World War I and during World War II he was drafted into the French army, later to be captured and held as a prisoner of war in Germany for five years.

He achieved fame as a philosophy professor in both France and the United States.

In France, he held positions at the Sorbonne University in Paris and during the 1960s at the newly-founded University of Nanterre, where he was criticized as an ally of the government during the student protests of that decade.

In 1967, he left France for the United States where he would teach at the University of Chicago for 15 years, as well as at Yale and Columbia.

His cross-cultural career led to two of his most enduring works: "The Rule of Metaphor" and the three volume "Time and Narrative."

Ricoeur is also known for his two volumes on the philosophy of the will entitled "Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary."

Opposed to all forms of totalitarianism, he spoke out against war from the French war in Algeria in the 1950s to the 1992-1995 Bosnian conflict.