Abstract:
A Heideggerian conception of our narrative self-understanding is compared to Paul Ricoeur’s more familiar version. Where Ricoeur’s threefold mimesis conceives of literary texts as configuring unformed temporal experience and mediating between a writer’s and reader’s understanding, the Heideggerian approach holds our orientation toward our temporal existence to be already narrative in form, though usually implicit; working it out explicitly in texts is optional and can be more or less distorting or authentic. Where Ricoeur describes a dialectic between identity as sameness and selfhood, the Heideggerian approach holds that sameness does not properly apply to our distinctive form of existence. A phenomenology of the self’s narrativity need not be reconciled with the metaphysics of identity, but should instead be seen as thematizing a different aspect of our being.
Keywords:
Heidegger, Ricoeur, narrative, the self, identity, temporality
How to cite:
Roth, Ben, “From Ricoeur Back to Heidegger on Narrative and Self-Understanding.” Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture 9, no. 4 (2025): 28-52. https://doi.org/10.14394/eidos.jpc.2025.0033.
Author:
Ben Roth
Marlboro Institute for Liberal Arts, Emerson College
120 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02116, USA
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8799-7568
ben_roth2@emerson.edu
References:
Benjamin, Walter. “The Storyteller.” In Illuminations. Translated by Harry Zohn. Shocken, 1969.
Blackburn, Simon. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy. Oxford University Press, 1996.
Carr, David. Time, Narrative, and History. Indiana University Press, 1986.
Critchley, Simon. The Book of Dead Philosophers. Vintage, 2009.
Guignon, Charles. Heidegger and the Problem of Knowledge. Hackett, 1983.
Halliwell, Stephen. The Aesthetics of Mimesis. Princeton University Press, 2002.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. Harper Collins, 1962.
Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading. Johns Hopkins, 1980. https://doi.org/10.56021/9780801821011.
MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue. Third ed. University of Notre Dame Press, 2007.
Parfit, Derek, “Personal Identity.” In Personal Identity. Edited by John Perry. University of California Press, 1975.
Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Oxford University Press, 1986. https://doi.org/10.1093/019824908X.001.0001.
Ricoeur, Paul. “Existence and Hermeneutics.” In The Conflict of Interpretations. Continuum, 2004.
Ricoeur, Paul. Interpretation Theory. Texas Christian University Press, 1976.
Ricoeur, Paul. Oneself as Another. Translated by Kathleen Blamey. University of Chicago Press, 1992.
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Volume 1. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. University of Chicago Press, 1984.
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Volume 2. Translated by Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. University of Chicago Press, 1985.
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Volume 3. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. University of Chicago Press, 1988.
Rorty, Amélie Oksenberg. “A Literary Postscript: Characters, Persons, Selves, Individuals.” In The Identity of Persons. Edited by Amélie Oksenberg Rorty. University of California Press, 1976.
Roth, Ben. “Reading from the Middle: Heidegger and the Narrative Self.” European Journal of Philosophy 26, no. 2 (2018): 746-62. https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12314.
Roth, Benjamin M. “Narrative, Understanding, and the Self: Heidegger and the Interpretation of Lived Experience.” PhD diss., Boston University, 2014.
Schechtman, Marya. The Constitution of Selves. Cornell University Press, 1996.
Taylor, Charles. Sources of the Self. Harvard University Press, 1989.
Velleman, J. David, “Narrative Explanation.” The Philosophical Review 112, no. 1 (2003): 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1215/00318108-112-1-1.
Wood, David, ed. On Paul Ricoeur. Routledge, 1991.
Open Access Statement:
This is an open access journal which means that all content is freely available without charge to the user or his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author, as long as the author and original source are properly cited. This is in accordance with the BOAI definition of open access.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Submitting a text to Eidos. A Journal for Philosophy of Culture means that the author agrees with the general conditions of this license. The author does and will maintain copyrights and publishing rights for his/her article without any restrictions.