Ricoeur's Concept of Narrative Identity - IS MUNI

Bakalářská diplomová práce

MGR. MARKÉTA DOHNALOVÁ

Brno 2021

FILOZOFICKÁ FAKULTA

Ricoeur’s Concept of

Narrative Identity

Vedoucí práce: doc. PhDr. Dagmar Pichová, Ph.D.

Katedra Filozofie

Obor Filozofie

RICOEUR’S CONCEPT OF NARRATIVE IDENTITY

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Bibliografický záznam

Autor: Mgr. Markéta Dohnalová Filozofická fakulta Masarykova univerzita Katedra Filozofie

Název práce: Ricoeur’s Concept of Narrative Identity

Studijní program: Filozofie

Studijní obor: Filozofie

Vedoucí práce: doc. PhDr. Dagmar Pichová, Ph.D.

Rok: 2021

Počet stran: 49

Klíčová slova: Paul Ricoeur, narativ, narativní identita, osobní identita, selfhood, narativní čas.


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Bibliographic record

Author: Mgr. Markéta Dohnalová Faculty of Arts Masaryk University Department of Philosophy

Title of Thesis: Ricoeur’s Concept of Narrative Identity

Degree Programme: Philosophy

Field of Study: Philosophy

Supervisor: doc. PhDr. Dagmar Pichová, Ph.D.

Year: 2021

Number of Pages: 519

Keywords: Paul Ricoeur, narrative, narrative identity, personal identity, selfhood, narrative time.


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Anotace

Bakalářská práce se zabývá konceptem narativní identity podle Paula Ricoeura. Nej-prve v ní představuji koncept narativní identity v rámci systému myšlení Paula Rico-eura a poté ji posuzuji z pohledu otázky osobní identity v analytické filosofii, konkrétně otázky trvání osobní identity v čase. Docházím k závěru, že Ricoeurův koncept nara-tivní identity nemůže být považován za alternativní vysvětlení trvání osobní identity v čase.


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Abstract

This bachelor thesis is concerned with Paul Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity. I first present this concept within Ricoeur’s system of thought and then continue to assess it in light of the question of personal identity from the viewpoint of analytic phi-losophy, specifically the question of the persistence of personal identity over time. I conclude that Ricoeur’s notion of narrative identity cannot be seen as an alternative explanation for the persistence of personal identity over time.


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Declaration

I hereby declare that this thesis titled Ricoeur’s Concept of Narrative Identity that I submit for assessment is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my own.

Brno June 22, 2021 ....................................... Mgr. Markéta Dohnalová


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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to doc. PhDr. Dagmar Pichová, Ph.D. for her help and guidance, especially for her aid in making my work more concise and easier for readers to follow. I would also like to thank all those who supported me with kind words and encouragement and who reminded me that there are more important things in life than success or failure.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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Table of Contents

Introduction 13

1 Introduction to Ricoeur 14

1.1 Short Summary of Ricoeur’s Life................................................................................. 14

1.2 Introducing Ricoeur as an Author .............................................................................. 15

1.3 The Sources of Ricoeur’s Philosophical Approach ............................................... 17

1.3.1 Ricoeur’s Roots in French Reflexive Philosophy ........................................ 17

1.3.2 Phenomenology and the Question of Human Freedom ........................... 17

1.3.3 Ricoeur’s Turn to Hermeneutics ....................................................................... 18

1.3.4 Ricoeur, Heidegger and the Long Route of Hermeneutics ...................... 19

1.3.5 Ricoeur’s Linguistic Turn and the Fullness of Language ......................... 20

2 Towards Narrative Identity 22

2.1 Hermeneutics of the Self ................................................................................................ 23

2.2 Idem and Ipse-identity ..................................................................................................... 24

2.2.1 Idem-identity ............................................................................................................ 24

2.2.2 Ipse and the Promise .............................................................................................. 25

2.3 Ricoeur on Personal Identity without Ipse – the Corporeal and Terrestrial Condition .............................................................................................................................. 26

2.4 Ricoeur’s Notion of Permanence in Time ................................................................ 27

2.4.1 Character .................................................................................................................... 27

2.4.2 Keeping One’s Word ................................................................................................ 28

2.5 Emplotment and Discordant Concordance ............................................................. 29

2.6 The “Narrative Unity of Life” ........................................................................................ 30

3 What is Narrative Identity? 32

3.1 What We Know About Ricoeur’s Concept of Narrative Identity ..................... 32

3.1.1 The Answer to “Who?” .......................................................................................... 32

3.1.2 Narrative Identity as a Middle Term ............................................................... 33

3.1.3 But What Is Narrative Identity? ......................................................................... 35

3.2 Is Ipse-identity Really Identity? ................................................................................... 37

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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3.3 What Kind of Permanence in Time Does Narrative Identity Secure? ........... 40

4 Conclusion 45

Bibliography 47

INTRODUCTION

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Introduction

A number of ethical concerns, including moral responsibility, directly refer to personal identity. The question of what ensures the persistence of such an identity over time has become a major concern to the contemporary debate on personal identity. In 1996, Marya Schechtman introduced a novel account of personal identity into the circle of analytic philosophy with her book The Constitution of Selves. Here, she presented her concept of narrative identity. A decade before Schechtman, however, the French phi-losopher Paul Ricoeur already used the term narrative identity in the final third vol-ume of his Time and Narrative (1985) and further elaborated it in his 1990 publication Oneself as Another.

The aim of this thesis is to explore Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity as pre-

sented in his works and to assess how it could potentially contribute to the contempo-rary discussion on personal identity. In Oneself as Another, Ricoeur engages in a dis-cussion with analytic theories of personal identity, yet he himself remains rooted in his approach of hermeneutic phenomenology. The first concern of this thesis will be to faithfully present Ricoeur’s notion of narrative identity and its place within his system of thought. Only then will I assess Ricoeur’s concept in light of the contemporary ana-lytic approach to identity, specifically the question of what maintains the persistence in time of personal identity.

The method employed in this thesis is an interpretation of Ricoeur’s concept of

narrative identity based on primary sources, specifically passages from Time and Nar-rative and particularly his 1990 work Oneself as Another. Here I have worked primarily with the 1992 English translation by Kathleen Blamey, but I have consulted the French original in some of the more ambiguous passages. I have also turned to relevant sec-ondary literature in order to aid my interpretation, where I have found an invaluable resource in the archives of the Fonds Ricoeur and their periodical Ricoeur Studies, such as articles commenting on Ricoeur’s linguistic turn (Pellauer, 2014) and his hermeneu-tics of the self (Davidson & Michel, 2010), to name a few.

I begin the thesis by introducing Ricoeur and his overall philosophical approach,

which is specific to him and his philosophical project. In the second chapter I focus on key terms within Ricoeur’s system of thought associated with narrative identity before turning to the question of what narrative identity is, according to Ricoeur, in chapter

three. Following this presentation of the concept in Ricoeur’s understanding, I engage in a discussion on how we can understand Ricoeur’s concept in light of the analytic approach to personal identity and specifically of the question of its persistence over time.

INTRODUCTION TO RICOEUR

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1 Introduction to Ricoeur

1.1 Short Summary of Ricoeur’s Life

Paul Ricoeur was born in 1913 in the French city of Valence. Orphaned at the age of two, he was raised by his grandparents and aunt, who secured him a protestant up-bringing (see Pellauer & Dauenhauer, 2021). Biblical faith remained an important part of Ricoeur’s worldview throughout his life, although he was always careful not to mix his faith and philosophy (see introduction to Oneself as Another, also Pellauer, 2007).

Ricoeur’s academic training was led under the tradition of French reflexive phi-losophy, the influences of which are visible in Ricoeur’s references to Maine de Biran, Jean Nabert or the French spiritualism of Émile Boutroux and Félix Ravaisson (see Johnson, 2013). At the beginning of World War II, Ricoeur served in the French army but was soon captured and spent five years as a prisoner of war under the Germans. During this time, he studied the works of Karl Jaspers and Edmund Husserl, preparing a French translation of Husserl’s Ideas. This marked the beginning of Ricoeur’s interest in existential phenomenology, primarily Husserl’s and Heidegger’s work, but also in-cluding authors like Gabriel Marcel, Jean-Paul Sartre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (see Pellauer & Dauenhauer, 2021).

Although Ricoeur never met Husserl in person, he maintained lifelong friendships

with Husserl’s students, such as Eugen Fink and Herman Van Breda (see Moran, 2017).

He also played an important role in establishing the Husserl Archives in Paris and ac-tively commented on Husserl’s method all the way up to his hermeneutical shift in the sixties. This hermeneutical shift came from Ricoeur’s exploration of the question of evil and was also inspired by the symbolism of Freudian psychology and led finally to Ric-oeur establishing his method of hermeneutic phenomenology.

Ricoeur spent most of his life in academia, working as professor and temporar-ily also as a dean at various French universities. From the mid-fifties, Ricoeur also lec-tured in the United States and Canada, becoming professor of philosophical theology at the University of Chicago in 1970 and giving his famous Gifford lectures (the ground-work for Oneself as Another) in Edinburgh in 1986 (see Pellauer, 2007). His contact with the Anglo-American environment is said to have inspired his discourse with ana-

lytic philosophy. Ricoeur was still publishing in his eighties, his final works focusing primarily on practical ethics, including the questions of the just and of forgiveness. We can say that Ricoeur stayed faithful throughout his life’s work to the central focus of his “philosophical anthropology” (see Pellauer & Dauenhauer, 2021), the concern for


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how the fallible man becomes both capable of performing voluntary actions and re-sponsible in these actions.1

Ricoeur published more than 500 titles (including essays, see Pellauer & Dauen-

hauer, 2021) and was a distinguished philosopher even during his lifetime, winning numerous awards for his contributions to philosophy and the human sciences. Alt-hough a publicly important figure, Ricoeur was always primarily concerned with initi-ating philosophical discourse and wished people would talk about his work rather than his person (see Pellauer, 2007). We can say that Ricoeur successfully achieved this pur-pose. In 2010, five years after his death, the Paul Ricoeur Association was established, connecting scholars interested in Ricoeur’s work (see Fonds Ricoeur, 2013). The leg-acy of Ricoeur’s work continues and his contribution to philosophy is still discussed

today by scholars from various fields and schools of thought.

1.2 Introducing Ricoeur as an Author

A project aiming to describe Ricoeur’s philosophy briefly or as a mere series of claims will necessarily run across difficulties, for an important characteristic of Ricoeur and his philosophy, one can say, is its ungraspability itself. As Theodore George puts it: “Ricoeur’s contributions are notoriously difficult to reduce to a specific position or oth-erwise categorize, in part because he practiced what he preached” (George, 2020, n.p.). What are these philosophical and methodological values that Ricoeur both “preached” and “practiced”?

If we look at Ricoeur’s work from an external viewpoint, ignorant for the moment of his methodological and philosophical sources, we can notice several distinct fea-tures. The first is what we could describe as an undiscriminating eclecticism of ideas

from various authors and philosophical traditions. Ricoeur comments on authors from different, often even opposing schools of thought, and brings them together into a joint discourse in his work.2 Fitting these contributions of others into his systemic analysis, he often interprets them “for his own purpose”, taking what he finds useful, without much concern of the discrepancy between his and the author’s philosophical and meth-odological presuppositions – a point which leads Engel (2014) to criticise his misinter-pretation specifically of analytic philosophers. As we shall see further, this attribute of Ricoeur’s philosophy stems from his belief in the necessity of a “long route” of

1 “L’homme fallible”, “l’homme capable” and “l’homme responsable” are key, or even signature terms of

Ricoeur. Achieving a clear understanding of them are the goals of Ricoeur’s investigations.

2 Engel (2014) underscores that this is for the most part a one-sided discourse, since the majority of

contemporary authors that Ricoeur commented on were not engaged in a discussion with him and

often were not even acquainted with Ricoeur’s work.


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interpretation (see further below) leading to understanding, one that considers dis-parate and opposing views.

A second related feature easily visible in Ricoeur’s writings is the openness of his analyses. Not only is Ricoeur open to various philosophical traditions, he is also open in the sense that he never arrives at a final conclusion. As Dowling (2011) puts it, read-ing Ricoeur as a beginner can seem like “having somehow been set adrift on a sea of endless analysis that has no object but to lead to further analysis and then to still more” (p. x). A more attentive reading of Ricoeur reveals that these fragmentary open anal-yses, when viewed as a whole, create a larger picture that carries an overall meaning. However, there is also an intentional non-conclusiveness in Ricoeur’s work. For Ric-oeur, understanding comes by way of a constant interpretation and reinterpretation,

which is never truly finished. Ricoeur categorically refuses all claims to absolute truth, what in French is called his “renoncement au savoir absolu” (Dowling, 2011, p. xii). This non-conclusiveness and openness can be seen not only in individual titles, but also

throughout the interconnectedness of his life’s works.

A third feature, which is also constitutive of the openness of Ricoeur’s analysis, is the use of dialectics that leads to the revelation of aporias. As Dowling puts it, the aim of Ricoeur is “to push analysis to the point where there stands revealed, just beyond the limits of purely logical or rational argument, a lurking aporia or irresolvable para-dox” (Dowling, 2011, p. x). The use of the dialectical method appears more prominently in Ricoeur’s writings especially after the publication of his work on Freud (Freud and Philosophy, 1970). Through his encounter with Freud’s thoughts, Ricoeur comes to re-

alize that there is no self-understanding without mediation and adopts an approach in which he searches for a middle term that mediates between two opposing, polar terms and which enables us to move back and forth between these (see Pellauer & Dauen-hauer, 2021). This mediating term is the result of interpretation and remains open to critique. Ricoeurian hermeneutics seek to negotiate conflicts of interpretation rather than remove them, an approach which also manifests in Ricoeur’s use of aporias.

The final feature visible throughout Ricoeur’s work and philosophy that I have chosen to present is its connectedness to life. Ricoeur was actively engaged in the polit-ical and social life of his time and had an important public influence. He was interested in topics outside of the field of academic philosophy, inciting discussions with histori-ans, literary critics, biblical exegetes, theologians and others (see Pellauer, 2007). As examples of Ricoeur’s connectedness to the social world around him, I can mention his

reaction to the death of Patočka in his 1977 article Jan Patočka, A Philosopher of Re-sistance, originally published in Le monde; or his acquaintance with Václav Havel, who requested that Ricoeur speak at his inauguration after the fall of communist rule in 1993 (see ibid). For Ricoeur, philosophy did not end with the writing of a philosophical


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text, it both stemmed from life and influenced it – a conviction that Ricoeur unfailingly sought to put into practice. Yet even within his writings this connectedness to life is present. Throughout Ricoeur’s work one can sense that at its core, his concern remains a practical one, belonging to the domain of ethics. Ethics, which for Ricoeur meant “aiming at the ‘good life’, with and for others, in just institutions” (Ricoeur, OSAA, p. 172). Ultimately, Ricoeur seeks to understand how we can live good lives within our communities.

For a deeper understanding of Ricoeur, a plunge into the sources of his methodo-logical approach is needed. I will attempt to briefly sketch this approach following the main influences throughout Ricoeur’s work in a roughly chronological order.

1.3 The Sources of Ricoeur’s Philosophical Approach

1.3.1 Ricoeur’s Roots in French Reflexive Philosophy

Ricoeur was trained in French reflexive philosophy, and although he was critical of this approach and soon adopted the phenomenological approach as his own, we can see his indebtedness to French reflexive philosophy throughout his works. Johnson (2013) notes the crucial influence of Maine de Biran on Ricoeur’s concept of action, especially in his borrowing of the term “primitive datum” of the power to act. Romano (2013/2015) sees an influence of French Reflexive philosophy in Ricoeur’s under-standing of the self and specifically in Ricoeur’s association of identity with immutabil-

ity (a point I will return to at length below). Although Ricoeur openly abandons French Reflexive philosophy, traces of his earliest philosophical influence remain.

1.3.2 Phenomenology and the Question of Human Freedom

When Ricoeur was sent to the war camp in Pomerania during World War II, he spent the time there reading, commenting and secretly translating Husserl’s Ideas into French, a translation that was later published in 1950. Husserl remained the primary influence on Ricoeur and his point of reference even to his later works.

From the beginning, however, Ricoeur was not uncritical of Husserl’s method. He was suspicious of moments when phenomenologists moved “too quickly to the exis-

tential features of the life-world” (Moran, 2017, p. 186) and believed that phenomenol-ogy should remain a structural, descriptive method, rather than attempting to provide explanations. Moreover, Ricoeur was highly critical of Husserl’s transcendental turn in the latter’s Cartesian Mediations and refused a number of component concepts, such as Husserl’s account of “willing” (see ibid).


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For Ricoeur, phenomenology always meant “the methodology of extracting essen-tial meaning from lived experiences” (Moran, 2017, p. 187). His most traditionally phe-nomenological work remains his eidetic exploration of the will in Freedom and Nature: The Voluntary and the Involuntary (1950). The question of human freedom was here posed as the question of what constitutes a voluntary act, one for which we are respon-sible, and not only a causally predetermined event within the chain of natural events (see Pellauer, 2007). In this work we see not only Ricoeur’s lasting interest in the pos-sibilities for the freedom of human action, but also for the “freedom” or autonomy of philosophy. Searching for human freedom, Ricoeur needs to find an authentic begin-ning within the series of natural causes. Likewise, for the autonomy of philosophy, there needs to be space for original thought which is not merely the consequence of

predetermination by a succession of historical philosophical thoughts that precede it (see ibid).

Gradually in his thinking, and also through various philosophical influences, Ric-oeur shifted his focus to metaphorical language and symbolism, which brought about the turn to hermeneutics as a useful methodological source. Husserl’s phenomenology nevertheless still remained present in Ricoeur’s works. We can see Ricoeur using it as a starting point of analysis (Fallible Man, 1960) or as a reference for comparison (Freud and Philosophy, 1965). It is again clearly visible in the discussion on the aporetics of time in the third volume of Time and Narrative (1988) and in the comments on Hus-serl’s egology in Oneself as Another (1990; see Moran, 2017). Ricoeur translated, criti-cised and surpassed Husserl’s work, but never fully abandoned it.

1.3.3 Ricoeur’s Turn to Hermeneutics

It was during his exploration of the human will that Ricoeur encountered the limits of

the phenomenological descriptive method to account for the existence of evil as a nec-essary component of the will (see Moran, 2017). It was also via the study of religious texts about willing that Ricoeur came to see that metaphorical and symbolic language was an important resource for the understanding of phenomena, a shift clearly visible in his 1960 title The Fallible Man. The need for a theory of interpretation became greater, leading to a hermeneutical turn in Ricoeur’s philosophy. The motives for turn-ing toward questions of the interpretation of language were also influenced by French structuralism and the new challenges this growing philosophical movement pre-sented; challenges to more fully explain how language is understood (see Pellauer,

2014).

Ricoeur not only adopted hermeneutics to enrich the method of phenomenologi-cal description, he also worked on developing hermeneutics in his own specific


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manner. He brought to the forefront a concern about the possibilities of language to mediate interpretation, which can be seen as one of his main contributions to contem-porary hermeneutics (see George, 2020). Ricoeur also stressed that language was pol-ysemic and that interpretation should therefore be viewed as a method meant to un-cover the plurality of meanings, instead of a single meaning of something, as it was traditionally understood. Influenced by Freud and what Ricoeur names his “hermeneu-tics of suspicion”, Ricoeur also saw that interpretation, especially of symbolic forms, sometimes plays the role of revealing a hidden or repressed meaning in an apparent or commonly accepted meaning (see ibid). For Ricoeur, hermeneutics, as a method of interpretation enabling the uncovering of meaning, must be central to any philosophy.

1.3.4 Ricoeur, Heidegger and the Long Route of Hermeneutics

Although Ricoeur turns to hermeneutics, he does not abandon phenomenology in this step, but searches instead for a way to graft hermeneutics onto phenomenology. Ric-oeur thus proceeds to name his approach “hermeneutic phenomenology”, a term he shares with Heidegger. Besides the two authors sharing this name and a common source in Husserl’s phenomenology, a source which each eventually came to surpass, their philosophies also resemble one another in several important features.

What Ricoeur and Heidegger most visibly have in common is the attempt to ac-

count for historicity, for the temporal aspect of human existence. For both authors, tem-porality is essential, for Heidegger it is the essence of Dasein expressed through Care, for Ricoeur it is an essential aspect of narrative and our narrative identities. Both au-

thors seek to explain enduring structures of this essentially temporal being, Heidegger exploring the structures of Dasein, Ricoeur the structural aspect of narrative in Time and Narrative. For both, moreover, the hermeneutic interpretation of our historical ex-perience is not only part of a philosophical method, our ongoing self-interpretation is also something constitutive of our existence (see Clayton, 1989). It is mostly in Ric-oeur’s emphasis on historicity that we see Heidegger’s positive influence on the for-mer.

Ricoeur is critical, however, of Heidegger’s method. According to Ricoeur,

Heidegger’s hermeneutic path is too short, since Heidegger interprets human existence by a direct analysis of being as it is uncovered in our individual being in the world (see George, 2020). Ricoeur maintains instead that a “long route” of hermeneutics, one that goes through the various symbols of culture and the various opposing theses of the

human sciences, is necessary to achieve self-understanding. This route takes many de-tours, a term originally stemming from Ricoeur’s claim that determining the meaning of a text always requires looking to a “viewpoint that lies outside the text” (Bohorquez, 2010, p. 5) itself. To see a concept as it is, we must first step out of it – take a detour.


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Ricoeur takes such detours in Oneself as Another, when, seeking to interpret selfhood, he looks into analytic theories of language and action, where he maintains that we find an absence of the notion of selfhood.

We can find other parallels and references to Heidegger in Ricoeur’s works. Both

authors strictly oppose Cartesian subjectivism and Ricoeur borrows from Heidegger’s vocabulary, for example in his own reuse of the terms distantiation, disclosure and ap-propriation (see Clayton, 1989). But as with his other philosophical sources, Ricoeur only takes that which he finds useful and he remains critical to Heidegger, especially to his post-Kehre works. Ultimately, the two authors give very contrasting impressions, with Heidegger’s confident and suggestive style opposing Ricoeur’s slow, careful dia-lectic procedure accompanied by his dutiful cautiousness in making ontological claims

(see e.g. Pellauer, 2007).

1.3.5 Ricoeur’s Linguistic Turn and the Fullness of Language

Alongside his turn to hermeneutics, Ricoeur also turned to linguistics, acknowledging the importance of exploring language in order to interpret and understand concepts. We should not, however, associate Ricoeur’s turn with the more general “linguistic turn” occurring in analytic philosophy at the beginning of the 20th century. In opposi-tion to the general analytic view,3 Ricoeur would not agree that philosophical problems come down solely to reforming or understanding language (see Pellauer, 2014). More-over, Ricoeur was not interested in logic as a discipline itself, nor did he search for an underlying logical atomism in ordinary language.

Ricoeur’s interest in language aimed at understanding the language we actually

use and how this language carries, often multiple, meanings. He first noticed the need of attending to the “fullness of language” (an important term for Ricoeur) along with his hermeneutic turn when working on The Symbolism of Evil (1967). When exploring how we make sense of evil and its origins, Ricoeur noted that people speak of it using “confessional language” (see Pellauer, 2014). This is a language filled with symbols and a multiplicity of meanings, one that the philosopher can only understand by re-enact-ing it. The structural analysis of language is insufficient for interpreting the “fullness of language” as it is used. Ricoeur does not deny the benefit of structural analysis,4 but

3 The term “linguistic turn” in analytic philosophy needs to be taken as a largely generalized simplifica-

tion, as there is no unified linguistic turn and the approaches to language among analytic thinkers

are diverse.

4 Ricoeur’s understanding of structural analysis is however also distinct from that of analytic philoso-

phy. In his structural analysis, Ricoeur mostly draws from developments in linguistics than from

the philosophy of language (see Pellauer, 2014).


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maintains that we should attend to both structure and the use of language. Language must be understood within its context and its intentionality.

This brings us to Ricoeur’s exploration of discourse, by which he understands the

context of language in which “someone says something to someone about something” (Ricoeur, 1981, p. 101). To understand the language of discourse, it is necessary, ac-cording to Ricoeur, to attend to spoken language (la parole), which Saussure puts in opposition to the written system of language (la langue). Spoken language is a living language and is necessarily an open system. It must be an open system, Ricoeur under-lines, in order to maintain its referential ability – that is, the ability to point to some-thing in the external world, outside of the language itself (see Pellauer, 2007). Lan-guage, specifically in live discourse, is also open in that it enables saying something

new. One of the linguistic forms which enables us to say something new is metaphor,

which Ricoeur explored at length in The Rule of Metaphor (1975). Metaphor, Ricoeur argues, does not consist simply in the substitution of a word for another (see Pellauer, 2010). Metaphors, specifically live metaphors,5 say that something simultaneously is and is not the case, which distinguishes them from logical propositions which are nec-essarily either true or false. Thus, metaphors are an example of semantic innovation. They are a source of new meaning in language and they are not translatable into a sin-gle truth-valued logical proposition without a significant loss of meaning. Since meta-phors are (at least potentially) meaningful, Ricoeur sees it as necessary to also consider the possibility of metaphorical truth, which describes reality in a new way (see ibid).

Exploring metaphoric discourse led Ricoeur to further focus on forms of extended discourse. Extended discourse is discourse that extends beyond the span of a single sentence6. Ricoeur was mostly interested in cases where this extended discourse had the same innovative and rediscriptive ability as live metaphor. He also noticed that there are distinct types, or “genres”, of extended discourse and wished to explore each in its specificity. According to Pellauer (2010), we can identify six types of extended discourse in Ricoeur’s work. These six forms are: poetic discourse, narrative discourse, religious discourse, political discourse, legal discourse and finally philosophical dis-course. Ricoeur most fully develops his notions of poetic and narrative discourse in Time and Narrative, while his other modes of discourse are less systematically

5 Live metaphors are newly created metaphors. These live metaphors can with time be appropriated

into familiar language and gain a fixed “dictionary” meaning, thereby “dying”. Dead metaphors then

no longer hold the symbolic power of linguistic innovation characteristic of live metaphors (see

ibid).

6 Discourse occurs at least at the level of a sentence, never at the mere level of words or signs (ibid).

TOWARDS NARRATIVE IDENTITY

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elaborated. The most vague and problematic of the six is philosophical discourse, since philosophical discourse includes Ricoeur’s very theory of discourse. What we know is that Ricoeur admits the reflexivity of philosophical discourse, meaning it can be a dis-course about discourse. Philosophical discourse is also the place where the use of lin-guistics reaches its limits, since Ricoeur, as I have mentioned, maintains that the anal-ysis of language is insufficient for arriving at the understanding that philosophy seeks to achieve. For Ricoeur, philosophical discourse remains a speculative discourse, but one that does not (or should not) make a claim to being absolute (see ibid).

I will not elaborate further on the other types of extended discourse that Ricoeur

distinguishes, but will only say a few words about narrative discourse, since it is closely related to the topic of this thesis. Narrative discourse is characterized by including a

plot. The narrative plot configures that which is already somehow prefigured in lan-guage – that is, for example, in the conceptual network of action, in symbols, etc. There is no rule as to how events “ought to” be placed into a narrative (not only placed in a chronological order, but also within a structure that endows them with meaning) – there are always multiple possibilities. Consequently, the configuration of plot via em-plotment (see below) requires the use of imagination and semantic innovation. Narra-tive discourse is essential to humans because it grants us a structural form which ena-bles us to make sense of time and also of human action. When we speak of time or action, we express it using narrative tools. It is by telling narratives, moreover, that we establish our identities, including the identities of communities.

I will return to Ricoeur’s understanding of narrative, which he develops in Time

and Narrative, further below. First, however, I will turn my focus to several other con-cepts essential for understanding Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity.

2 Towards Narrative Identity

In the previous chapter, I looked at how Ricoeur approaches his philosophical explo-rations. Now I turn to the central topic of this thesis, which is Ricoeur’s concept of nar-rative identity. Ricoeur first introduced this concept in his three-volume work Time and Narrative (TN).7 Here, narrative identity was presented as a conclusion arrived at from the previous analyses on how narrative helps us make sense of time. Ricoeur fur-ther developed the notion in Oneself as Another (OSAA), where the term became central to the project of a hermeneutics of the self. The term of narrative identity can be seen as central not only in the sense of its importance, but also in the position Ricoeur places

7 I have chosen to abbreviate Time and Narrative in this thesis as TN. In citations, the following number

denotes the volume (e.g., TN3 is the third volume of Time and Narrative).


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it in – that is “in the middle” as a mediator between other key terms (see Figure 1 below for a graphic representation). I will begin by presenting these other terms and con-cerns before turning directly toward the question: “What is narrative identity?”

2.1 Hermeneutics of the Self

The first term that requires clarification is the overarching term of Ricoeur’s Oneself as Another: the hermeneutics of the self. For Ricoeur, the path of a hermeneutical inter-pretation of the self is the only way to understand and preserve the concept of selfhood. Ricoeur equates this question of selfhood with the question “who?”, understood in its polysemy as “Who is speaking?”, “Who is acting?”, “Who is recounting about them-selves?” and finally “Who is the subject of moral imputation?” (see OSAA). OSAA culmi-nates with Ricoeur’s “little ethics”. In its ethical concern, the hermeneutics of the self can be seen as part of Ricoeur’s larger project – the aforementioned exploration into how man becomes both capable and ethically responsible.

Faithful to his method, Ricoeur believes that the self can only be understood through the “long route” of hermeneutics. That is, through an interpretation of what lies outside the self and what can never belong to it completely – of cultural symbols, human sciences, the otherness of others and our body and among these also through the interpretation of narrative forms (see Davidson & Michel, 2010). The self that we come to see at the end of this long route is a “fragile self”. Ricoeur contrasts its fragility with the alleged certainty of the Cartesian cogito which claims to be directly accessible through reflection. For Ricoeur, the self can never be fully captured or grasped and

cannot therefore claim the role of foundation. Simultaneously, the fragile self is not a mere illusion and equally stands in opposition to the dissolution of the self in the phi-losophy of Nietzsche and following anti-subject philosophies.

To describe the specific kind of “fragile” certainty we can have concerning the self,

Ricoeur introduces the term of attestation. According to Ricoeur, claims concerning the self cannot be subjected to verification in the meaning of falsification, of the bivalent true or false dichotomy of logical statements. Rather, attestation is a form of belief in the sense of “I believe-in” (see OSAA) and the credibility of attestation is that of the trustworthiness of a testimony.8 Like a testimony, attestation always remains open to suspicion. As Ricoeur writes, “there is no recourse to false testimony than another that is more credible; and there is no recourse against suspicion but a more reliable attes-tation” (OSAA, p. 22). Suspicion gives rise to questions and demands for a better attes-

tation, to which suspicion can again be raised, creating a necessary dialectic of suspi-cion and attestation. In this dialectic we see a reflection of the dialectic of the self and

8 Here Ricoeur also notes the etymological affinity of “testimony” and “attestation”.


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the other. It is in response to the call of the other that the self attests to itself9 in the form of the proud declaration “Here I stand!” (“Me voici!”).10 It is within this specific framework that Ricoeur presents narrative identity in Oneself as Another.

2.2 Idem and Ipse-identity

Already in Time and Narrative, Ricoeur draws a distinction between two types or meanings of identity, which he calls idem-identity and ipse-identity. Ricoeur borrows these terms from Latin and identifies idem with “same” and ipse with “self”. Accord-ingly, Ricoeur understands idem-identity as the identity corresponding to a sameness or immutability, while ipse-identity is identity in the sense of selfhood. But what kind of identity does Ricoeur have in mind?

In Time and Narrative, Ricoeur claims that the “difference between idem and ipse is nothing more than the difference between a substantial or formal identity and nar-rative identity” (TN3, p. 246). Here it would seem that idem-identity pertains to sub-stantial or formal identity and ipse-identity to narrative identity. In Oneself as Another, however, we see that the relationship of the three identity terms (idem-, ipse- and nar-rative) is more complex. Narrative identity is described as containing aspects of both idem and ipse-identity and serves as a bridge and mediator between them. Let us con-tinue by looking at the two terms individually.

2.2.1 Idem-identity

Idem-identity is identity in the meaning of sameness and as in Time and Narrative, also in Oneself as Another Ricoeur equates it with formal identity. In study five of OSAA, Ricoeur describes idem-identity as containing three separate identity notions: (1) nu-merical identity, (2) qualitative identity and (3) uninterrupted continuity. (1) Numer-ical identity has to do with the identification of one (thing, person, etc.) among many or the reidentification of the same at different times. For example, is this human I see walking towards me now the same one as the human I met yesterday on the bus? (2) Qualitative identity on the other hand is that of extreme resemblance, enabling “substitution without semantic loss, salva veritate” (OSAA, p. 116, original emphasis). It is the meaning of same as in sharing the same qualities. Two dresses are qualitatively identical if they both share all of the same qualities of cut, colour, fabric, size, etc., alt-hough numerically they are two.

9 I will note here that Ricoeur uses attestation both as an epistemological term and also to denote the

act of “attesting to” – to ourselves, our actions, etc. – a meaning I will return to when speaking

about Ricoeur’s notion of selfhood.

10“Me voici!” is an expression Ricoeur borrows from Lévinas and returns to throughout OSAA.


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Ricoeur notes that numerical and qualitative identity are irreducible to one an-other, just as the Kantian categories of quantity and quality. We often meet both con-joined, however, for qualitative identity or similitude is frequently used as a criterion for deciding numerical identity. The greater a time span divides the past occurrence from the present one, the more difficult it is to use similitude as an aid, since time cre-ates dissemblance. I will have more success recognizing the man from the bus a day after than if I meet him by chance five years later (although I remember him just as well), when he has gained twenty pounds and gone bald.

Considering situations where growth and change are considerable, a third com-ponent of idem-identity is introduced. This is (3) uninterrupted continuity between the first and last stage of an individual’s development. Ricoeur illustrates uninterrupted

continuity with the classic Lockean examples of an oak growing out of an acorn, or of an animal from birth to death. Uninterrupted continuity depends on an ordered series of small changes, small enough to not destroy resemblance.

Ricoeur concludes his presentation of idem-identity with the question of perma-nence in time. For Ricoeur, this is the principal question of identity and it is first applied to identity in the meaning of idem-identity. I will return to the question of permanence in time further below. We can see that idem-identity not only covers but exhausts the meanings we associate with the logical form of identity. What meaning is then left for ipse-identity?

2.2.2 Ipse and the Promise

Turning to ipse-identity, there is not much to be said about which form of identity this corresponds to. Ricoeur stays silent on this matter and turns directly to the question of what constitutes a permanence in time specific to ipse-identity (a point I will elabo-rate below). What we only really know is that ipse-identity corresponds to selfhood. Since the entirety of OSAA can be seen as an exploration of selfhood, I will attempt to clarify at least the first half of the term – Ricoeur’s understanding of ipse, the self. To give a better idea of this, I will present a notion closely connected to both selfhood and attestation: the notion of promise.

For Ricoeur, the promise is a paradigm illustration of selfhood. We can take the statement: “I promise (you) that…”. This statement holds a twofold significance. The

first is its linguistic significance as an illocutionary speech act, a term Ricoeur borrows from Austin and Searle. Saying “I promise that” is promising. Said in a different linguis-tic person however – “He promises that”, for example – the statement loses this force. This “I” in “I promise (you) that” is none other than the self. Simultaneously, the prom-ise has an ethical significance. Linguistics itself cannot account for the accepted norm


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that promises should be kept. The linguistic rule and ethical rule are combined in the promise, but remain distinct rules. Thus, the promise serves as a bridge between de-scribing and prescribing, between Hume’s is-ought gap (see Arrien, 2008).

Promising, moreover, is the paradigm example of attesting. The attestation of the self, like a promise, is also a “genuine engagement” (see ibid). The self attests to itself and its permanence by attesting to its actions, by asserting “This is I, here I stand”. It is only with the aid of attesting, claims Ricoeur, that we can speak of original and inten-tional human action and the teleology of such action. In this sense, the future-oriented intention-to… is not unlike a promise. By intending to do an action in the future, I bind myself to act so.

The illustration of selfhood via the example of the promise shows two important aspects of Ricoeur’s notion of the self. First, it is the attestational grounding of the self. From Ricoeur’s view, the self can never be directly accessible. We do not come to un-derstand it through immediate reflection, by way of the “I look and I see” of French reflexive philosophy. Instead, we come to see the self through a detour, by observing it in its speech, actions, narratives and finally its ability to be responsible. Second, from the very beginning, the role of the other is indispensable for the constitution of the self. It is in answer to the call of the other that the self attests to itself in the form of “Here I am!”. The self “crystalizes” in interaction with the other. Speech, action, narration, moral imputation are all essentially social acts which make sense only when the other is taken into account.

2.3 Ricoeur on Personal Identity without Ipse – the Corporeal and

Terrestrial Condition

Reacting to various historical and more contemporary accounts of personal identity, Ricoeur makes clear from the beginning that his approach to identity will be different. First of all, Ricoeur explicitly refuses the notion of a criterion of personal identity over time, central to contemporary debates. Since Ricoeur is indeed interested in the ques-tion of permanence in time, it is mostly the term of criterion he rejects. Personal iden-tity, for Ricoeur, belongs to the epistemological field of attestation, not of logical veri-fication. To speak about necessary and sufficient conditions for establishing personal identity seems a pointless project in his view. Like Parfit, Ricoeur sees that questions of personal identity are often indeterminate, but for Ricoeur this does not mean that identity is an empty question, only that it can at times be left unanswered.

Ricoeur, moreover, opposes the dispute between a psychological or a bodily cri-terion of personal identity. Such a distinction is incompatible with Ricoeur’s under-standing of the self as an incarnate being, a term Ricoeur borrows from Gabriel Marcel.


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What we tend to call the “body” and the “mind” are inseparable notions. Ricoeur’s con-cept of embodiment is another term central to his hermeneutics of the self. From a phe-nomenological point of view, the body is something that belongs to us. When we speak of the body, we speak of our body. We have a phenomenological notion of it that we appropriate – we speak of our hands, our voice, our eyes. When Parfit reduces the body to the brain in his thought experiments on personal identity, he violates, according to Ricoeur, the corporeal condition, the essential fact of the experience of our body. We have no such phenomenological experience of the brain – we speak of our brain only as the result of a reflective detour. By reducing the body to the brain, Parfit eliminates, by principle, the selfhood that appears in the belonging of the body to a self that owns it.

We know no other life than that in our body and on this earth, within its history and temporality. With this notion, Ricoeur adds a terrestrial condition. As humans, we are rooted on this earth. From the existential viewpoint, the Earth is not merely a planet, but “the mythical name of our corporeal anchoring in the world” (OSAA, p. 150). Here we can see Ricoeur’s reference to Heidegger’s being-in-the-world, a notion which the former talks of at length in the final tenth study of OSAA. The terrestrial condition is another point that Parfit’s technological puzzling cases violate, we can take for ex-ample his famous thought experiment in which a man is duplicated and teletrans-ported to Mars (see Parfit, 1984, p. 198-200; also OSAA, p. 134-135). Literary fictions, on the other hand, are variations of our phenomenological experience that respect both the corporeal and terrestrial conditions. Literary narratives imitate human action and their characters are acting and suffering beings like ourselves. This is another rea-

son why Ricoeur sees literary narratives as a relevant source for understanding self-hood.

2.4 Ricoeur’s Notion of Permanence in Time

I have explained why Ricoeur refuses to speak of a criterion of personal identity in time. Yet Ricoeur does at length speak of permanence in time in reference to identity. What, then, does he mean by this term? Ricoeur puts the question of permanence in time pertaining to idem-identity aside and asks instead directly if there is a perma-nence in time that can be a response to the question “who?”, that is, a permanence in time concerning selfhood. He describes two modes of permanence in time that apply to ipse-identity – character and keeping one’s word.

2.4.1 Character

The first mode of permanence in time is that of character. Character concerns both idem and ipse-identity and Ricoeur describes it as the place where the two types of


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identity overlap. In OSAA, Ricoeur defines character as the set of lasting dispositions “which permit the reidentification of a human individual as being the same” (OSAA, p. 119). Rachel from the T.V. series F.R.I.E.N.D.S, for example, can be recognized as stylish, funny, spirited, self-involved and somewhat hysterical. The lasting dispositions of character correspond to idem, to sameness. It is the aspect of character as a finitude and limit that we do not choose but must accept (see for example Fallible Man).

Simultaneously, however, via this acceptance, character becomes something we appropriate as our own. I myself claim “this is me, this is my character”. Ricoeur can then speak of character as “sameness in mineness” (OSAA, p. 120). In this belonging of character to someone, selfhood comes to the forefront. Selfhood is also revealed in the temporal unfolding of the formation of dispositions which create character, more spe-

cifically of habits and acquired identifications. Before a habit is acquired, it is first expe-rienced as a form of innovation. A person decides to start getting up at 5:00 a.m. and at first, it seems very strange and unnatural. But through time they get used to it and waking up early becomes their “second nature” or even a recognizable trait of theirs. Similarly, one can in time acquire the initial strangeness of others, for example of ve-gans, and finally appropriate it as one’s own and call oneself a vegan. This is what Ric-oeur calls an acquired identification with (an)other. Through the unfolding of the tem-poral formation of character, the ipse as an active agent is uncovered.

To summarize, character ensures permanence in time through the unchangeabil-ity of lasting dispositions. Yet these dispositions are only seemingly permanent, since they must also have been formed in time. At the root of the innovation leading to these formations lies the self. Ricoeur also calls character the “‘what’ of the ‘who’” (OSAA, p.

122), since it contains both idem- and ipse-identity.

2.4.2 Keeping One’s Word

The second mode of permanence in time that Ricoeur describes pertains solely to ipse. It is that of keeping one’s word and it is an expression of self-constancy, or in French “maintien de soi”. I add here the French original because I find it better expresses an important aspect of Ricoeur’s notion of selfhood. “Maintien” is clearly linked to the ver-bal forms “maintenir” or “se maintenir”: to maintain (oneself). It underlines the fact that the self “maintains itself”. What in English is translated as self-constancy is not a virtue or characteristic describing the self, but a self-maintaining act of the self.

Keeping one’s word brings us back to the notion of promise. It is through this act

of the engagement of keeping one’s words that the self maintains itself throughout time. Permanence in time in the sense of keeping one’s word is a “challenge to time, a denial of change” (OSAA, p. 124) – whatever changes, “I will hold firm”.


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The permanence of ipse-identity as keeping one’s word is brought to light in situa-tions when the ipse loses the support of the idem or the character. Situations like these are described in various fictive narratives. Ricoeur uses the example of Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities. Even when one says “I am nobody”, there is still an “I” making this statement. This “I” is none other than the self stripped bare. Keeping one’s word is simultaneously an ethical notion. Ricoeur notes that this mode of permanence in time points to the primacy of ethics over narrative. Even in moments when the self cannot answer its own question “who?”, for example in an existential crisis, it can nevertheless respond to the plea of the other who counts on this self. One can then simultaneously ask “Who am I?” and proudly declare “Here I am!” to another.

I will conclude this section by underscoring that Ricoeur’s account of the two

modes of permanence in time, that I have just summarized, is insufficient in explaining how, in fact, the two modes assure the persistence in time of the identity of a person. I will return to the question of what sort of permanence in time character and keeping one’s word can assure in the third chapter.

2.5 Emplotment and Discordant Concordance

As has been mentioned, narrative identity is introduced in OSAA as a mediator be-tween the two types of identity, idem and ipse. Narrative fulfils this mediatory function primarily through emplotment, a process that creates a discordant concordance of nar-rative.

Emplotment is the main organizing element of the story and allows us to give meaning to a random sequence of events and configure them into a coherent plot. In Time and Narrative, Ricoeur shows how emplotment consolidates history and fiction in a narrative. Taking the example of a historical narrative, emplotment chooses from the hypothetically infinite set of possibly describable historical events and places them into a meaningful constellation of a plot. The form of the plot and its structure are bor-rowed from fiction. Creating a historical narrative – for example the biography of Na-poleon Bonaparte – always involves the application of interpretive, fictive imagination. This is one of the reasons why even historical narratives cannot completely avoid the ethical evaluations characteristic to fictive narratives. We will find biographies of Bo-naparte which focus more on the ingeniousness of his battle strategies and positive

reforms, elevating him to a historical hero, and on the other side biographies focusing on his dictatorial tendencies and ambitions to dominate which paint his character as that of a narcissistic villain.


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The narrative created by emplotment is a discordant concordance. Within a narra-tive, concordance is the principle of order which organizes an ordered succession of actions and events. Discordance on the other hand corresponds to the unexpected, to the reversals of fortune within a plot that allow for the story to become a transfor-mation from one initial state to a different final one. The concordance of the whole of the plot wins over the discordance of the manifold changes occurring with new events.

Ricoeur later applies the term discordant concordance to character, now under-stood also as a narrative category. For character, concordance is the singularity that it draws from the specific temporal unity of a “narrative unity of life”. Concordance grants character its stability. Discordance to a character is the threat that unforeseea-ble events pose to this unity. Again, in narrative the two are reconciled into a discordant

concordance in which the threats and challenges that the character faces are retrospec-tively turned into the necessity expressed in the “history of a life”.

This is then how “narrative constructs the identity of the character” (OSAA, p.

147). Narrative identity is a dynamic identity, allowing for change through time. In nar-rative identity we find both the sameness of character, unified through the plot, and the selfhood of an acting agent, initiating change or suffering under the actions of others.

2.6 The “Narrative Unity of Life”

Real life is always more than narrative, yet narrative enables us to consider life as a

unity. Ricoeur calls this the “narrative unity of life”, a term he borrows from Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue). The relation between real life and the “narrative unity of life” can be described on all three levels of mimesis.

Mimesis is a term Ricoeur borrows from Aristotle’s Poetics, where it corresponds to the imitation of action. Ricoeur expands this term in Time and Narrative to denote the entire hermeneutic circle between the world, or life, and narrative. The first stage of mimesis is narrative prefiguration. It concerns the preunderstanding of the world of action that prefigures it for possible narrative interpretation. We can find prefiguration in the abilities to use the conceptual network of action (e.g., the ideas of agent, act, mo-tive, etc.), to use symbols to give actions meaning and significance over others and fi-nally to organize events into a syntagmatic order (see TN1). These pre-narrative abili-ties allow us to advance to the second step of mimesis, to the imaginative configuration

of events into a narrative. This is the phase in which emplotment creates a plot out of a sequence of “random” events. Moreover, in the configuration of narrative, the various questions pertaining to the semantic network of action (“what?”, “why?”, “who?”) are compounded into a unity of (narrative) meaning in the sense of “Who did what why?”


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(see OSAA). Finally, in the third stage of refiguration, through the reader’s interpreta-tion and "owning" of the story, the narrative is integrated into lived experience through an influence on the reader's choices of action in the real world (see TN1). Likewise, the “narrative unity of life” stems from life and events that are already narratively prefig-ured. It is then configured by us when we use our narrative imagination to recount narratives of our lives. Finally, our life narratives again influence how we decide and act in real life.

The “narrative unity of life” is central to Ricoeur’s ethics. If life is to have an ethical

aim, it must necessarily be unified in some way. Ricoeur sees no other such way of gathering the disparate elements of life together into a unity than via narrative (see OSAA). Ricoeur presents the “narrative unity of life” as the summit of praxis. He de-

scribes a scale of actions ordered based on their complexity, starting from basic ac-tions, followed by chains of such actions and moving on to practices. Only at the level of practice can we begin to ascribe moral predicates to action, such as forbidden or permitted. Passing through the intermediary step of “life plans”, we finally arrive at the “narrative unity of life”, which enables us not only to ascribe ethical predicates to ac-tion, but also to agents themselves. It is also the “narrative unity of life” that grants character its singularity, as we have seen above.

Narrative serves as a bridge between the description and the prescription of ac-

tion. The description and prescription of actions are important categories for Ricoeur and are even reflected in the structure of OSAA. The first four studies are dedicated to the description of speech and action and are connected to the three studies that com-

pose Ricoeur’s “little ethics” (i.e. that focus on the prescription of action) via the two studies (5 and 6) which explore narrative identity. Ricoeur, as has already been indi-cated, is concerned with how to bridge Hume’s is-ought gap. One way that narrative bridges this gap between description and prescription is precisely via the encompass-ing of basic actions and action chains (described action) into larger, meaningful wholes and finally into the “narrative unity of life”. It is here that we can finally speak of the ethical aim and of prescription.

WHAT IS NARRATIVE IDENTITY?

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3 What is Narrative Identity?

3.1 What We Know About Ricoeur’s Concept of Narrative Identity

In the previous chapter I have presented the key terms associated with Ricoeur’s con-cept of narrative identity. Now I turn to narrative identity itself and seek to answer the question “What is narrative identity?" I will begin by summarizing what Ricoeur tells us about narrative identity and creating a more unified picture of this concept.

3.1.1 The Answer to “Who?”

In Time and Narrative, Ricoeur states explicitly that narrative identity is the answer to the question “who?”, more precisely to the question “Who did this?” Applying this to Ricoeur’s analysis in OSAA, we may consider that the mediating function of narrative connects the polysemy of the question “who?” expressed in “Who is speaking?”, “Who is acting?”, “Who is narrating?” and “Who is the moral subject of imputation?”. In Time and Narrative, Ricoeur claims that narrative identity becomes this answer by granting the permanence in time to the proper name to which it is associated. “Who wrote this thesis?” Markéta did. “But who is Markéta?” And here the answer would necessarily, according to Ricoeur, be a narrative, perhaps Markéta’s life story. Only a narrative, Ric-oeur claims, can explain why we take a being to be the same person all throughout its life from birth to death (see TN3).

Narrative identity, according to Ricoeur, is the solution to the question of personal

identity that prevents it from becoming an “antinomy with no solution” (TN3, p. 246).

Without the aid of narrative identity, we would either have to posit a subject who is identical with itself despite the diversity of its changes or conclude that it is a mere illusion. Since narrative identity allows for the preservation of the self throughout change, it is a dynamic identity, one which always remains open to revision. The his-tory of life is constantly refigured by the stories one tells about oneself. In light of this, Ricoeur concludes that narrative identity is a fragile identity, corresponding to the fragile self of the hermeneutics of the self in OSAA.

Life, Ricoeur claims in TN, is a fabric woven by the histories one narrates about

oneself. These histories we recount about ourselves are inspired by both historical and

fictional narratives of our culture. Narrative is, in the end, a cultural and social phe-nomenon. We can assign narrative identity, moreover, to both an individual and a com-munity, where the history of a community ultimately becomes their very identity.


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3.1.2 Narrative Identity as a Middle Term

Narrative identity for Ricoeur, we have seen, is a dynamic and fragile identity which grants a permanence of personal identity throughout the various changes of a lifetime. Ricoeur does not elaborate on what kind of identity narrative identity specifically is in either TN or OSAA, but he takes care to describe how narrative identity functions as a mediator between a series of opposing concepts.

Before I turn to describing the various intermediary roles of narrative identity, it is important to note that I will at times be speaking of both narrative identity and the more general notion of narrative. Ricoeur himself does not clearly distinguish the two terms, one can assume this is most probably due to the fact that narrative identity is

also narrative and thus shares the more general functions of narrative, including its mediatory roles.

I will begin by shortly describing the mediatory role of narrative from which the notion of narrative identity first sprung in Ricoeur’s work. In Time and Narrative, nar-rative identity is presented as the (by)product of the aporia of phenomenological and cosmological time. By cosmological time, also “world time”, Ricoeur understands linear succession, or “the order of things”. Cosmological time is represented principally by Aristotle’s notion of time in relation to movement. In narrative, it corresponds to the sequence of events ordered as “before” and “after”. Phenomenological time is time ex-perienced as past, present and future. It is represented by Augustine’s account of the distention of the mind and therefore also called “soul time”. In narrative, it is expressed through the change of tenses or the tempo of a narrated scene. In our example of the

biography of Napoleon, we will most probably find the past tense used in the majority of cases, describing events that happened. This brings historical narrative closest to cosmological time. We might, however, also encounter a switch to the present tense in a passage seeking to convey the experience of the “glory of battle”. “Time freezes. Na-poleon hears the cannon balls whizzing through the air. He looks out over the battle-field to his troops…” The author may also wish to instigate the feeling of suspense and anticipation in his readers, switching to the future tense: “Will Napoleon’s strategy work?” This imitates our experience of phenomenological time. Thus, temporality is not just described, but also "relived" in the reading of the story.

Ricoeur maintains that the difference between cosmological and phenomenologi-cal time cannot be abolished, but it can be consolidated by narrative, which, as has been

indicated, contains both cosmological and phenomenological time. By containing both, narrative gives rise to a “third time”, to what Ricoeur calls narrative time. Narrative time is also “human time”, since it is essentially time as we experience it. Narrative time is constructed by the dialectic of history and fiction, mentioned above in reference to emplotment. In a narrative, we inscribe the phenomenological “now” into the


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cosmological sequence of the events in a plot. The question “What date is today?” con-tains references to both cosmological (“date”) and phenomenological (“today”) time. The answer is a “dated now”, the anchoring of our phenomenological experience into the public reference of the calendar. The mixed characteristic of narrative time will become important in the following analysis of Ricoeur’s notion of permanence in time.

Turning to Oneself as Another, here we can identify four instances where narrative identity serves an intermediary role.

First, narrative identity is a central point between the certainty of a Cartesian ego and the dissolution of the ego in Nietzschean philosophy. Epistemologically, narrative

identity is placed in the middle between certainty and illusion, pertaining to the field of attestation, which grants us only the humble certitude of trustworthiness while al-ways remaining open to suspicion. Moreover, unlike the “empty” Cartesian ego of im-mediate reflection, narrative identity possesses a history and is therefore simultane-ously specific and dynamic.

Second, narrative identity mediates between sameness and selfhood, or idem- and ipse-identity. Idem-identity, as we have seen, is composed of numerical and qualitative identity and the identity of uninterrupted continuity. Ricoeur sees idem-identity as the basis of traditional accounts of identity (Locke’s, Hume’s, even Parfit’s). The perma-nence in time associated with idem-identity is character as a set of lasting dispositions. The self of ipse-identity is present in the temporal dimension of character, where it

initiates change through innovation and identification with the other. The mode of per-manence in time corresponding to selfhood is keeping one’s word. Throughout OSAA, selfhood is linked to attestation as the act of attesting to oneself as speaker, as agent, as the subject of narration and finally as the subject of imputation.

Narrative identity primarily connects the two poles of identity through the medi-ation of emplotment which creates a discordant concordance. As we have seen, emplot-ment allows a coordination of actions, agents, motives etc., dispersed both in time and in the multitude of describable events, into the meaningful whole of a plot. Narrative identity also bridges the gap between the two modes of permanence in time – charac-ter and keeping one’s word – by unfolding the history and movement of character. Nar-rative, moreover, allows us to move on the scale from complete overlap of idem and

ipse to an ipse laid bare, as seen in the imaginative variations of fictional narratives, such as Robert Musil’s Man Without Qualities.

Third, narrative identity mediates between description and prescription, as we have seen. Thus, Ricoeur claims, it bridges Hume’s famous is-ought gap (see OSAA).


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First of all, narrative itself is simultaneously descriptive (describing specific agents, ac-tions and motives) and prescriptive (involving evaluation of both actions and agents). Ricoeur stresses the ethical nature of narrative. Ethical evaluation is present already on the level of narrative prefiguration and storytelling itself is in essence a training in practical wisdom. In addition, fictional narratives in their imaginative variations are explorations into possibilities of moral evaluation and into the notions of good and evil. Apart from containing both aspects, the descriptive and prescriptive, narrative identity is presented as their mediator. Its first important function lies in the extension of the field of actions described in action theory to refigure complex actions that can be sub-ject to moral evaluation. Passing through practices and life plans, we arrive at the “nar-rative unity of life”, which allows for the unity necessary in order for us to speak of an ethical aim of life – the aim of a good life. The unification of narrative also allows us to

pass from the evaluation of action to the evaluation of the agent itself. Finally, Ricoeur can say that the ethical subject is the same as the one to whom we assign a narrative identity.

The fourth mediation of narrative identity is not explicitly elaborated in OSAA, but

is indicated on several occasions. It is the role narrative plays in mediating between otherness and selfhood or mineness. The role of the other is central for Ricoeur’s notion of ethics. Narrative allows for the integration of the other into oneself through the threefold process of mimesis, primarily in the final phase of refiguration of narratives into real life, in which, for example, we imitate the attitudes of our favourite literary heroes when facing our own moral dilemmas. Reading, Ricoeur claims, leads to the af-fection of the self by the other, which can in turn lead to the identification with this

other and finally to the appropriation of otherness as mineness. We can clearly see the central position of narrative identity in Ricoeur’s system,

also depicted visually on the schema below (see Figure 1). Narrative identity is a “mas-ter” mediator, it enables the bridging of many seemingly unbridgeable chasms be-tween opposing terms that Ricoeur encounters in his exploration of both time and self-hood.

3.1.3 But What Is Narrative Identity?

In the summary above, we primarily find an enumeration of what narrative iden-tity does in Ricoeur’s system. It mediates, unifies, consolidates, integrates… But we may

still wonder, what is narrative identity? What kind of entity is it? How does it exist tem-porally? How do we differentiate it from narrative itself? How does it differ from the “narrative unity of life”?


36

Ricoeur does not specify the term of narrative identity in this sense, nor does he provide answers to these questions. Assuming that Ricoeur does this deliberately, we can consider two main motives for such an omission. First and foremost, the notion of narrative identity is firmly anchored in Ricoeur’s hermeneutical phenomenology, and in the process of Ricoeur’s hermeneutics of self, these questions are secondary, or per-haps in some cases invalid. Second, Ricoeur is always cautious of making ontological claims – he himself explores the possible ontological implications of Oneself as Another only at the end of the first nine studies, when he has passed through all necessary de-tours of interpretation. Taking into account Ricoeur’s hermeneutic approach and his caution towards ontological claims, we are no longer surprised that narrative identity emerges as a mid-term between a series of dialectics of opposing terms. Despite these points, however, I believe Ricoeur can still be charged with the transgression of creat-

ing confusion through obscurity and an insufficient clarification of key terms. This charge will gain increasing significance in the following paragraphs, where I

will continue exploring the question of what narrative identity is and isn’t. First, I will stop to consider whether narrative identity is in fact identity as we understand it, based on Claude Romano’s (2013, 2015) claim that ipse-identity cannot be understood as identity in the strict sense of a logical relation. Second, I will return to the question of narrative identity and temporality, exploring in which way narrative identity is meant to ensure the permanence in time that Ricoeur speaks of.

Figure 1. Schematic model of the connections between narrative identity and the principal no-

tions of Oneself as Another.


37

3.2 Is Ipse-identity Really Identity?

Throughout OSAA, as we have seen, Ricoeur uses the distinction he makes between identity in the sense of idem or sameness and identity in the sense of ipse, or selfhood, to make his case and primarily to criticize accounts of identity that only consider iden-tity in the sense of idem.

Claude Romano (2013/2015) presents a strong critique of Ricoeur’s notion of identity, arguing that ipse-identity cannot really be understood as a kind of identity. The opposition of idem- and ipse-identity is central to Ricoeur’s argumentation and ac-cepting Romano’s conclusion would mean a critical disruption to Ricoeur’s entire sys-

tem built around this dialectic, making it necessary to either modify this system con-siderably or refuse it altogether.

The reader may ask why I have chosen to elaborate this specific critique without

mentioning other criticisms of Ricoeur’s concepts. For one, few other criticisms of Ric-oeur’s identity concepts that I have encountered are based on a careful reading of Ric-oeur himself, whereas Romano’s in my opinion is. Galen Strawson, for example, in his 2004 article Against narrativity, includes Ricoeur’s concept among those of narrative identity that he criticises, without acknowledging major differences of Ricoeur’s view nor reflecting Ricoeur’s primary aim of accounting for selfhood without referring to immediate reflection, to which Strawson repeatedly himself refers (see Arca, 2018, for a discussion on how Ricoeur might respond to Strawson’s critique). Second, Romano’s criticism concerns an argument found relatively early in Ricoeur’s reasoning and one

which serves as the base of other further arguments. If we accept Romano’s critique, many other points of criticism become invalid.

Having vindicated my choice of presenting Romano’s critique, I will now continue

by presenting his main thesis. Romano asks the question whether Ricoeur’s notion of ipse-identity can be understood in the strict sense of identity, that is as an equivalence relation. I reconstruct one of Romano’s central arguments as follows:

P1: If ipse-identity is a form of identity, it needs to be specified which form. P2: Ricoeur associates numerical and qualitative identity with idem-identity. P3: Idem-identity and ipse-identity are put into opposition. P4: Ipse-identity therefore corresponds to neither numerical nor qualitative iden-

tity. P5: If ipse-identity would correspond to another, third meaning of the term iden-

tity in the sense of logical relation, Ricoeur would need to present this third mean-

ing.


38

P6: Ricoeur does not present any additional meaning of identity which he would

equate with ipse-identity. C: Ipse-identity is not identity in the strict sense of the word.

If ipse-identity is none of the types of identity that Ricoeur associates with idem-identity (i.e. numerical, qualitative and even uninterrupted continuity), what meaning of identity remains? Perhaps Ricoeur could argue for another additional meaning of the identity relation, outside of the traditional understanding of a logical relation, but Ricoeur, perhaps strategically, remains silent on this subject.

Romano concludes decidedly that ipse-identity does not and cannot constitute a form of identity. He does not maintain, however, that this important error should dis-

credit Ricoeur’s notion of ipseity altogether. Romano suggests that Ricoeur’s ipse is an answer to the question “who?” in an alternative sense to that of identity. The “who?” of ipseity is not about recognizing one and only one individual among many, or even the

same one in its different temporal occurrences, but of describing or defining the indi-vidual by listing their (principal) qualities.11 Romano associates this kind of response to the question “who?” with qualitative identity, which he believes has been neglected in the contemporary discussion on personal identity in favour of numerical identity.

Where selfhood comes into play is through a distinction between what Romano names “1st person identity” and “3rd person identity”. Third person (qualitative) iden-tity is simply the set of qualities that pertain to the person independently of them and whether they will it or not – being a female, being 167 cm tall, being tone-deaf, for ex-

ample. First person (qualitative) identity, however, is constituted by qualities that di-rectly depend on the stance I take towards them in order for them to pertain to me. These are qualities I must appropriate, take on as my own. Romano classifies beliefs,

desires, intentions, projects, wishes and preferences as such “1st-person” qualities. These qualities cannot be attributed to me unless I maintain a certain relation to them. This relation or “mode of being” is none other than that which Ricoeur presents as ip-seity. It is the owning of certain qualities, or for Ricoeur of actions and engagements. This assumption of qualities links us to Ricoeur’s idea of attestation. For Romano, “first person identity”, a subtype of qualitative identity, depends on our “modes of responsi-bility”, which correspond to the Ricoeurian notion of ipse-identity. These modes of re-sponsibility are not, however, themselves a form of identity. Rather, they are a capacity, a mode of being. I will not further elaborate the alternative model of selfhood that Ro-

mano develops, since it does not concern narrative identity which is my focus. I do

11 I see a similarity of this reformulation of the question to Marya Schechtman’s distinction of the

reidentification question and characterization question as pertaining to two different meanings of

identity (see Schechtman, 1996).


39

believe, however, that Romano’s analysis sheds light on an important lacuna in Ric-oeur’s work which extends also to the concept of narrative identity, that of a suspicious absence of clarification in the case of a term central to the whole of his argumentation, that of ipse-identity.

I would also like to briefly mention a second point that Romano highlights about

Ricoeur’s understanding of identity. Ricoeur repeatedly associates idem-identity with immutability. Identity as sameness, for Ricoeur, is the identity of something that does not change. Romano notes, however, that numerical identity is not immutable and does allow for change. Indeed, this association is an error, since every change presupposes the numerical identity of that which undergoes change. Romano sees this tendency of Ricoeur to associate identity with immutability as a result of his indebtedness to his

philosophical roots in French reflexive philosophy. This error, according to Romano, may be part of why Ricoeur turns to ipse-identity as an alternative for securing moral constancy throughout change.

The additional question I would like to now pose after having reviewed the rea-

sons by which we may refuse to admit ipse-identity as a form of identity, is what this implies for the notion of narrative identity. Ricoeur presents narrative identity as a form of a dynamic, “mixed identity”12, one that mediates between ipse and idem-iden-tity. If, however, we maintain that ipse-identity is not a form of identity in the strict sense, neither can narrative identity make such a claim, unless it is to be understood as identity only to the degree in which it coincides with idem-identity. If that were the

case, however, we could argue that narrative identity loses its function of mediating between two forms of identity and we will fare better investigating idem-identity di-rectly, without the additional complications of narrative. Without the main role of me-diator between the two poles of idem and ipse identity, it remains questionable whether narrative identity would present any advantage to the question of personal identity as understood in classical terms. Moreover, as stated above, Ricoeur does not elaborate which form of identity is meant by narrative identity. I conclude that narra-tive identity, like ipse-identity, cannot constitute identity in the strict sense of an iden-tity relation.

12 This is my own formulation, Ricoeur does not himself use the attribute “mixed” to describe narrative

identity.


40

3.3 What Kind of Permanence in Time Does Narrative Identity

Secure?

The question of what ensures the persistence of personal identity over time is of par-ticular interest to analytic philosophy. We can rephrase the question as what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a person at a time t1 to be the same person as a person at a different time t2 (see Olson, 2021). If we differentiate a person from their body (i.e. we refuse the bodily criterion) and also dismiss substantial accounts of per-sonhood, we encounter an array of logical difficulties in attempts to determine such a criterion (see Schechtman, 1996, for a review of these problems). Since Ricoeur not only directly opposes his theory to analytic approaches, such as Parfit’s account, but

also speaks of permanence in time in a significant way, we may be tempted to see his account of narrative identity as a proposal for an alternative criterion of personal iden-tity over time. I will argue, however, that this is not the case.

First of all, Ricoeur explicitly rejects the notion of a criterion for personal identity,

as I have elaborated above, since for him the question of identity is not subjected to verification in the meaning of falsification. Second, the modes of permanence in time that Ricoeur presents are not a response to the question of the persistence of personal identity understood as numerical identity over time, as I will demonstrate.

In Time and Narrative, Ricoeur presents the problem of personal identity in such a way that it very closely resembles the analytic question of the persistence of personal identity in time. Here Ricoeur asks: “What justifies our taking the subject of action […]

as the same throughout a life that stretches from birth to death?” (TN3, p. 246). Ac-cording to Ricoeur, the response must be narrative. Without narration, the problem of personal identity would be “condemned to an antinomy with no solution” (ibid), since it would either require identifying a non-changing substance of person or would lead to the claim that identity is an illusion.

In OSAA, Ricoeur does speak of a criterion of identity through time in relation to

idem-identity, although not in relation to personal identity. Following the explanation of numerical, qualitative identity and uninterrupted continuity, Ricoeur illustrates the idea of permanence in time as an invariable structure, such as DNA. Permanence here is presented as the “transcendental of numerical identity” (OSAA, p. 118). It is on the level of idem-identity where the problem of persistence in time first poses itself and

Ricoeur explains that the entire discussion of personal identity revolves around the search for a “relational invariant” in the strong sense of permanence in time.

However, Ricoeur does not further develop the notion of permanence in time of

idem-identity but turns instead directly to the question of a permanence in time that


41

would allow for ipseity and would answer the question “who?” instead of “what?”. That is, Ricoeur turns to the question of permanence in time of personal identity. Both of the modes of permanence in time that Ricoeur describes – character and keeping one’s word – are connected to ipse-identity. It seems that Ricoeur sets the question of per-manence of the idem-identity of persons aside. If we are to assume he does this know-ingly, we may, in light of what he says about the paradoxes of personal identity, con-clude that Ricoeur does this because he sees the project of finding such an account of personal identity in time as doomed to failure. For Ricoeur, an account of the persis-tence in time of personal identity will necessarily include ipse-identity. Such an ac-count, however, can never conform to the logical requirements of the persistence in time of idem-identity.

As a side note, I would like to point out that in both TN and OSAA, we see that Ricoeur associates idem-identity with immutability – it is the identity of something un-changing. Yet as we have seen Romano (2013/2015) underscore, this is a simplifica-tion of the notion of numerical identity. We find an absence in Ricoeur’s work of direct references to relational accounts of persistence in time, such as Parfit’s in Reasons and Persons. Although Ricoeur discusses Parfit’s approach to identity in OSAA, he does not mention Parfit’s Relation R nor the problem of the circularity of the definition of iden-tity, which serves as one of Parfit’s major motives for establishing a reductionist rela-tional account of personal identity as the best contender for an account of personal identity (see Parfit, 1984).13 This error of associating idem-identity with immutability may be one of the reasons why Ricoeur refuses a permanence in time based solely on idem-identity as an impossible project.

Ricoeur explains that the permanence of time he describes as character includes

both idem and ipse-identity. Could character then be a source for understanding how Ricoeur understands the persistence of a person’s idem-identity? Ricoeur defines char-acter as a set of lasting dispositions “which permit the reidentification of a human in-dividual as being the same” (OSAA, p. 119), where “reidentification” seems to indicate numerical identity. Ricoeur does not explain, however, how one would reidentify a hu-man individual on the basis of their character. The most probable option would be to say this would involve assessing a list of qualities that need to stay permanent in order for us to speak of the same person. But this does not explain how this character would persist despite change, which Ricoeur explicitly admits occurs to character. We might try to link character to the idea of an invariable structure, but what such a structure of

character would be is a question still to be answered. Ricoeur’s notion of character is not an account of persistence in time as viewed by analytic philosophy. If character

13 See Engel, 2014, for a critical account of Ricoeur’s (mis)representation of analytic philosophy, in-

cluding Parfit’s theory of personal identity.


42

cannot help us, neither will the second mode of permanence in time – keeping one’s word – since it pertains solely to the domain of ipse.

If we cannot view Ricoeur’s modes of permanence in time as an alternative ac-

count of what enables the reidentification of a person as the same in two separate in-stances in time, in the sense of the necessary and sufficient conditions of an identity relation, how are we to understand them? Ricoeur approaches the problem of identity from the viewpoint of his hermeneutic phenomenology. This includes his epistemolog-ical notion of attestation, as we have seen, which means that Ricoeur need not worry about problems of logical form, since for him personal identity is something more frag-ile to which these do not apply. Ricoeur’s approach, moreover, includes a distinct un-derstanding of time. I believe that Ricoeur’s concept of time, elaborated in Time and

Narrative, can help us elucidate how he understands the permanence in time that he speaks of.

Ricoeur tells us that the two modes of permanence in time he describes are con-

nected by narrative identity. Narrative identity enables this by unfolding the histori-cality of a character in a plot. Narrative emplotment seems to work in two directions – unfolding what has become the same and unifying the various. We again come to the notion of discordant concordance. In Time and Narrative, discordant concordance is first represented as unifying two modes of time – phenomenological and cosmological (see also above). The resulting time is narrative time or also human time, in which phe-nomenological time is inscribed onto cosmological time to create a “dated now”. In the narrative, this is an episode of the story that is simultaneously a “now” for the character

and a moment ordered and placed in the sequence of the narrative. Considering what we know from TN, it is a legitimate move to ask to which modes of time the two in-stances of permanence in time elaborated in OSAA refer. It makes sense to connect the analytic understanding of persistence over time with Ricoeur’s notion of cosmological time, since we are assessing whether x in t1 is the same person as y in t2; t1 and t2 refer-ring solely to a sequence of moments in the meaning of “before” and “after”. Phenom-enological time is not taken into account.

Yet Ricoeur, on the other hand, does take phenomenological time into account.

The narrative that bridges the two modes of time also bridges the two modes of iden-tity and the two modes of permanence in time that Ricoeur speaks of. Indeed, we can see a striking proximity of idem-identity and cosmological time on the one hand and

ipse-identity and phenomenological time on the other. Is not the time of the self, the ipse, time as viewed from the now of the self? We cannot in like manner associate char-acter with cosmological time, since character is the place where idem and ipse-identity overlap – character belongs to narrative time. The permanence in time of character is a permanence in narrative time. Correspondingly, narrative identity is dynamic and


43

fragile. It can be “lost”, as we have seen, and is continually reconstructed (see also TN3). The permanence of character can be broken, interrupted, the self can be stripped of the same in moments of existential confusion and yet regained again through its inte-gration into the narrative. The permanence of ipse can withstand the loss of narrative identity. Although we lose the idea of sameness with our past selves, we are neverthe-less able to keep our word, to make or fulfil a promise. When a man and woman vow to be husband and wife in good or ill, they also promise to be such despite the changes they will undergo in time. One of the spouses may undergo an existential crisis and change to the point of becoming unrecognizable to themselves (be it a change in their faith, personal values or gender identity). We may very well say they are not the same person as they were fifteen years ago. However, they can nevertheless recognize them-selves as the person who made that promise 15 years ago and decide to hold by it. In

this sense, they are still the same self who made that promise. I may not be the same person in the requirements of idem-identity in the future, but by my promise and at-testation I make myself responsible – I “maintain myself”.

Figure 2 is a schematic representation and simultaneously an interpretation of

Ricoeur’s notion of narrative time, portrayed as a narrative arch. Its relation to what Ricoeur calls cosmological time is enabled through emplotment, or the selection of spe-cific events from all the possible happenings of cosmological time and their placing in an order of narrative, where they gain significance and meaning as events in a plot. The now of phenomenological time can be seen as the now of our lived time, or as the now of the character in the story, the place where we are in the recounting of the story. The dynamic of narrative identity could be represented by the “now” of lived time moving

along the line of cosmological time. In each such “now”, the (life) narrative can be de-stabilized and changed by new and unexpected events and reviewed and edited by the person, its co-author, in an ongoing mimetic process.

From this point of view, Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity may seem like a

psychological and social construct, a way we make sense of the world. Indeed, narra-tive identity has become a key term in both narrative psychology and therapy.14 But Ricoeur himself would not see it as such. He may claim, on the contrary, from his phe-nomenological viewpoint, that cosmological time is the theoretical construct. We gain an understanding of cosmological time only as a deduction from our experience of nar-rative time, human time.

14 The use of narrative in therapy was not initiated by Ricoeur. T. R. Sarbin introduced the term of

“narrative psychology” in 1986, the same year that Ricoeur gave his Gifford Lectures and four years

before the publication of OSAA.


44

I will conclude this chapter by claiming that neither Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity, nor its related concepts, can be understood as persistence in time sought by analytic philosophy, nor do I conceive of a way they could be transformed into such an account. As I have demonstrated, Ricoeur’s notion of permanence in time makes sense only when viewed within Ricoeur’s understanding of the epistemology of attestation and the narrative nature of our “human time”.

Figure 2. A schematic representation of narrative time in relation to phenomenological and

cosmological time.

CONCLUSION

45

4 Conclusion

The aim of this thesis was to present Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity and assess whether it could contribute to the contemporary discussion on personal identity and ethics.

First, I will respond to this question in light of the problem of the persistence of

personal identity in time. Although Ricoeur engages in a discussion with analytic phi-losophy in his presentation of narrative identity, I have presented several reasons why his concept cannot be considered an alternative answer to the analytic question of what ensures the persistence of personal identity through time. Attempts to construct

Ricoeur’s narrative identity as such a response will fail, primarily due to the discrep-ancy of premises between Ricoeur’s approach and that of analytic philosophy. Ric-oeur’s concept of narrative identity remains rooted in his phenomenological herme-neutics, within which narrative identity is presented in relation to Ricoeur’s distinct epistemological notion of attestation and a specific understanding of time. Moreover, Ricoeur is not seeking an account of personal identity that would fit the logical relation of numerical identity. Indeed, as I have shown in Romano’s arguments, Ricoeur’s no-tions of both ipse-identity and narrative identity are not forms of identity in the sense of an identity relation. In the end, Ricoeur is searching for an account of selfhood, a fragile selfhood that avoids the problems of cogito-philosophies and yet preserves self-hood from being deemed a mere illusion.

Second, since Ricoeur’s notions of identity cannot be taken as identity in the strict sense of an identity relation, we may view his approach as maintaining the Par-fitian notion that “identity is not what matters”, since only idem-identity can be seen as identity in the traditional sense and Ricoeur would claim that “idem-identity is not what matters”. Nevertheless, Ricoeur would argue that selfhood – though we may in-sist it is not a form of identity – is crucial for moral responsibility, as is visible in Ric-oeur’s notions of attestation and the promise. This is also where I believe Ricoeur can contribute to the discussion on personal identity and ethics, bringing the question of whether such a strong relation as that of identity is necessary for moral responsibility in its traditional sense, yet approaching the question from a different standpoint than Parfit or Schechtman do. Both Ricoeur’s notions of attestation and the role of the other(s) for moral responsibility may be of interest in an exploration into how we ac-tually impute moral responsibility to others in real life.

From an empirical viewpoint, Ricoeur’s concept of narrative identity may be in-spirational for accounts such as Bruce Hood’s (2012), which take personal identity as a “necessary” and useful illusion, which evolved to help us adapt to our social human

CONCLUSION

46

lives. Ricoeur’s account of narrative identity seems also translatable into social con-structivist terms, given its dependence on cultural symbols and narratives. Finally, Ric-oeur’s notion of narrative identity may be beneficial for narrative psychology and psy-chotherapy, the practice of which supports Ricoeur’s undeniable notion that the per-sonal narratives we create affect real life actions.

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47

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losophy. Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Spring 2021. Retrieved from: https://plato.stan-

ford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/ricoeur/

Audio presentations

ROMANO, Claude. Identité et ipséité: l’apport de Paul Ricoeur et ses prolongements [audio

presentation]. In: Colloque "Paul Ricoeur: de la phénoménologie a l’herméneutique et re-

tour". Fonds Ricoeur, Paris IV Sorbonne, 2013. Retrieved from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwtp6O3_CEg&t=819s

JOHNSON, Michel. “The Primitive Datum" of the power to act: The Roots of Paul Ricœur's cri-

tique of Anglo-American analytical philosophy of action in the French tradition of re-

flexive philosophy [audio presentation]. In: Colloque "Paul Ricœur et la philosophie con-

temporaine de langue anglaise". Fonds Ricoeur, IPT Paris, 2013. Retrieved from:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbN1OBy6vos&ab_channel=FondsRicoeur

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/ricoeur/

https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/ricoeur/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwtp6O3_CEg&t=819s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbN1OBy6vos&ab_channel=FondsRicoeur

Ricoeur's Concept of Narrative Identity - IS MUNI

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