Narrative identity: Transcending Existential Finitude through Narrative. In the Circle of the Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur.

• Authors: Jakubowski, Jarosław

Abstracts

EN

In Ricoeur’s view, existential finitude is delineated through both ‘external’ otherness inrelation to an existing being (the world, Others), as well as through ‘inner’ otherness (thebody itself, conscience). The interweaving of those two types of otherness, and therebythe quintessence of existential finitude, is expressed by the figure ‘limitation of opennessto the world’. Depicting various types of limitation of openness to the world, Ricoeur arguesthat a certain way of transcending it can be assigned to each of those types. Is there,however, in line with Ricoeur’s concept, any universal way of transcending the limitationof openness to the world which encompasses all types of limitation? There are groundsfor believing that the role of such a universal way of transcending the limitation of opennessto the world could be performed, according to Ricoeur, by vouloir dire (wanting tosay, meaning, sayability) in its most, perhaps, developed form, i.e. vouloir dire taking theform of a narrative (the narrative in the meaning of being close to Aristotle’s notion ofmythos). Why narrative? First, the reason for the narrative allows me to look as if it werefrom a distance at any limitation of openness to the world in which I participate. The narrativeprompts me to recognize the perspective world revelation precisely as the perspectiveworld revelation. Next, that the narrative, by revealsing newer and newer possibilitiesof Being before me, induces me to modify, to a lesser or greater extent, the relationshipI establish with the world and with oneself.

Keywords

EN

limitation of openness; the World; transcending; an existing being; the otherness; the narrative

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Gdański
• Journal: Miscellanea Anthropologica et Sociologica
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 17(2)
• Pages: 27-40

Contributors

author

Jakubowski, Jarosław