Narrative Identity

This paper proposes Adaptive Regulation as a conceptual and developmental account of how reflectively integrated conscious systems maintain, lose, and recover psychological stability over time. Building on a prior account of consciousness as a continuous adaptive process, it argues that introspective reflection introduces both power and burden: individuals can interpret, revise, and regulate their own internal states, but can also become destabilised through recursive self-interpretation, identity threat, rumination, and poorly integrated emotional signals. Adaptive Regulation describes stability not as permanent happiness (...) or emotional suppression, but as dynamic equilibrium maintained through signal interpretation, participation, agency, reflection, identity stability, and environmental reinforcement. The paper introduces internal variables as functional conditions that shape how signals are weighted and interpreted, and argues that regulatory strategies become available through development, biology, identity, support, and environment rather than instruction alone. It links emotional interpretation with participation, contribution, agency, self-worth, respect, conflict, developmental integration, and collective reinforcement. Existing practices such as therapy, medication, education, behavioural strategies, social support, and structured self-help are positioned as intersecting with these mechanisms by restoring or supporting regulatory availability under different conditions. The framework also considers how adaptive capacities may be cultivated through reflective support, receptive timing, survivable pressure, low-pressure participation, modelling responsibility, tolerance of difference, and environments that reinforce agency, repair, rest, and meaningful participation. Adaptive Regulation is offered as an interpretive synthesis rather than a clinical or diagnostic model, with limitations involving trauma, neurodivergence, medication, biological conditions, culture, poverty, coercion, structural harm, and normative misuse. (shrink)

This paper argues that vulnerability to suicide includes at least two contrasting types. In one type, suffering is blocked by difficulty in articulation, making it hard to direct or externalize. In a minority type, however, danger arises when the disassembly of meaning and value outpaces the reconstruction of life, despite the presence of high vocabulary, reflective capacity, and existential insight. This paper calls the latter the "right peak." What makes the right peak dangerous is not the intensity of suffering itself, (...) but an asymmetry between capacities for disassembly and reconstruction, whereby clarity and depth of self-analysis are misread as signs of safety. Furthermore, what this paper terms "residual fatality," a lethal inclination that persists even after explanation has been exhausted, lies at the core of this configuration. The paper maps this structure as nine interconnected paradoxes, including expressions that invite misreading, structural loneliness in which potential understanding exists yet cannot be reached, the self-contamination of theory, and the possibility that accurate recognition itself becomes harmful. The aim is not to propose a diagnostic category or clinical protocol, but to render visible, in the vocabulary of health humanities, a minority form of suffering that is often overlooked. (shrink)

This paper offers a contemporary reinterpretation of Plotinus’s doctrine of emanation by translating the metaphysical sequence One → Nous → Psyche into an ontological–phenomenological account of human experience. The Plotinean One is refigured as the Ontological Now: the immediate, objective presence of reality as experienced under maximal present-constraint, with minimal conceptual and narrative mediation. Nous is interpreted as the shared human archetype, encompassing biological, cognitive, and symbolic structures that universally organize perception and meaning. Psyche is understood as the narrative self, (...) in which personal history, language, and cultural context generate an individualized sense of identity and a subject–object divide. By integrating insights from phenomenology, cognitive science, and depth psychology, the paper reframes emanation not as a supernatural cosmology but as a layered process of mediation through which presence becomes meaning and meaning becomes personal story. The analysis further explores the Plotinean return (epistrophē) as a phenomenological reversal: a movement of introspection and de-mediation that increases present-constraint, reducing narrative mediation within experience. This reinterpretation situates Plotinus within contemporary debates on consciousness and selfhood, suggesting that ontological grounding in the present has implications for metaphysics, psychology, and contemplative practice. (shrink)

Conscience is often referred to yet not understood. This text develops a theory of cognition around a model of conscience, the ACTWith model. It represents a synthesis of results from contemporary neuroscience with traditional philosophy, building from Jamesian insights into the emergence of the self to narrative identity, all the while motivated by a single mechanism as represented in the ACTWith model. Emphasis is placed on clarifying historical expressions and demonstrations of conscience - Socrates, Heidegger, Kant, M.L. King - in (...) light of the ACTWith model, while at once turning these resources to developing the basic architecture. In the end, this text aims to enrich moral theory by improving our understanding of moral cognition, while at once providing a useful tool in everyday moral practice and self-development. (shrink)

This paper examines the parallels between Marya Schechtman’s (2014. Staying Alive: Personal Identity, Practical Concerns, and the Unity of a Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press) ‘Person Life View’ (PLV) and Conventionalism regarding personal identity. PLV contends that personal identity hinges on recognition by others and societal institutions, while Conventionalism argues that personhood is influenced by social conventions. Schechtman argues against Conventionalism and in favour of PLV on the grounds that changing conventions could undermine personhood. However, this paper argues that PLV (...) is a form of Conventionalism. By analysing the roles of conventions, desires, and behaviours in both theories this paper demonstrates their fundamental similarities. In particular, PLV’s reliance on the notion of ‘acceptance into the person-space’ aligns with Conventionalism. Ultimately, this analysis suggests that Schechtman’s distinctions between her theory and Conventionalism may be artificial, showing how her criticism of Conventionalism is based on misunderstanding of the theory rather than genuine critiques. (shrink)

Values are widely recognized as playing a central role in the formation of our identities, perspectives, and affects. If you want to know who I am, how I see the world, and what has emotional significance for me, you will need to know something about my values. However, I argue that the relationship between value and subjectivity—understood as encompassing a person’s identity, perspective, and affective life—is more complex than it initially appears. Even when two individuals share the same values, their (...) engagement with those values can diverge significantly: it can be manifest either in a positive, affirmative manner or in an oppositional, antagonistic manner. With this distinction at hand, I examine a pervasive but undertheorized phenomenon: the emergence of subjectivities that are fundamentally structured around opposition rather than pursuit of positive ideals. Drawing on examples from contemporary politics and social movements, I distinguish between contingently negative orientations, which dissolve once specific threats disappear, and constitutively negative orientations, which perpetuate themselves through a continual search for new opponents. I argue that these negative orientations are not determined by the contents of evaluative judgments, but by the particular form of valuing that individuals or groups exhibit. Certain valuings are grounded in affects such as hatred, fear, and resentment; when these affects become self-sustaining and detached from stable targets, they generate constitutively negative orientations. (shrink)

A pressing question for the philosophy of personal identity in the digital age is the extent to which people can be identical to their various digital self-representations, from virtual avatars and social media profiles to AI digital duplicates and future mind uploads. This article addresses this question in the case of virtual avatars: user-controlled, visual representations of self in online environments like video games and virtual reality worlds. I interpret the metaphysical relationship between avatar and user implied by the ‘avatar (...) identity question’ through the lens of the extended self thesis. Drawing on the narrative theory of identity, I argue for the avatar extended self (AES): the view that virtual avatars can become constitutive components of a user’s personhood. After establishing criteria for avatar-user narrative integration and responding to objections to the view, I examine its ethical implications, arguing that AES raises the ethical significance of virtual actions involving one’s avatar and, in so doing, sheds light on the question of what grounds the moral weight of virtual phenomena. (shrink)

This article develops the twin concepts of food ease/unease by examining the effect of Ozempic era cultural narratives on fat peoples’ relationship with food. Accordingly, I make three contributions to the literature on GLP-1RAs. First, I characterize four master narratives relating to food that stem from Ozempic era discourses. Master narratives were first theorized by Hilde Lindemann Nelson (2001): they are cultural stories through which people construct their narrative selves. I identify four relevant master narratives: the miracle narrative, the ending (...) narrative, the simplicity narrative, and the food noise narrative. Second, I argue that these food narratives burden fat people with what I term food unease. Food unease makes the subjective experience of hunger and eating difficult, undesired, or interfere with life in an unpleasant or obtrusive way. Narratives that pathologize (fat) hunger and (fat) eating burden fat people insofar as fat people use them to make sense of their relationship with food. My third contribution is to show that the twin concepts of food ease/unease are more useful for thinking about GLP-1RAs’ effect on peoples’ relationship with food than the concept of food noise. By examining the impact of Ozempic era master narratives on fat people’s relationship with food, I provide more reason to be circumspect about the popularity of these drugs. At the same time, I offer new concepts that can be used to construct counter narratives against oppressive cultural stories. (shrink)

Metaphysics is the science of what is necessarily the case and thus the case in every possible world. Kant had framed the question of the possibility of metaphysics as a science as the question of whether there are synthetic truths a priori. This can be affirmed if there is knowledge from experience - because a statement whose truth can be shown to be a necessary condition for this cannot be shaken by any possible experience and therefore does not itself express (...) a fact of experience. Transcendental argumentation amounts to showing that a statement can be inferred from the premise “There is knowledge from experience”. The most general form of transcendental argumentation is expressed in the sentence: Cogito ergo mundus talis est - I think, therefore the world is like this. -/- This volume contains paragraphs §27, §28 and §29. In §27, the concept of metaphysics is analyzed with respect to its role within the history of ideas. In particular, the important concept of “category” is clarified. §28 examines which physical structures of our world of experience can be identified as transcendentally necessary. It deals with time and space, bodies, object permanence, causality and fundamental physical quantities such as mass, momentum, force and energy. Finally, the paragraph answers Leibniz's fundamental question: Why is there something instead of nothing? §29 deals with the psychological aspect of experiential structures, including life. It is primarily concerned with the relationship between the physical and the psychological (the “mind-body problem”), freedom of will, criteria of personal identity and the concept of happiness and its possible realization in human life. (shrink)

A significant and burgeoning problem associated with artificial intelligence is its capacity to generate mirrors of ourselves, or digital duplicates of varying complexity consisting of our likeness and (perhaps ostensibly) behaviors, using our personal information. This chapter will explore how digital duplicates impact our narrative identity, relying upon Paul Ricoeur’s narrative philosophy to argue that digital duplicates undermine or challenge the construction of personal identity through narrative in appropriating elements of the idem (sameness) and interfering with our ipse (selfhood). This (...) challenge is generated and exacerbated by, and compounds, breaks in the contextual integrity of our personal information, and therefore causes a rupture in narrative privacy itself, where narrative privacy is a state of being able to narrate our lives without arbitrary or unjust efforts to read or co-author those narratives by third parties. We argue that there are two key sources of harm to the narrative self and privacy in the case of digital duplicates: the other or corporation responsible for constructing the duplicate, and the digital duplicate itself, which can transmit both true and untrue information about its subject with little regard to the appropriateness of the receivers of the information. This occurs through a mixture of abuse of the idem self, and possibly an imitation of the ipse by duplicates that can represent changes in disposition over time. The result is constrained capacity to narrate and become who we wish to be. (shrink)

Ressentiment describes a psychological process in which a subject responds to feelings of inadequacy by altering his evaluative orientation in a way that enables him to blame the inadequacy on some outgroup. Ressentiment is taken to have far-reaching applicability: it has been used to explain many different forms of political antagonism, including those present in the authoritarian far-right, the far left, identity politics, populism, neo-Nazi movements, the manosphere, incels, and fanaticism. This essay asks what exactly ressentiment is and whether it (...) gives a good account of political antagonism. Is ressentiment an emotion? If so, what kind of emotion is it? How is it linked to strife and discord? Section 1 begins by analyzing the key features of ressentiment. Section 2 asks how ressentiment is linked to the narratives or ideologies with which people and groups operate. Section 3 considers the way in which ressentiment leads to changes in the subject’s identity. Section 4 concludes by discussing the way in which ressentiment generates politically antagonistic emotions and stances. (shrink)

Nietzsche distinguishes between moralities that prioritize negation and those that prioritize affirmation. Moreover, he claims that this negation/affirmation distinction applies at the level of individual identities: some people define themselves through opposition, fixating on what they reject, whereas others orient toward what they conceive as good. While the negation/affirmation distinction plays a prominent role in several of Nietzsche’s arguments, it is philosophically puzzling. What does it mean to say that certain moralities prioritize negation, and why does Nietzsche associate these negative (...) moralities with negative identities? I argue that we can answer these questions by examining Nietzsche’s account of how moralities introduce new narratives and concepts. These narratives consolidate, transform, and entrench affective structures. In certain cases, this reconfiguration generates identities that are constitutively negative: they are defined not by the pursuit of a determinate goal, but by the continuous expression of negative affects. (shrink)

Non-Consensual Sexual Deepfakes (NCSD) are a growing issue of our onlife experience. We argue that, far from harming individuals merely indirectly, NCSD constitute a _Direct Personal Harm_ to the persons they depict, because they can be understood as parts of their personal identity. We defend this claim by developing a narrative theory of identity according to which a person is constituted by their life story—a story that is not solely self-authored but socially shaped and often beyond one’s control. On this (...) basis, we argue that digital artifacts such as NCSD can become elements of a person’s narrative identity. We ground our account in a four-dimensionalist metaphysics that treats persons as aggregates of both biological and digital temporal parts. Finally, by examining the verbal behavior of imaginary and actual victims of NCSD, we show that this account is less counterintuitive than it may initially appear and helps make sense of why many experience NCSD as violations of their person, rather than merely of their representation. (shrink)

I offer two novel theories of our nature: volitional phase animalism, which holds that we are essentially organisms with volitions; and narrative phase animalism, which holds that we are essentially organisms that produce self-narratives. Both theories agree with the standard versions of animalism’s claim that we are essentially living organisms but deny that we are essentially human. I examine the implications of these theories for the categorisation of artificial intelligence: I discuss whether certain AI systems might eventually qualify as some (...) of us if they function as organisms with the relevant volitional or narrative capacities. (shrink)

This is a textbook/popular introduction to the metaphysics of identity. It is centred around 12 science fiction stories, each of which explores some facet of the personal identity debate; cases like amnesia, teleportation, time travel, brain fission and mental fusion. Accompanying each story is a commentary that summarises the philosophical arguments. While the arguments are presented in a balanced way, the author ends up supporting a broadly animalist account, according to which we are essentially autonomous animals. This means that we (...) persist so long as we maintain our animal bodies and its autonomous life-preservation distinct from other animals. We stop persisting if we are bodily fused with other animals, or if we lose our basic animal characteristics (for instance, if our bodies are gradually replaced by machine parts). Another point that the book makes is that thought experiments are essential for reasoning about the metaphysics of identity. Yet philosophers have often used thought experiments in an irresponsible way. For instance, philosophers such as Derek Parfit make appeals to brain transplants without thinking through their practical implications in any realistic detail. A collection of science fiction stories on these scenarios is thus important for getting us to think more carefully about these cases. Finally, the book has appendices which list science fiction stories and films relevant to personal identity, and a teacher's guide for a class centred around the metaphysics of identity. The attached file is a preprint version containing the contents list and introduction only. (shrink)

La philosophie de la signification s'articule autour de quatre grands axes : la connaissance, l'esthétique, l'éthique et l'identité. En se confrontant à la question de l'émergence de la conscience, elle examine les limites logiques du matéria-lisme et du réductionnisme et propose une critique du monisme physicaliste, au profit d'un dualisme repensé, fondé sur la discontinuité entre matière et signification, disconti-nuité qui seule permet l'émergence du discours objectif. -/- Au fondement de cette approche se trouve l'idée d'une ouverture originaire de l'être (...) au monde - une exposition silencieuse à ce qui lui est extérieur, antérieure au langage, à la logique et à toute forme de représentation. Trois dimen-sions centrales de l'expérience peuvent ainsi être interrogées à partir de cette structure première : l'esthétique, à travers la musique, comme voie d'accès immédiate à l'articulation entre le sensible et le signifiant ; l'éthique, en tant que questionnement fondamental du rapport à l'altérité qui précède la problématique normative de la morale ; et l'identité, pensée comme une dialectique dynamique entre ouverture et rassemblement de l'être. Ces registres ne relèvent pas de champs séparés, mais déclinent, chacun selon ses modalités, la structure d'un dualisme radical - condition de toute production formelle, de toute pensée et de toute possibilité de comprendre le monde. -/- En filigrane, se dessine une tentative de réconcilier science et humanisme à travers une philosophie de la forme, de la liberté et de l'esprit. -/- Geoffroy de Clisson est titulaire d’un Doctorat en Philosophie (La Sorbonne, Paris IV) . (shrink)

La philosophie de la signification s'articule autour de quatre grands axes : la connaissance, l'esthétique, l'éthique et l'identité. En se confrontant à la question de l'émergence de la conscience, elle examine les limites logiques du matéria-lisme et du réductionnisme et propose une critique du monisme physicaliste, au profit d'un dualisme repensé, fondé sur la discontinuité entre matière et signification, disconti-nuité qui seule permet l'émergence du discours objectif. -/- Au fondement de cette approche se trouve l'idée d'une ouverture originaire de l'être (...) au monde - une exposition silencieuse à ce qui lui est extérieur, antérieure au langage, à la logique et à toute forme de représentation. Trois dimen-sions centrales de l'expérience peuvent ainsi être interrogées à partir de cette structure première : l'esthétique, à travers la musique, comme voie d'accès immédiate à l'articulation entre le sensible et le signifiant ; l'éthique, en tant que questionnement fondamental du rapport à l'altérité qui précède la problématique normative de la morale ; et l'identité, pensée comme une dialectique dynamique entre ouverture et rassemblement de l'être. Ces registres ne relèvent pas de champs séparés, mais déclinent, chacun selon ses modalités, la structure d'un dualisme radical - condition de toute production formelle, de toute pensée et de toute possibilité de comprendre le monde. -/- En filigrane, se dessine une tentative de réconcilier science et humanisme à travers une philosophie de la forme, de la liberté et de l'esprit. -/- Geoffroy de Clisson est titulaire d’un Doctorat en Philosophie (La Sorbonne, Paris IV) . (shrink)

Voices Against Oblivion is a philosophical and historical narrative exploring memory, identity, illness, family history, and moral inheritance. Through the story of Alessandro’s return to Naples following a cancer diagnosis, the work combines autobiography, historical testimony, family memory, and philosophical reflection. Central themes include the Four Days of Naples, the fate of Alessandro Piereschi during the Second World War, intergenerational transmission of memory, the ethics of remembrance, and the relationship between personal identity and historical continuity. The work examines how memory (...) resists oblivion and how family narratives become forms of moral witness across generations. (shrink)

This book presents a novel interpretation of Hume as a proponent of sentimental virtue ethics. This interpretation sheds light on the nature of Hume's ethics, as well as its relevance for contemporary debates in moral philosophy. The book starts by developing an understanding of the self in Hume based on the passion of pride. Contrary to the common view that Hume denies the unity of the self by diluting it into a bundle or collection of different perceptions, the author argues (...) that, by focusing on pride, it is possible to identify in Hume a firm notion of the self as having a sentimental nature that can be explained in narrative terms. Pivoting on this narrative self, he shows how it accounts for the Humean notion of the virtuous person by holding together in a harmonious whole several central issues in Hume's moral philosophy, including sympathy, the point of view from which we make moral judgements, the practical nature of ethics and the role that reflection plays in it, and the definition of perfect character. Finally, the author maintains that Humean virtue ethics, so understood, has the individual at its core, representing a secular and pluralist alternative to neo-Aristotelian versions discussed today. The Proud Self will appeal to scholars and graduate students working on Hume, 18th-century philosophy, virtue ethics, and moral psychology. (shrink)

Autobiographical interviews are a key tool in various social science disciplines. Autobiographical narratives, the product of these interviews, suggest that individuals use self-narration to construct their identity. In addition to remembering, interviewees often engage in parallel additional mental tasks (AMTs), such as action evaluation, counterfactual imagination, and value expression. Although research on autobiographical interviews has highlighted the occurrence of these AMTs, the cognitive processes behind them remain underexplored. In this article, I draw on the theoretical framework of Simulation Theory, which (...) is influential in the psychology and philosophy of memory, to examine the nature of AMTs and their role in identity construction. According to simulationist accounts, remembering personal past events relies on mental simulation as a general mechanism for episodic construction. I argue that this mechanism not only enables recalling information about the past but also supports AMTs that help achieve the agent’s current goals. In autobiographical interviews, the coordinated use of recalling information about the past and engaging in AMTs serves to construct identity through self-narration. AMTs play a key role in reinforcing or altering beliefs about the self by tapping into the malleability of memory and the need for coherence between memories and self-conceptions. (shrink)

We are a species deeply committed to being haunted. Not accidentally, not reluctantly, but with the diligence of archivists and the devotion of monks. We collect the past, label it, polish it, and then complain about its weight, as though it followed us home uninvited. We speak of history as if it were a creditor, memory as if it were law, and precedent as if it were gravity. One would think the past had agency, ambition, perhaps even a small legal (...) team. In truth, it has none. The past is inert. It does not pursue us. We drag it with us. (shrink)

There are certain changes in a person, often small at first, almost too subtle to notice, that begin to rearrange the familiar contours of their mind. A misplaced word, a forgotten task, a momentary confusion about time or place. We tend to react to these slips with concern because they seem to signal something drifting out of reach, but we rarely reflect on what exactly we believe is being lost. Forgetfulness appears frightening not only because a memory is gone but (...) because it disturbs our quiet assumption that memory is the substance of who we are. We live in a culture where the symbolic self, our stories, identities, names, and roles, carries the entire weight of our personhood. When cracks appear in that structure, it feels as though the person themself is leaking away. (shrink)

This paper examines the relationship between breathing, olfactory experience, and the sense of self. By employing the concept of posture, I explore the proprioceptive dimension of breathing within the complex framework of olfaction. The link between respiration and smell is analyzed phenomenologically, situating it within broader discussions on selfhood and embodiment. Ultimately, this research highlights how breathing and smelling are integral to our posture – our distinctive way of being in the world.

In this paper, I try understanding what Husserlian transcendental phenomenology and Ricoeurian hermeneutical narrative identity can say to each other: are these two approaches – as suggested so far – opposite, or can they dialogue in some way? Is there something as a transcendental phenomenology of the (narrative) existence? I inquiry this topic by tackling B. Zannoni's "I miei stupidi intenti" (Sellerio, 2021), a novel about the flow of existence, where we can see all of its fractures, dilemmas, and rearticulations.

The article critically examines the concept of narrative identity and related (pedagogical) questions of transformation and education from a philosophical, phenomenological, and educational theory perspective, paying particular attention to aspects of the antinomies of power and social recognition in the context of disability. The aim is to develop an inclusive perspective on identity and education.

This chapter explores the role that non-textual narrations of biblical stories can play in Christian life and practice. Our case study is the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Kabuga, Rwanda. The stations at the shrine tell the story of Jesus’s life and passion, incorporating images from the Catholic devotional tradition of Divine Mercy and elements evoking the Rwandan genocide. While many philosophical accounts of narratives presuppose that narratives are textual, material and visual art like the Kabuga shrine can also be (...) narrative, in that, like text, material and visual art can selectively represent multiple events and connections between them. We argue that material-visual narratives like the shrine can be effective in achieving commonly identified functions of narratives, such as focusing attention, immersing in a story, engaging the emotions, and fostering a common perspective on the world. We further argue that material-visual art is well-suited to narrating the Gospel in particular, for it can present the Gospel story alongside other stories (in this case, the story of the Rwandan genocide) and in so doing reframe these other stories in light of the Gospel. (shrink)

Examining the author’s own experiences of narcotics addiction reveals certain aspects of the addicted mentality that have strong ethical valence. In general, this shows that addiction is not a state fundamentally characterized by lack. The rudiments of this position are found in some contemporary philosophy of addiction; also, it is contrasted with a common widely held mistaken view. Addiction should instead be understood in continuity with and as illuminating the nature of human personhood and subjectivity. Under a phenomenology specific to (...) the author’s experience, addiction appears as a mode of experience that has an unmanageable overflow of narratives created as discourses concerning people, events, thoughts, and feelings. (shrink)

In recent years, narrative accounts of the self have gained increasing attention. It is widely accepted that humans are storytelling creatures, that stories shape our self-conception, and that we fail to be agents without a narrative framework. While there is less agreement on what constitutes a narrative, it is generally understood to be more than a chronological listing of life events; it is also an account of the explanatory relationships among these events—a story of how events lead to other events. (...) However, specifying the nature of this explanatory relationship has proven difficult. As critics have pointed out, narrativists often resort to simplistic notions of narrative when faced with criticism. The concept of narrative explanation needs to be elaborated in a way that is both substantive enough to exclude trivial behaviours from being considered narratives and nonrestrictive enough to accommodate ordinary lives that may not be particularly story-like. In this paper, I review existing accounts of narrative explanation and propose a teleological account, according to which narratives consist of goal-directed explanations of a sequence of events. I argue that a teleological account of narrative explanation can be a fruitful way to clarify the concept of “narrative” in the context of the narrative self by addressing the most common objections. (shrink)

This book is a brief guide to Proust's magnum opus in which Joshua Landy invites the reader to view the novel as a single quest--a quest for purpose, enchantment, identity, connection, and belonging--through the novel's fascinating treatments of memory, society, art, same-sex desire, knowledge, self-understanding, self-fashioning, and the unconscious mind. -/- Landy also shows why the questions Proust raises are important and exciting for all of us: how we can feel at home in the world; how we can find genuine (...) connection with other human beings; how we can find enchantment in a world without God; how art can transform our lives; whether an artist's life can shed light on their work; what we can know about the world, other people, and ourselves; when not knowing is better than knowing; how sexual orientation affects questions of connection and identity; who we are, deep down; what memory tells us about our inner world; why it might be good to think of our life as a story; how we can feel like a single, unified person when we are torn apart by change and competing desires. Finally, Landy suggests why it's worthwhile to read the novel itself-how the long, difficult, but joyous experience of making it through 3,000 pages of prose can be transformative for our minds and souls. (shrink)

We love people because of who they are, but can the idea of “who they are” be explained through a property that everyone has, such as agency? David Velleman believes this to be the case, and argues that love is an appraisal of a person’s incomparable value, which disarms the lover’s emotional defences. Modelling love on Kantian respect, Velleman claims that love is a response to a person’s rational nature, indirectly perceived though her empirical persona—her observable traits and behaviours, which (...) are imperfect representations of the value of rational nature. An important problem for Velleman’s account is that it seems incompatible with two widely shared assumptions about love: that love is personal (so it cannot be analogous to impersonal respect) and that love is selective (so it cannot be based on a property shared by all individuals). Here, I propose a re-formulation of Velleman’s view that avoids those objections while preserving the idea that love is an evaluation of the loved person’s agency. Specifically, love is an evaluation of a person’s inner narrator, which is also a person’s capacity to act for reasons—to make actions intelligible to herself. The inner narrator is perceived through that person’s observable narrative: her actions and interpretations in interaction, which are a product, and not an imperfect representation, of the inner narrator. In the re-formulated view, love is both personal and selective, but still an agential process that involves both the lover and the loved person’s capacities to make sense of the world. (shrink)

This article examines the form and language of Simone de Beauvoir’s novella “The Woman Destroyed” to argue that the story is a philosophical work in two ways. First, it contributes to scholarship on narrative self-understanding: it moves beyond Anthony Rudd’s and Peter Goldie’s theories by revealing how the instability of language complicates self-understanding. Second, it invites philosophical introspection by representing life as it is and generating questions about self-understanding for readers to ponder instead of giving them ready-made answers.

Biblical narratives include some of the most important and influential narratives in human history, shaping human understanding of the most basic questions of human life as lived individually or in social association with others. These narratives have lasted for so many centuries because they offer deep insights into the nature of the human condition and human flourishing. This volume includes chapters by accomplished philosophers and theologians who bring their expertise to bear on biblical narratives to show the way in which (...) each narrative contributes something distinctive to our understanding of human flourishing. They broaden the ongoing work in analytic theology with a new focus on narrative and the knowledge of persons in philosophical-theological biblical exegesis. They also illustrate the narrative cognition that this methodology can provide. The book will be of interest to scholars of philosophy, theology, and biblical studies. (shrink)

In this article, we investigate how the concept of Care Biography and related concepts are understood and operationalised and describe how it can be applied to advancing our understanding and practice of holistic and person‐centred care. Walker and Avant's eight‐step concept analysis method was conducted involving multiple database searches, with potential or actual applications of Care Biography identified based on multiple discussions among all authors. Our findings demonstrate Care Biography to be a novel overarching concept derived from the conjunction of (...) multiple other concepts and applicable across multiple care settings. Concepts related to Care Biography exist but were more narrowly defined and mainly applied in intensive care, aged care, and palliative care settings. They are associated with the themes of Meaningfulness and Existential Coping, Empathy and Understanding, Promoting Positive Relationships, Social and Cultural Contexts, and Self‐Care, which we used to inform and refine our concept analysis of Care Biography. In Conclusion, the concept of Care Biography, can provide a deeper understanding of a person and their care needs, facilitate integrated and personalised care, empower people to be in control of their care throughout their life, and help promote ethical standards of care. (shrink)

This paper introduces three new criteria that a theory of personal identity ought to satisfy: (1) material holism, (2) narrative unity, and (3) narrative integrity. Material holism guards against the undesirable consequence of positing the person as part and existentially distinct from the organismal whole, of which it is dependent and interconnected. Narrative unity ensures that continuity between the beginning, middle, and end of a human life is sufficiently accounted for. Narrative integrity secures fidelity and congruence between each part and (...) the whole, the whole to each part. Jeff McMahan’s Embodied Mind Account (EM) fails to satisfy each of these. On McMahan’s account, human persons and human organisms are distinct entities, human persons come into existence after its human organism, and human persons may go out of existence before their human organism. Moreover, fetuses, infants, the congenitally severely cognitively impaired, those with severe dementia, and the comatose are non-persons. A theory of personal identity that incorporates holism and narrative can provide a better explanation of human existence, life and death, and the identity paradox of dicephalic twins. If accepted, EM must either be rejected or ameliorated, and the new criteria ought to be incorporated in contemporary research of personal identity. (shrink)

In the industrial era, advanced science and technology make immortality-obsessed human beings constantly develop, modify, and reshape their bodies and consciousness, to overcome the fragility and transience of their bodies and approach the dream of immortality. The transformation of the body, in turn, drives society to confront the co-existence of cyborg, transhuman, information subject, nomadic posthuman and other life forms. Focusing on Chinese-American writer Ken Liu’s science fiction the Future Trilogy, Arc, and The Waves, this paper attempts to explore the (...) metamorphosis of the body and the ethical choices in the tension between death and immortality, embodiment and disembodiment. Immortality is not a Utopian paradise but causes many ethical problems and loss of continuity of time, space, history, and identity. Liu’s works suggest that the solution to the problem of posthuman disembodiment involves embracing embodiment and recognizing the importance of memory and social interaction in the formation of one’s identity, affirming that memory and the interaction with others are necessary conditions for the formation of the subject’s identity. Blending genesis myths and technological immortality, Liu explores the possibility of creating new life different from human beings. The posthumans depicted are always in the status of becoming, eager to discover the new world, and indicate the author’s expectations for the bright new future. (shrink)

Grace Hibshman has developed a new explanation for why narrative self-conceptions might contribute to one’s flourishing: conceiving of one’s life narratively, she argues, can facilitate an improved self-understanding. In this short paper, we argue that, pace Hibshman, life narratives tend to misrepresent and mislead. So while they may give the impression of an improved self-understanding, that impression is typically mistaken. In this respect, conceiving of one’s life narratively hinders flourishing.

Building on the account of a pattern-theory of self introduced by Shaun Gallagher, this article investigates the unique role of the narrative dimension of the self within the self-pattern. According to a pattern-theory, the self is constituted by a cluster of dimensions that interact with each other. A particular variation of this pattern constitutes a self. This article advances the argument that for selves who narrate, the narrative dimension of the self takes a special role that cuts across the other (...) dimensions. First, the pattern-theory of self is introduced and a conceptual and ethical argument for employing a pattern-theory is developed. Second, the distinct role of the narrative dimension of the self is analysed. Through the narrative dimension of the self, we engage in self-definition, integrate and connect the other dimensions of the self, make them intelligible, and ascribe personal meaning to them. And third, the narrator type of self is characterized. Organizing one’s experiences through a self-narrative changes the self. Narrators constitute a unified self, they can actively plan and lead a life and engage in forensic practices, and they integrate the subjective and objective nature of the self. (shrink)

Among the teachings Jesus delivers in the Gospel of Matthew following the Sermon on the Mount are important instructions concerning prayer. Just before teaching the "Our Father," Jesus speaks of the "inner room" into which one must retreat in order to pray. According to Jean-Louis Chrétien's multi-volume genealogy of "figures of interiority, and the way in which interiority becomes 'subjectivity,'" this inner room is one of two key biblical starting points for tracing the development of how we think about consciousness (...) in the West, the other being the biblical "heart" in its relation to St. Paul's "inner man." Here I focus on Chrétien's investigations of the "inner room" and other spatial topoi or schemas that Christian writers and thinkers have employed in order to figure consciousness as a space in which the human being communes intimately with God, and which later writers, both Christian and non-Christian, have overturned by vacating God, transforming this inner space of divine encounter into a profane space of solitude. I explain how Chrétien makes the surprising connection between the inner room described by Jesus and related inner spaces developed in its wake, on the one hand, and, on the other, the modern narrative techniques for portraying human consciousness employed by such master of the modern novel as Gustave Flaubert and Henry James. (shrink)

This paper applies concepts of elemental media and metabolisms to the case of cosmic and planetary ecologies that emerge from the interaction between Earth and Sun, manifesting in photosynthesis or carbon isotope chemistry. In doing so, it expands on registers of media theory and environmental studies and prompts the reader to consider the medial and archival affordances of the light-based interactions, and further processes they give rise to. The main aim of the paper is to use these observations to speculate (...) about the human condition in the Anthropocene, characterised by the experience of human mediality. The paper addresses human mediality mainly in the dimension of affective qualities this condition may prompt, and the resulting narrative model of selfhood – the metabolic self. The paper develops its conceptual contribution in close proximity with several artistic examples, especially Eduardo Navarro’s performance In Collaboration with the Sun (2017–2019). The paper is positioned as a contribution to studies of multispecies cohabitation and more-than-human communication, while also developing a narrative strategy for talking about the decentred position of human species in the more-than-human world-making. (shrink)

The idea that love changes who we are is widely shared, and has been mostly explored from a stance in the middle stage of love (i.e., when people already love each other). But how do we get there? And what happens when love ends? In this chapter, I explore how self-understanding may be shaped in different ways at different stages of love through the notions of narrative and existential feeling. As I will argue, love gains narrative momentum at the beginning, (...) which is maintained during the middle, and ultimately extinguished at the end. This momentum is triggered and later sustained by the existential feeling that ‘things make sense’, which keeps the lovers oriented towards each other. (shrink)

Paul Ricœur says that our narrative identity depends on how others understand us. This claim, however, does not explicitly address the fact that not everyone receives the same recognition: it underexplains how certain groups are systemically not acknowledged, respected, or taken seriously. More recent work on narrative co-authoring starts to address this fact by examining how people’s vulnerability to co-authoring depends on the context in which they live. But I argue that this work should be extended to attend to the (...) kinds of vulnerabilities that result from what José Medina calls recognition deficiencies, which become more normalized due to structural oppression, specifically what Iris Marion Young calls cultural imperialism. I then illuminate the kinds of vulnerabilities that result from recognition deficiencies in cases of structural oppression by bringing in work in Black feminist thought and epistemic injustice, particularly that of Audre Lorde and Veronica Ivy, into conversation with narrative scholarship. (shrink)

Conservation of the Circle is the only dynamic in Nature, and, therefore, the simple solution to the complex problem called ‘reality.’ (Also known as 'identity.') Financial, technological, and, therefore, psychological.

Narrative views of agency and identity arise in opposition to reductionism in both domains. While reductionists understand both identity and agency in terms of their components, narrativists respond that life and action are both constituted by narratives, and since the components of a narrative gain their meaning from the whole, life and action not only incorporate their constituent parts but also shape them. I first lay out the difficulties with treating narrative as constitutive of metaphysical identity and turn to its (...) function in practical identity. I then explore the ways narrative shapes our agency—by tapping into our motivational structures, providing an understanding of the social background within which our agency operates, guiding our agency through an understanding of our histories and aspirations, providing the links that structure actions internally, and allowing us to change the meaning of our pasts. I suggest that putting these functions of narrative together may allow us to genuinely shape our past motivational structures through our actions. Finally, if life has the form of a narrative, it may seem as if mortality is necessary for our lives and their contents to be meaningful: a narrative, it might seem, relies on the ending for its meaning. If so, an immortal life would be meaningless. I examine the possibility that even an immortal life may draw meaning from local narratives that constitute projects within such a life, while arguing that, to the contrary, narrative may be a tool exclusively adapted to mortal lives. (shrink)

Everyone thinks they know who Prince Zuko is and can be. His father, Fire Lord Ozai, and sister, Azula, think him weak, disobedient, and undeserving of the crown. His Uncle Iroh thinks him good, if troubled, but ultimately worthy of his faith. The kids initially think him a villain, but eventually come to see him as a person – neither monster nor saint – someone who can choose to go in a new way. Zuko himself shows great ambivalence between these (...) conflicting stories about who he is, though each one helps to craft his own self-understanding. In this paper, we apply Hilde Lindemann’s narrative account of the self to explore the ways that others “hold” Zuko in one identity or “let him go” from others. According to Lindemann, our personal identities consist of the first- and third-person stories that cluster around significant acts, relationships, and commitments in our lives. Our identities are fundamentally relational, formed by the interaction between our own self-conception and the ways in which others see us. As such, others’ stories can enable or prevent us from imaginatively projecting ourselves into a particular future. This can lead us to becoming trapped in our identities; without the possibility of being perceived differently by others, we might find ourselves unable to try different ways of being or acting. The converse is also true, in that others can open up new possible identities by seeing things in us that we have trouble seeing in ourselves. If others in our moral community see us as wicked, beyond redemption and unable to repair our wrongs, we are held in the role of the villain and might come to live into that role without question. Zuko’s story is a perfect illustration of Jean Harvey’s reminder that, “it is just not true that once a thief, always a thief” and that agents can choose to go in a new way, can choose to change. How does Zuko change? We argue that Zuko’s redemption is enabled by those in his moral community holding him in identities in which he is a good person, capable and deserving of care, friendship, and love. While the identity he has in relation to his father and sister closes down many possible futures, his uncle Iroh in particular persists in holding him in an identity in which he is loved and worthy of love. And in doing so - in holding this space for him - Iroh opens up a way for Zuko to exercise agency and choose to become a different kind of person than the one he thought he was destined to be. (shrink)

One goal of this paper is to argue that autobiographical memories are extended and distributed across embodied brains and environmental resources. This is important because such distributed memories play a constitutive role in our narrative identity. So, some of the building blocks of our narrative identity are not brain-bound but extended and distributed. Recognising the distributed nature of memory and narrative identity, invites us to find treatments and strategies focusing on the environment in which dementia patients are situated. A second (...) goal of this paper is to suggest various of such strategies, including lifelogging technologies such as SenseCams, life story books, multimedia biographies, memory boxes, ambient intelligence systems, and virtual reality applications. Such technologies allow dementia patients to remember their personal past in a way that wouldn’t be possible by merely relying on their biological memory, in that way aiding in preserving their narrative identity and positively contributing to their sense of well-being. (shrink)

It is widely held that it is good to conceive of one's life narratively, but why this is the case has not been well established. I argue that conceiving of one's life narratively can contribute to one's flourishing by mediating to oneself a second-person experience of oneself, furnishing one with valuable second-personal productive distance from oneself and as a result self-understanding. Drawing on Eleonore Stump's theory that narratives re-present to their audiences the second-person experiences they depict, I argue that conceiving (...) of one's life narratively facilitates taking on the second-person experience that an audience would have in hearing one's life narrative, mediating how someone from a second-person perspective might perceive oneself and as a result yielding valuable self-understanding. I conclude with some practical implications. (shrink)

This book is a brief guide to Proust's magnum opus in which Joshua Landy invites the reader to view the novel as a single quest-a quest for purpose, enchantment, identity, connection, and belonging- through the novel's fascinating treatments of memory, society, art, same-sex desire, knowledge, self-understanding, self-fashioning, and the unconscious mind. -/- Landy also shows why the questions Proust raises are important and exciting for all of us: how we can feel at home in the world; how we can find (...) genuine connection with other human beings; how we can find enchantment in a world without God; how art can transform our lives; whether an artist's life can shed light on their work; what we can know about the world, other people, and ourselves; when not knowing is better than knowing; how sexual orientation affects questions of connection and identity; who we are, deep down; what memory tells us about our inner world; why it might be good to think of our life as a story; how we can feel like a single, unified person when we are torn apart by change and competing desires. Finally, Landy suggests why it's worthwhile to read the novel itself-how the long, difficult, but joyous experience of making it through 3,000 pages of prose can be transformative for our minds and souls. (shrink)

What if we aren’t just the stories we tell about ourselves? What if our identity also involves something beyond any possible narrative—something, indeed, that needs protecting from narrative? If so, then it might seem as though a sequential account of our memories is beside the point; yet under some circumstances, surprisingly, a sequential account of our memories is precisely what protects us best. That’s arguably what The Periodic Table does for Primo Levi: while this stunningly unusual generic hybrid preserves the (...) full force and magnitude of Levi’s experience in the camps, it also situates that experience on the same level as other events, thus preventing it from taking over completely. Rather than giving us, through content, the story of Levi’s life, its main function is to express, through form, the depths of his character, something that remains constant across all circumstances. It thus represents a heroic refusal on Levi’s part to let the Holocaust define him, to let others deprive him of his individuality, to let the diachronic dominate. It saved his self from stories. Did it also, perhaps, keep him alive a little longer? (shrink)