Abstract

The metaphysical self is the self that is implicated in a well-defined metaphysical project. The autobiographical self is the self that would be captured in one’s autobiography. The autobiographical self is not, necessarily, narratively structured. However, a minimal form of narrative self-understanding is built into the structure of memory. The distinction between the properties of the act of remembering and those of the episode remembered entails the possibility of a kind of “ironic distance” being built into every episodic memory. This entails the possibility of the one who remembers adopting something like the position of a narrator with respect to the self that is remembered. The latter self is the W-Self. The former self is the R-Self. The autobiographical self is the fusion of the W-Self and the R-Self, a fusion underwritten by the R-Self’s recognition of the W-Self as identical with the R-Self.