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Galen Strawson, philosophy editor of TLS <\/i> , challenges the current widespread idea that human lives either are or should be narrative. He distinguishes between the \u201cPsychological Narrative\u201d thesis, which claims that \u201cordinary human beings experience their lives\u201d in a narrative fashion, and the \u201cEthical Narrativity Thesis,\u201d which claims that we ought to see our lives narratively if we are going to have rich and unified lives. These two theses can combine in four ways: some affirm both (majority of contemporary narrative theorists \u2013 MacIntyre, Ricoeur, Taylor); some affirm the Psychological but deny the Ethical thesis (Sartre); some affirm the Ethical but deny the Psychological (he mentions Plutarch); and some, like Strawson, deny both. He argues that \u201cthere are deeply non-Narrative people and there are good ways to live that are deeply non-Narrative.\u201d The Ethical Narrativity thesis is, he thinks, particularly damaging: Such views \u201chinder human self-understanding, close down important avenues of thought, needlessly and wrongly distree those who do not fit their model, and can be highly destructive in psychotherapeutic contexts.\u201d <\/p>\n
By way of contrast, Strawson suggests that human self-experience can be Diachronic or Episodic as well as Narrative. Diachronic persons figure themselves \u201cconsidered as a self, as something that was there in the (further) past and will be there in the (further) future ?Esomething that has relatively long-term Diachronic continuity, something that persists over a long stretch of time, perhaps for life.\u201d Diachronic and Narrative may overlap, but they are not identical. Episodic persons, however, do not figure themselves \u201cconsidered as a self, as something that was there in the (further) past and will be there in the (further) future, although one is perfectly well arae that one has long-term continuity considered as a whole human being.\u201d <\/p>\n
Strawson describes himself as a \u201crelatively Episodic\u201d personality, and explains his relation to his past as follows: \u201cI*\u201d stands for \u201cthat which I now experience myself to be when I\u2019m apprehending myself specifically as an inner mental presence or self.\u201d In this sense, \u201cIt\u2019s clear to me that events in my remoter past didn\u2019t happen to me*. But what does this amount to? It certainly doesn\u2019t mean that I don\u2019t have any \u201cautobiographical\u201d memories of these past experiences. I do. And they are certainly the experiences of the human being that I am. It does not, however, follow from this that I experience them as having happened to me*, or indeed that they did happen to me*. They certainly do not present as things that happened to me*, and I think I\u2019m strictly, literally correct in thinking that they did not happen to me*.\u201d Even memories that are memories \u201cfrom the inside\u201d do not imply that the experience remembered happened to \u201cme*\u201d: \u201cit certainly does not follow [from a from-the-inside experience] that it carries any feeling or belief that what is remembered happened to me*, to that which I now apprehend myself to be when apprehending myself specifically as a self.\u201d <\/p>\n
Of course, he says, \u201cI\u2019m aware that my past is mine so far as I\u2019m a human being, and I fully accept that there\u2019s a sense in which it has a special relevants to me* no, including special emotional and moral relevance. At the saime time I have no sense that I* was there in the past, and think it obvious that I* was not there, as a matter of metaphysical fact.\u201d <\/p>\n
Narrative constructions of the self are not only not universal; they can be positively harmful. Retelling the story of the self smooths over or enhances the past, so \u201cthe more you recall, retell, narrate yourself, the further you risk moving away from accurate self-understanding, from the truth of your being.\u201d Narrative is not necessarily a friend to the \u201cexamined life,\u201d but may be an enemy. <\/p>\n
One of the most interesting comments in the essay is Strawson\u2019s claim that Narrativist theorists of the self are talking about themselves more than anything: \u201cthose who think in this way are motivated by a sense of their own importance or significance that is absent in other human beings. Many of them, connectedly, have religious commitments. They are wrapped up in forms of religious belief that are ?Elike almost all religious belief ?Ereally all about the self.\u201d <\/p>\n
An intriguing challenge to narrative conceptions of the self. I\u2019m not convinced by Strawson\u2019s arguments, but he does raise the important question of whether we (whoever we might be) do indeed experience ourselves narratively. And perhaps the answer to that question does ultimately lie in the religious dimensions that Strawson notes in narrative theorists of the self. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Galen Strawson, philosophy editor of TLS , challenges the current widespread idea that human lives either are or should be narrative. He distinguishes between the \u201cPsychological Narrative\u201d thesis, which claims that \u201cordinary human beings experience their lives\u201d in a narrative fashion, and the \u201cEthical Narrativity Thesis,\u201d which claims that we ought to see our lives […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-928","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"yoast_head":"\n