Self and Others in the Narrative: Self and Others from the Perspective of Ricoeur

Title

Self and Others in the Narrative: Self and Others from the Perspective of Ricoeur

Author

Hong-Hsin LIN

Page

1-26

DOI

Abstract

This research deals with the relation between self and others from the hermeneutical perspective of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), who has transferred the focus from the side of readers to the side of text and narrative and developed the concept of narrative identity to probe into the deeper questions about "who" rather than "what" concerning self. From the perspective of narrative identity, on the one hand he criticizes against the Cartesian Self as the archetype of modern concept of self which tends toward inwardness and solipsism and extreme individualism. On the other hand, he criticizes that Reductionism, which corresponds to the development of technology, reduces human beings into material or takes quantization as a way of measuring human beings. Based upon narrative identity, he develops the relation between self and others. By ways of emphasizing mutuality of relations he constitutes the ethics of responsibility and the concept of institutions of mutual recognition, because every self has its own stories and it is only possible to understand a self through its stories. Every story of self reacts with the stories of other selves and even with bigger stories and it is therefore composed into historical stories with many other stories. Ricoeur tends to be communitarian and he criticizes against individualism, but he tries to keep distance with the danger of resolving individuals into a community. While adopting Ricoeur's understanding of self and others into a dialogue with Chinese culture, we should be concerned about how is it possible to be opposed to the radical individualism but not at the expense of totalitarianism, and how is it possible to be opposed to the materialization of human beings by Reductionism but not at the expense of the value of individuals by returning to the traditional ways of grounding it totally upon relations, in order to offer a reference for the further dialogue between the Eastern and Western culture.

Keyword

Ricoeur, Hermeneutics, Narrative, Cartesian Self, Reductionism, Concept of Self and Others

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