Identifying selfhood : imagination, narrative, and hermeneutics in the thought of Paul Ricoeur / Henry Isaac Venema.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Venema, Henry Isaac, 1958-

Series:

McGill studies in the history of religions

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ricœur, Paul.

Self (Philosophy).

Identity (Philosophical concept).

Physical Description:

xii, 206 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albany, N.Y. : State University of New York Press, [2000]

Summary:

Identifying Selfhood provides the first sustained treatment of the development of Paul Ricoeur's decentered formulation of selfhood from his earliest works to his most recent. For Henry Venema, Ricoeur's affirmation that consciousness is always rooted in the signs, symbols, and texts that precede the hermeneutical project of self-recovery and discovery provides the thread that links all of Ricoeur's philosophical inquiries together. However, as Venema argues, Ricoeur's hermeneutic is caught up in the semantics of identity to such an extent that selfhood is confused and often equated with the textuality of the reflective process and is never dealt with on the intimate level of the reflexive structure of selfhood in relation to otherness. In the end, Ricoeur's formulation of alterity identifies the other within the circle of the self-same.

Contents:

1 From Ego to Selfhood: A Question of Method 11

1.1 Distanciation and Phenomenology 12

1.2 Ricoeur's Critique of Phenomenological Idealism 24

1.3 A Hermeneutical Variation of Phenomenology 28

1.4 A Dialectic of Phenomenological Hermeneutics 33

2 Imagination: Mediated Self-Constitution 39

2.1 Creative Imaginativity 41

2.2 Freedom and Nature 42

2.3 Fault and Failure 52

2.4 Fallible Man 54

3 Metaphorical Reformulation: Toward Mutual Selfhood 75

3.1 From Semantics of Discourse to the Work of Resemblance 79

3.2 The Work of Resemblance 83

3.3 Reference and Reality 87

4 Narrative Imagination and Personal Identity 91

4.1 Narrative Identity 95

4.2 The Mimetic Arc 97

4.3 Narrative Identity Between Art and Life 112

5 Identity and Selfhood 123

5.1 Identity and Language 130

5.2 Identity and Sameness 136

5.3 Identity, Selfhood, and Ontology 143

Ethical Reciprocity or Mutuality? 151

Identifying Selfhood 158.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 185-195) and index.

ISBN:

0791446735

0791446743

OCLC:

43076787