Narrative Identity and Personal ResponsibilityNarrative Identity and Personal Responsibility is about why and how identifying ourselves by means of narrative makes it possible for us to be responsible, morally and otherwise. The book begins as an investigation into how it is that we can hold people responsible for who they are, despite the fact that we have almost no control over our lives in our formative years. It explains the relation between representation, personal identity, and self-knowledge, demonstrating how awareness of the vulnerability of our identity as persons is the origin of our capacity for the cathartic revision of a self-identifying narrative which is the condition of moral awareness. Innovative in its interdisciplinary juxtaposition of ethics, moral psychology, literary theory and literature, Narrative Identity and Personal Responsibility develops a sophisticated and comprehensive account of human nature. This book offers an intuitively satisfying and humane yet rigorous account of why and how we think of ourselves as simultaneously free and constrained by nature. Its fundamental thesis, the mediation of narrative representation between agent and the world, suggests new answers to old problems in moral psychology, such as the question of free will and responsibility. With a more literary style than many philosophy texts, it works through a series of interconnected problems of as much interest to a thoughtful layperson as to academic philosophers. |
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action agent ambivalence Aristotle articulations asserts awareness belief Burnyeat Cambridge University Press capacity character Charles Taylor claim concept condition consciousness depressive position dispositions distinction endorsement entails ethical evaluation evaluation of desires evaluative terms evil existence expressive theory extent feeling first-order desires Fortenbaugh Frankfurt Freedom and Resentment habituation Harris Harris's Human Agency identify implies insofar interpretation Kathleen Blamey Likierman London means Melanie Klein Mikal Gilmore mimesis mode moral community moral psychology moral responsibility motivation narrative identity nature necessarily object one's identity ourselves P.F. Strawson Paul Ricoeur perception personal identity personhood Plato pleasure possession possibility presupposes projection question radical evaluation rational wanton re-evaluation reactive attitudes reality reason refer reflective self-evaluation relation representation repudiation retributive Richard Wollheim second-order evaluation second-order volition self-interpreting self-knowledge selfhood sense sort Strawson strong evaluator strong responsibility superego Tanner Lectures Taylor thing Thread tion tive trans University of Chicago values vicarious Watson weak evaluator wholly