Corporeal selfhood, self-interpretation, and narrative selfhood

Philosophical Explorations 17 (2):141-153 (2014)
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Abstract

Ever since Freud pioneered the “talking cure,” psychologists of various stripes have explored how autobiographical narrative bears on self-understanding and psychic wellbeing. Recently, there has been a wave of philosophical speculation as to whether autobiographical narrative plays an essential or important role in the constitution of agentic selves. However, embodiment has received little attention from philosophers who defend some version of the narrative self. Catriona Mackenzie is an important exception to this pattern of neglect, and this paper explores Mackenzie’s work on embodiment and self-narrative with the aim of better understanding the adequacy of autobiographical narrative as an account of the agentic self. I argue that Mackenzie’s narrative account of embodied subjectivity and agency is incomplete, for it over-estimates the reach of narrative and underestimates the cognitive and agentic powers of the lived body.

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Diana Meyers
University of Connecticut

Citations of this work

Embodied agents, narrative selves.Catriona Mackenzie - 2014 - Philosophical Explorations 17 (2):154-171.
Narrative and embodiment – a scalar approach.Allan Køster - 2017 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 16 (5):893-908.
Mineness without Minimal Selves.M. V. P. Slors & F. Jongepier - 2014 - Journal of Consciousness Studies 21 (7-8):193-219.

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References found in this work

Sources of the self: the making of the modern identity.Charles Taylor - 1989 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
How the Body Shapes the Mind.Shaun Gallagher - 2005 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity.Charles Taylor - 1989 - Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press.
The Constitution of Selves.Marya Schechtman (ed.) - 1996 - Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

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