Narrative Identity and Personal Responsibility

By Linda Ethell

Narrative 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.

Chapter 1 Introduction Part 2 Part One. Frankfurt, Taylor, and Self-Evaluation Chapter 3 Chapter One. Frankfurt and Second-Order Evaluation Chapter 4 Chapter Two. The Rational Wanton Chapter 5 Chapter Three. Charles Taylor and the Nature of Desire Part 6 Part Two. Desire and the Formation of Personal Identity Chapter 7 Chapter Four. Desire and Personal Identity Chapter 8 Chapter Five. The Value of Fantasy Chapter 9 Chapter Six. Self-Knowledge and Narrative Chapter 10 Chapter Seven. Responsibility for Self Part 11 Part Three. A Defense of Empathy Chapter 12 Chapter Eight. Plato on Mimesis Chapter 13 Chapter Nine. Vicarious Emotion and Pleasure Chapter 14 Chapter Ten. Aristotle on Mimesis: Aesthetic Pleasure Part 15 Part Four. Narrative Identity Chapter 16 Chapter Eleven. Ways of Being Chapter 17 Chapter Twelve. Description, Interpretation, and Evaluation Chapter 18 Chapter Thirteen. Exemption from Responsibility Part 19 Part Five. Freedom and Resentment Chapter 20 Chapter Fourteen. P.F. Strawson Chapter 21 Chapter Fifteen. "Responsibility and the Limits of Evil" Chapter 22 Chapter Sixteen. The Limits of the Moral Community Chapter 23 Chapter Seventeen. Richard Wollheim: Retribution and Reparation Chapter 24 Chapter Eighteen: Melanie Klein: Tragedy and Morality