Identidade narrativa

24Ago07

Excerto de “Narrative identity and ipseity by Paul Ricoeur“ de Maria Villela-Petit.

“… Hannah Arendt had already emphasised: ‘Who someone is or was can only said if we know his or her story, that is his or her biography’.

To consider the Who-question in such a way has repercussions for the problem of personal identity. This problem was worked out by Locke, to whom we owe one of the first formulations of the question of self identity. It is true that in order to ’solve’ such a problem, Locke sought to distinguish two sorts of criteria, those relative to the ‘body’, and those relative to ‘mind’. Despite Locke’s intention to overcome Cartesian dualism, this distinction merely confirmed the split between mind and body. Or alternatively, it led to sceptical conclusions, as was the case with Hume.

The notion of ‘a narrative identity’ allows one to think through the question of personal identity in a new way, taking into full account the temporal dimension (the temporality) of a being who, by existing with others in the horizon of a common world, is led to transform him (her)self in the course of a life history, that is, who is what he or she is only in the course of becoming himself or herself. This notion also makes it possible for Ricoeur to distinguish two dimensions within the pseudo-unitarian notion of identity: identity as sameness (Latin: idem); and identity as selfhood (Latin: ipse).

A self understood as the who of a history (story), the one upon whom the story confers a sort of identity, is a self whose temporalisation shapes itself in accordance with a narrative model.”

• Paul Ricoeur, “L’identité narrative”, Esprit 7/8, pp. 299‑304.
• Paul Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre.
• Paul Ricoeur, Temps et récit.

Referência online:

• Site dedicado a Paul Ricoeur com uma boa quantidade de links.

Filed under: Arendt, Descartes, Hume, Locke, Ricoeur, identidade pessoal, narrativa   |  Leave a Comment