THE NARRATIVE IDENTITY

IN PAUL RICOEURS HERMENEUTICS OF THE SELF

I. Introduction
This paper will primarily be devoted to the concept of narrative identity as developed by
one of the great thinkers of our contemporary era, Paul Ricoeur. Its main endeavor is to expose
what Ricoeur means by an identity that springs from the fusion of time and narrative through the
aid of emplotment. For that purpose, this paper will first trace the roots of Ricoeurian
hermeneutics by juxtaposing him with other great minds of this discipline, all of whom Ricoeur
respectfully acknowledges. Then, it shall proceed with the discussion of time and narrative
which aims to ground us to the understanding of how human life runs through the temporality
and narrativity, on hoe are we able to grasp the elements of the narratives of life, which shall
usher us to the third part of the discussion, the birth of narrative identity and the selfhood that
springs from such an identity.
A. The Background of Ricoeurs Hermeneutics
To begin then, we have to ground ourselves first with the problematic of the text which
Ricoeur tries to resolve by dialoguing with the prevailing hermeneutical discussion of his time.
Ricoeur adopts the definition of hermeneutics as the theory of the operations of understanding
in their relation to the interpretation of the text.1 With this working definition, he sets up a
project that would search for the complementarity between these two attitudes [i.e., explanation
and understanding], which Romantic hermeneutics tend to dissociate, [which] will thus express

Paul Ricoeur, The Task of Hermeneutics in From Text to Action (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern
University Press, 1991), 53.

on the epistemological plane the hermeneutical reorientation demanded by the notion of the
text.2
With the positivist and scientific attitudes that dominated the modern era, hermeneutics
was not spared from raising it to the level of scientific investigation by incorporating language
within the realm of natural sciences. Ricoeur observes that in this period, hermeneutics is
characterized by two preoccupations which are the movement of deregionalization and
radicalization, which in effect, the movement of deregionalization is thus accompanied by a
movement of radicalization by which hermeneutics becomes not only general but
fundamental.3 With this approach, language and its interpretation fell, first, within the tension
of hermeneutical and technical interpretation which Schleiermacher would contend, and second,
within the Ditheyan distinction between understanding and explanation.
Departing from the ancient phase of hermeneutics which was generally concerned with
the interpretation of classical and biblical texts,4 Friedrich Schleiermachers project is to make
hermeneutics be a more general and philosophical method5 through the attempt to raise
exegesis and philology to the level of Kunstlehre, that is, a technology that is not restricted to a
mere collection of unconnected operations.6 This aim, it must be noted however, is not to totally
disengage hermeneutics from the tradition of the ages but to bring this respected tradition of
interpretation into a rigorous discipline of understanding. As such, Schleiermachers

Ibid.

Ibid., 54 . All italicized terms in this paper come from the sources unless otherwise stated.

See Don Ihde, Paul Ricoeurs Place in the Hermeneutic Tradition in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur. ed.
Lewis Edwin Hahn. (Illinois: The Library of Living Philosophers, 1995), 60.
5

Ibid., 61.

Ricoeur, Task of Hermeneutics, 55.

hermeneutical program thus carries a double mark: romantic by its appeal to a living relation
with the process of creation, critical by its wish to elaborate the universally valid rules of
understanding.7
Concerning his critical project, Schleiermacher brings out the two forms of interpretation:
grammatical and technical. Ricoeur explains this distinction in the following:
Grammatical interpretation is based on the characteristics of discourse that are common to a culture;
technical interpretation is addressed to the singularity, indeed, to the genius of the writers
message.Schleiermacher makes this clear: to consider the common language is to forget the writer;
whereas to understand an individual author is to forget his language, which is merely passed over.
The first interpretation is objective, since it is concerned with linguistic characteristics distinct from
the author, but also negative since it merely indicates the limits of understanding; its critical value
bears only upon errors in the meaning of words. The second interpretation is called technical,
undoubtedly owing to the very project of a Kunstlehre, a technology.8
With Schleiermacher, therefore, hermeneutics turns its locus of interpretation to the author. It is in

the interpretation of the world of the author that hermeneutics plays its role. Language is only at
the service of the speaker or the author. What Schleiermacher gives us then, is a more
humanistic version of hermeneutics. [Hermeneutics] begins to be understood as a method for
understanding the human as such, it begins to be existential.9
Another hermeneutical thinker that Ricoeur dialogues with is Wilhelm Dilthey. Dilthey
was influenced much by two movements of thinking in his time: historicism which claims that
before the coherence of the text comes the coherence of history; and by positivism which
demands that the model of intelligibility be taken from the sort of empirical explanation current
in the domain of the natural sciences.10 These two movements led him to propose the two
irreconcilable themes in his hermeneutics: explanation of nature and the understanding of
7

Ibid., 56.

Ibid., 57

Ihde, Paul Ricoeurs Place, 61.

10

Ricoeur, Task of Hermeneutics, 58.

history. As to how then can we understand human being, Dilthey contends that, he comes to
know himself only through the detour of understanding, which is, as always, an interpretation.11
Taking then the side of history, the proper field of hermeneutics is, for him, history because
[T]o understand myself is to make the greatest detour, via memory that retains what has become
meaningful for mankind. Hermeneutics is the rise of the individual to the knowledge of universal
history, the universalization of the individual.12
Confronted with these two streams of thoughts of the modern period of hermeneutics,
Ricoeur acknowledges the merits of them, but nevertheless, clarifies the relationship of the
author and the text as well as the need for complemantarity between understanding and
explanation in the real interpretation of the text. For him, there are two possibilities that we can
find in approaching the problem that Schleiermacher and Dilthey dealt with. These two
possibilities merge in the act of reading, which Ricoeur will also invoke in his threefold mimesis.
He argues:
We can, as readers, remain in the suspense of the text, treating it as a worldless and authorless object;
in this case, we explain the text in terms of its internal relations, its structure. On the other hand, we
can lift the suspense and fulfill the text in speech, restoring it to living communication; in this case we
interpret the text. These two possibilities both belong to reading, and reading is the dialectic of these
two attitudes.13

For Ricoeur, therefore, understanding is just the first phase of hermeneutics. It has not yet
reached the level of meaning as an important component in reflection. Through reading, one
comes to explain the surrounding elements of the text, and hence proceeds to the real aim of
hermeneutics, which is arriving at the meaning of the text. Nevertheless, Ricoeur promptly

11

Ricoeur, Task of Hermeneutics, 62.

12

Ibid.

13

Paul Ricoeur, What is a Text? Explanation and Understanding in From Text to Action (Evanston, Illinois:
Northwestern University Press, 1991), 113.

salvages the intrinsic relationship between these two movements by affirming that, reflection is
nothing if it is not a mediation of signs and works, and that explanation in nothing if it is not
incorporated as an intermediary stage in the process of self-understanding.14
The next phase of grounding Ricoeurs hermeneutics is his dialogue with his
contemporary philosophers, Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer. To proceed with the
thoughts of these two great figures of contemporary thinkers will help us see how Ricoeur
develops his ontological hermeneutics of the self. On this contemporary period, hermeneutics
shifted its focus from the conditions of how knowing becomes possible to the question of being,
but this time, with the aid of phenomenology.
Following the Husserlian project of going back to the things themselves, Martin
Heidegger grafts phenomenology with hermeneutics which Ricoeur would also follow in his
philosophy. The bracketing or epoche reveals being without the natural attitude that disrupts the
revelation of the being. With this, Heidegger arrives at the concept of Dasein, a being who finds
his mode of being as thrown with other being within the sphere of temporality and historicity.
Within this temporal and historical dimension, dasein essentially finds its way of being as a
being-in-the-world. This being thrown of the dasein reveals its nature as a being which has
already [emphasis mine] projected itself and it remains in projection so long as it is.15
Ricoeur catches this state of dasein as a being which has already projected itself as a
problem in his hermeneutics as he contends that this gives way for a direct understanding of the
self. For him, there is no direct immediate knowledge of the subject,16 and as such,
14

Ibid., 119

15

Paul Ricoeur, The Task of Hermeneutics, 67 quoting Martin Heidegger in Sein und Zeit, 145; BT, 185.
[emphasis mine.]
16

Leovino Ma. Garcia, Paul Ricoeurs Happy Memory: Remembering, Forgeting, Forgiving, 2 quoting
Paul Ricoeur in DI, 61-62; DINT, 54-55.

[R]eflection is not an intuition but interpretation. Reflection requires the critical detour of an
interpretation of the signs by which the self expresses itself.17
Ricoeur also dialogues with the philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer who acknowledges
the historical condition on which a human being finds himself or herself. As such, one cannot but
belong to a certain historical context which develops his or her interpretation and understanding
of life. This belonging to a certain history is so impinged on his or her being that the way one
projects the world will always be with bias or prejudice. Hence, one can not unbound himself or
herself from his or her history and experience the world at a distance, cold and detached, that
would somehow pave the way towards an objective interpretation. As this is the case, Gadamers
philosophy implicitly grants the possibility of other horizons thus opening the way, more
explicitly than Heidegger, of what today might be called cross-cultural or multicultural
horizons.18
This consciousness of history is well taken by Ricoeur. He warmly acknowledges
Gadamer in the following:
We owe to Gadamer this very fruitful idea that communication at a distance between two differently
situated consciousness occurs by means of the fusion of their horizons, that is, the intersection of their
views on the distant and the open. Once again, an element of distanciation within the near, the far,
and the open is presupposed. This concept signifies that we live neither within closed horizons nor
within one unique horizon.hence, the play of difference is included in the process of convergence.19

Ricoeur applies this fusion of horizons in developing his concept of narrative identity. Ricoeur
would open the world of the text into different possible interpretations as it meets the world of
the reader.

17

Ibid.

18

Ihde, Paul Ricoeurs Place, 63.

19

Paul Ricoeur, The Task of Hermeneutics, 73.

II. TIME AND NARRATIVE: THE PLAYFUL MIMESIS

As Paul Ricoeur departs from the Heideggers direct consciousness and otherwise affirms
that a self can only be understood through the critical interpretation of the signs of the self, he
then proceeds in discussing two problematics wherein these signs of the self can be best
implanted: time and narrative. This investigation paves the way for a dialectical relationship of
the function of narrative and its temporal dimension in creating an unfinished version of a life
that continuously expresses and interprets the signs of oneself and of the other. At the outset of
this investigation, Ricoeur sees a twofold problem which he says, [O]n the one hand, the
epistemology of narrative, whether it considers narrative in the sense of history-writing or storytelling, scarcely questions the concept of time which is implicit in narrative activity.On the
other hand, the phenomenology of time-experience usually overlooks the fact that narrative
activity, in history and fiction, provides a privileged access to the way we articulate our
experience of time.20
A. The Problem of Time
Ricoeur takes St. Augustines meditation on time in his Confession: If nobody asks me,
I know; but if I were desirous to explain it to one that should ask me, plainly I know not.21
Ricoeur presents three problems in this Augustinian aporia, which as he would further show,
Heidegger would also follow.
The first is taking time like that of mathematical points wherein, time is merely
constituted merely by relations of simultaneity and of succession between abstract nows, and

20

Paul Ricoeur, The Human Experience of Time and Narrative in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and
Imagination, ed. Mario J. Valds (New York: Harvester Wheat sheaf: 1991), 99.
21

St. Augustine, Confessions XI, XIV quoted in Ricoeur, The Human Experience of Time and Narrative,

103.

by distinction between extreme end-points and intervals between them.22 With this presentation,
time, as Ricoeur evaluates it, is simply reduced to as a measurement of when an event happens
and for how long it may last. This mathematical representation of time, Ricoeur argues, takes
into account neither the centrality of the present as an actual now nor the primacy of the future as
the main orientation of human desire, nor the fundamental capacity of recollecting the past in the
present.23 In resolving this, Augustine forwards the paradox of the human present: expectation,
which he calls the present of the future, memory which he calls the present of the past, and
attention which is the present of the present.24
The second problem is the experience of distraction in what Augustine termed as
distentio animi. It consists in the permanent contrast between the unstable nature of the human
present and the stability of the divine present which includes the past, present and future in the
unity of a gaze and a creative action.25 Ricoeur comments that Heidegger also faces this
problem in his conception of Dasein as a being within time and space, or in-the-world. As
dasein, human beings experience a kind of authentic and inauthentic time. The authentic time is
our awareness of being as already a projection, and hence, always towards the utmost possibility
of death, whereas, in between this gap between birth and death, human beings experience
inauthentic time with respect to this attitude of projection. The distentio of Augustine is thereby
rescued by the Care of Heidegger: [I]n this stretching-along26 we may recognize Augustines

22

Ibid., 100.

23

Ibid.

24

Paul Ricoeur, Life in Quest of Narrative in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II. trans.
Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson (Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 31. Cf. Ricoeur, The
Human Experience of Time and Narrative, 101.
25

Ibid.

26

In Heidegger, this is the time between life and death.

distentio. But this distentio is preserved from sheer dispersion thanks to Daseins capacity to
recapitulate to repeat, to retrieve our inherited potentialities within the projective dimension
of Care.27
The third problem that Ricoeur sees in this discussion of time is a kind of passivity of
human beings with respect to the experience of human time. The mathematical approach to time
loses the richness of the experience of the actual now for it only calculates the projected event
that will happen in a certain time, or as Augustine conceives it, an experience of time is an
experience of a discordance, a scattering of the soul, which Ricoeur calls a disease of timeconsciousness.28
B. The Problem of the Narrative
Ricoeur begins this discussion by taking Aristotles concept of plot which discourages
any consideration of time, even when it implies concepts such as beginning, middle, and end, or
when it becomes involved in a discourse about the magnitude or the length of the plot.29 The
problem extends further in the seemingly disconnectedness of the themes which the two main
kind of narratives discuss fiction and history wherein, on the one side, we have narratives as
fiction which, even if they take their start in real events, depart from reality and present
themselves as works of imagination, not being subjected to methodological procedures. On the

27

Ricoeur, The Human Experience of Time and Narrative, 102.

28

Ibid.,103.

29

Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative: Threefold Mimesis in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination,
ed. Mario J. Valds (New York: Harvester Wheat sheaf: 1991), 52.

other, we have historical narratives which, being based on documents and all sorts of factual
material, aspire to being objective.30
This problem gives way to the kinds of approach towards narrative, namely, the antinarrativism in the field of history and the structuralism in the field of fiction. Ricoeur gives the
following strong comment on these two attitudes:
Because most historians have a poor concept of event and even of narrative they consider history
as an explanatory endeavor which has severed its ties with story-telling. The underscoring of the
surface grammar in literary narration leads critics to what seems to me to be a false posing of radical
choices: either to remain caught in the labyrinthine chronology of the told story, or to radically move
to an achronological model.31

Both of these two attitudes, therefore, show a kind of refusal of time as Aristotle
conceived of a narrative. The historians, by striving to be objective, only focus on the chronology
of events as supported by facts and documents, and as such, claim to have accessed the truth of
the past, whereas the fictionists are taken as only concerned with the unhistorical and therefore
unreal state of affairs. This would be rescued by Ricoeur in his thesis of emplotment.
C. The Threefold Mimesis
Ricoeur, faced with this problematic of time and narrative, works on bringing these two
elements which shall constitute the humanization of time. He claims that time becomes human
to the extent that it is articulated through a narrative, and narrative attains its full meaning when
it becomes a condition of temporal existence.32 Ricoeur brings together these two elements of
time and narrative through the reinterpretation of the plot and mimesis. With Ricoeur,
emplotment becomes a work of composition which consists in taking together a series of events

30

Maria Villela-Petit, Narrative Identity and Ipseity by Paul Ricoeur in

http://www.onlineorginals.com/showitem.asp?itemID=287&articleID=11 (August 31, 2006)
31
Ricoeur, The Human Experience of Time and Narrative, 104.
32

Ricoeur, Time and Narrative: Threefold Mimesis, 52.

10

in order to form an organized unity with beginning, a middle and an end,33 whereas [M]imesis
is the active process of imitating or representing.34 This reinterpretation of plot and mimesis,
Ricoeur claims, is aimed at showing the concrete process by which the textual configuration
mediates the prefiguration of the practical field and its refiguration through the reception of
work.35
Mimesis 1: Prefiguration
The structure of Mimesis 1 which is the prefiguration takes on the preunderstanding of
the world where the plot of the narrative is grounded. This preunderstanding of the world of the
plot demands three areas of competence, namely, the structural and practical, symbolic and
temporal competence.36 The structural or practical area of competence is the ability to distinguish
human action and suffering from natural or physical events. This first point differentiates man
from mere physical events is his capacity to act.37 Ricoeur sees the human being as caught within
the semantics of action that shows his being an agent, uncovers his goals, motivation, and ethical
and moral judgment. Ricoeur explains this semantics of action in the following:
Actions imply goals, the anticipation of which is not confused with some foreseen and predicted
result, but which commit the one on whom the action depends. Actions moreover, refer to motives,
which explain why someone dopes or did something in a way that we clearly distinguish from the
way one physical event leads another. actions have agents, who do and can do things which are taken
as their work, or their deed. As a result, these agents can be held responsible for certain consequences
of their actions.Finally, the outcome of an action may be a change in fortune toward happiness or
misfortune.38

33

Garcia, Interpreting Life, 2

34

Ibid.

35

Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 53.

36

Ibid., 54.

37

Ibid., 55.

38

Ibid.

11

How does this semantics of action attain an intelligible plot, whether that of a fictional or
historical account? Ricoeur sees a movement of two orders in the development of plot which also
requires mastery under this first area of competence, and it is the movement from the
paradigmatic order to the syntagmatic order. The paradigmatic order, Ricoeur explains, is the
synchronic relationship that exists between each element within the semantics of action which
become irreducible to each, thus making the elements unrecountable in any other way, other in
the level of the diachronic character of the syntagmatic order. For Ricoeur, this movement offers
the semantics of action the character of actuality in as much that the syntagmatic order confers
responsibility to the agents, and integration because each element now falls under one intelligible
whole.39
The second area is the symbolic competence. This area affirms that each action of the
agent or the suffering of the victim can always be understood within symbols of a particular
context. Through the understanding of these symbols, actions acquire different and even
particular meaning. Ricoeur explains that [T]his feature will decide which aspects of doing, of
being-able to do, and of knowing-how-to-do belong to poetic transposition. If indeed action can
be recounted, this is because it is already articulated in signs, rules and norms, it is always
symbolically mediated.40
The last competence that Mimesis 1 requires is the temporal competence. It is the ability
to read the temporal dimensions of an action whether it belongs to the future (such as a project)
or to the past (I did) which help in the comprehension of the present ( I can, I do).41

39

Ibid., 56 57.

40

Ricoeur, Life in Quest of Narrative, 28; See also Time and Narative, 57 60.

41

Garcia, Interpreting Life, 3; See also Ricoeur, Time and Narrative,60.

12

The understanding of these three competencies brings us into realizations that in a

narrative, there is a kind of an evaluation of the lived-experience, as to be put together in
Mimesis 2; that in a culture, there is always an ethical standards from which, we judge a certain
character as moral or not; and there is already a wisdom in the pre-ethical culture, and is being
heightened in Mimesis2.
Mimesis 2
This point brings us into a kingdom of the as if. By locating Mimesis2 at the center,
Ricoeur uncovers its mediating role in the narrative. Mimesis2 is the emplotment stage, defined
by Ricoeur as a synthesis of heterogeneous elements.42 Emplotment mediates in the narrative
in three ways: first, between the individual events or incidents taken as a whole. From the
different elements gathered and mastered in prefiguration, the plot grafts them carefully to make
one story. The whole that is served through emplotment is now more than just an enumeration of
different elements, it becomes an intelligible whole, of a sort such that we can always ask what
is the thought of this story.43
Second, emplotment brings together the factors as heterogeneous as agents, goals, means,
interactions, circumstances, unexpected results. This gathering as discordant discordance
answers the schism between Aristotle and Augustine, wherein one could say that in Augustine
discordance wins out over concordance: whence the misery of the human condition. And that in
Aristotle, concordance wins out over discordance, whence the inestimable value of narrative for
putting our temporal experience into order.44 Through the followability of plot brings the

42

Ricoeur, Life in Quest of Narrative, 21.

43

Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 64.

44

Ricoeur, Life in Quest of Narrative, 31.

13

narrative and the time into a human condition colored by our expectations as the story goes on
until it reaches the conclusion.
The last is the mediation is that of its temporal characteristics. In this level, a narrative is
a configuration of successions. The successive events of the story become not just as an
enumeration but as configured events that causes the other events to happen and ultimately the
conclusion.45 The episodic character becomes whole as it is configured, thus grasping together
the detailed action. The temporal elements of a narrative is so emplotted that as a result, time is
taken both as what remains and what does not, hence answering again Augustines distentio.
Mimesis 3
The last stage is the refiguration which is the fusion of the horizons of the text and of the
reader. As seen in Mimesis 1, an interpretation of the text is done with respect to the readers
context or symbolic structure and hence, the world of the text is received within the parameters
of the reader and in the same way, the reader is also transported into the world of the text. To
remember Gadamers fusion of horizons, the text can be interpreted in various ways with
respect to the context of the reader. Through the emplotment also of the Mimesis 2, the
followability of the story enables the reader to understand and interpret himself, his world, and
his fellow human beings. This stage then shows that the act of reading is the completion of the
work of narrative. It is the constant reinterpretation of the text that brings about the innovative
dimension what has been sedimented in history. What is most important in this stage, however,
is in what Aristotle calls catharsis the purification of emotions or pleasures at viewing the
reversal of fortune in tragedies.46 As what is said in Mimesis 1, the ethical competence of the

45

Ibid., 32.

46

Garcia, Interpreting Life, 4.

14

reader enables him to read using his own standards the character, and hence, relates to himself
the possibility that what happens to the character may happen to himself if he follows the
characters action. Hence, the act of story telling and the work of reading becomes two
inseparable elements of narrativity.
D. On History and Fiction
The discussion on the threefold mimesis brings us into a seemingly contradicting forms
of narrative, namely, history and fiction. Both of these forms emplot, so to say, discordant events
and make them concordant in different ways and thus present us different intelligibility of a
narrative. The first is concerned with the collection facts and empirical data on what happened in
the past. Empirical as it is, this form of narrative claims to have a direct truth-claim, and thus, an
objective type of narration. The latter, on the other hand, is concerned with a non-real world,
such as the myths, legends and others, and hence has no direct access to truth. Yet, Ricoeur
resolves the dilemma on emplotment in these two forms in the following:
[t]he metaphorical reference common to every poetic work, inasmuch as the past can only be
reconstructed by the imagination, and what also it adds to it, inasmuch as it is polarized by past
reality. Conversely, the question will also arise whether fictional narrative does not borrow, in turn, a
part of the referential dynamics from this reference through traces. Is not every narrative told as
though it had taken place, as is evident from the ordinary usage of verbal tenses to narrate the unreal?
In this sense, fiction would borrow as much from history as history borrows from fiction.47

Ricoeur, then, proposes an interweaving of history and fiction. History, although

concerned primarily with the empirical accounts of the past, is always recounted with the
historians capacity to tell the story, and thereby implores a fictive character to make the past as
if really present. Same way happens with fiction which, although concerned with unreality, tells
the story as if it really happens within time, within a certain period of history. Thus, these two
main forms of narrative both tell the story of human lives. Historical and fictional narratives are
interweaved in order to preserve the memory of what deserves to be remembered or, on the

47

Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, 82.

15

contrary, of what was so awful and ignominious in the lives of human beings that forgetfulness
would be like second death to victims.48
III. THE BIRTH OF THE NARRATIVE IDENTITY
Human time, by being a narrative time, presents the story of human beings in their
lifetime of being agents and sometimes, or most of the times, as victims. The threefold mimesis
presents a way in which we can understand our human journey vis--vis the world of the text.
Through the use of emplotment, Ricoeur hinges our world into the contextual frame of the text
which requires us to competently understand the structural, symbolic and temporal elements, and
at the same time it opens us into the fused horizons of the world of the text and of our world as
readers, where a possible world opens before us and hopes to bring us its cathartic effect. Finally,
the interweaving of history and fiction presented us that our human stories, whether historical of
fictional, are always grafted with time.
What we do we actually get from these narratives? These narratives are the signs and
symbols of human beings which serve as the detour for self understanding. As the preceding
discussion mentioned, Ricoeur contends that only in this way the understanding mediated by
symbols can one come to self reflection. Hence, we now see that Ricoerian hermeneutics is
actually geared towards the hermeneutics of the self. Ricoeur says:
Our own existence cannot be separated from the account we can give of ourselves. It is in telling our
own stories that we give ourselves an identity. We recognize ourselves in the stories we tell about
ourselves. It makes little difference whether these stories are true or false, fiction as well as verifiable
history provides us with an identity.49

48

Maria Villela-Petit, Narrative Identity and Ipseity in Paul Ricoeur.

49

G.B. Madison, Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of the Subject in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur, ed. Lewis
Edwin Hahn (Illinois: The Library of Living Philosophers, 1995), 81 quoting Ricoeur, History as a Narrative
Practice in Philosophy Today (Fall, 1985), 213.

16

As the text is a symbol that provides avenue for self reflection, so is our capacity of
seeing ourselves in front of it and our capacity of telling a story that give us our narrative identity
which will now be discussed in this part.
A. Idem vs. Ipse
Before going into the discussion of narrative identity, Paul Ricoeur explains beforehand
two poles in the understanding of identity and afterwards designates as to what pole is the
understanding of narrative identity can be grounded. These two poles of the understanding of
identity are sameness (idem) and selfhood (ipse) which, Ricoeur would contend, are not
reducible to each other, though may overlap with each other in some levels and situations.
The concept of identity as sameness is understood under the criteria of similitude and
continuity, and hence, to it belongs the understanding of identity as permanence in time. To the
criterion of similitude, idem-identity is understood in two senses: as similitude and uninterrupted
continuity. Ricoeur explains that the way we first understand identity is when we are confronted
with one and unique entity, and hence, similitude offers us a concept of identity in numerical
sense, we say that two occurrences of a thing designated by an invariable do not constitute two
different things, but one single and same thing.50 As singular, and therefore unique, identity is
never understood as plurality, Ricoeur contends. The second understanding of idem-identity
under the criterion of similitude is extreme resemblance, example two persons wearing the same
suit, and hence, the contrary in this sense is different.51 To these two, Ricoeur explains that
sameness is taken in the quantitative and qualitative senses respectively. The other criterion is

50

Paul Ricoeur, Narrative Identity in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics, trans. David Wood
(Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1991), 189.
51

Ibid.

17

the uninterrupted continuity between the first and the last stage of its evolution.52 This is what
enables us to identify all trees of the same kind whether it is on its germination period or to its
withering time, or that the reality before us is a human being regardless of its stage in the life
cycle. Identity, in this sense, is not disruption or discontinuity. This uninterrupted characteristic
gives way to the last criterion, the permanence in time.53
On the other hand, ipse-identity seems to be problematic in the sense that it is not
grounded on the criteria of the idem-identity. Thus, Ricoeurs project is to look for an element of
this identity which can give us a sense of permanence. The models that Ricoeur shows regarding
this permanence in self-identity are character and keeping ones word. By character, Ricoeur
means that which designates the set of lasting dispositions by which a person is recognized.54
By disposition, Ricoeur gives us two notions, namely, as habit (both as formed and acquired) and
as a set of acquired identifications. On this level selfhood as character, he further contends that
ipse and idem notions are not yet fully dichotomized, they still overlap with each other. What
does habit do to the formation of character? Ricoeur explains that habit gives a history to
character, but this is a history in which sedimentation tends to cover the innovation which
preceded it, even to the point of abolishing the latter.55 This dialectic of sedimentation and
52

Ibid.
Ibid., 190.

53
54

Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another. trans. Kathleen Blamey.(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992),
121. In the preceding discussion of this text, it is explained that the above definition of character is the late
formulation of Paul Ricoeur. He explains that his first formulation of this is that of a set of distinctive marks which
permit the reidentification of human individual as being the same, explained in the Voluntary and the Involuntary.
This formulation, he says further, is still pursued in the time of The Fallible Man, where character is still presented
as the fundamental existential polarity. Yet, he explains that with the problematic of identity, the present endeavor
of this discussion, the above formulation is developed.
55

Ibid. By sedimentation, Ricoeur means the models that constitute the typology of emplotment that allows
to order the history of literary genresbut proceed from the sedimented history whose genesis has been obliterated
and by innovation, is that pole opposite to tradition, as it gives room for changes for what is sedimented by history,
yet, innovation still is grounded on what tradition had offered. It does not come from nowhere. (Ricoeur, Life in
Quest of Narrative, 24 25).

18

innovation is an important element in the development of the narrative identity. Sedimentation

provides the temporal sphere of the self yet it also through the movement of innovation that the
self which Ricoeur provides is a dynamic self, a self that continues to be emplotted.
The second element in the understanding of character as a habit is as a set of acquired
identifications. Here, we see again the overlapping of idem and ipse. Character, in this sense, is
acquired through the situatedness of an individual. Hence, how one perceives the world and how
one presents himself can be understood within the background of the collective character of the
person or of the society. This is what Gadamer says in the previous discussion of this paper that
we can not escape from our historicity. Thus, Ricoeur aptly says that this notion of character as
acquired identifications is way which recognizing oneself in contributes to recognizing oneself
by.56
Since in this level of identity, idem and ipse are not yet fully separated as both still play
in the background of sameness, Ricoeur offers a model where these two notions become
irreducible to each other. This model offers a new kind of permanence both in time and in
identity. To quote an important thought of Ricoeur as to this model of permanence:
It is in keeping ones word in faithfulness to the word that has been given. I see in this keeping the
emblematic figure of an identity which is polar opposite of that emblematic figure of character.
Keeping ones word expresses a self-constancy which cannot be inscribed, as character was, within
the dimension pf something in general but solely within the dimension who? The perseverance of
character is one thing, the perseverance of faithfulness to a word that has been given is something else
again. The continuity of character is one thing, the constancy of friendship is quite another.57

It is the ability therefore to be faithful to a promise that one attains a selfhood which is
not the same as sameness-identity. The element of holding firm, as Ricoeur explains further, is a
56

Ibid.

57

Ibid., 123.

19

denial of a change hence it goes beyond the temporal element. Most importantly, it is only
through way of this ability to keep promise that self enters into the realm of what is ethical,
which is yet another topic for a lengthy discussion.
B. The Narrative Identity
The distinction made between two concepts of identity brings us now into the discussion
as to how this identity understood as selfhood is made manifest in the narratives. We are once
more reminded at this point of Ricoeurs affirmation that reflection is always mediated by the
symbols of human beings. If that is the case, how then does this self attains a narrative identity if
narratives are the symbols of ones existence?
Ricoeur encounters at the outset of this investigation the popular adage that says: stories
are recounted and not lived; life is lived and not recounted.58 This maxim shows a dichotomous
relationship between narrative and life. The former, it is suggested, is just concerned with story
telling and not, in anyway, related to the act of living, while the latter has, in return, no concern
with story telling, it just minds its own business of living.
In order to clarify these dichotomous relationship between life and narrative, Ricoeur
goes back to the discussion of emplotment with its configuring role between mimesis 1 and
mimesis 3. The mediation of emplotment brings in concordance the discordant elements of one
story as discussed above. Through emplotment, the story attains a followable stance, thanks to
the plot, it serves to make one story out of the multiple incidents, or if you prefer, transforms
the many incidents into one storyit organizes together components that are heterogeneous us
unintended circumstances, discoveries, those who perform actions and those who suffer them,

58

Ricoeur, Life in Quest of Narrative, 20.

20

chance or planned encounters, interactions between actors ranging from conflict to collaboration,
means that are well or poorly adjusted to ends, and finally unintended results; gathering all these
factors into a single story makes the plot a totality which can be said to be at once concordant
and discordant.59
What is most important, however, in this discordant concordance characteristic of the plot
are the characters who act the actions of the story, hence, the narrative appears as the path of the
character and vice versa.60 Thus, it is through the plot of the story that characters attain their
being, either as agents or as victims. Furthermore, this emplotment of the character brings us into
two movements which are already mentioned in the preceding discussion, but this time, at the
service of the being of characters. Ricoeur says:
[F]rom a paradigmatic point of view, the questions who? what? why? and so on can denote
separate terms in the conceptual network of action. But from a syntagmatic viewpoint, the responses
to these questions from a chain that is none other than the story chain. Telling a story is saying who
did what and how, by spreading out in time the connection between these two various viewpoints.61

Hence, by emplotment, the characters of the story become so immersed in elements of the
story that they become responsible to the movement of the plot. The narrative gives the character
of the story an initiative, the power to begin a series of events,thereby constituting an
absolute beginning, a beginning of time and on the other hand, by assigning to the narrative as
such the power of determining the beginning, the middle and the end of an action..62

59

Ibid. 21. Ricoeur says the following on concordance and discordance: the narrative event is defined by
its relation to the very operation of configuration; it participates in the unstable structure of discordant concordance
characteristic of the plot itself. It is a source of discordance inasmuch as it springs up, and a source of concordance
as it allows the story to advance. (Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 142.)
60

Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 146.

61

Ibid.

62

Ibid., 147.

21

This initiative that the plot confers to the characters offers two roles in the story:
sufferers, those affected by the process of modification or conservation, and, in correlation with
them, of agents who initiate these processes.63 These roles are the ones that usher us into the
realm of ethics whereby we judge the characters or we anticipate what will be the course of a
certain action. As what happens in mimesis 3, the reader appropriates himself or herself to one
character emplotted in mimesis 2 so as to make the good things that happen to the character may
also happen in his or her life and the contrary be avoided.
After seeing how characters become emplotted in the story itself, and by that we see that
the characters both the actors and the sufferers are the ones that take the initiative to actually
make the story be a unity in time by putting within the course of events its beginning, middle and
end, we are now in the position to ask Paul Ricoeur what exactly does he mean by narrative
identity. To this Ricoeur replies:
The person, understood as a character in a story, is not an entity distinct from his or her
experiences. Quite the opposite: the person shares the condition of the dynamic identity peculiar to
the story recounted. The narrative constructs the identity of the character, what can be called his or
her narrative identity, in constructing that of the story told. It is the identity of the story that makes
the identity of the character.64

Going back then to the dichotomy life and narrative as presented in the beginning of this
part, it is through emplotment that we become part of the great story of human life. As characters
of the this story, ours is narrative identity, and hence we are always in the process of telling and
retelling our human experiences, whether as agents or as sufferers. And as our stories are yet to
end, we do not cease to interpret and reinterpret our narratives, by which, we learn to become
and the narrator the hero of our own story, without actually becoming the author of our own

63

Ibid., 144.

64

Ibid., 148. (emphasis mine.)

22

life,65 and hence ours is a self instructed by cultural symbols, the first among which are the
narratives handed down in our literary tradition[which] gives us a unity which is not
substantial but narrative.66
C. NARRATIVE IDENTITY ANDTHE ETHICAL CLAIM OF THE NARRATIVE
What have we discovered to this point of discussion is that life is so interweaved in the
narratives. As such, fictional narratives are not atemporal and ahistorical stories that talk about a
world somewhere out there, but they are stories wherein the time and the characters are so
emplotted to make a unity and thereby, as Ricoeur puts it, presenting an imaginative variation
of what is historical. With this, going back again to the third part of the threefold mimesis, the
narrative can finally perform its functions of discovery and transformation with respect to the
readers feelings and actions, in the phase of the refiguration of action by the narrative.67 On the
other hand, history is reminded of its indebtedness to people of the past. And in certain
circumstances in particular when the historian is confronted with the horrible, the extreme
history of victims the relation of debt is transformed in the duty never to forget.68 In the
interweaving of these two groups of narrative, our narrative identity is born.
Yet again, the narrative identity, as it is always recounted and reinterpreted, holds the
problem of constancy in time and in character. To where does selfhood as discussed above
enter in an identity brought by the narrative?
Ricoeurs solution to this another problematic is the consideration of the answer or the
response to question of who of the story, for which we have two ways: ascription and
65

Paul Ricoeur, Life in Quest of Narrative, 32

66

Ibid., 33.

67

Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 164.

68

Ibid.

23

imputation. Ascription is the assignation of an agent to an action. By this we certify that the
action is the property of whoever committed it, that it is his, that it belongs to him personally,69
and through imputation which implies accusation, excuse or acquittal, blame or praise, in short,
appraisal in terms of the good or the just.70 Ascription appears in every grammatical person:
in the first person in confession, the acceptance of responsibility (here I am) in the second
person in the warning, advice, the commandment (thou shalt not kill) in the third person in
narrative(he said, she thought, etc).71 By imputation, on the other hand, one sees it in the
kind of fidelity to the self which is expressed in the form of keeping ones promises.72
What way is appropriate to the self? If we go back to the distinction of the ipse idem
identity, it was affirmed that these two notions actually overlap with each other, until Ricoeur
came into the idea of the ability to keep promises wherein the two cease to coincide. Hence, the
problematic of constancy, both in time and in character, is solved with the capacity to hold on to
promises. In the same way with narrative identity, this capacity of promising leads the character
into a moral commitment. Ricoeur says:
Self-constancy is for each person that manner of conducting himself or herself so that others can
count on that person. Because someone is counting on me, I am accountable for my actions before
another. The term responsibility unites both meanings: counting on and being accountable for.
It unites them, adding to them the idea of a response to the question Where are you? asked by
another who needs me. The response is the following: Here I am! a response that is a statement of
self constancy.73

69

Paul Ricoeur, Narrative Identity, 191.

70

Ibid.

71

Ibid.

72

Ibid., 192.

73

Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, 165.

24

For Ricoeur, this proud answer of Here I am! extinguishes the path where we
understand the who by the what of the who which as discussed above, pertains to the notion
of character as a set of disposition acquired through ones historicity and temporality.
The answer of Here I am! shows the ethical claim of the narrative, and consequently of
the narrative identity that springs therein. It is through this answer to the who that narrative
identity makes the two ends link with one another: the permanence in time and that of self
constancy.74 This particular answer furthermore is the way by which the person recognizes
himself or herself as the subject of imputation [which] marks a halt in the wandering that may
well result from the selfs confrontation with a multitude of models for action and life, some of
which go so far as to paralyze the capacity for firm action.75
Lastly, this answer provides not only a narrative identity but fuses this identity to
selfhood through the capacity of holding firm amidst the changing nature of the stories. We take
a very strong and meaningful quote from Ricoeur:
On the other hand, the tormenting question Who am I? exposed by the troubling cases of literary
fiction can, in certain manner, be incorporated into the proud declaration Here is where I stand! The
question becomes Who am I, so inconstant, that notwithstanding you count on me? The gap
between the question which engulfs that narrative imagination and the answer of the subject who has
been made responsible by the expectation of the other becomes the secret break at the very heart of
commitment. (Ricoeur 1992, 168)

The narrative identity then, is not a fleeting character. Understood within the framework
of the story as a text, it has the responsibility towards the other, towards whom his or her actions
are directed. Understood within the framework of a life story our lived life stories it is
through our capability of holding firm to our promises that we become responsible to the other
and to ourselves, and through which, our identity is put to its ultimate test. Against the fleeting

74

Ibid., 166.

75

Ibid., 167.

25

element of time, our promises connect the future to our present, and the present is brought to the
future. Ricoeur, seems to suggest, that in the end, who we are will be seen how we stood the
changes of times by our fidelity to promises.
IV. TOWARDS A NEW BEGINNING
This paper has journeyed us from the hermeneutical development from the modern to
contemporary periods from where we situated Paul Ricoeurs hermeneutics and moved towards
the capacity of the self. In the first part, we have seen how Ricoeur dialogued with the thoughts
of philosophers and how he also built his own hermeneutics. This dialogical character of his
philosophy is carried through our discussion of the threefold mimesis wherein he used
Augustines problem of time and Aristotles notion of plot as springboard to show how each
elements in the semantics of action are configured by emplotment that makes the story a unified
narrative. The stage of configuration is a crucial part in this threefold mimesis since, as we have
seen, it is through which that we can follow the story, and from which we have the discordant
concordance character of the story. Yet, this is not where the narrative ends. The refiguration
stage is where the horizons of the text and of the reader are fused and brings a possibility of
catharsis upon the reader. We have also discussed how historical and fictional narratives are
interweaved so as that these two are actually form of the stories of human existence.
From there, the paper discussed the problem of identity understood either as sameness or
idem or as selfhood or ipse. Though overlapping with each other, selfhood attains its distinct
identity by ones capacity to promise. This capacity to be faithful to the promises made gives
also an enduring character of the narrative identity. The characters of the story become
responsible to the objects of their actions and hence, we see the ethical claim of the narrative
which is grounded of responsibility understood both as counting on and being accountable

26

for. The answer Here I am! shows a proud proclamation of selfhood and at the same time a
commitment to this selfhood. Against the fleeting element of time, this answer stands out as a
principle of constancy.
For this last part then, I would like to offer my reflection so as to complete the stage of
Ricoeurs threefold mimesis. As a beginning reader of the vast texts of Ricoeur, and for this
purpose, of Ricoeurs notion of narrative identity, at what point is mimesis 3 true to me?
This attempt to understand Ricoeurs narrative identity leads to a strong affirmation that
everybody is a story. One of the overused maxims is Shakespeares Life is a stage. And yet,
clich as it is, reading Ricoeur brings me into a new appreciation of this. Indeed, we all are actors
in this great play called life, wherein, every act is an actual act, there is no rehearsal in this play.
Hence, as part of the story, I have to act my own part at its best, as my part is so crucial that it
can dictate the making or the breaking of the play. Like a web, each character is indispensable,
each act is crucial, each suffering is meaningful.
Taking it in a more personal level, I am reminded to write my story carefully. The way I
tell my story is open for interpretation and reinterpretation, for which, when I shall die, I have no
hold. My identity in my personal narrative will be the judge of my own share in history. The
achievements and honors accorded me will mean less or even nothing for in the end, my
identity will be taken within the background of how well did I keep my promise.
This ability to keep promises, I should say, brought the so called cathartic effect of the
text in me. The question of how well have I kept my promises awakened me to the fact that the
errors in my past are due to my inability to keep promises, for as Ricoeur puts it, to keep
promises is to be responsible, that is, be counted on and to be accountable for. Is it not true, that
indeed, this where most of our sufferings come from? When responsibility breaks, my identity

27

also falls apart. And so, Ricoeur asks a reality check for me: how well do I live out my promises?
This is not a dead end, however. As my story is not yet ended, I can still recount it in another
way, in a way wherein the ending will tell that I have been capable.
Indeed, the answer Here I am is an answer of dynamism. First, it is an affirmation of
mans situatedness, to use Heideggers term. It situates me as a being-in-the-world, within a
certain context, within a particular space and within a definite time. Yet, this proclamation is also
openness. For me it makes a human being vulnerable as he or she recognizes that the I is
caught in a vast world, where nothing is certain. But over this, this answer is an answer of
openness to commitment to the other, a joyful proclamation of capacity, an exultation of human
existence!
I believe this where actually Ricoeur becomes a philosopher of hope. His is a philosophy
of capacity amidst frailty, a source in a conviction on the superabundance of sense over the
abundance of nonsense.76 As the story can always be recounted, as it is always a narration of
life, so is mans search for meaning is not yet ended. And here, I see the most important promise
one can make: the promise to live a meaningful existence.

76

Leovino Ma. Garcia, Civilization and Culture: Culture as Burden and Oppurtunity, a speech delivered in
the International Philosophy Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, July 17 20, 2006, 14.

28

WORKS CITED
A. Primary
Paul Ricoeur.

Life in Quest of Narrative in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II.

trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. Illinois: Northwestern University
Press, 1991.

__________.

Narrative Identity in From Text to Action: Essays in Hermeneutics II. trans.

Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson. Illinois: Northwestern University
Press, 1991.

__________.

Oneself as Another. trans. Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1992.

__________.

The Human Experience of Time and Narrative in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection

and Imagination ed. Mario J. Valds. New York: Harvester Wheat sheaf, 1991

__________.

Oneself as Another. trans. Kathleen Blamey. Chicago: University of Chicago

Press, 1992

__________.

The Task of Hermeneutics in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination ed.

Mario J. Valds. New York: Harvester Wheat sheaf, 1991

__________.

Time and Narrative: Threefold Mimesis in A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and

Imagination ed. Mario J. Valds. New York: Harvester Wheat sheaf, 1991

B. Secondary
Blamey, Kathleen.

From the Ego to the Self: A Philosophical Itinerary in The Philosophy of Paul
Ricoeur. ed. Lewis Edwin Hahn. Illinois: The library of Living Philosophers,
1995

Garcia, Leovino Ma. Interpreting Life: Paul Ricoeurs Hermeneutics of the Narrative.
_______________. Civilization and Culture: Culture as Burden and Oppurtunity.
Ihde, Don

Madison, G.B.

Paul Ricoeurs Place in the Hermeneutic Traditon in The Philosophy of Paul

Ricoeur. ed. Lewis Edwin Hahn. Illinois: The library of Living Philosophers,
1995
Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of the Subject in The Philosophy of Paul Ricoeur.
ed. Lewis Edwin Hahn. Illinois: The library of Living Philosophers, 1995

C. Internet
Villela-Petit Maria. Narrative Identity and Ipseity by Paul Ricoeur.
http://www.onlineoriginals.com/showitem.asp?itemID=287&articleID=11
(August 31, 2006)

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