
Narrative, Identity and the Kierkegaardian Self
Description
Is each of us the main character in a story we tell about ourselves, or is this narrative understanding of selfhood misguided and possibly harmful? Are selves and persons the same thing? And what does the possibility of sudden death mean for our ability to understand the narrative of ourselves? These questions have been much discussed both in recent philosophy and by scholars grappling with the work of the enigmatic 19th-century thinker Søren Kierkegaard. For the first time, this collection brings together figures in both contemporary philosophy and Kierkegaard studies to explore pressing issues in the philosophy of personal identity and moral psychology. It serves both to advance important ongoing discussions of selfhood and to explore the light that, 200 years after his birth, Kierkegaard is still able to shed on contemporary problems.
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Contributors Introduction
John Lippitt and Patrick Stokes 1. The Moments of a Life: On Some Similarities between Life and Literature
Marya Schechtman 2. Teleology, Narrative and Death
Roman Altshuler 3. Kierkegaard's Platonic Teleology
Anthony Rudd 4. Narrative Holism and the Moment
Patrick Stokes 5. Kierkegaard's Erotic Reduction and the Problem of Founding the Self
Michael Strawser 6. Narrativity and Normativity
Walter Wieizke 7. The End in the Beginning: Eschatology in Kierkegaard's Literary Criticism
Eleanor Helms 8. Forgiveness and the Rat Man: Kierkegaard, 'Narrative Unity' and 'Wholeheartedness' Revisited
John Lippitt 9. The Virtues of Ambivalence: Wholeheartedness as Existential Telos and the Unwillable Completion of Narravives
John J. Davenport 10. Non-Narrative Protestant Goods: Protestant Ethics and Kierkegaardian Selfhood
Matias Møl Dalsgaard 11. Narrativity, Aspect, and Selfhood
Michael J. Sigrist 12. The Senses of an Ending
Kathy Behrendt 13. The End? Kierkegaard's Death and its Implications for Telling his Story
George Pattison Index