Book Symposium

Excerpt

The question of narrative reference has given rise to a number of critical debates in contemporary philosophy. If hermeneutics is right in supposing that every narrative involves “someone saying something to someone about something,” the main question I want to pursue here is: what exactly is this something about which narrative speaks? Is it real or possible? Is it true or hypothetical? Is it actual or imaginary? Is it existent or non-existent? And how does the response to these queries depend on whether we are dealing with historical narratives, fictional narratives or the narratives of one’s everyday lived experience, as when we talk of one’s life-history or one’s life-story? These questions have been touched on in different ways by historians like Hayden White, literary critics like Frank Kermode and social scientists like Karl Hempel. What I wish to examine here, however, is a particular debate in contemporary continental philosophy conducted between David Carr and Paul Ricoeur where decisive issues of narrative reference and identity come into unique critical focus. …