An inquiry on the relationship between passivity and alterity in Paul Ricoeur's narrative ethics

Widely acknowledged as one of the great thinkers of the twentieth century, Paul Ricoeur is seen to designate a philosophy of the subject, which he previously established on the grounds of reflexive philosophy and the hermeneutical tradition, with a view to forming an ethics in his later work, Oneself as Another. Arguing that the subject could only know himself through language and symbols, Ricoeur treats the subject not merely as a consciousness but as a social and corporal being with a capability for moral commitment. In this context, he finds it necessary to grasp the entirety of a life in its narrative unity and to scrutinize the determinations of the subject on the basis of the narrative form. This study focuses on the process of the subject's becoming an ethical self who, oscillating between sameness and alteration, has to identify himself constantly in a narrative. Narrative identity thematizes the active-passive balance between oneself and others since it requires to comprehend the self in relation with the other. Moreover, narrative is a means to attest the types of otherness and passivity inherent in the self. Consequently, this inquiry further investigates the manners to overcome the states of passivity the self suffers by way of what Ricoeurs calls 'narrative imagination'. Within this framework, informed by the opportunities of literary narratives, this study seeks to answer whether a person's responsibility for narrative self-identification is also a creative act of establishing an ethical relationship with others and of achieving the aim of good life.