Narrative understanding and self-shaping

Ph.D.In his After Virtue, Alasdair MacIntyre claims that human lives are “lived narratives”. He says that “stories are lived before they are told”. Narrative, in MacIntyre’s view, “is not the work of poets, dramatists and novelists reflecting upon events which had no narrative order before one was imposed by the singer or the writer”, rather, it is the real event which happens in the world. In the other words, the most original form of narrative is not human artifact such as novel or drama, but human life itself. As long as we are living, we have already been “writing” our life stories by means of our actions. Life stories, originally, are not written by words but acted out by actions. Since we are the agent of our actions, MacIntyre thus claims that we are (one of the) authors of our own lives. We, in a sense, “create” our own self as artists create their artworks.MacIntyre’s idea of narrative self has a huge influence on the academic. Many philosophers follow his path of thought, developed different theories of self in terms of narrative. While these “Narrative Views of Self” become more and more popular in the academic, some intractable problems have been pointed out by other scholars. And these problems, as I see them, were not fully replied by the proponents of the Narrative Views of Self.Among the critics of the Narrative Views, Galen Strawson is the most ferocious one. Strawson offers many counterexamples, including his own experience, to argue that narrative structure is not the necessary condition for someone to be a person. In the other words, human lives themselves do not, as MacIntyre believes, have narrative structures. There are persons who conceive their lives as narratives, and there are persons who do not conceive their lives as narratives. Narrative is just an optional way for us to reflect on our lives. It is an irrelevant factor to determine whether something is a human person or not.The objective of my dissertation is to develop a Narrative View of Self which stands in between with MacIntyre’s and Strawson’s positions. On the one hand, I agree with Strawson’s claim that life is not identical to narrative. On the other hand, I believe that narrative has an indispensable role in human life. In particular, I propose that narrative is a form of understanding which has a life-shaping function. In contrast to both MacIntyre and Strawson’s views, I believe that the relation between narrative and life is not a simple question of identical or non-identical. Rather, they are mutually presupposing each other and dynamically shaping each other. That is to say, there is a circular relation between them. On the one hand, the lives we live call for stories: we have a desire to explain our lives in terms of narrative. On the other hand, the stories we told shapes our lives: to tell a story is not just to understand our lives in a detached way. The stories we told to ourselves will embed into our lives. That is, we will live out our lives according to the story we told to ourselves.麥金泰（MacIntyre）在《德行之後》 After Virtue）中提到，人生是一個「活的故事」。他說，「我們首先活出故事，然後才將它們講出來」。麥金泰認為故事不是詩人、劇作家和小說家將敘事秩序加諸於事件身上而製造出來的作品，相反，它們是真實發生於世界上的事件。換句話說 ，最原初的故事並不是小說或戲劇這些人造物，而是人生本身。只要我們活著 ，我們就已經是通過行動去「書寫」自己的人生故事。人生故事並不是通過語言書寫出來，而是用行動實踐出來的。由於我們自己就是實踐行動的人，所以 麥金泰說我們是自己人生的（其中一個）作者。我們於某種意義上「創造」出自己，就像藝術家創造藝術品一樣。麥金泰的主張於學術界有重要的影響。不少學者跟隨他的思路，提出各種不同的「敘事自我理論」。然而，亦有學者反對這些「敘事自我理論」。在眾多批評者中，以斯特勞森（ Galen Strawson）的批評最為嚴厲。斯特勞森提出許多例子去證明敘事結構並不是使人成為人的必要條件。斯特勞森認 為敘事只是其中一種反省人生的方法，有些人比較傾向用講故事的方式理解自己，另一些人卻沒有這個傾向。所以將敘事視為人生的必然結構是錯誤的。這篇論文的目的是要建立一個「敘事自我理論」。這個理論介乎於麥金泰和斯特勞森的立場之間。一方面，我贊成斯特勞森說人生本身並沒有敘事結構；另一方面，我卻認為敘事於人類生命有著不可或缺的角色。在這篇論文，我提出敘事具有 塑造人生 的功能。我認為人生和敘事有著互動關係︰一方面，我們的人生 要求 一個故事 我們渴望用故事來理解自己的人生；另一方面，我們所講的故事會 形塑 我們的人生 我們會根據自己所講的故事來活我們的人生。Li, Hong Ting."November 2019."Thesis Ph.D. Chinese University of Hong Kong 2020.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 230-234).Abstracts also in Chinese.Title from PDF title page (viewed on 20 May, 2021)