Narrative and Understanding Persons

This volume brings together nine original contributions that develop and challenge proposals on narratives.

Daniel D. Hutto (Edited by)

9780521714099, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 12 July 2007

236 pages
22.4 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.35 kg

The human world is replete with narratives - narratives of our making that are uniquely appreciated by us. Some thinkers have afforded special importance to our capacity to generate such narratives, seeing it as variously enabling us to: exercise our imaginations in unique ways; engender an understanding of actions performed for reasons; and provide a basis for the kind of reflection and evaluation that matters vitally to moral and self development. Perhaps most radically, some hold that narratives are essential for the constitution of human selves. This volume brings together nine original contributions in which the individual authors advance, develop and challenge proposals of these kinds. They critically examine the place and importance of narratives in human lives and consider the underlying capacities that permit us to produce and utilise these special artifacts. All of the papers are written in a non-technical and accessible style.

Notes on contributors
1. Narrative and understanding persons Daniel D. Hutto
2. Framing narratives Gregory Currie
3. The narrative practice hypothesis: origins and applications of folk psychology Daniel D. Hutto
4. Dramatic irony, narrative, and the external perspective Peter Goldie
5. Episodic ethics Galen Strawson
6. On the distances between literary narratives and real-life narratives Peter Lamarque
7. Reasons to be fearful: Strawson, death and narrative Kathy Behrendt
8. Stories, lives, and basic survival: a refinement and defense of the narrative view Marya Schechtman
9. Self and other: limits of narrative understanding Dan Zahavi
10. Pathologies in narrative structure Shaun Gallagher.

Subject Areas: Philosophy [HP]