2017/12/25 by Ben Roth
Arts and Humanities · #Hermeneutics and Narrative Identity #Narrative Theory and Analysis #Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism
paper · doi:10.1111/ejop.12314
openalex publication_date 2017/12/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/27
Abstract Heidegger's Being and Time is an underappreciated venue for pursuing work on the role narrative plays in self‐understanding and self‐constitution, and existing work misses Heidegger's most interesting contribution. Implicit in his account of Dasein (an individual human person) is a notion of the narrative self more compelling than those now on offer. Bringing together an adaptive interpretation of Heidegger's notion of “thrown projection”, Wolfgang Iser's account of “the wandering viewpoint”, and more recent Anglo‐American work on the narrative self, I argue that we read our ongoing existences in the same way that, mid‐story, we read a narrative. Reading is a better master metaphor than authorship, narration, plot, or character to guide investigations of narrative's relation to the self. It is not merely a metaphor, however, as the hermeneutic structures involved in interpreting existence and a narrative from the middle are the same.