Questions: Ricoeur — Narrative Identity

Question 1

Ricoeur's distinction between idem-identity and ipse-identity maps onto:

• A. The distinction between memory and imagination
• B. The distinction between sameness (persistent character traits) and selfhood (the capacity to keep commitments regardless of how one changes)
• C. The distinction between individual identity and group identity
• D. The distinction between authentic and inauthentic existence

Answer: (B)

Idem-identity is 'what' I am — my character, habits, dispositions, the traits that persist and make me recognizable over time. Ipse-identity is 'who' I am — my capacity to stand behind my word, to be responsible, to maintain commitments even when my character changes. A person who keeps a promise made decades ago, despite having become a very different person, exemplifies ipse-identity. The two are not opposed but related: narrative is the medium through which the sameness of character and the selfhood of commitment are woven into a coherent life.

Question 2

Ricoeur argues that the self is a fixed substance that persists unchanged through time.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Ricoeur explicitly rejects both the substantial self (Descartes: a permanent thinking thing) and the anti-self (Hume, Nietzsche: the self is an illusion). The self is neither fixed nor dissolved — it is narratively constituted. Through the stories we tell about ourselves, we create a dynamic identity that accommodates change while maintaining coherence. Narrative identity is always revisable, always in process, and always involves interpretation — it is not a fact to be discovered but a story to be told and retold.

Question 3

How does narrative resolve the tension between the permanence and the changeability of personal identity?

Model answer: Narrative emplotment takes the disconnected events of a life — changes, reversals, continuities — and configures them into a meaningful whole. The plot creates concordance (coherence, unity) out of discordance (contingency, change, rupture). A life that includes radical transformation can still be grasped as one life because narrative provides the structure that connects who I was to who I have become. The narrative self is neither unchanging nor arbitrary but a dynamic configuration that is continually revised as new events demand reinterpretation.

Ricoeur draws on Aristotle's Poetics: a plot is not a simple sequence of events but a meaningful arrangement that transforms 'one thing after another' into 'one thing because of another.' Applied to personal identity: the events of my life become my life story not because they happened in sequence but because narrative gives them causal, motivational, and evaluative connections. This is why the same events can feature in different life stories — the same divorce can be narrated as liberation or as failure. The self is the protagonist of a story that is always being revised.

Question 4

Ricoeur's concept of narrative identity applies only to fictional characters, not to real persons.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

Ricoeur argues that narrative identity characterizes real persons as much as fictional characters — in fact, he holds that fiction and life are deeply intertwined. We understand real lives through narrative structures borrowed from fiction (comedy, tragedy, quest), and fiction enriches our understanding of possible ways of living. Life is not lived as a narrative — but it is understood, communicated, and made meaningful through narration. The interpretation of one's own life is an ongoing hermeneutical project, not a fixed biographical fact.