The ways of identity in Paul Ricoeur

Towards a hermeneutics of the self as narrative identity

Abstract

This article explores, initially, the ways of Paul Ricoeur in his analysis of the problem of identity as a fundamental philosophical problem of modernity. In order to do so, the article analyzes the criticisms by the French philosopher to the antinomies that arise in the philosophies of the subject around the problem of the subject as the possibility of a hermeneutic of the self. It examines and problematizes the links between “narrative identity” and literary discourse, in the spirit of building a philosophical bridge with recognition as a condition of the new configurations of the self in late modernity.