Fictions of the Self

Aspects of the Relationship between the Experience of Reading and Selfhood in Paul Ricœur

Authors

  • Felice Maria Fiorino Étudiant en master à la Scuola Normale Superiore de Pise et à l’Université de Pise

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5195/errs.2025.709

Keywords:

fiction, Reading, Ipseity, Body, Temporality, Imagination

Abstract

This article will consider the links between Ricœur’s respective accounts of the experience of reading and selfhood (ipseity). Without ignoring the hermeneutic and narrative definitions of the self, I will concentrate on the phenomenological and existential aspects of this correlation. First, I will show how Ricœur’s consideration of fiction’s effects on identity is indebted not only to the phenomenological tradition—especially Sartre’s critique of the ego and Husserl’s theory of imaginative variations—but also to phenomenological theories of reading—namely those of Ingarden, Poulet and Iser. Secondly, I will argue that some phenomenological aspects that Ricœur ascribes to reading—namely its embodied and temporal nature—could be linked to the phenomenological anchoring self in relation to fictional experiences. Finally, I will consider the problem of the “identity crisis” raised by Ricœur in relation to Musil’s The Man Without Qualities in light of the mixed nature of the narrative imagination in relation to the field of action. I will argue that, on the ethical horizon of selfhood that Ricœur opens by referring to axiological imagination, works of fiction like Musil’s not only provide descriptive concepts, but also a radical categorial shift.

References

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Published

2025-10-01

Issue

Vol. 16 No. 1 (2025)

Section

Articles

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Copyright (c) 2025 Felice Maria Fiorino

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