Practical Identity and Narrative Agency

309 Pages·2008·1.78 MB·English

by  Kim Atkins

Practical Identity and Narrative Agency
Theessayscollectedinthisvolumeaddressarangeofissuesthatarisewhen
the focus of philosophical reflection on identity is shifted from solely
metaphysical to practical and evaluative concerns The essays also explore
the usefulness of the notion of narrative for articulating and responding to
these issues.
The chapters, written by outstanding international scholars, address a
range of complex philosophical issues concerning the relationship between
practical and metaphysical identity, the embodied dimensions of the first-
personal perspective, the kind of reflexive agency involved in the self-con-
stitution of one’s practical identity, the relationship between practical iden-
tity and normativity, and the temporal dimensions of identityand selfhood.
In addressing these issues, the authors engagewith debates in the literatures
on personal identity, phenomenology, moral psychology, action theory,
normative ethical theory, and feminist philosophy.
Catriona Mackenzie is Associate Professor in Philosophy at Macquarie
University, Sydney, Australia. She is also co-editorof Relational Autonomy:
Feminist Perspectives on Autonomy, Agency and the Social Self.
KimAtkinsisSeniorLecturerinPhilosophyattheUniversityofWollongong,
Australia. She is also editor of Self and Subjectivity. A Reader with Com-
mentary and author of Narrative Identity and Moral Identity: A Practical
Perspective.
Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy
1. Email and Ethics
Style and Ethical Relations in Computer-Mediated Communication
Emma Rooksby
2. Causation and Laws of Nature
Max Kistler
3. Internalism and Epistemology
The Architecture of Reason
Timothy McGrew and Lydia McGrew
4. Einstein, Relativityand Absolute Simultaneity
Edited by William Lane Craigand Quentin Smith
5. Epistemology Modalized
Kelly Becker
6. Truth and Speech Acts
Greimann & Siegwart
7. Fiction, Narrative, and Knowledge
A Sense of the World
Edited by John Gibson, Wolfgang Huemer, and Luca Pocci
8. A Pragmatist Philosophyof Democracy
Communities of Inquiry
Robert B. Talisse
9. Aesthetics and Material Beauty
Aesthetics Naturalized
Jennifer A. McMahon
10. Aesthetic Experience
Edited by Richard Shusterman and Adele Tomlin
11. Real Essentialism
David S. Oderberg
12. To be announced
13. Metaphysics and the Representational Fallacy
Heather Dyke
14. Practical Identityand Narrative Agency
Edited by Catriona Mackenzie and Kim Atkins

Practical Identity and
Narrative Agency
Edited by
Catriona Mackenzie and Kim Atkins
Firstpublished2008
byRoutledge
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Contents
Notes on contributors ix
Acknowledgments xii
1 Introduction: Practical identity and narrative agency 1
CATRIONAMACKENZIE
Part I
Personal identity and continuity 29
2 Staying alive: Personal continuation and a life worth having 31
MARYASCHECHTMAN
3 Personal identity: Practical or metaphysical? 56
CAROLINEWEST
4 Narrative identity and embodied continuity 78
KIMATKINS
Part II
Practical identity and practical deliberation 99
5 Personal identity management 101
JANBRANSEN
6 Imagination, identity, and self-transformation 121
CATRIONAMACKENZIE
7 Why search for lost time? Memory, autonomy, and practical
reason 146
JOHNCHRISTMAN
viii Contents
Part III
Selfhood and normative agency 167
8 The way of the wanton 169
J.DAVIDVELLEMAN
9 Losing one’s self 193
CHESHIRECALHOUN
10 Normative agency 212
JEANETTEKENNETTANDSTEVEMATTHEWS
11 Remorse and moral identity 232
CHRISTOPHERCORDNER
Part IV
Selfhood, narrative, and time 253
12 Shaping a life: Narrative, time, and necessity 255
GENEVIEVELLOYD
13 How to change the past 269
KARENJONES
Index 289
Contributors
Kim Atkins is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at the
Universityof Wollongong. She has a special interest in the philosophyof
Paul Ricoeur. She is the editor of Self and Subjectivity: A Reader with
Commentary (Blackwell) and has published in Journal of Applied Philo-
sophy, Philosophy Today, Continental Philosophy Review, and Interna-
tional Journal of Philosophical Studies.
Jan Bransen is Professor of Philosophy of Behavioral Science at Radboud
University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He has published in a range of
editedcollections andjournals,includingEuropeanJournalofPhilosophy,
Inquiry, and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Jan Bransen is
founder of Philosophical Explorations: An International Journal for the
Philosophy of Mind and Action.
Cheshire Calhoun is Professor of Philosophy at Arizona State University,
Tempe Arizona. Her publications include Feminism, the Family, and the
Politics of the Closet (Oxford University Press), Setting the Moral Com-
pass: Essays by Women Philosophers (Oxford University Press), and
essays in Ethics, Hypatia, Journal of Philosophy, Journal of Political Phi-
losophy, and Philosophyand Public Affairs. She is series editor for Oxford
University Press’s Studies in Feminist Philosophy.
JohnChristmanisAssociateProfessorofPhilosophyandPoliticalScienceat
Penn State University. He is the authorof The Myth of Property (Oxford
University Press) and Social and Political Philosophy: A Contemporary
Introduction (Routledge)andistheeditorofTheInner Citadel:Essays on
Individual Autonomy (Oxford University Press) and the co-editor with
Joel Anderson of Autonomy and the Challenges to Liberalism: New
Essays (Cambridge University Press).
Christopher Cordner is Head of the Department of Philosophy at the
University ofMelbourne.HisbookEthicalEncounter(Palgrave)explores
the ways in which our moral concepts and capacities are informed by
what is disclosed in immediate encounter between human beings.
Christopher Cordner also contributes to health ethics and the ethics of