European Journal of Philosophy (forthcoming)
The claim that selves are narratively
constituted has attained considerable currency in both analytic and continental
philosophy. However, a set of increasingly standard objections to narrative identity
are also emerging. In this paper, I focus on metaphysically realist versions of
narrative identity theory, showing how they both build on and differ from their
neo-Lockean counterparts. But I also argue that narrative realism is implicitly
committed to a four-dimensionalist, temporal-parts ontology of persons. That
exposes narrative realism, I argue, to the charge that the narratively
constituted self, on the one hand, and the self that is the object of much of
our everyday self-reference and self-experience, on the other, can’t be the
same thing. This conclusion may well force narrativists to abandon metaphysical
realism about narrative selves – which, in turn, may leave the invocation of
‘narrativity’ as identity-constituting somewhat under-motivated.