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The narrative approach to identity has developed as a sophisticated philosophical response to the complexities and ambiguities of the human, lived situation, and is not – as has been naively suggested elsewhere – the imposition of a generic form of life or the attempt to imitate a fictional character. I argue that the narrative model of identity provides a more inclusive and exhaustive account of identity than the causal models employed by mainstream theorists of personal identity. Importantly for ethical subjectivity, the narrative model gives a central and irreducible role to the first-person perspective. I will draw the connection between narrative identity and ethical subjectivity by way of an exposition of work by Paul Ricoeur and Marya Schechtman, and a brief consideration of Korsgaard’s work on practical identity and normative ethics. I argue that the first-person perspective – the reflective structure of human consciousness – arises from human embodiment, and therefore the model of identity required of embodied consciousness is more complex and irreducibly first-personal than that provided in a causal account. What is required is a self-constitution model of identity: a narrative model of identity.

Friendship, trust and forgiveness In this paper I will argue for a conception of forgiveness as the outcome of a process of mutuality rather than something brought about solely by the action of an individual. On the traditional view, forgiveness is conceived in terms of the emotional, cognitive or moral state of a harmed party who endows forgiveness upon the agent of the harm. On my account, unlike other, more traditional accounts,' the forgiven person plays a key role in bringing about forgiveness; the forgiven party is an active party in the process of forgiveness. I propose an intersubjective model that aims to overcome shortcomings arising from the individualistic orientation of the philosophical accounts of forgiveness that I have examined. The individualistic assumptions of these accounts leads them to collapse into what is called the 'paradox of forgiveness', 2 where forgiveness becomes either redundant or impossible. The paradox arises from the problem of retaining a sense of the moral quality of the agent of the harm, without either condoning a moral wrong or eliminating the moral quality of the harm. My account proposes a solution to the paradox by shifting the focus from the level of the individual to the level of the relationship. It is here, in the context of the mutuality of a relationship, that the moral agency of the one who harmed can be reconciled with forgiveness. My focus will be solely on the case of close friendship between two persons. While this focus is limited, I believe that the basic principles of nay account are applicable to other cases of moral harm between persons. One implication of my view is that it does not seem possible to forgive

Ricoeur distinguishes himself from many figures writing in hermeneutics and the natural sciences in that he does not strictly grant the hierarchical orientations proposed by Robert Crease:2 1. The priority of meaning over technique 2. The primacy of practical over theoretical 3. The primacy of situation over abstract formalisation However, neither does Ricoeur endorse the reverse order. Instead he sees each term as equiprimordial. It is on this point that Ricoeur's philosophy comes closer to the natural sciences than phenomenology would traditionally tolerate. However, Ricoeur's notion of objective reality is far removed from transcendental realism. He argues for a dialectical "middle way" that undercuts the dualism of subjectivity and objectivity by showing their mutual implication and logical dependence.3 The effect is to grant legitimacy to the methods of the natural sciences without falling victim to the estrangements of either transcendental realism or transcendental egoism. Ricoeur's "middle way" can be distinguished from the mainstream Heideggerian form of hermeneutics if we consider how he would respond to the following proposition from Patrick Heelan: What kind of entity then is a hammer...? It is a public cultural reality, a physical reality constituted by socio-cultural meaning."4 I suggest that Ricoeur would demure that the hammer, or any physical object, is not merely constituted by a socio-cultural meaning since meanings cannot constitute anything but other meanings. We do not resolve the problem of realism by appeal to the "as" structure of language, since this does not engage directly with the physicality of a physical object. As Ricoeur has argued in a different context, the reality of enduring physical objects exceeds the conceptual resources of phenomenology and, in doing so, implies an order of objective reality.5 The purpose of this essay is to examine the ways in which Ricoeur has articulated his particular form of phenomenology and its notion of objectivity in three different philosophical contexts.6 Ricoeur's arguments for objectivity appear variously as arguments concerning the nature of explanation and understanding, extra-linguistic reality, cosmological time, historical causality and, most recently, the neuronal basis of mental life.7 will be considering only three: explanation and understanding, cosmological time, and the neuronal basis of mental life. While the arguments for ontological reference that appear in the Rule of Metaphor would be entirely appropriate here, they have received considerable attention elsewhere,8 so for reasons of economy I have omitted that discussion.

In this essay I explicate Heidegger's conception of time to show that the account of self understanding and interpretation built upon that conception fails to provide the closure necessary for determinacy in self understanding. The flaw lies in a discontinuity between the two levels of time within Heidegger's concept of"Being-toward-death." This discontinuity prevents the formation of a requisite temporal unity and a concommitant conceptual unity. I go on to explain how Paul Ricoeur's account of "human time" responds to this problem by drawing on the strategies of poetics (specifically narrative) to articulate both temporal and conceptual unity. Ricoeur identifies the processes by which two levels of time interweave to achieve a tentative, unstable closure through the "inscription of phenomenological time on objective time."1 The strategies which fix meaning by connecting together the diverse aspects of human acting can also disconnect and reconnect those elements in ongoing processes of re-interpretation across chronological time. Dasein: The Ontological Temporality of Subjectivity Heidegger attempts to expose the ontological structures of human being through an analysis of the implicit structures of self awareness and experience. This analysis reveals that, as a subject, one always already finds oneself encountering a world wherein one is aware of one's existence in that world as self aware, i.e., as having an orientation to, and concern for, one's existence. This mode of existence Heidegger calls "Dasein."2 As self consciousness, or subjectivity, only Dasein can enquire into its own existence as an enquirer. This existence as enquiry into its own existence is ontological: it refers to Dasein's being "an entity for which, intimately involved in its being-in-the world, this very being is at issue."3 Dasein is not an entity, but is a mode of existence characteristic, indeed, constitutive, of being a human subject. That is to say, to exist as a self is to live this self concernfulness; there is no other essence, no soul or substantiality behind self consciousness, no telos determining what we are to be. The single defining feature of a self is concern with one's existence: one's existence is always an issue. For this reason Heidegger says that the essence of Dasein is its potentiality: "in each case possible ways for it to be."4 Because human being lacks predetermination, it can be characterized only by potentiality-the potentiality to become various kinds of lives. Aware of life's potential, it is up to each subject to carve out an existence for himself or herself, to create the meaning of one's own life. This is the task of self determination. Self determination is necessary if one is to acquire an identity, i.e., to become some-one. This is why Heidegger says that "Dasein has in each case mineness," and that "Dasein is mine to be in one way or another."5 The peculiar feature of human existence is that we are required to, as it were, appropriate our lives from the many possibilities and situations before us. The meaning of one's experiences is not a function of either nature or God, but of our own self activity. Our capacity for self determination is the response to the closure necessary for potentiality to become actuality. As potentiality-to-be, Dasein's being is fundamentally temporal-we are "in-the world" oriented to what we are to be; that is, we have a basic orientation to our own existence in terms of our future.6 If the essence of being a subject is to be self concerned, then it is to be concerned with oneself in a fundamentally temporal, and primarily futural, way. Because of the futural orientation of self concern, Dasein's existence is primordially practical. Heidegger argues that my understanding of the world is, firstly, in terms of tasks rather than objects, and it is the tasks that I find myself amongst that give definition and purpose to objects around me.7 Finding oneself always already among tasks, Dasein is said to be "thrown. …

In this essay I take issue with Derek Parfit's reductionist account of personal identity.Parfit is concerned to respond to what he sees as flaws in the conception of the role of 'person' in self-interest theories. He attempts to show that the notion of a person as something over and above a totality of mental and physical states and events (in his words, a 'further fact'), is empty, and so, our ethical concerns must be based on something other than this. My objections centre around the claim that Parfit employs an impoverished conception of 'life'. Parfit misconceives the connection between 'I' and one's body, and, so, despite his rejection of a metaphysical conception of 'self', remains within the logic of Cartesianism. What Parfit and other reductionists call an 'impersonal' perspective, I shall call the third-person perspective: a perspective which one in general may take. Against Parfit I shall offer a more complex conception of 'self' through the concept of 'bodily perspective'. I emphasize the irred...

This essay will address a general philosophical concern about autonomy, namely, that a conception of autonomy focused on freedom of the will alone is inadequate, once we consider the effects of oppressive forms of socialization on individuals' formation of choices. In response to this problem, I will present a brief overview of Diana Meyers's account of autonomy as relational and practical. On this view, autonomy consists in a set of socially acquired practical competencies in self-discovery, self-definition, self-knowledge, and self-direction. This account provides a distinction between choices that express unreflectively internalized social norms and those that are the result of a critical 'self-reading'. I conclude that this practical conception of autonomy makes much higher demands upon nurses (and patients) than has previously been thought. In fact, if nurses are to be expected to genuinely promote autonomy, they are going to need specific training in counselling-type communication skills.

In his famous paper, What Is It Like To Be a Bat?, Thomas Nagel argues against a reductive physicalist account of consciousness by highlighting what he calls "the subjective character of experience." In this paper I will argue that Nagel's insight is important for understanding the value placed on patient autonomy in medical ethics. Appreciation of the subjective character experience brings with it the necessity for an epistemological humility with respect to the lives of others and what can be said to be "right" for them. Appreciation of the subjective character of experience lies at the heart of empathy and our capacity to make decisions that genuinely reflect respect for the patient's autonomy. Through the example of a case involving extreme medical intervention, I identify some impediments to the proper recognition of autonomy. These kind of cases highlight the significance of affective responses with respect to the subjective character of experience, and, by extension, to our capacity to imagine and act in accordance with another's perspective. I argue that affective responses are appropriate and needed considerations in the case where one must attempt to assume another's perspective in order to respect autonomy. I conclude that understanding that experience has an irreducibly subjective character is essential to respecting patient autonomy.