The Time of the Self

Journal title PARADIGMI
Author/s Dan Zahavi
Publishing Year 2014 Issue 2014/2
Language Italian Pages 18 P. 31-48 File size 176 KB
DOI 10.3280/PARA2014-002003
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This essay tries to investigate the relationship bewteen time and the Self by contrasting two different ways of thinking this relationship, which they both assume as constitutive for the Self. The first one is the narrative account of the self, the second one is the experiencial or phenomenological account of the self. The narrative account stresses the importance of narrated time, and therefore of authorship in the constitution of the identity of the Self. On the contrary, the experiencial approach focuses on the time structure of our own stream of consciousness, and therefore emphasizes the ownership of lived experience, i.e. the first-person perspective of our own lived experience. After having argued that no account of the Self can ignore the basic temporal structure of experience and that for this reason the experiencial approach is the most fundamental, in the conclusions the author suggests that this view alone is incapable of giving a complete account of the identity of the self, especially when it comes to human selfhood. As a consequence, the experiencial approach should be integrated with the narrative approach.

Keywords: Time, selfhood, identity, narrative, inner time-consciousness.

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Dan Zahavi, Il tempo del sé in "PARADIGMI" 2/2014, pp 31-48, DOI: 10.3280/PARA2014-002003