Life

a story in search of a narrator

Paul RICOEUR

pp. 121-132

in: Facts and values, Berlin, Springer, 1986

Abstract

That life has to do with narration has always been known and said; we speak of the story of a life to characterize the interval between birth and death. And yet this assimilation of a life to a history should not be automatic; it is a commonplace that should first be subjected to critical doubt. Such doubt is the outcome of all the knowledge acquired in the past few decades concerning the narrative and the narrating activity - knowledge that seems to remove the story from life as lived and locks it away in the realm of fiction.