Closereads: Philosophy with Mark and Wes
Galen Strawson Against Narrativity (Part One)
April 9, 20261h · 9,450 words
Show notes
On "Against Narrativity" (2004), where Galen (son of P.F.) argues that the prevalent philosophical and cultural camp is wrong. This objectionable camp (the Narratives) says that we understand our lives by telling ourselves a story about ourselves. Moreover, this is how we make meaning out of our lives, and how we thus behave ethically, taking responsibility for our past and future: how we have integrity.
Highlighted moments
I think the current widespread acceptance of the third view is regrettable. It's just not true that there is only one good way for human beings to experience their being in time. There are deeply non-narrative people and there are good ways to live that are deeply non-narrative.
“If one is episodic, by contrast, E, one does not figure oneself considered as a self as something that was there in the further past and will be there in the further future.”
“The past can be alive, arguably more genuinely alive in the present simply insofar as it has helped to shape the way one is in the present. Just as musicians playing can incorporate and body forth their past practice without being mediated by any explicit memory of it.”
Transcript
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