A Matter of Mimesis: Kierkegaard and Ricoeur on Narrative Identity

Abstract

AbstractThe overall aim in this text is to make clear the relationship between Kierkegaard and Ricoeur with regard to the notion of narrative identity. Thus, I would like to demonstrate that Ricoeur’s idea of mimesis becomes highly present in Kierkegaard’s writings in the very moment one recognizes the importance of the narrative in his authorship and takes the existential implications of these narratives into account. In unfolding some of these implications, I will emphasize the crucial difference between identifying oneself with one’s own history and the individual’s identification with an extraneous story. At the end of my text, I will use Kierkegaard to articulate some conflicts implied in Ricoeur’s idea of the third mimesis and its relation to the notion of an imitatio Christi