Narration and the Normative Theory of Freedom

Abstract

The author examines how the normative account of freedom might be profitably supplemented by a theory of narrative configuration, according to which narrating action is concomitant with the formation of the identity of a character. A normative-narrative conception of freedom would require neither an abandonment of the basic intuitions underlying our practices of moral responsibility nor a commitment to the untenable metaphysics of the causa sui. Freedom, according to this account, is something of an achievement of narrative self-understanding. By recounting our own story, by owning up to our past, by claiming responsibility for past actions, we not only come to better understand ourselves, but in some sense we even reclaim the possibility of becoming—within the narrative of our lives—our own beginning.