Symposion

Volume 2, Issue 4, 2015

Le self dans l’ouvrage de Ricoeur Soi-même comme un autre. L’attestation de soi : certitude et fragilité du self

The paper aims to explain how Paul Ricoeur’s phenomenological and hermeneutic approach offers an original theory of the self as self-attestation. Considering useful an approach that combines the psychological uses of the notion of self with a reflection on one’s capacity to design himself/herself as a person, the paper offers a thorough analysis of Ricoeur’s work Soi-même comme un autre / Oneself as Another. The main purpose of this analysis is to highlight that, drawing a clear distinction between two forms of identity (la mêmeté/sameness and l’ipséité/selfhood) and proposing a dialectic between the self and the other, Ricoeur grounds his theory on a notion of self which includes one’s acceptance of the other.