Self Value And Narrative A Kierkegaardian Approach

"In this book, Anthony Rudd defends a series of closely related claims about the nature of the self. He argues that the self is a being that constitutes or shapes itself, and that it can only do this non-arbitrarily if it is guided by a sense of the good. This ethical or evaluative dimension to selfhood has an essentially teleological character, and can only be understood in narrative terms. Versions of these ideas have been developed by various influential philosophers (including Frankfurt, Korsgaard, MacIntyre, Ricoeur, and Taylor) but Rudd's account is importantly different from others familiar in the literature. He takes his main inspiration from Kierkegaard and argues (controversially) that he belongs in the Platonic rather than the Aristotelian tradition of teleological thinking about the self and the good. Through close engagement with much contemporary philosophical work, Rudd presents a convincing case for an ancient and currently unfashionable view: that the polarities and tensions that are constitutive of selfhood can only be reconciled through an orientation of the self as a whole to an objective Good."--Jacket.