Introduction

Abstract

Over the last few years the question of narrative has been taken up in a number of new ways by a wide range of philosophers and theorists—a conversation that has provoked reactions both skeptical and affirmative. The result has been something of a generational shift in how narrative is philosophically appropriated. This volume is especially concerned with what narrative and philosophy have to say about life—a question posed often in terms of the stark binary of Sartre’s character Roquentin (“you have to choose: live or tell”). In Part I, the essays of this volume offer a consideration of the definition and functions of narrative as it concerns philosophical issues such as selfhood, identity, agency and temporality; in Part II, the essays concern the specific task of writing biographical or autobiographical accounts of philosophical lives especially.