Paul Ricoeur: Imaginative Variation and Narrative Identity

The dialectic between idem and ipse, in radical opposition to Descartes’ method on which the cogito is based, represents the hermeneutics of the self. Narrative identity performs a mediating function between self-sameness and hypseity: Ricœur hypothesizes a project, the foundation of which is traced in the imaginative variation generated in the story, which recognizes identity as a narrative identity. Even though the narrative text remains central, the interpretative perspective does not follow the direction or sense of the author of the text, but instead the world to which the text opens up in its entirety.