Strukturen der Identität und des Selbstverständnisses von Personen

Abstract

Abstract The article explores how persons conceive of themselves as individuals. Often, they attribute personality traits to themselves which they exemplify or justify by reference to former life episodes. According to dominant narrative approaches, this biographical self-understanding is entirely constituted by so-called “self-narratives,” that is, the way in which persons construct stories about themselves and their lives. Against this line of thought, it will be argued that the self-understanding of persons is not only characterized by narrative structures but also by certain phenomenal as well as invariant features. This will be shown by analysing a non-narrative sense of self-identity across time, which necessarily grounds biographical self-understanding.