What Ricoeur’s hermeneutics reveal about self and identity and aesthetic experience

Abstract

By analyzing eminent artists’ depictions of their experiences as taken from too-long-neglected interviews with Sigmund Koch and juxtaposing these with Ricoeur’s regressive and progressive hermeneutics and contemporary concerns in narrative psychology, the authors open new avenues of inquiry into self, identity, and art. Using interviews with Toni Morrison and Arthur Miller, they demonstrate how the creative process involves a concurrent interrogation and dislocation of the self, as well as a moral responsibility to a collective other. While the artists engage in regressive and progressive processes in their art, they also engage in the same processes in telling about their lives and their art. These enable transformative experiences for an artist’s sense of self and identity as well as the genesis of creative work. The regressive and progressive processes hold true not only for Toni Morrison and Arthur Miller, but also for other artists and individuals negotiating the long-term tasks of development.