Fiction and fictions: On Ricoeur on the route to the self

Abstract

In reaching his narrative view of the self in Oneself as Another, Paul Ricoeur argues that, while literature offers revealing insights into the nature of the
self, the sort of fictions involving brain transplants, fission, and so on, that
philosophers often take seriously do not (and cannot). My paper is a response
to Ricoeur's charge, contending that the arguments Ricoeur rejects are not
flawed in the way he suggests, and that his own arguments are sometimes
guilty of the very charges he lays at the door of his opponents.

South African Journal of Philosophy Vol. 25 (4) 2006: pp. 329-335