敘事情節當中的自我與他者──從利科觀點看自我與他者

Self and Others in the Narrative: Self and Others from the Perspective of Ricoeur

本文從法國哲學家利科（Paul Ricoeur, 1913-2005）的詮釋學觀點觀察自我與他者的關係。利科把詮釋焦點從讀者轉向文本敘事，發展出敘事身份概念而從表層的「什麼」的問題轉向深層的「誰」的問題。藉由敘事身份，一方面批判現代社會自我概念的主要原型―笛卡兒式自我（Cartesian Self）向內轉向的獨我傾向，以及其所造成的個體主義自我中心傾向；另一方面批判與科技發展呼應的化約主義把人化約成物質，或者以量化方式衡量人的傾向。利科從敘事情節當中發展出自我與他者的關係，重視關係的相互性而導引出負責的倫理與互相承認的體制，主張每一個自我都是一個故事，也只有在故事當中才能理解每一個自我，而每一個自我故事都與其他自我故事交織互動，甚至與更大的故事交織互動，連同許多其他的自我故事共同組成更大的故事而串聯成為歷史故事。整體而言，利科傾向社群主義而批判個體主義，然而他對於個體被消溶於群體當中的危險保持高度警惕。當利科的自我與他者概念和中國文化傳統對話時，我們關注如何反對個體主義的極端化而不至於走上集體主義的道路，如何批判化約主義把人物化而不至於回復把個體價值全部建立在關係的傳統，以作為東西思想文化對話的一個參考。

This research deals with the relation between self and others from the hermeneutical perspective of French philosopher Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), who has transferred the focus from the side of readers to the side of text and narrative and developed the concept of narrative identity to probe into the deeper questions about 'who' rather than 'what' concerning self. From the perspective of narrative identity, on the one hand he criticizes against the Cartesian Self as the archetype of modern concept of self which tends toward inwardness and solipsism and extreme individualism. On the other hand, he criticizes that Reductionism, which corresponds to the development of technology, reduces human beings into material or takes quantization as a way of measuring human beings. Based upon narrative identity, he develops the relation between self and others. By ways of emphasizing mutuality of relations he constitutes the ethics of responsibility and the concept of institutions of mutual recognition, because every self has its own stories and it is only possible to understand a self through its stories. Every story of self reacts with the stories of other selves and even with bigger stories and it is therefore composed into historical stories with many other stories. Ricoeur tends to be communitarian and he criticizes against individualism, but he tries to keep distance with the danger of resolving individuals into a community. While adopting Ricoeur's understanding of self and others into a dialogue with Chinese culture, we should be concerned about how is it possible to be opposed to the radical individualism but not at the expense of totalitarianism, and how is it possible to be opposed to the materialization of human beings by Reductionism but not at the expense of the value of individuals by returning to the traditional ways of grounding it totally upon relations, in order to offer a reference for the further dialogue between the Eastern and Western culture.