Date of Award
Fall 2000
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Philosophy
First Advisor
Vandevelde, Pol
Second Advisor
Tallon, Andrew
Third Advisor
Landry, Lorraine
Abstract
The scope of our analysis will not allow for a full explanation, let alone a justification, for all these various claims. Our task is to show that Ricoeur's theory of narrative is a reformulation of Husserl's notion of intentionality. Intentionality is the key concept of phenomenology, summarizing both the fact that 1) consciousness is always consciousness of something, always correlated to a part of the real world and that 2) the only being that things can have is a being for consciousness, for example being perceived, wished, remembered. Intentionality thus includes for Husserl a productive aspect: consciousness constitutes the meanings of things and events. It is my contention that Ricoeur's theory of narrative explains how productive constitution works. In particular, when Husserl describes productive constitution as the moment when a subject reveals the meaning of a thing, it is Ricoeur's account of narrative which explains how this moment occurs...