Galen Strawson

The Unstoried Life

Should ethically serious people seek for unity in their lives, for harmony, for coherence? Is this a requirement on living a good life, a requirement on flourishing or eudaimonia? Should we aim for some kind of self-authorship or narrative self-constitution, as Marya Schechtman and Dan McAdams have suggested? Many think we should. This chapter argues for the opposite view, assembling and reflecting on a dossier of contrary quotations from many sources, including Proust, Montaigne, Alice Munro, Georges Perec, and Keats.

Freedom and Belief.

Introduction PART I: METAPHYSICS AND COMMITMENT: Libertarianism, action, and self-determination Kant and commitment Commitment, illusion, and truth Non-rational commitment: a view of freedom Phenomenology, commitment, and what might happen PART II: THE OBJECTIVIST BASIS: Objectivism: preliminaries Choice Self-consciousness PART III: THE SUBJECTIVIST CHALLENGE: Evidence and independence Contravention and convention The spectator subject and integration The natural epictetans The experience of ability to choose Subjectivism and the experience of freedom Anitomy and truth Appendices.