We Live Beyond Any Tale That We Happen to Enact

Some say [1] we all experience or conceive of their own lives as a narrative or story of some sort.  Many more say [2] we ought to do this.  I argue that both these claims are false (cp Strawson 2004).  Many go on to claim something more specific: we not only experience our own lives as a narrative of some sort, but [3] we ‘constitute our identity’ as a person or self in this way (the ‘narrative self-constitution thesis’).  Others again claim that [4] we ought to constitute our identity in this way. Again I reject both claims: people are very different; there are different good ways to be and to live. 

I consider Emerson, Nietzsche, Proust and Woolf among others.  Suppose Socrates is right (it may be doubted) that the unexamined life is not a life for a human being: suppose he’s right that self-examination is always a good thing.  Even so, the narrative approach is not the only way to do it, nor the best way. I advise against it.