French philosopher who developed a hermeneutical phenomenology — a philosophy of interpretation that engaged with Freud, structuralism, and analytic philosophy — producing influential accounts of narrative, identity, and memory.
Narrative identity: a self is not given but constituted through the stories it tells about itself — idem (sameness) vs. ipse (self-constancy through change). Oneself as Another: the dialectic of same/self/other in personal identity. Memory, History, Forgetting: the largest philosophical treatment of memory and historical consciousness. Conflict of Interpretations: hermeneutics as the arena of philosophical conflict.
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