The corporeality of time in the narrative self: Reflections on Paul Ricœur’s Time and Narrative

Abstract

This article situates Ricoeur’s concept of temporality in the embodied subject who is a narrative being. It is by becoming human time that time becomes intelligible, since it is as embodied narrative that time acquires a meaningful dimension. An important aspect of narrated time is a recognition of the human person as homo viator, an embodied being whose life is a continuous process of becoming. Ultimately, time consolidates its ontological status on two levels: on the level of narrative, in which time becomes history, and on the level of the embodied narrative subject, in which time manifests itself as existence.