Description
Book SynopsisThe Aesthetics of Autonomy: Ricoeur and Sartre on Emancipation, Authenticity, and Selfhood argues that, despite their differences, Sartre and Ricoeur have a similar goal. While they are both anti-essentialists, they nevertheless advocate for the notions of selfhood and autonomy. Autonomy, for them, is the end result of an aesthetic path. An identity, at the individual or collective level, is created by weaving together contingent threads of the given. In other words, identity is a narrative construct. The first two chapters focus on the respective methods of Sartre and Ricoeur. Despite their different emphases, Farhang Erfani argues that they have a similar dialectical method, between the situation and our ability to surpass it for Sartre, and between sedimentation and innovation for Ricoeur. The third chapter brings them together and shows how they can complement each other in building a narrative identity at the individual level; Ricoeur is helpful in appreciating Sartrean notions of
Trade ReviewDr. Erfani’s book on Sartre and Ricœur is a welcome re-reading, together, of two relatively neglected thinkers, with a view of appropriating what is most valuable in each for understanding the challenges posed by globalization to the newly ‘fragile’ subjects of an increasingly complex, globalized world. It will appeal to those individuals who are nevertheless interested in creatively rescuing a sense of autonomy and selfhood—an aesthetic path to an autonomous self—from oblivion at a time when heteronomy appears to be increasingly the rule in various domains. With insight and humour, Erfani demonstrates that these thinkers’ conceptions of imagination and creativity, together with a sensitivity for the constitutive role of narrative for individual subjects, can revitalize our own floundering attempts to rise above the restrictions of the nation state while still clinging to the protection it supposedly affords one from global, multi-national corporate power. -- Bert Olivier, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University
Table of ContentsIntroduction Chapter 1. Can the Revolutionary Agent Ski? On Sartre's Methodology Chapter 2. Dialectics of Sedimentation and Innovation: On Ricœur's Methodology Chapter 3. Giving Style to One's Life: Existentialist Narrative Ethics Chapter 4. From Ideology to Dark Utopia Conclusion: "Imagine There's No Countries"
