The Dialectic of Identity and the Experience of the Stranger

Abstract

From Ricoeur's perspective, identity is a transformative strategy that transcends traditional metaphysical inquiries and instead turns toward the images and models through which the self represents itself and constructs its network of representations within the world. Ricoeur thus sought to develop a renewed conception of both identity and temporality, according to which the individual's relationship with the self and with the world—that is, with the Other—is redefined. Within this framework, the human being's destiny and purpose in life emerge through these relational dynamics. Likewise, the experience of the stranger within the self is determined by the awareness or feeling of the otherness of something, whether this otherness exists outside the self from the outset or acquires its strangeness through the tensions generated by the ongoing conflict between the self and the other. In this way, Ricoeur dismantles the Romantic conception that had long shaped this identity relationship by assuming that the self and the other ultimately constitute one and the same reality.