<研究論文(原著論文)>人生が意味をもつためには、どのような物語が必要なのか

Abstract

In this paper, I will examine the views known as narrativism about meaning in life. Narrativism refers to a set of views that hold that narrative, in some sense, contributes to meaning in life. While these views have garnered considerable support in the philosophy of meaning in life, the debate surrounding it is far from clear. The issue arises because, not only is the concept of “meaning in life, ” which is to be explained, ambiguous, but the concept of “narrative, ” which is supposed to explain it, also varies among different theorists. In light of these circumstances, this paper has two aims. First, I will clarify the concepts of “narrative” as the explanans and “meaning in life” as the explanandum. By doing so, the ambiguity surrounding the narrativist debate should be reduced, making it easier to grasp the overall picture. Second, I will review and evaluate existing narrativist claims and propose a more persuasive view as an alternative. This paper proceeds as follows. I will first clarify the concepts of “narrative” and “meaning in life” (section 2). This clarification will reveal that narrativism can be theoretically divided into three variants: the story view, the recounting view, and the narrative view. Existing narrativist views can be classified under the story view and the recounting view, so I will first examine the story view (section 3) and then the recounting view (section 4), reviewing and evaluating the claims of each. In my view, while both the story view and the recounting view capture important aspects of meaning in life, they still leave some challenges to be overcome. Therefore, I will present a new narrativist view, which falls under the narrative view, as an alternative to these views (section 5).