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The Unstoried Life

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The Realizations of the Self

Abstract

Should ethically serious people seek for unity in their lives, for harmony, for coherence? Is this a requirement on living a good life, a requirement on flourishing or eudaimonia? Should we aim for some kind of self-authorship or narrative self-constitution, as Marya Schechtman and Dan McAdams have suggested? Many think we should. This chapter argues for the opposite view, assembling and reflecting on a dossier of contrary quotations from many sources, including Proust, Montaigne, Alice Munro, Georges Perec, and Keats.

I want Death to find me planting my cabbages, neither worrying about it nor the unfinished gardening.

Michel de Montaigne (1563–92, 99)

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Texas University at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Galen Strawson

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  1. Galen Strawson
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Correspondence to Galen Strawson .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. China University of Political Science and Law, Beijing, China

    Andrea Altobrando

  2. Institut Jean Nicod, Paris, France

    Takuya Niikawa

  3. Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Hokkaido, Japan

    Richard Stone

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Strawson, G. (2018). The Unstoried Life. In: Altobrando, A., Niikawa, T., Stone, R. (eds) The Realizations of the Self. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94700-6_7

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