ABSTRACT
The previous chapters have argued that a ‘real narravive’ theory of practical identity helps solve major objections to narrative approaches and that and that needed modifi cations to early hierarchical theories of autonomy show that personal identity also has stronger narrative conditions. Kierkegaard’s distinction between ethical and aesthetic “stages” or basic orientations to life can then be explained in terms of the volitional and narratival di erences that caring and wholeheartedness make in one’s practical identity. And Kierkegaard’s examples of aestheticism and contrasting descriptions of autonomous self-direction help defend such a narrative account of personal autonomy from further objections, while complementing related contemporary arguments that personal autonomy rationally requires recognition of ethical norms as an implicit precondition. Strawson’s objections to ethical narrativity conditions ignore these fi ndings about personal autonomy.
