Chapter 25 Further Reading: Language, Narrative, and the Stories We Live By

Primary Philosophical Texts

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations (1953), §1–88
The opening sections of the Investigations contain the most important and accessible moves: the critique of Augustine's picture of language, the introduction of language games, the family resemblance concept, and the early stages of the private language argument. §1–88 can be read as a self-contained introduction to Wittgenstein's late philosophy. Read slowly, with a pencil — the text is aphoristic and rewards annotation. The standard English translation is G.E.M. Anscombe's; the Anscombe-Hacker-Schulte revision (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009) is the most recent and generally preferred.

J.L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (1962), Lectures I–III
The first three lectures introduce the performative/constative distinction, develop the concept of felicity conditions, and set up the problem that the rest of the lectures will resolve. Reading just the first three lectures gives you the essential framework without the full technical apparatus. Austin's prose is dry and precise with occasional flashes of wry humor; he is one of the most enjoyable analytic philosophers to read. The second edition (Oxford University Press, 1975) with J.O. Urmson and Marina Sbisà's editorial notes is standard.

Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another (1990), Studies 5–6
Studies 5 and 6 (roughly the middle of the book) contain Ricoeur's most focused treatment of narrative identity, including the idem/ipse distinction, the relationship between narrative and personal identity, and the limits of narrative as an account of selfhood. The book as a whole is demanding; Studies 5–6 can be read with limited context. The Kathleen Blamey translation (University of Chicago Press) is standard.

Secondary Literature

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (1960/1975), Part II: "The Hermeneutics of the Human Sciences" (Introduction)
Part II's introduction — roughly twenty pages — contains Gadamer's central arguments about the rehabilitation of prejudice, the structure of the hermeneutical circle, and the concept of the fusion of horizons. It is more accessible than the book's later sections and gives the philosophical core of hermeneutics. The Joel Weinsheimer and Donald Marshall translation (Continuum, second revised edition) is standard.

Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue (1981), Chapter 15: "The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life and the Concept of a Tradition"
Chapter 15 is MacIntyre's account of narrative intelligibility and what it means for a human life to have the form of a quest — the context within which virtues make sense. It is one of the finest chapters in twentieth-century moral philosophy and reads as a self-contained essay. The rest of After Virtue provides the argument for why narrative matters for ethics; Chapter 15 is the payoff.

George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (1980)
The founding text of cognitive metaphor theory, written for a general audience. The first half is accessible to anyone; it proceeds through a series of case studies showing how conceptual metaphors structure the experience and reasoning we bring to argument, time, love, and life as journey. One of those books that changes the way you notice language after reading it. The afterword in the 2003 University of Chicago edition updates the theory.

Jonathan Gottschall, The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (2012)
A journalist-turned-scholar surveys the science and evolutionary theory of human storytelling. Covers how stories shape memory, identity, and social life; how narrative is ubiquitous in dreaming, play, and fantasy as well as art and literature; and why humans are uniquely and inescapably story-building creatures. Accessible, well-researched, and philosophically informed without being academic.

For Further Depth

Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (2007)
Fricker develops two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial injustice (giving someone's testimony less credibility than it deserves because of their social identity) and hermeneutical injustice (having experiences that cannot be understood because the interpretive resources don't yet exist — like experiencing sexual harassment before the term existed). This is the book that made epistemic injustice a central philosophical topic and connects this chapter's themes directly to questions of social power and justice.

Michael White and David Epston, Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends (1990)
The founding text of narrative therapy. White and Epston show how psychological distress is often related to "problem-saturated stories" and develop practical therapeutic techniques for re-authoring. The book is written for a clinical audience but is highly accessible. It is one of the most direct translations of Ricoeur's narrative identity thesis into therapeutic practice.