ETIK OG NARRATIVITETENS TRE NIVEAU’ER

Abstract

This paper makes the distinction between three kinds of stories about human life: the life-story, the arch-story and the basic story. The life-story simply records what we can remember of our own life, both in solitude and together with the other, the archstory tells about life with its imagined scenes of a better understanding of the human condition and the driving forces behind our life, and the basic story concerns life, which tells about our possibilities and responsibilities and opens up our world for the good life in community with the other. The arch-story is a kind of generalized memory which chiefly refers backwards to the life which has already been lived, whereas the basic story is a kind of generalized expectation which chiefly points forward towards the possibilities which life offers. The two kinds of story derive their validity and necessity from highlighting the life-story, where the life-story conversely finds its meaning in these two ideal narrative models of true existence. It is my thesis that ethics presuppose both the life-story and the arch-story, but that the fight against loss and evil relies on the vision related - directly or indirectly - by a basic story.