In the previous two chapters we began to explore how phenomenology might respond to the questions put to it by deconstruction in a way which neither rebuts nor embraces them, but searches within itself for the means to think beyond itself, or at least beyond its hitherto perceived limits and shortcomings. Specifically, we have seen that Merleau-Ponty's ontology, whether elaborated in terms of perception or language, is interrogative and indirect, and as such does not fully fall under the Derridean umbrella of ‘le plein de présence immédiate requis par toute ontologie ou par toute métaphysique.’ Meaning is not given in Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, arising as it does in an inextricable mutuality of world and body, call and response, perception and expression. However, in the process of recasting the issue of the ontological in an ‘interrogative mode’ and framing the question of alterity not in terms of reciprocity but in terms of mutuality, the question of the ontology of the person has emerged as a privileged line of inquiry, and in order to explore this further we shall engage the help of Paul Ricœur.

No one has approached the question of selfhood from a phenomenological point of view with more care and incisiveness than Ricœur, and in this chapter we shall see how he responds to the question of selfhood by insisting that the relation of ‘life’ and ‘narrative’ must be neither collapsed nor dichotomised.