WORK
<em>Time and Narrative</em>
Ricoeur's three-volume masterwork (1983–1985) arguing that narrative is the fundamental way human beings make time meaningful—synthesizing Augustine, Aristotle, historiography, and fiction into a theory of temporal existence that AI's compression of creative time now tests.
Time and Narrative (Temps et récit) is Ricoeur's most ambitious philosophical project: a three-volume, 1,100-page demonstration that narrative and time are reciprocally related—narrative makes time human by imposing meaningful structure, and time makes narrative possible by providing the medium in which plots unfold. Volume 1 synthesizes Augustine's phenomenology of time-consciousness with Aristotle's theory of emplotment, producing the framework of mimesis₁, mimesis₂, mimesis₃. Volume 2 applies the framework to historiography and fiction, demonstrating that the narrative configuration of time operates identically across factual and imaginative discourse. Volume 3 addresses the aporetics of time—the irresolvable tensions the previous volumes could not eliminate. The work established narrative identity as a fundamental philosophical category and provided the conceptual resources the AI age now requires: when AI compresses the temporal structure of creation, it alters the conditions under which narrative meaning is produced—producing output-rich but meaning-thin experience.
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