The Truth of the Story and its Variations

Abstract

Husserl’s investigations on appearances and variations in the constitution of reality has led to the further examinations in what Arendt calls a ‘story’. Arendt argues that we produce our lives as a ‘story’. At the same time, she argues that nobody can be the author of one’s own life story. This intriguing claim implies that autobiography is an impossible task for an individual and that only others are capable of telling one’s own story. The main reason for this claim is that narration is only possible when the narrator has sufficient distance to the narrated life, and one cannot have a sufficient distance from one’s self. In this article, I will argue the following: if distance is a precondition of seeing and narrating, then variations of appearances and the reality that they constitute through different perspectives become a necessary part of seeing and narrating. This argument will emphasize the importance of the plurality of perspectives. Thus it will lead to the further question of whether it makes sense to make a truth claim in any of these perspectives or whether the variations force us to think every truth claim in relation to fiction.