Ricoeur, Narrative, and the Just

This paper draws on the work of philosopher Paul Ricoeur to relate together the perhaps seemingly disparate themes of narrative and justice. While we may frequently think of narrative and justice from the perspective of their terms being established - a completed story or an existing principle that we attempt to apply - I want to interrelate narrative and justice as tasks, as terms not established but open, incomplete, and subject to human creativity. Ricoeur encapsulates the narrative act that as which seeks the concordant through the discordant. Ricoeur's model of narrative challenges Lyotard's argument that our choice is between failed metanarratives and the incommensurable. The narrative is not pre-given in either human or individual history but must be constructed. It is an act and the product of choice. Similarly, Ricoeur shows how the just is a result of an imaginative judgment, where in situations of new application we can no longer follow an existing rule but must renovate the rule to fit the case before us. Resolution of what is just is not predetermined but the search for the concordant across the discordant, a task of extending and transforming the narrative of justice as it is applied. The notion of justice may express certain large truths, but in practice there is much contingency. The logic of justice could have developed differently. The logic of justice is that of a narrative we create; it is not a matter of inevitability but of human decision and judgment. I illustrate the argument with examples from the current legal context in the United States.