Goal

Projects and sub projects under this title will shed more light on our understanding of the human experience of the time and how we know and understand ourselves in time. With Narrative self-understanding, that builds on Aristotelian teleology as proposed by Alasdair MacIntyre, humans can find meaning in temporally dispersed actions, purposefully uniting them meaningfully with the help of narratives.
By studying the prevalence and application of philosophical concept of narrative self-understanding in various dimensions of human flourishing and across different fields (psychology, education, management programs, theology, business and management ethics, character education etc.), we key into a natural and necessary feature of humans as storytelling animals while exploring ways in which that capacity can be better used to achieve human flourishing.
The perspective of being protagonists of personal life stories and the history of communities is important for acquisition of virtues, character building and can generate concerns for others (while building the community's history with my personal actions). This addresses human flourishing and social wellbeing.
Narrative self-understanding is important for evaluating individual's spiritual wellbeing and an understanding of the one's role in the history of salvation (in the Christian dimension) or within the evolution of the world.

Opportunity

Constructivism and relativism have sown confusion as to an objective dimension of wellbeing that is at the same time flexible and non-deterministic. Narrativity plays a role in contemporary psychology and other fields. Scholars make attempts to apply narrativity often without a robust philosophical framework as a foundation for their work. E.g. Self-authoring projects, creating fictional selves for therapy with the danger of self-deception etc.
A realist, teleological approach to narrative self-understanding within contexts, and projecting the self towards the future, is essential for cultivating virtues in coherent lives while creating one's life story (and history) in the quest for flourishing

Roadblocks

There is vast literature with diverse perspectives of narrative self-understanding and the project will select the realist, teleological framework that is best suited for human flourishing.
Collaborators need to grasp the difference between real selves vs fictional selves that are forms of self-deception and may not be sufficiently robust for human flourishing.
Coordination of complexity: it will be challenging to bring disparate fields and views together while seeking common grounds for studying the same object (humans).
The concept connects several virtues and collaborators would have to select key virtues (four cardinal virtues) to be explored when creating virtue specific interventions

Breakthroughs Needed

Activities include: Interdisciplinary seminars, workshops, trainings, possible ethnographic studies for traditional concepts of narrative self-understanding, focused group discussions, Qualitative research on narrativity in lives (possibly sponsored masters theses/research fellowships), working sessions and workshops for adaptation of human flourishing measurement tools indices to be used in the project, Interdisciplinary conferences.
The project will choose the teleological realist framework of narrative self-understanding based on an interpretation of MacIntyrean narrativity that resonates with the Aristotelian concept of human flourishing. It will thus provide a robust philosophical model on which the different fields can build along the project.
The assessment and applications of tools designed will be done across different fields leading to robust discovery instead of a single perspective of the report.
A call for proposals that explains that unity is not uniformity would be appealing to diverse fields. Encouraging autonomy of methods in the different fields while applying a known framework gives a new perspective to previous studies that scholars would find attractive. Several fields can apply narrativity to enriching their objective of human flourishing

Key Indicators of Success

The indicators for human flourishing adapted to the project periodically assessed should show that participants improve e.g, in virtues, relationships, better jobs, skill acquisition etc.
Year 3: Books and journal articles which clearly articulate the prevalence of the application of narrative self-understanding in different communities.
Year 5: Intervention and programs designed set up and running promote application of narrative self-understanding in different fields.
Year10: Assessment tools are designed to measure self-awareness, growth in virtues evidenced by participants' long term achievements and reports by colleagues, participants running their projects which address social concerns, for spiritual development for themselves and others etc

Additional Information

SUMMARY: The narrative self is an anthropological vision of a human being as a self whose life has the structure of a narrative. Such a vision helps direct the self towards its ends and thus is guide for purposeful human life, (for the self and others). Human existence is temporal. We coordinate our temporal resources and successfully link separate events and activities, shaping them into meaningful units, through a narrative self-understanding. Narrative self-understanding in time is important for acquisition of virtues and for purposely directing oneself towards human flourishing, while overcoming temporal dispersion of ones' choices, and actions. Application of narratology to moral philosophy contends that human fulfillment or happiness may only be achieved by living an intelligible, coherent, unified, meaningful and successful story as we our own selves by building the narratives of our lives around everyday actions.
Even though it is a feature common to humans and spontaneously employed, there is complexity of interpretation and applications of narratives across different disciplines. In contemporary psychology, scholars observed that one's life is very much determined by the narrative set in childhood. Theology situates each individual within the broader context of the story of a divine plan (history of salvation).
By studying the prevalence and application of philosophical concept of narrative self-understanding in various dimensions of human flourishing and across different fields (psychology, education, management programs, theology, business and management ethics, character education etc.), we key into a natural and necessary feature of humans as storytelling animals while exploring ways in which that capacity can be better used to achieve human flourishing.
This project's realist and teleological approach to narrativity fosters robust human flourishing while focusing on real (non-fictional) active self-narration with a sense of ownership and increased awareness of being in control (protagonists) of building one's life stories and of history

References
1.DOI:10.17421/2037-2329-2014-MM-1
2.DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316816967
3. https://premiosrazonabierta.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Actas-Razon-Abierta-II.pdf (see pp205-221)
4. DOI: 10.17421/2498-9746-05-15
5 https://www.edizionisantacroce.it/dissertationes.html (Check XLVII) {O. Ogunyemi, The Unity of Autobiographical Temporality of the Narrative Self in Contemporary Psychology and Neuroscience: A Philosophical Study, EDUSC, Rome, 2017.}
Possible collaborators:
1. Kemi Ogunyemi: (The Christopher Kolade Centre for Research in Leadership and Ethics) Her team is willing to work on the implications of the topic in business mangers, MBA students and other youth
2. Robert Gahl: (Program of church management, Rome) Work on practical applications of narrative self-understanding to spiritual well-being and sense of mission, team building etc. in priests and religious
3. Matthew Lee and his team at the Harvard Center for Human flourishing could run projects evaluating autobiographical temporality and its links to the domains of human flourishing.
4. Dan P. McAdams (Narrative psychologist) or Jordan Peterson (Psychologist): Possible advisors for projects enriching the approaches to self-authoring in a way that focuses on teleology and human flourishing.
5. Dominic Burbidge and the Cambridge Center may explore civic virtues connected to narrativity e.g. listening)
6. A team at the Jubilee centre (University of Birmingham): Could run programs applying the principles of autobiographical temporality to character formation