Authoring a Moral Self: A Dialogical Perspective

This article argues that the moral self is situated neither psychologically nor socially, but dialogically-as a function of the linguistically mediated exchanges between persons and the social world that are the hallmark of lived human experience. Primary support for this argument is taken from the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, who suggests that the "authorship" of the narratives one tells about one's life is always a function of both self and other. This dialogical perspective is illustrated by an autobiographical account written by an emigre from Nazi Germany in which the author tells the story of a series of striking transformations in her moral self-moral identity, and in which her moral authority-ethical responsibility gradually emerge from the multitude of voices that she encounters in the social world. This article concludes that autobiographies provide perhaps the clearest evidence of the degree to which moral selfhood-identity is, at its core, a function of the ongoing dialogical interchange between self and others.