Abstract

Philosophical anthropology and critical interpretive theory provide the context for this inquiry exploring aspects of self and modes of being-in-the-world. Building on the work of Paul Ricoeur and Martin Heidegger, the investigation provides insight into: an understanding of how the voluntary and the involuntary influence and shape the narrative identity of self with self and of self in relation with other---addressing the question, Who is it that we are?; an understanding of how the voluntary and the involuntary are reflected in our being-in-the-world as being, doing, and becoming---addressing the question, What is it that we do? ; and a sense of how these dialectics relate to the search for a dialectical concept capable of integrating the voluntary and the involuntary. ;Drawing from wisdom traditions of both Western and non-Western---specifically Zen Buddhist---sources, the inquiry explores global dialectics of the voluntary and the involuntary within research categories of narrative identity, temporality, and being-in-the-world. The ten authors---from whose work I selected the discourse comprising the mini-texts, which were used as data---include Hannah Arendt, Georg Hegel, Martin Heidegger, Richard Kearney, and Paul Ricoeur from the Western perspective and Cheri Huber, Mu Soeng, D. T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, and Wei Wu Wei from Eastern tradition. ;At the limit, there is no relation between self and other, because there is no separation---only oneself-as-another. At the limit, there is no cause and effect, because there is only a single event---the dance of be-coming. And correspondingly, at the limit, there is no past or future, as there is only the present moment---the eternal, temporal now