ABSTRACT
There are several different conceptions of 'narrative ethics', and each carries significantly different implications for the question of moral justification. As developed by Arthur Frank, postmodern ethics risks sacrificing ethics at the altar of personal self-development. This approach to moral methodology was first articulated in the early work of John Rawls, and has since been the subject of much amplification and commentary at the hands of other ethical theorists. This view, perhaps best represented by Alasdair Maclntyre and Stanley Hauerwas, constitutes a frontal assault on the so-called Enlightenment project of establishing a rational basis for ethics beyond the constraints of traditions and culture. More specifically, the postmodern categorical imperative seems to come down to an insistence that everyone gets to tell his or her own story. A related problem for Frank, and more generally for postmodernism, is the temptation to fetishize 'little narratives' at the expense of broader social understanding and critique.
