Overview

In the rigorous and highly original Self-Awareness and Alterity, Dan Zahavi provides a sustained argument that phenomenology, especially in its Husserlian version, can contribute something decisive to the analysis of self-awareness. Taking on recent discussions within both analytical philosophy (Shoemaker, Castaneda, Nagel) and contemporary German philosophy (Henrich, Frank, Tugendhat), Zahavi argues that the phenomenological tradition has much more to offer when it comes to the problem of self-awareness than is normally assumed. As a contribution to the current philosophical debate concerning self-awareness, the book presents a comprehensive reconstruction of Husserl's theory of pre-reflective self-awareness, thereby criticizing a number of prevalent interpretations and a systematic discussion of a number of phenomenological insights related to this issue, including analyses of the temporal, intentional, reflexive, bodily, and social nature of the self.

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9780810117013

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Reviews

An ambitious and original discussion of subjectivity and self-consciousness . . . accessible, rigorous, and engaging. --Robert Piercey, author of The Uses of the Past From Heidegger to Rorty This book, significant in its phenomenological detail, shows how phenomenology can contribute important insights that are easily overlooked in both analytic and scientific accounts of human experience. --Shaun Gallagher, author of The Inordinance of Time Self-Awareness and Alterity is well organized, clear, and evenhanded, and it advances a thesis that is highly original and convincing, one that should command attention not only from phenomenologists but from any philosopher interested in the topic of self-awareness... There simply is no other work in phenomenology that goes at the problem of self-awareness in such detail and in such a systematic and illuminating way. --Steven Crowell, author of Husserl, Heidegger, and the Space of Meaning

Author Information

Dan Zahavi is a professor of philosophy and the director of the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of more than eight books, including Subjectivity and Selfhood: Investigating the First-Person Perspective, Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame, and Husserl's Legacy.

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