Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame
Oxford University Press
2014
hardcover ($49.95)
280
Reviewed by:
Thomas Nenon, University of Memphis
This book continues Dan Zahavi’s ongoing discussion of the closely related themes of subjectivity, selfhood, intersubjectivity, and sociality. Following several other books he has previously published on these topics, this one presents Zahavi’s considered views on them primarily through a critical engagement with a whole range of contemporary philosophers’ and empirical researchers’ theories on selfhood, subjectivity, and the underpinnings of human social interaction, with special attention to the phenomena of empathy and shame. Generally speaking, the result is a validation of insights achieved in the phenomenological tradition by thinkers such as Max Scheler, Edmund Husserl, Edith Stein, Jean-Paul Sartre, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Alfred Schutz. In each case, though, Zahavi relies on his own phenomenological analyses that guide his readings of these thinkers’ works as he translates their findings into his own independently developed terminology.
Continue reading D. Zahavi: Self and Other: Exploring Subjectivity, Empathy, and Shame