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"...an ambitious and original discussion of subjectivity and self-consciousness...accessible, rigorous, and engaging." -- Robert Piercey in Philosophy in Review
From the Back Cover
"[The book] 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, Professor of Philosophy, Rice University.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
a new-generation phenomenologist,
By A Customer
This review is from: Self-Awareness and Alterity: A Phenomenological Investigation (Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) (Paperback)
This is the newest in a recent spade of books where phenomenologists attempt to clarify and reconstruct positions in phenomenology by borrowing the tools of analytic philosophy and of empirical psychology. Phenomenologists have their work cut out for them. At a rapid pace psychologists are coming up with philosophically interesting hypotheses about consciousness and self-consciousness; analytic philosophers are becoming clearer and clearer about what philosophical strategies will not work in theorizing about these phenomena. From the perspectives of both, the tradition of phenomenology seems a promising source of ideas. The trouble is with the amount of jargon and apparent flaws, or simply the sheer number of pages, in a typical phenomenological text. Opportunities for fresh (and shorter) accounts of the tradition are thus ripe.Zahavi's book is as competent as any other in this field I've read. It is not an introduction to the phenomenological tradition. Nor is it a treatise on Husserl, as a couple of lines on the back cover may lead one to expect. Its ideal reader is probably someone who feels the urge to know something about every important position on self-awareness. The book starts with an introduction to analytic philosophy on first person reference; continues with an introduction to some contemporary scholarship on German idealism; goes on to dwell on Husserl's theory of time-consciousness for a little while; and then branches out to Sartre, Levinas, Derrida... Zahavi's on top of things with most of the topics he covers. A discriminating reader would not call his expositions authoritative; but one has to concede Zahavi has interesting things to say. Even when he doesn't succeed in his arguments, he manages to be lucid and keeps on his feet: he doesn't appeal to authority or ideology, does not make the kind of outrageous claims that could turn a reader off for good. This is actually no meager achievement. Given a topic as complex and difficult as self-awareness, no one can hope for as much as a 60% success. So if you still want to write a book about it, you've got to prevent your failures from spoiling your successes. And that means you can't try to cover the failures up-that would be impossible to do.
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