Authors
Dan Zahavi
Publication date
2018
Journal
The Embodied Self: Dimensions, Coherence and Disorders
Publisher
Klett-Cotta
Description
Let me start by thanking Sanneke de Haan for her thoughtful comments. She quite rightly points to some ambiguities in my original text. Responding to her comments consequently provides me with a welcome opportunity to clarify a few things. As I see it, De Haan basically raises two questions. Let me discuss them in turn. In “A Distinction in Need of Refinement” my interest concerns the extent to which pre-linguistic forms of sociality influence the formation of the self. I mainly focus on our ability to experience and adopt the other’s attitude towards ourselves. De Haan’s first question is whether this focus on how we come to adopt an excentric perspective on ourselves doesn’t put too much emphasis on self-reflective capacities. As she writes,“would such a reflective ability really be a necessary pre-condition for interpersonal interactions.” Let me right away make it clear that the answer to that question must be a resounding no. So I agree completely with De Haan on this point and have never claimed otherwise (cf. Zahavi 1996). But why then this highlighting of the importance of a changed perspective on oneself? Although I am not denying the existence of prereflective forms of sociality, my focus is precisely on the extent to which social interaction changes or transforms the structure of my self-experience. One might discuss when this happens in the development of the child. I think it makes good sense to take a closer look at self (-other)-conscious emotions, just as I think it might be important to distinguish the case of being (pre-reflectively) aware of being the object of the other’s attention from the situation where one reflectively adopts the other’s …
Total citations
2019202021
Scholar articles
D Zahavi - The Embodied Self: Dimensions, Coherence and …, 2018