Book | Chapter
(2014) Self and other, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
The chapter is primarily exegetically oriented. It discusses what at first sight seems to be an important difference between Merleau-Ponty’s and Husserl’s view on the relation between self and other. Is the difference between self and other fundamental, or derived and rooted in some preceding stage of undifferentiatedness? Through a discussion of Husserl’s notion of the primal I, this analysis brings to the fore not merely how minimal a notion the experiential self is, but also why it is necessary to operate with more complex forms of self, including ones that are socially constructed. One decisive question is then whether an insistence on the priority of the experiential self jeopardizes, or rather allows for, a proper account of intersubjectivity.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199590681.003.0006
Full citation:
Zahavi, D. (2014). Pure and poor, in Self and other, Oxford, Oxford University Press, pp. 78-87.