Dan Zahavi
Prof. Dan Zahavi
Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Subjectivity Research
the University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Prof. Dan Zahavi is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His primary research area is phenomenology and philosophy of mind, and their intersection with empirical disciplines such as psychiatry and psychology. In addition to a number of scholarly works on the phenomenology of Husserl, Prof. Zahavi has mainly written on the nature of selfhood, self-consciousness, intersubjectivity, empathy, and most recently on topics in social ontology. Since 2020, Prof. Zahavi has been the principal investigator on a 5-year research project entitled “Who are We?” which is supported by the European Research Council and the Carlsberg Foundation. His writings have been translated into more than 30 languages.
The Socially Distributed Self: Perspectives from Anthropology, Cultural Psychology, and Philosophy
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For inquiries, please email to philosophy@cuhk.edu.hk
Abstract:
Is selfhood socially constituted and distributed? Although the view has recently been defended by some cognitive scientists, it has for long been popular within anthropology and cultural psychology. Whereas older texts by, say, Mauss, Geertz, and Markus and Kitayama often contrast a Western conception of a discrete, bounded and individual self with a (supposedly more correct) non-Western sociocentric conception, it has more recently become common to argue that subjectivity is a fluid intersectional construction that is fundamentally relational and conditioned by discursive power structures. I will assess the plausibility of these claims and argue that many of these discussions of self and subjectivity remain too crude. By failing to distinguish different dimension of selfhood, many authors unwittingly end up advocating a form of radical social constructivism that is not only incapable of doing justice to first-person experience, but which also fails to capture the life of a real community.
Conducted in English
All are welcome
Communication, Social Acts and Second-personal Engagement: A Husserlian Account
Join synchronous online broadcast (Zoom link: https://cuhk.zoom.us/j/92320637608)
For inquiries, please email to philosophy@cuhk.edu.hk
Abstract:
In my talk, I will discuss Husserl’s views on the relation between communication and communalization and show how Husserl considered mutual communicative address to result in a social unification that he called a communicative community “Mitteilungsgemeinschaft”. In my talk I will address topics such as reciprocal empathy, communicative intertwinement, and the role of the I-you nexus, and argue that Husserl’s analysis converges with much more recent ideas defended by Margaret Gilbert and Naomi Eilan.
Conducted in English
All are welcome