Lucy O'Brien (London): Pervious to Others: The Nature and Control of Social Self-Consciousness

Humans are social animals. We can make sense of little we do without thinking of ourselves in the context of other humans – our con-specifics. Analytical philosophy of mind has not, however, developed a social philosophy of mind, as a distinct track. This book aims to make a start on doing that. My particular concern is with the nature of social self-consciousness. We say that we ‘feel self-conscious under the eyes of another’. But, what is it to feel that? It is a peculiar duplex phenomenon that is not easy to understand: it seems both to involve us being reflexively conscious of ourselves as ourselves – it is a form of self-consciousness – and at the same time being so through the idea, or awareness, of the other and their perspective on us: it is also other-consciousness of us. A satisfactory account of such social self-consciousness seems to demand both a doubling of standpoints – me and my observer – and an integrated single intersubjective, but reflexive, structure. The book aims to make sense of the nature this form of self-consciousness, how it is occasioned, and how it is controlled by others. It explores how such self-consciousness relates to the self-conscious emotions of shame and pride, and how considers the subject’s own rational and practical relation to her social self-consciousness.

Lucy O'Brien ist Richard Wollheim Professorin für Philosophie am University College London. Sie arbeitet auf dem Gebiet der Philosophie des Geistes und des Handelns, insbesondere zur Natur des Selbstbewusstseins und der Selbsterkenntnis. Sie ist Autorin von Self-Knowing Agents (OUP 2007). Sie ist Fellow der British Academy, Vorsitzende des Kuratoriums des Royal Institute of Philosophy, zusammen mit A. W. Moore Mitherausgeberin der Zeitschrift Mind und erhielt 2022 einen Humboldt-Forschungspreis.