Philosophy Meets the Infant

Stephen Langfur's Philosophy Meets the Infant integrates groundbreaking infancy studies of the last 50 years to offer a fresh exploration of our drive for human connection.

Infancy research and philosophy explore "first things," yet few books bring the two fields into contact. Stephen Langfur's Philosophy Meets the Infant integrates groundbreaking infancy studies of the last 50 years to offer a fresh exploration of our drive for human connection. He begins with a new understanding of self-awareness, which he locates in reciprocal attention between baby and caregiver. Instead of "I think, therefore I am," the new research supports "You attend, therefore I am." The event of becoming self-aware through another is termed a "You-I Event."The idea is counterintuitive: we are perfectly self-aware when alone! To explain the change after infancy, Langfur makes transformative use of an old psychoanalytic finding. With the onset of language, a child internalizes (introjects) the most important You's, playing them toward herself in speech. Instead of the original You-I Event, we have its counterfeit in our heads. Nevertheless, a longing for the true Event persists in the unconscious; individual chapters trace this longing in work, love, art, conversation, and religion.Organized into three parts ("The You-I Event in infancy and why it disappears," "The You-I Event after infancy," and "Philosophical Issues"), this book will be of keen interest to philosophers, infancy researchers, and anyone seeking new light on the major questions of human existence.

Autorentext

Stephen Langfur, PhD, has published widely in phenomenology and psychology journals. Philosophy Meets the Infant is Langfur's first book-length treatment of what he calls the You-I Event, in which self-awareness originates and develops through the attentions of others. He has also authored the philosophical memoir Confession from a Jericho Jail (Grove-Weidenfeld 1992, Fomite 2023).

Klappentext

Stephen Langfur's Philosophy Meets the Infant integrates groundbreaking infancy studies of the last 50 years to offer a fresh exploration of our drive for human connection.

Inhalt

Part 1: The You-I Event in infancy and why it disappears

1 Introducing the You-I Event

2 Born to connect

3 Becoming I through a You

4 Counterfeiting the You-I Event

Part 2: The You-I Event after infancy

5 Heidegger's hammer and the spectral You

6 Love and the precluded You

7 The split-off self in action

8 The You-I Event in art

9 The You-I Event in conversation

Part3: Philosophical issues

10 Other accounts of self-awareness

11 Free will and the You-I account

12 The call of conscience

13 God or the precluded You

14 What can be done

Appendix: Replies to imagined critics

Acknowledgments

Index