Dan Zahavi (born 1967) is a Danish philosopher. He is currently a professor of philosophy at University of Copenhagen.
Dan Zahavi
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Dan Zahavi in Copenhagen, 2014
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| Born | (1967-11-06) 6 November 1967 (age 56) |
| Alma mater |
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| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Phenomenology |
| Institutions | University of Copenhagen University of Oxford |
Main interests |
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Notable ideas | Collective intentionality Coining the term "pre-reflective self-consciousness" |
Dan Zahavi was born in Copenhagen, Denmark to an Israeli father and a Danish mother. He initially studied phenomenology at the University of Copenhagen. He obtained his PhD in 1994 from the Husserl Archives at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium, with Rudolf Bernet as his doctoral supervisor. In 1999 he defended his Danish Disputats (Habilitation) at the University of Copenhagen. In 2002, at the age of 34, he became Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen. In the period 2018-2021, he was also Professor of Philosophy at University of Oxford.
Zahavi writes on phenomenology (especially the philosophy of Edmund Husserl) and philosophy of mind. In his writings, he has dealt extensively with topics such as self, self-consciousness, intersubjectivity and social cognition. He is co-editor of the journal Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences. Zahavi's work has been translated into more than 30 languages.
In several books and articles, Zahavi has defended the existence and significance of pre-reflective self-consciousness, and argued in favor of the idea that our experiential life is characterized by a form of self-consciousness that is more primitive and more fundamental than the reflective form of self-consciousness that one finds in various kinds of introspection.[1][2][3] More generally speaking, Zahavi has spoken out against different reductionist approaches to consciousness, and insisted on the theoretical significance of subjectivity and the first-person perspective.[2][4]
In working on these issues, Zahavi has collaborated and debated with psychiatrists,[5][6] developmental psychologists,[7][8] and Buddhist scholars.[9] Critics have included those who either deny the existence of self[10] or the existence of pre-reflective self-consciousness.[11][12]
Another part of Zahavi's work has focused on problems related to intersubjectivity, empathy, and social cognition. His PhD thesis defended a phenomenological approach to intersubjectivity.[13] In various papers and books since then he has in particular focused on the role and structure of empathy.[14][15][16] He has argued in favor of the bodily and contextual character of interpersonal understanding, and criticized dominant positions within the so-called ’theory of mind’ debate, including simulation theory and theory-theory.[2][17][18][3]
Since 2010, Zahavi has worked increasingly on social emotions and on issues in social ontology. He has written on shame,[19] on shared emotions, we-experiences, collective intentionality, and the importance of the I–thou relation.[20][21]
In parallel with his systematic work on the above-mentioned topics, Zahavi has also written on phenomenology, especially the work of Edmund Husserl. He has argued that phenomenology is a powerful and systematically convincing voice that contemporary philosophy and empirical science shouldn’t ignore. In addition to offering extensive analyses of Husserl’s analyses of intersubjectivity and self- and time-consciousness,[13][1] Zahavi has also discussed the nature of Husserl’s transcendental philosophy and the metaphysical implications of phenomenology in various publications.[22][23][24] Throughout his work, Zahavi has criticized what he takes to be overly simplistic interpretations of Husserl that depicts the latter as a solipsist and subjective idealist, and instead accentuated the continuity between Husserl’s phenomenology and the work of post-Husserlian phenomenologists, especially that of Merleau-Ponty.[25][24]
Zahavi is the director of the Center for Subjectivity Research (CFS), established in 2002 on the basis of funding from the Danish National Research Foundation. Since 2002, CFS has been working on topics related to selfhood and sociality and has actively promoted a research strategy involving collaboration between different philosophical tradition and between philosophy and empirical science, in particular psychiatry. After the expiration of the funding from the Danish National Research Foundation in 2012, CFS has continued its research with support from a variety of both Danish and European public and private foundations. Since 2010, CFS has organized an annual summer school in phenomenology and philosophy of mind that typically attracts around 100 students from all over the world.
Zahavi has received a number of honors and awards, including:
Zahavi is the author of a number of books, including:
Zahavi is also the editor of more than 10 volumes, including: