Description:
This book brings together some of the finest recent critical and expository work on Mead, written by American and European thinkers from diverse traditions. For English-speaking audiences it provides an introduction to recent European work on Mead. The essays reveal the richness of Mead's thought, and will stimulate those who have thought about him from very specific vantage points (behaviorism, symbolic interactionism, pragmatism, etc.) to consider him in new ways.
Brief description: Mitchell Aboulafia is Professor of Philosophy and the Humanities, University of Houston-Clear Lake.
Review Quotes:
"Mead is arguably the greatest neglected American philosopher. In many respects, he ranks with Peirce, James, and Dewey, and in at least one respect beyond them: he is the preeminent theorist of self-other relations after Hegel. Now that this topic has finally made it onto the philosophical agenda, and now that Mead's interdisciplinary approach to it has become an incentive rather than an impediment, the time has come for a serious reception of his work. Leading German thinkers like Jürgen--Habermas, Hans Joas, and Ernst Tugendhat have recently made outstanding contributions to that reception. The selections from their work and from the best recent English-language discussions make Aboulafia's collection the right book at the right time."--Thomas McCarthy Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern University
"Given the rigorous revival of Classical American Philosophy, it is fortuitous that Mitchell Aboulafia has assembled these fine essays on the seminal thought of George Herbert Mead. As with Marx and Dewey, Mead contended, brilliantly, that we are creatures who come to consciousness on an irreducibly social matrix."--John J. McDermott, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Humanities, Texas A&M University