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(1986) Steppingstones toward an ethics for fellow existers, Dordrecht, Springer.
The present study owes its origin to a long-standing interest in a personal experience which I have found strangely neglected by both philosophy and psychology. Its most spontaneous expression is the seemingly trivial sentence "I am me". I submit that especially in the context of its actual occurrence it is the outgrowth of a peculiar amazement, a vertiginous feeling which is particularly acute in childhood but by no means restricted to it. It differs significantly from the mere everyday awareness of selfhood or individuality as signified by the use of the pronoun "I". For the I-am-me experience involves a peculiar centripetal movement not to be found in the simple statement "I am". This is not the place for a phenomenological elucidation of this experience. The main purpose of the present study is to establish its existence empirically and to make it available for fuller investigation both psychologically and philosophically.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-009-4337-7_2
Full citation:
Spiegelberg, H. (1986). On the I-am-me experience in childhood and adolescence, in Steppingstones toward an ethics for fellow existers, Dordrecht, Springer, pp. 29-48.
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