The Cosmopolitan Self: George Herbert Mead and Continental Philosophy (review)

In The Cosmopolitan Self: George Herbert Mead and Continental Philosophy, Mitchell Aboulafia continues what he began with The Mediating Self: Mead, Sartre and Self-Determination (1986). In the latter, he compared Mead's and Sartre's views of subjectivity, intersubjectivity, and self-determination in order to, first, show Mead's potential contributions to debates more common within Continental philosophy; second, demonstrate some of the limitations of Mead's own view; and, finally, articulate his own view of the self that draws from each of theirs, yet avoids their problems. In The Cosmopolitan Self, Aboulafia again brings Mead into conversation with Continental philosophers on a theme familiar to Continentalists: the place of the political in the development of the Self. In this work Mead's views are put into dialogue with those of Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, and Emmanuel Levinas. Specifically, Aboulafia wants to use Mead to construct "a model of the social development of the self that shows how a democratically inclined subject embodies both a universalistic dimension and a sensitivity to particular others" (2), and, at the same time, to inspire greater philosophical exchange between continental philosophy and pragmatism.

Such a project of broad comparison runs the risk of pleasing nobody. Mead scholars may not be sympathetic to Aboulafia's willingness to find criticisms of Mead in the views of continental figures; likewise, Arendt scholars, Habermas scholars, and Levinas scholars may not be sympathetic to Aboulafia's Mead-inspired criticisms. The result of such a comparative project not done well could be less communication rather than more. Fortunately, Aboulafia does his job well. Few philosophers have the needed breadth to accomplish such a project. Aboulafia pulls it off because he is so good at narrowing in on the key themes—plurality and identity, universality and individuality, creativity and reflexivity—and bringing philosophers into conversation around these themes.

To make the comparisons, Aboulafia has to show that Mead is indeed a political thinker rather than merely a social thinker. He sets the bar high by claiming "it is impossible to appreciate fully the implications of Mead's approach to the social self, pluralism and universalism without understanding the political dimensions of his thought" (7). These sorts of statements are usually reserved for John Dewey, not Mead, especially because there are so few writings by Mead on politics. Yet Mead scholars won't be surprised by the idea that Mead's views are inherently political; it has just fallen to Aboulafia to make the case. A sign of the paucity of relevant writings is the fact Aboulafia has to turn to a letter Mead wrote to his daughter-in-law encouraging her pursuit of a medical degree. On Mead's view, we are always internalizing the views of others in the process of self-development. As we engage in wider and wider communities, we find a more and more generalized understanding of ourselves as individuals—so individualization and socialization develop hand in hand. Aboulafia argues that Mead encourages his daughter-in-law to pursue a public vocation so that her thinking can become more universal as she becomes more established as an individual in an international community. Democracy, presumably, is the political system that would allow for the broadest social consciousness without at the same time eliminating social differences.

In the chapter on Arendt, Aboulafia is concerned with her use of Kant's third critique as a work of political philosophy. The main theme Aboulafia picks up from Kant (and Adam Smith) via Arendt is the idea of taking into consideration a greater and greater variety of viewpoints as a means to impartiality. The similarities between Mead and Arendt on this point provide the means for Aboulafia to subtly bring out what is at stake in their respective appropriations of Kant, especially on the point where...