Living, Thinking, Looking: Essays

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AFTER REREADING THE ESSAYS COLLECTED in this book, I understood that although they take on a number of subjects, they are linked by an abiding curiosity about what it means to be human. How do we see, remember, feel, and interact with other people? What does it mean to sleep, to dream, and to speak? When we use the word self, what are we talking about? Every age has had its own platitudes, truisms, folk wisdom, and dogmas of varying kinds that purport to answer such questions. Ours is no different. In fact, we are drowning in answers. From simplistic self-help manuals on sale in every bookstore to the just-pull-yourself-together advice offered by talk-show therapists to the more sophisticated arguments made in evolutionary sociobiology, analytical and continental philosophy, psychiatry, and neuroscience, theories abound in our culture. It is important to remember that despite the plethora of solutions, who we are and how we got that way remain open queries, not only in the humanities but in the sciences as well.

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