Without a doubt, Walt Whitman is one of the most philosophical poets. His writings are overflowing with conceptions that range from the Presocratics to Hegel. Nevertheless, the philosophical aspect of his work has been neglected with scholars satisfying themselves in making loose allusions to transcendentalist ideas that are said to respire in his writings. Therefore, our attention has been drawn to the connection of his poetry with philosophy (phenomenology), since as Emanuel Levinas once stated, the whole of philosophy is only a meditation of Shakespeare. Therefore, this book throws the Whitmanesque self into a typically phenomenological context, silhouetting the notion of selfhood against the views of Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Emanuel Levinas. Moreover, the book differentiates between the overall understanding of subjectivity and selfhood. The former corresponds to the representative capacities of the Cartesian cogito, which in itself is detached from the world of life. On the other hand, selfhood is defined though the idea of commitment to the overall mattering of the world, which in itself is not reduced to the materialist or idealist understanding. Rather, the world is what phenomenology - following Husserl - calls Lebenswelt, which corresponds to the general way in which the self finds itself attuned to the horizon of its existence.
About the Author: Wojciech Majka is presently affiliated with the Pedagogical University of Cracow, where he teaches classes devoted to literature and philosophy. He received his PhD in Literature from the University of Silesia in 2005. He is the author of many publications devoted to theoretical revisions of philosophy and literature. In 2007, he published Avatars of the Libido, which offers an epistemological overview of the theory of the unconscious as it unfolds in the writings of Jung, Freud and Lacan. In 2011, his book, Man in Search of Social and Ethical Foundations: A Phenomenology, was also published. This book explores the moral and existential dilemmas awaiting humanity in the modern, secular age. The author's present scope of interest centers upon issues connected with psychology, phenomenology, and philosophy of literature, as well as the intellectual and artistic history of Europe.