Abstract

So far as we know, we are the only species capable of introspection, and thus, sometimes, of insight into our own individual and collective nature. Arguably, the entire discipline of philosophy and, much more recently, of psychology, is premised on this simply stated but complicated fact. We are also a social species, each of us desiring – perhaps, even needing – to live as one among others. Taken together, these perfectly trite observations invite a number of questions regarding the nature of the self and self-consciousness, and about the possibility of successful intersubjective communication. One line of enquiry among these questions, one that is vigorously pursued in The Five Obstructions, concerns the extent to which an individual’s self-understanding depends on the availability to that person of a genuinely second-person perspective. In order properly to understand oneself, does one need to see oneself through another’s eyes – in particular, the eyes of another who is in relation with us? If the answer is affirmative, what obligations do we have to each other to provide secondperson perspectives? How is such a perspective to be achieved? How is it best achieved, morally speaking? As I will try to show here, The Five Obstructions provides a very powerful example of self-revelation facilitated by another. Towards the end..