Selfhood is formed socially through others from earliest infancy

Evidence

Another factor in all of this, for Merleau-Ponty, is our social existence: we cannot thrive without others, or not for long, and we need this especially in early life. This makes solipsistic speculation about the reality of others ridiculous; we could never engage in such speculation if we hadn’t already been formed by them. As Descartes could have said (but didn’t), ‘I think, therefore other people exist.’ We grow up with people playing with us, pointing things out, talking, listening, and getting us used to reading emotions and movements; this is how we become capable, reflective, smoothly integrated beings. Merleau-Ponty was especially interested in the way babies imitate those around them. If you playfully pretend to bite the fingers of a fifteen-month-old baby, he wrote, its response is to make its own biting movements, mirroring yours. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 737

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the phenomenological critiques of Cartesian solipsism and Sartre’s and Heidegger’s views elsewhere in this book. — connects to: Development from infancy is not only growing independence but growing interdependence — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 435; Individual motives become social only through forms of mutual interaction — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 194; Ubuntu personhood defines the self only through communal relation — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History…, 4252 (+7 more)
• ADDENDUM: Relevant to the reader’s interest in how embodied, relational being works — though not directly one of the three articles.

Broader Connections

• Humans are constituted by their social relations rather than an intrinsic essence #corroborates (0.85) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 2517
• Development from infancy is not only growing independence but growing interdependence #expands (0.82) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 435
• Parents’ simulated theory of mind about newborns is what brings infants into human community #expands (0.80) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 411
• Individual motives become social only through forms of mutual interaction #corroborates (0.78) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 194
• Socially prescribed behavior forms the conditions of self-emergence, not its obstacle. #corroborates (0.78)
• Ubuntu personhood defines the self only through communal relation #exemplifies (0.75) — , The Rod and the Child, 4252
• Self-control is maintained socially, through others, not only individually #corroborates (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 331
• Infants evolved to elicit parental attribution of intentionality #expands (0.72) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 415