A phenomenological attempt at understanding otherness

• Author: Attila Kovács
• Position: Transilvania University of Brasov
• Pages: 79-86

Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov

Series VII: Social Sciences • Law • Vol. 10 (59) No. 2 - 2017

A PHENOMENOLOGICAL ATTEMPT AT

UNDERSTANDING OTHERNESS

Attila KOVÁCS1

Abstract: The phenomenology of otherness is not satisfied with the

reductionist definitions of the classical anthropological conceptions. The

latter have identified the essence of man in his rationality, morality,

createdness, or the possibility of moral and aesthetic self-perfection. The

monolithic definition of human essence, based on uniform criteria, seems

today one-sided and outdated. The parallel effects of cultural diversification,

the pluralized political and social system, and multilingualism have directly

and inevitably confronted us with otherness and strangeness. We could even

say that we can understand our identity primarily through the experience of

otherness. We will reach our conclusions related to the phenomenological

constitutive of otherness by way of the interpretation of the relevant ideas of

Baudrillad, Guillaume and Lévinas.

Key words: Otherness, Alterity, Phenomenology, Gaze, Levinas

1. Historical Occurrences of Otherness

“...alterity is always a challenge...” (Baudrillard and Guillaume, 2002, p. 13)

From a historical-philosophical point of view, the issue of otherness had the most

interesting development among the problems of philosophy. As a matter of philosophical

principle, alterity was a priori excluded from Greek cosmogony. Greek philosophers

discussing the relationship between the One and the Many always sympathized with the

One, banishing multiplicity and the changeable/change to an illusory world, or

subordinating it to the idea of a holistically understood Oneness.2 Transitory being, or any

existence deviating from the norm of unity, did not have a substantial ground of being,

and as such was unworthy of philosophical reflection.

Aristotle, however, was less faithful to the pre-Socratic and Platonic theory of oneness.

In his Metaphysics, he takes the first step from existence toward beings on the road of

Western thought, fraught by the “forgetfulness of Being”. When saying that we can speak

in four ways about being, he implicitly refers to the heterogeneity of existence.

Nevertheless, Western philosophy did not deal with the obvious fact of alterity for

centuries.

1 Transilvania University of Braşov, kovattila@yahoo.com

2 In Plato’s cosmology, perfect being is an emanation of the Demiurge’s goodness. Since this is unitary, it

excludes otherness. Thus, the androgynous ancestors of humans could not have had any knowledge of the

suffering associated with the I-You difference i n an imaginary prehistoric state.