Phenomenology and the other
20
Jun
The Other is not a contemporary category, however how it is realized
from the Husserlian phenomenology is something entirely new, not by chance Heidegger, Husserl’s student and disciple thought ipseity thought the rooting of otherness in “ipseity” itself (Selbstheit) (which differentiates one being from another, refusing to think the “self” (Selbst) according to the categories of substance and “identity” (Identität), thus his ontology of the Other is entirely new (within philosophy) .
If we want to deal with identity, a category proper to a period of individualism and alleged finite totalities, we can say that in a more current modern anthropology, the “theory” of identity must be seen as giving the Other the “similar” aspect as a “human being”. ”, but defined as “diverse” and “unequal” in the set of interethnic, intercultural or interreligious relations.
It is this contact between different cultures, religions and even ideological identity positions, that the civilizational process is at stake, there is no lack of “influencers” and groups that encourage one type of culture in repulsion to another, treating the unequal and the different as “enemy ” and this does not even mean that they do not exist, in a war for example, but the negation of the Other.
There is no lack of philosophers who have dealt with the subject, we highlight Husserl’s phenomenology and its influences: Heidegger, Edith Stein, I highlight Paul Ricoeur (The self as an other) and Emmanuel Lévinas (Ethics and infinity) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (Truth and Method).
But also Habermas (The philosophical discourse of Modernity and The inclusion of the Other) and Byung-Chul Han (The expulsion of the other: Society, perception and communication today) which are very good for analyzing communication and society today, but without a clear view of Being as Being as in Heideger’s ontology.
Recognizing the Other as having dignity and deserving respect, even if in positions different from ours, is the remedy for today’s lack of empathy.
