Throughout the years, care ethicists have raised concerns that prevalent definitions of empathy fail to adequately address the problem of otherness. They have proposed alternative conceptualizations of empathy that aim to acknowledge individual differences, help to extend care beyond one’s inner circle, and develop a critical awareness of biases and prejudices. We explore three such alternatives: Noddings’ concept of engrossment, Meyers’ account of broad empathy, and Baart’s concept of perspective-shifting. Based on these accounts, we explain that care ethics promotes (...) a conceptualization of empathy that is radical in its commitment to engage otherness and that is characterized by being: (1) receptive and open, (2) broad and deep in scope, (3) relational and interactive, (4) mature and multifaceted, (5) critical and reflective, (6) disruptive and transformative. This type of empathy is both demanding and rewarding, as it may inspire health professionals to rethink empathy, its challenges, and its contribution to good care and as it may enrich empathy education and professional empathy practices in health care. (shrink)

This article makes the political dimension of Gadamer's thought more explicit by examining the interplay of three concepts in his work: solidarity, friendship, and the other. Focusing primarily on certain post--"Truth and Method" writings, I argue that Gadamer's conception of solidarity has to do with historically contingent manifestations of bonds that reflect a civic life together of reciprocal co-perception. These bonds go beyond conscious recognition of observable similarities and differences and emerge from encounters among those who are, and remain, in (...) important ways other to each other. I make this case through an analysis of Gadamer's phenomenology of friendship and the crucial role of otherness in his accounts of both understanding and friendship. I suggest that Gadamer's political thought gives us a way of conceptualizing solidarity and otherness without making the other same or leaving the other completely other. (shrink)

Abstract:This essay develops a dialogue between Zhu Xi's thirteenth-century Neo-Confucian thought and Levinas' twentieth-century Western philosophy, around the notion of interrelatedness between individuals, between self and other. Despite the fact that Zhu Xi and Levinas belong to diff erent cultural universes and to diff erent philosophical spiritualities, and lived in diff erent historical times, they share the same interest in exploring, interpreting, and building interrelatedness, and therefore in ethics and ethical relationships. Through an intertextual and hermeneutical approach, the essay builds (...) a dialogue between diff erent cultural presuppositions underlying the essence of ethics and of ethical relationship: otherness and sameness. This dialogue allows one to become aware of the existence of transcultural concepts such as interrelatedness, and of their diff erent, cross-cultural meanings (e.g., interrelatedness is grounded in "sameness" in Zhu Xi's Confucian context and in "otherness" in Levinas' thought). (shrink)

This study explores the distinguished Persian Sufi mystic Shaykh Maḥmūd Shabestarī’s Golshan-e Rāz, or The Rose Garden of Mystery. Adopting a hermeneutic approach, it scrutinizes the intricate spiritual journey towards divine realization delineated in Shabestarī’s poetry, utilizing qualitative content analysis of original texts and interpretations by scholars such as Lāhījī and Ibn Turka Iṣfahānī. The main question the paper addresses is this: “How can the spiritual journeyer overcome obstacles—particularly ‘otherness’—and achieve unity with the divine Essence within the framework of (...) Islamic mysticism, as interpreted through Shabestarī’s teachings in Golshan-e Rāz?” To answer this inquiry, the paper addresses pivotal questions concerning Shabestarī’s depiction of the spiritual journeyer’s path, its stages and challenges, and the critical role of the human form in divine manifestation. The study underscores the necessity of overcoming duality and distinction, alluding to the transformative nature of the journey that necessitates self-purification and the cessation of otherness. Findings from this study provide an enriched understanding of Shabestarī’s thought, contributing to the discourse on Islamic metaphysics. It presents valuable insights into the spiritual journeyer’s path, offering a comprehensive interpretation of the challenges, practices, and transformative experiences leading to divine realization and unity. (shrink)

Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics rests largely on the concept of the classical. According to Gadamer, the classical stands for the continuity and the truth claim of the tradition, as transmitted by the written word. The normative character of the classical is directed against the neutrality and relativism of historicism: understanding does not occur primarily through distancing or methodological reconstruction but through belongingness to, and participation in, the past. The article shows how, given the central importance of dialogue and otherness in (...) Gadamer's theory, the philosopher does not seem to fully do justice to the critical intention of its own dialogical and philological dimensions. On the other hand, it shows also how Gadamer's hermeneutical practice, notably in his rehabilitation of Plato, stresses the learning from otherness more explicitly than does his own theory, thus correcting, as it were, the latter. The article aims, finally, at demonstrating how, by unduly emphasizing the continuity in the encounter between past and present, Gadamer's theory undermines the importance of reconstructing the otherness and specificity of the classical text. /// A hermenêutica filosófica de Gadamer, entendida como uma defesa das humanidades, assenta essencialmente sobre o conceito de clássico. Segundo Gadamer, o clássico representa a continuidade e a pretensão à verdade da tradição tal como nos é transmitida pela palavra escrita. O carácter normativo do clássico em Gadamer constitui assim uma resposta crítica à neutralidade e ao relativismo do historicismo: a compreensão não acontece primariamente graças a um processo de distanciação ou reconstrução metódica, mas sim pelo facto de, desde logo, reconhecermos que temos pertença activa no passado. O presente artigo demonstra como, dada a importância central do diálogo e da alteridade na teoria de Gadamer, ofilósofo acaba por não fazer inteiramente justiça à intenção crítica inerente à dimensão dialógica e filológica do seu próprio pensamento. Mostra-se também, por outro lado, até que ponto a práctica hermenêutica de Gadamer, nomeadamente no que se refere à sua reabilitação de Platão, acaba por sublinhar a nossa aprendizagem da alteridade de uma forma muito mais explícita do que a sua própria teoria parece capaz de fazer. O artigo mostra ainda como, ao sublinhar de forma indevida a continuidade e, com ela, a identidade no encontro entre opassado e opresente, a teoria de Gadamer parece comprometer a importância que se deve dar ao esforço de reconstrucção da alteridade e especificidade do próprio texto clássico. (shrink)

In seeking to answer the question "How does that which is other become evil?" the author provides a discussion of four entwined aspects of the issue at stake: difficulty in achieving clarity on the grammar of evil; genocide as a striking illustration of otherness becoming evil; the challenge of postnationalism as a resource for dealing with otherness in the socio-political arena; and the ethico-religious dimension as it relates to the wider problem of evil.

What is or should be the place of the ethical dimension in a general enactive theory of sociality? How should such a dimension be understood and articulated within the more general picture of the enactive approach to social life? In this paper, building on Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophy, we argue that ethics should be understood as a distinct dimension of the complex and multidimensional phenomenon of sociality; a dimension of radical otherness that intertwines with but does not reduce to the (...) intersubjective dynamics of social life. In showing the particular place that the ethical dimension occupies in the general picture of sociality, we show, following Levinas, why sociality is more than intersubjectivity and how enactivism, if interested in a comprehensive account of ethics, would benefit from this insight. (shrink)

The paper considers three uses of the real in literature that bear witness to what I would call “prevalence” of the real as the ultimate otherness. The first concerns the way in which the real bursts into fiction; the latter does indeed draw from the former details and surprises little accessible to imagination. The second is the way in which sometimes the pretext of fiction is used to mitigate the consequences of its claims; this mode is the strongest evidence (...) of the extent to which fiction is steeped in reality. The third refers to the postmodern world, in which theory itself purported to be literaturised; certain statements (otherwise false or morally serious) are possible in such a theoretical context since the postmodern discourse theorizes the loss of the distinction between reality and fiction, and between philosophy and literature. The thread that unites these three ways to represent the relationship between fiction and reality is that all three of them are represented in the contemporary cultural landscape. The minimalist moral that can be drawn from this is therefore that realism – as well as anti-realism – is said in many ways that are not always transparent. (shrink)

In Sein und Zeit, the Dasein, thrown in the world by Geworfenheit and relaunched by Entwurf (projection) into the future, experiences itself as a “Self”. This exercise of existence cannot escape the critique of solipsism. However, paragraph 29 — about the existentiale of Befindlichkeit — opens an access way to the Other, which later will be ceaselessly explored by Heidegger, after having found the Stimmungen of the Greek beginning in Holderlin’s poetry and the Grund Stimmungen of “the night of the (...) gods” and of the forgetfulness of being of our time. Not until the fifties and the mystical experience of the fourfold (das Geviert) will Heidegger find the possibility of transmuting the experience of the Other from a πόλεμος into a being-in-harmony (stimmen). This unique path of affectivity, asserted in paragraph 29 of Sein und Zeit, will enable Heidegger to reach an essential way of working out the question of Otherness, that only right now we may be starting to understand. (shrink)

Interactive media arts offer us new approaches to the role of theatrical representation. Nowadays, digital technology allows us to explore self-representation in systems that cross over between installation art, theatre and performance. By confronting the subject with his or her own image, these devices question the mechanisms of identification and denegation. Both the theatrical creations and the interactive forms that are examined here invite the spectator to explore the relationship between identification and denegation. All the artistic productions that are studied (...) in this article call for a virtual double that the immersant meets: Liquid Views (1992) and Rigid Waves ([1993] 2008) by Monika Fleischmann and Wolfgang Strauss, Telematic Dreaming ([1992] 2007) by Paul Sermon and Eux (2008) by the Crew company and Sensorama (2009) by the Andwhatbeside(s)death company. In all of these artworks, the participant is encouraged to give less importance to his or her cognitive senses in order to allow his or her sensations to create a representation of himself or herself. The overlap between identity and otherness is therefore to be found at the very heart of the sensitive body. (shrink)

The concept of natural otherness can be found throughout the environmental ethics literature. Drawing on this concept, this article pursues two aims. For one, it argues for an account of individual natural otherness as stable difference as opposed to accounts of natural otherness that put more emphasis on independence for the purpose of differentiating individual natural otherness from the concept of wildness. Secondly, this account of natural otherness is engaged to argue for a particular way (...) of theorising the moral standing of individual nonhuman entities. While individual natural otherness in itself does not provide an account of whether an entity matters morally in itself (that is, whether it is morally considerable); it points to an account of incommensurable moral significance for all entities which are attributed moral considerability. That is an often-overlooked alternative to egalitarian or hierarchical accounts or moral significance. Individual natural otherness understood in this way in turn provides another explanatory story for why relational accounts of environmental ethics that strongly emphasise the importance of concepts such as wildness are particularly salient. (shrink)

This article attempts to conceptualise the notion of the foreigner in relation to immigrant early childhood teachers. Sparked by Kristeva’s challenge, to live with and as others without ostracism or levelling, it highlights tensions that arise in a juxtaposition of the Aotearoa/new Zealand early childhood curriculum document, Te Whāriki and other guidelines for cross-cultural practices, with perspectives on the foreigner and foreignness. Situated in the neoliberal sociopolitical and cultural landscape of Aotearoa/new Zealand, the analysis foregrounds and re-frames orientations towards immigrant (...) teachers as they may play out in the early childhood realm. Kristeva’s insights into foreigners’ raw and intimate experiences provide a freeing lens to emphasise influences on and consequences of a foreigner’s otherness. While Kristeva’s challenge may be a never-ending story of a utopian future in education, its use in this analysis is intended to provoke an awareness of complex conceptualisations of foreignness and of tensions that could subvert the aim of working towards this, possibly elusive, ideal. (shrink)

"Directly following the internationally acclaimed Art & Discontent, Thomas McEvilley argues in Art & Otherness for an advanced anthropological perspective that contravenes conventional thinking in the visual arts, and leads to a concept of artistic globalization. The description of Western culture as superior and in opposition to other cultures of the world preoccupied our aesthetic philosophy for at least 200 years, whether or not explicitly stated. That argument was undertaken in various guises, especially as the historical determinism of Hegel (...) which proposed to quantify human "progress." Recently, however, the term "multiculturalism" has come to signify a post-Modern understanding of how visual arts transgress artificial boundaries, and of how there may now exist, perhaps for the first time in history, a post-colonial globalism in the arts freed of ethnocentric value judgements. In these ten crucial essays, McEvilley clarifies how the presentation of art can determine its reception, how "influence" can be bi-directional, how "otherness" serves to define "self," and how art need not necessarily lose its meaningfulness when stripped of badges of universality. Once again illustrating his argument by drawing upon an array of sources and cultures, Thomas McEvilley demonstrates that the post-Modern crisis in cultural identity demands an imaginative, integrating response."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

This volume comprises a number of letters between author Anindita Niyogi Balslev and philosopher Richard Rorty. The letters explore ways to generate a creative and critical crosscultural discourse not only by challenging stereotypes about cultures and subcultures in general and traditions of thought in particular, but by being careful not to abolish the common ground on which stereotypes can be addressed.

The British writer John Wyndham (1903–1969) explored societal effects of surprising or mystical events. A paradigmatic example is _The Midwich Cuckoos_ (1957), which portrays identical-looking children born without sexual intercourse. I propose a reading strategy that focuses on the fictional spatial order and analyses how the construction of the children’s otherness interferes with the village’s demarcation. Furthermore, I interpret the mysterious pregnancies as a reference to basic embryo research in the 1950s – cloning. Finally, I scrutinize Wyndham’s negotiation of (...) utilitarianism throughout the novel and his critique of truly utilitarian decisions that are based on constructions of Otherness. (shrink)

본 글은 현상학적 측면에서 혐오의 문제를 고찰하면서 혐오 현상의 극복이 어떻게 가능한지 그 대안을 모색하는 데 목적이 있다. 혐오감은 자신이 지닌 부정적 요소를 외부인 타자에게 전가하는 일종의 심리작용으로서, 자신과는 다르다고 여기는 특정 타자집단을 차별화하고 분리시키는 사회적 도구로 주로 사용된다. 이 혐오감의 극복을 위한 현상학적 대안으로서 고려될 수 있는 대표적인 이론이 레비나스와 후설의 타자이론이다. 레비나스와 후설 모두 타자에 대한 전적인 포용과 책임성을 강조한다는 점에서 양자의 타자이론은 혐오감의 극복을 위한 기본적인 형식적 조건은 갖추고 있다. 그러나 레비나스는 나와 타자 간의 이질성과 분리성에 바탕을 (...) 두고 절대적 타자성을 주장함으로써 양자간의 융합이나 공감적 합일의 가능성을 근본적으로 부정한다. 하지만 나와 타자간의 합일의 의식이나 동질적 공감대 없이 혐오감은 실질적으로 극복이 어렵다는 것이 본 글의 생각이다. 반면, 기본적으로 나와 타자 간의 동질성에 바탕을 두고 타자를 감정이입 속에서 나의 유사체로 간주하는 후설의 타자이론은 타자와 나와의 공감적, 합일적 관계에 바탕을 두고 타자이론을 전개한다는 점에서 혐오감의 극복을 위해 효과적일 수 있다. 특히 후설 현상학은 혐오감의 극복을 위한 주된 방법론적 요소로 간주될 수 있는 판단중지와 사랑 그리고 상상력을 타자이론에 적용할 수 있는 풍부한 체계를 갖추고 있음으로써 혐오감에 대항할 수 있는 하나의 대안적 이론으로서 충분한 자격이 있다. (shrink)

This volume offers essays on the nature of God and the fundamental tasks of philosophy and theology written by internationally recognized thinkers in the ...

Since the death of Jacques Lacan, Jean Laplanche is now considered to be one of the worlds foremost psychoanalytic thinkers. In spite of the influence of his work over the last thirty years, remarkably little has been available in English. Essays On Otherness presents for the first time in English many of Laplanche's key essays and is the first book to provide an overview of his thinking. It offers an introduction to many of the key themes that characterise his (...) work: seduction, persecution, revelation, masochism, transference and mourning. Such themes have been increasingly both in psychoanalytic thought and in continental philosophy, social and cultural theory, and literature making Essays On Otherness indispensable reading for all those concerned with the implications of psychoanalytic theory today. (shrink)

This work focuses on the relational dimension of the encounter between teacher and students meant as a structural element for teaching practice. By using theoretical group-analytical and anthropo-analytical coordinates, the authors psychodynamically problematize some relational conditions that may influence learning. This research concentrates on the circumstances that limit and allow the birth of a group arrangement capable to learn from experience, rather than on a perspective to teach-learn in a perfect agreement with planning. Intercultural education is pointed out and located (...) as a horizon and ideal term to guide educational practice. (shrink)

Environmentalist philosophers often paint a holistic picture, stressing such things as the continuity of humanity with wider nature and our membership of the 'natural community' . The implication seems to be that a non-anthropocentric philosophy requires that we strongly identify ourselves with nature and therefore that we downplay any human/non-human distinction. An alternative view, I think more interesting and plausible, stresses the distinction between humanity and a nature valued precisely for its otherness. In this article I discuss some of (...) its main elements, and some of the difficulties involved with keeping nature's otherness in focus. Firstly (in sections 1-5), I try to clarify what I take to be the otherness-based position by distinguishing it from the apparently similar views of John Passmore, Robert Elliott and Keekok Lee, and some opposed holistic views, especially of J. Baird Callicott. Then, in the second half of the article (sections 6-7), I argue that if nature is valued in virtue of its otherness, this value is best thought of as an extrinsic, final and objective good, where 'objectivity' is a 'method of understanding', in Thomas Nagel's sense. Although I give some reasons for preferring an otherness account to certain alternative positions, I make no overall attempt to 'prove' that nature is valuable for its otherness. My aim is to show that, if it is, then this seems the best way to understand that value. (shrink)

One of the core themes of Stanisław Lem’s 1961 novel Solaris is the encounter with radical otherness. The ocean planet being studied by scientists form earth is usually interpreted as a representation of radical otherness, which eludes human efforts of understanding. In this paper we argue that in Solaris Lem attempts to show not merely that the ocean is unknowable, but that the unknowability is itself impossible to adequately conceptualise and represent. However, we further argue that this impossibility (...) is the subject of an experience in which the presence of otherness is made available. We focus on the images of chaos which Kelvin discovers on Solaris to show that Lem presents the epistemic situation of the main protagonist as radically unstable. Contrary to most interpretations, however, we argue that the discursive narration in the novel engages with the presence of otherness only superficially. Rather, we suggest that the encounter with otherness is shown as something that manifests itself in bodily emotions, and is, therefore, only possible to convey non-discursively. The fear and dread inspired by the vastness and strangeness of the ocean are always presented by appeal to sensuality and bodily experience. These emotive reactions to encounters with otherness subvert its conceptual representations. We suggest that in this way Lem attempts to convey what cannot be discursively described, or even depicted. He presents radical otherness as something impossible to represent conceptually but offers a vision of the possibility of an encounter with otherness through bodily emotions. On this interpretation Solaris is not only a novel about the encounter with otherness, but also about the very possibility of representing such an encounter. (shrink)

Intelligent machines are no longer distant fantasies of the future or solely used for industrial purposes; they are real “living” things that operate similarly to humans with verbal and nonverbal communication capabilities. Humans see in such technology the horrifying dangers and the bliss enabled by the saving power. Entrenched in the emotions of hope and fear concerning intelligent machines, humans’ attitudes toward intelligent machines are not free of expectations, judgments, strategies, and selfish agendas. As the discovery of the New Worlds (...) has led to the development of an understanding of self as distinct from the other, narratives on intelligent robots have taken on similar forms of colonial discourse: contradictory manifestations of ethnocentrism (anthropocentrism) and exoticism. Similar to colonial encounters, the racialized Mechanical _Other_ operates like any other marginalized group. Colonial discourse often regards the mechanical _Other_ as both inferior yet exotic, which usually produces a mixed sense of blessing and curse, ambivalence composed of both desire and aversion. In these representations of machinic _otherness,_ one should not miss the fundamental injustice of creating the “Machinic Other” and imposing humans’ viewpoints. The field must expand the purview of intelligent machines to consider the larger historical and cultural forces shaping our understanding of who we are as reflected in the mirror of intelligent machines. (shrink)

While offering a public welcome of communicative participation, a communicative dark side of the moderate Enlightenment project emerged. Moderate Enlightenmentrsquo;s corollary companion to wresting power from a limited few is the staggering sense of confidence in the universal ground of assurance that is ldquo;bad faithrdquo; mdash;we fib to ourselves that we can stand above history and affect the future. Absolute conviction of universal access to truth propels through methodological confidence, undergirding the era of ldquo;the rationalrdquo; pursuit of truth, transporting the (...) individual into an ethereal delusionmdash;that one can stand above the historical moment of engagement and cast judgment. This essay calls into question the common assumption that communication begins with the individual. We offer a critique of this assumption in accordance with radical enlightenment scholarship, calling forth a return to Otherness that renders the construct of individual secondary to that which is met.br /. (shrink)

In this work I search for elements that contribute to the development of the ethical dimension of environmental education. I start with the existence of what C.A. Bowers calls “areas of silence” in the curriculum in both schools and universities. The reason for this silence, I argue, is to be found in the Cartesian conceptual structures of curricula. I suggest that the works of Bacon, Galileo and Descartes provoke a twofold process that I have termed the forgetting of tradition and (...) objectification of nature. As a corrective to this process, I explore the possibilities that the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer opens for rehabilitation of tradition and de-objectification of nature. I work with the concept of the “dignity of things” present in Greek dialectics: that nature is not simply a projection of mind (as the neo-Kantians claim), but something that thought suffers. In my conclusions I argue that for nature to be reinserted into almost all areas of knowledge it is necessary that we respect “the otherness of nature.”. (shrink)