The Question of the Other
By Marina Luptakova*
1.
The category of the Other (the category of 'otherness'
in the widest meaning possible - altérité in French) bears key significance
in re-thinking
the fundamental notions of ontology and anthropology. The
topic of relation to the Other is best represented by
a fruitful line of confrontations of standpoints on the interconnection of
ontology and ethics. In contemporary philosophy, this topic is particularly
related to Heidegger's analysis of fundamental
ontology, the critique of Greek metaphysics
and contemporary theories of `disappearance of man'. In the course of
the past half century or more, these thoughts have been remarkably elaborated
in the works of Emmanuel Lévinas (Entre nous. Essais sur le penser-ŕ-l'autre; Totalité et infini), Joun D. Zizioulas - the
Metropolitan of Pergamus (Being as Communion), also in the works of a notable
Greek contemporary theologian and philosopher Christos Yannaras (The Person
and the Eros), of Vladimir Lossky (A Theological Concept of the Human
Person) and of Constantin Sigov whose
works are scattered across various journals on philosophy (see e.g.
The
Problem of Rupture Between Ontology and Ethics in Contemporary Humanities; Alfa i Omega,
No. 2(32), Moscow 2002, which I based upon
in several cases while working on these `few theses').
2. Joan Zizioulas expands
Lévinas'
idea in Commonness and Difference: "Fear
of the others, arising from
rejection - that's the essence of sin. Yet since then, rejection comes along as an affirmation of one's `self - and not the acceptance of the Other... - and
arrives as natural and inevitable that the Other is regarded as an opponent and a threat..." And further:
"When the fear of the `other' manifests as
a fear of the `difference'..., we tend to identify distinction with division. This complicates and beclouds the thought and conduct of man in a
dangerous manner. The moral consequences of this can become rather grave. We divide our lives and beings on the ground of the difference between each other. We organize
nations, clubs, brotherhoods and even
churches, based on their differences." (Metropolitan Joan Zizioulas. Commonness and Difference. Vestnik
RKhD 172.
3. The same topic of the Other and otherness as a foundation of an ethical relation, as well as the theory of conduct and communication based
on the conception of Other, have been
covered by another of contemporary Greek philosophers, Christos Yannaras. The proximity of Lévinas' approach is more than obvious here, though we don't find
any explicit links to his works. Analyzing the origins of the situation Europe
finds itself in there days, Yannaras emphasizes
the anthropological distortion in particular that accompanies the crisis of our historically-materialistic
civilisation: forming of the type of men with `a reduced capability
of establishing dynamic relations: those are individuals with a marginally restricted capability of speech and a very weak active
thought, judgement, imagination and wishing."
4. Yannaras defines three
theoretical factors, gradually establishing the prerequisites of a supremacy of nihilism and historical materialism in the
contemporary West. First, a transition in the realm of
knowledge from logos to ratio, from the priority of experience of
a relation to the priority of individual rational conception. Second, a
transition from a person to an individual, i.e. from an anthropology built upon a common consent to the priority
of a psychological individualism and a juridical, legal appraisal of the human
subject. And third, a transition from aletheia (a truth as a logos-based disclosure of that
which engages one into a relation) to the objectivity of
convictions based on rules and practical values, to the foundation of culture
in general along the principle of utility and the logic of the law.
With regard to the transition
from the Greek logos to the Latin ratio. To the
Greeks, logos originally rather represented a form (eidos),
through
which a being can manifest itself, appear, i.e. - as Yannaras puts it - a-letheuein (to become unconcealed). The fact that that
which exists manifests itself, means that it finds itself `in relation to...' -
i.e. the concept of
logos kept in itself the notion of interrelationship. Besides, logos is
the ability to conceive the outer interrelation of a being and to render it in
art in the form of an image, an idea; furthermore, logos also is the human
capability of conveying an abstracted construction of reality, of representing
it with the help of words - concepts, to atune oneself to the
logos of the being and to communicate it.
5. That's why
relation is the fundamental meaning of logos: an appeal and its perception, or
a response to an appeal, which also determines being in relations.
6. The notion of ratio
differs from the Greek philosophical concept of logos. From the
workings of logos stems the dynamics of relations, but the notion of logos
rarely leads to an intellectual capability of a natural individual (facultas rationis of a man).
Knowledge doesn't rate as an experience of contacts and relations, and the
truth is constrained by individual comprehension, by correspondence of the mind
and its object.
7. For ratio, the
existential reality of a person doesn't exist in the end: `in the place
of the Other', i.e. of an existential otherness that is naturally put in effect as part of surpassing
and abandoning one's self from one's free will, ratio begets a logical subject.
On the grounds of ratio, individualistic anthropology and rationalistic gnoseology had been founded,
systematized by the scholastics later on.
8. Hence, for the time being,
nothing but mere lines of concern, along which - in my view - an essay to
comprehend the main topics in the entire complex of humanities should be
pursued.
*