RE THINKING OTHERNESS: HOW THE CONCEPT HAS BEEN RETHOUGHT IN RECENT PHILOSOPHICAL APPROACHES

Abstract

The essay examines how the question of otherness has been rethought in recent philosophical approaches. It consists of three parts. The first part discusses two possible understandings of otherness: The first presents it in a binary, dependent relation to identity. The second presents it as something which can be understood distinctively from identity, possibly as an enigma. The second part goes through Todorov’s Conquest of America and discusses how certain characters of the book try to understand the Other. Finally, the third part discusses possible solutions to that problem, where the Other can be understood independently, beyond a given framework of an identity - which seeks to dominate over otherness - and it concludes that despite their necessity, identities must be thought as contingent and relational. Only in that way, the possibility of a more genuine understanding of the Other opens up

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