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Other (26185)

The other or constitutive other is a key concept in continental philosophy, opposed to the same. It refers to that which a person considers to be entirely unrelated to their own concept of their self-identity. more...

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Other (26185)

As such, a person's definition of the 'Other' is part of what defines or even constitutes the self (see self (psychology), self (philosophy), and self-concept) and other phenomena and cultural units. Lawrence Cahoone explains it thus:

"What appear to be cultural units—human beings, words, meanings, ideas, philosophical systems, social organizations—are maintained in their apparent unity only through an active process of exclusion, opposition, and hierarchization. Other phenomena or units must be represented as foreign or 'other' through representing a hierarchical dualism in which the unit is 'privileged' or favored, and the other is devalued in some way." (Cahoone 1996)

It has been used in social science to understand the processes by which socieites and groups exclude 'Others' who they want to subordinate or who do not fit into their society. For example, Edward Said's book Orientalism shows how this was done by western societies—paticularly England and France—to 'other' those people in the 'Orient' who they wanted to control.

History of the other in philosophy

The concept that the self requires the other to define itself is an old one and has been expressed by many writers:

The German philosopher Hegel, wrote "Each consciousness pursues the death of the other", meaning that in seeing a separateness between you and another, a feeling of alienation is created, which you try to resolve by synthesis. Hegel's famous parable of the Master and Slave uses this concept of "the other" to great effect.
The poet Arthur Rimbaud may be the earliest to express the idea: "Je est un autre" .
Søren Kierkegaard argued that others, the crowd, is "untruth", and stressed the importance of the individual.
Friedrich Nietzsche, in The Gay Science, phrased it thus: "You are always a different person."
Ferdinand de Saussure described language as, in Calvin Thomas' words, a "differential system without positive terms".
Jacques Lacan argued that ego-formation occurs through mirror-stage misrecognition, and his theories were applied to politics by Althusser.
Emmanuel Levinas, on the other hand, saw apprehension of the other as the basis for ethics, and as a limit on ontology.
Jean-Paul Sartre mentioned that Hell is other people.

The Other in gender studies

Simone De Beauvoir adopted the Hegelian notion of the Other in her description of how male-dominated culture treats woman as the Other in relation to man. The Other has thus become an important concept for studies of the sex-gender system. According to Michael Warner

"the modern system of sex and gender would not be possible without a disposition to interpret the difference between genders as the difference between self and Other ... having a sexual object of the opposite gender is taken to be the normal and paradigmatic form of an interest in the Other or, more generally, others."

Thus, according to Warner, Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalysis hold the heterosexist view that if one is attracted to people of the same gender as one's self, one fails to distinguish self and other, identification and desire. This is a "regressive" or an "arrested" function. He further argues that heteronormativity covers its own narcissist investments by projecting or displacing them on queerness.