Talk:Alterity

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	Continental philosophy

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Move to Wiktionary[edit]

This ought to be more than a dictionary entry - see Other. Possibly redirect there. Charles Matthews 10:47, 29 August 2005 (UTC)[reply]

In Continental philosophy, the relation between the terms "same" and "identity" is not the same as the relation between the terms "Other" and "alterity". The term "Other" is usually used in the context of ethics (see also Face-to-face), while the term "alterity" is usually (but not exclusively) used in the context of ontology (sometimes along with the term "indeterminacy"). Thus, I would be reluctant to support a merger of the two articles. --Omnipaedista (talk) 06:24, 17 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agree. To not merge. LookingGlass (talk) 16:36, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

e.g Lacan et al[edit]

I think it would be helpful to expand the entry here to ouitline the ways the term has been used/appropriated by "others" e.g in the article on Lacan on the "Big other".
LookingGlass (talk) 17:38, 23 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unnecessary Brackets[edit]

The paragraph on uses of the term in popular media has a lot of words bracketed for unclear reasons. I'm guessing that these were meant to be links, perhaps. Does someone want to try to establish real links there (if there are other Wikipedia pages to which to link on those terms)? If not, it seems best to remove the brackets and clean up the article. Thanks. Mgllama (talk) 23:15, 1 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Important term[edit]

I'm surprised to see someone has marked this as "low importance" on the philosophy scale. I would have thought it was very important. However, perhaps that is because the term is more central to literary theory than to philosophy. But we do need a good article here, and at the moment this is not at all good. It reads like a series of unconnected sentences from somebody's lecture notes. Sorry. --Doric Loon (talk) 09:29, 22 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

:Further to this I have removed a chunk of the lead exactly because it reads like that.

Alterity is an encounter with "the other". This "other" is not like any other worldly object or force. The perceiving subject (I myself) sees that another human being is "like me". They act like I do, appear to be in control of their conscious life, just like me.^[1] The "other" takes me out of myself and creates new understanding, that is, alterity. Philosophically, the life of the other functions symbolically. It is in our encounter with this other life that generates the contrasts at the foundations of new consciousness.^[2] In such exchanges we are not lost, but rather the "proper self", one's subjectivity, scrubbed and brightly lit, becomes stained and unsure by a renewed understanding from a nonoriginal origin. Ego is still there; we do not disappear, but boundaries are less well defined. The self is opened to new experiences, and the "affair" of the other is made available."^[3]

^ Levinas, Emmanuel. (From works of 1961 and 1974). "Emmanuel Levinas". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2017.

^ "Homecoming: Interpretation, Transformation and Individuation" (Missoula, Montana. Scholars Press, 1978).

^ "Desiring Theology" (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

If it can be worked into the article, usefully, that would be good, otherwise it is mystical sentences without context.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:40, 9 April 2019 (UTC).[reply]

Alterity is not a term with a historical tradition like 'epistomology' but a generic discription[edit]

I think the page suffers from the confusion that because authors use the same word, does not mean they are of the same tradition or even share the same use of the word, which is in itself a word common enough and general enough to be picked up independently from many authors. I don't see compelling evidence supporting the grouping together of many of the names on this page. Very lazy compartmentalization

This is a problem with translations, if an author uses the word alterite and the translator decides to leave it untranslated, it give the illusion of it being a weighty technical term, rich with history and traditional application. Gross faux techne pseudo languages CantingCrew (talk) 19:02, 20 June 2020 (UTC)CantingCrew[reply]

[1] Levinas, Emmanuel. (From works of 1961 and 1974). "Emmanuel Levinas". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. 2017.

[foo3-2] "Homecoming: Interpretation, Transformation and Individuation" (Missoula, Montana. Scholars Press, 1978).

[foo-3] "Desiring Theology" (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995).

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