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

As part of our small contribution in dialogue toward better peace development and reconciliation studies, and following Toffler & Toffler’s War and Antiwar (1993), the present article delves into a realm of logic beyond the traditional confines of negation and the excluded middle principle, exploring the nuances of "Otherness" that transcend classical and Nagatomo logics. Departing from the foundational premises of classical Aristotelian logic systems, this exploration ventures into alternative realms of reasoning, specifically examining Neutrosophic Logic and Klein bottle (...) logic (cf. Smarandache, 2005). The study challenges conventional boundaries and explores the implications of embracing paradoxes and self-reference in logic systems, aiming to redefine approaches to understanding truth and reasoning. The paper investigates how these alternative logics open avenues for philosophical inquiry, redefining entropy, and potentially influencing innovative perspectives in free energy systems. Through this exploration, it seeks to expand the discourse on logic, welcoming a broader spectrum of thought beyond established frameworks; and we also discuss shortly a number of possible implementations including in risk management and also Klein bottle entropy redefinition (Tang et al, 2018). (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)

Violence has become the number one problem in contemporary societies, and has reached the point of becoming a true challenge to present-day moral conscience. Its general form shows up both as a question and a paradox for our understanding of natural and social phenomena, the progress of scientific knowledge and intellectual conquests, and any attempt to assert the value and respect for life. Each day, no doubt each moment, human rights are both proclaimed and violated.

This article is one of the author’s serial writings to assimilate Ricoeur’s three-fold ethical investigation into various areas of human acts of forgetting, including 1) the therapeutic or pathological area, 2) the pragmatic area, dealing with individual and group’s self-identity in relation to time and otherness, and 3) the more explicitly ethical-political (social and institutional) area, in a wide context. Corresponding to the second area of the Ricoeurian three-fold investigation, this paper probes the ethical dimension of the Zhuangzian forgetfulness (...) of personal identity in relation to time and otherness. It first examines textual materials of the Zhuangzi to navigate on the narrative meanings of forgetting oneself or personal identity, and then delves into three domains of Zhuangzian conception on the forgetting of one’s fixed identity. Finally, it elaborates on the Zhuangzian notion of relational autonomy or agency that underlies the practice of forgetfulness of oneself or personal identity. (shrink)

This article reformulates Stephan Helmreich´s the ¨microbiomisation of race¨ as the historiality of otherness in the foundations of human microbiome science. Through the lens of my ethnographic fieldwork of a transnational community of microbiome scientists that conducted a landmark human microbiome research on indigenous microbes and its affiliated and first personalised microbiome initiative, the American Gut Project, I follow and trace the key actors, experimental systems and onto-epistemic claims in the emergence of human microbiome science a decade ago. In (...) doing so, I show the links between the reinscription of race, comparative research on the microbial genetic variation of human populations and the remining of bioprospected data for personalised medicine. In these unpredictable research movements, the microbiome of non-Western peoples and territories is much more than a side project or a specific approach within the field: it constitutes the nucleus of its experimental system, opening towards subsequent and cumulative research processes and knowledge production in human microbiome science. The article demonstrates that while human microbiome science is articulated upon the microbial ‘makeup’ of non-wester(nised) communities, societies, and locales, its results and therapeutics are only applicable to medical conditions affecting rich nations (i.e., inflammatory, autoimmune, and metabolic diseases). My reformulation of ¨microbiomisation of race¨ as the condition of possibility of human microbiome science reveals that its individual dimension is sustained by microbial DNA data from human populations through bioprospecting practices and gains meaning through personalised medicine initiatives, informal online networks of pseudoscientific and commodified microbial-related evidence. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2015 Heft: 204 Seiten: 291-313.

Rapid developments in science, technology and means of communication offer man possibilities for dialogue that up until now have been undreamed-of. It must be undeniably admitted, however, that we live in a world dominated by fear of the other, fanaticism, racism and every kind of conflict. This is why we have thought it useful to reactualize the Goethian conceptions of universal literature and otherness, conceptions that, coming from the generosity of a humanist and appreciator of the other, could help (...) us contribute to the discussion on the problems of interculturality that give rise to more and more animated controversies. (shrink)

This article explores the elaboration of differences through the use of concepts of categories and policies with regard to the Other in France, Germany and the United States. It analyses three approaches in the definition of Otherness: The first one is interactive, that is the interaction between states and groups in search of political recognition. Through interactions one can measure the dynamics and the mechanisms of boundary construction and justify its legitimacy The second approach is normative. It is based (...) on justice and equality as means of recognition. And the third approach is political. It is based both on empirical reality and normative perception and leads to institutional adjustments. All the three approaches come to show how explicitly or implicitly how an element of identity becomes a "permanent difference", and is perceived ad the main source of cleavage in one society; and how this difference change from one society to another but also it switches over the time within one society. (shrink)

Those who work with topics related to Modern Greek identity usually start discussing these issues by quoting the famous Georgios Gemistos Pletho (c.1360-1454): we, over whom you rule and hold sway, are Hellenes by genos (γένος), as is witnessed by our language and ancestral education. Although Woodhouse thought of Pletho as the last of the Hellenes, others prefer to denounce him the last of the Byzantines and the first and foremost Modern Greek. During the 14th and 15th centuries, a number (...) of influential intellectuals in the Eastern Roman Empire preferred the term Hellene (Ἓλλην) to identify themselves, instead of the formal Roman (Ρωμαῖος) and the common Greek (Γραικός). According to the prevalent view of modern scholarship, the shift should not be interpreted only as a statement of proto-national identity, but also as the outcome of growing archaism. As Vryonis pointed out, the historian Critoboulos used to call the Balkan nations with their archaic names: Byzantines became “Hellenes,” Albanians became “Illyrians,” etc. Chalkokondyles followed in the same path. Furthermore, in order to lament the decline of their Empire, byzantine intellectuals tended to compare their sad present to the glory of ancient Greece. Besides archaism, proto-nationalism and Hellenism, I suggest that a careful reading of the sources would lead us to reappraise the ways 15th century intellectuals perceived identity. Whilst I do not accept Vakalopoulos’ views on diachronic Hellenic identity, I support that, in the 15th century, Byzantine scholars attempted to create an identity based on cultural and historical continuity and otherness. Moreover, Laiou’s definition of Greek identity as a resultant of language, history, tradition and interests does not cover the case of 15th century Byzantine philosophers, since the latter strived to enrich and enlarge Greek identity with additional elements. It is worth noting that those philosophers who fled to Italy deliberately chose to describe themselves as Greeks (Greci/Γραικοί) or Hellenes (Ἓλληνες) and not as Romans (Ρωμιοί/Ρωμαῖοι), according to the Byzantine official terminology. During the 15th century a major shift occurred in the Byzantine intelligentsia and its prominent members revisited matters of identity. In this paper, I attempt to scrutinize the ways Byzantine philosophers of the 15th century, who lived in the territories of the Byzantine Empire and in Italy, perceived identity and otherness. In my research, I include not only Greek, but also Latin sources, since their works is written in both languages. (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)

A lucid intervention in current debates about identity and difference, this book uses the concept of Otherness to look again at both Gothic fiction and Postcolonialism.

The evolution of the concept of subjectivity in the works of Jacques Lacan.

The article explores the construction of boundaries, alterity and otherness in modern science-fiction films. Boundaries, understood as real state borders, territoriality and sovereignty, as well as the construction of the other beyond an imagined border and delimited space, have a significant meaning in the dystopian settings of SF. Even though SF topics are not bound to the contemporary environment, be it of a historical, technical or ethical nature, they do relate to the present-day world and transcend our well-known problems. (...) Therefore, SF offers a pronounced discourse about current social challenges under extreme conditions such as future technological leaps, encounters with the alien other or the end of the world. At the same time the genre enables us to play through future challenges that might really happen. Films like Equilibrium, Code 46, Children of Men and District 9 show that in freely constructed cinematic settings we are not only unable to escape from our border conflicts, but quite the contrary, we take them everywhere with us, even to an alternative present or into the future, where new precarious situations of otherness are constructed. (shrink)

In view of scholarly work that has explored the socio-psycho significance of national performativity, the body and the “other,” this article critically analyses newspaper representations of the Canadian-born British tennis player Greg Rusedski. Drawing on Lacanian interpretations of the body, it illustrates how Rusedski’s media framing centered on a particular feature of his body—his “smile.” In doing so, we detail how Rusedski’s “post-imperial” Otherness—conceived as a form of “extimacy” (extimité)—complicated any clear delineation between “us” and “them,” positing instead a (...) dialectical understanding of the splits, voids and contradictions that underscore the national “us.”. (shrink)

Resumen: Esta investigación propone una valoración al diálogo teológico-literario desde la obra Cuatro poetas desde la otra ladera del teólogo español Olegario González de Cardedal. En primer lugar, se esbozan elementos que la obra -tangencialmente- sugiere para una lectura teológica fundamental, poniendo de relieve el diálogo con la literatura; la relación dialógica del ser humano con Dios, en su doble vertiente: homo capax Dei/Deus capax hominis; y el aspecto vivencial de los poetas como criterio de lectura para la comprensión de (...) la Revelación. En segundo lugar, se propone un balance valorativo del diálogo y método teológico-literario que ha surgido de la lectura de la obra, ofreciendo claves de lectura metodológica e interpretativa desde la literatura como otredad de la teología. Abstract: This research proposes an assessment of the theological-literary dialogue from the work Cuatro poetas desde la otra ladera of the Spanish theologian Olegario González de Cardedal. In the first place, elements are outlined that the work -tangentially- suggests for a fundamental theological reading, highlighting the dialogue with literature; the dialogic relationship of the human being with God, in its double aspect: homo capax Dei/Deus capax hominis; and the experiential aspect of the poets as a reading criterion for the understanding of the Revelation. Secondly, an evaluative balance of the theological-literary dialogue and method is proposed which has emerged from the reading of the work, offering keys for methodological and interpretive reading from literature as otherness of theology. (shrink)

The God of classical Christian faith is radically transcendent--utterly beyond understanding and words. So if God is to be known it must be in the luminous darkness of unknowing. Drawing on a wide range of primary sources--biblical, patristic, and medieval--Barry D. Smith identifies and explores seven ways of expressing the otherness of God in classical Christian thinking. By allowing historical theologians to speak for themselves, he shows how an aversion to ontotheology long precedes postmodernism. The book first lays out (...) the Old Testament and New Testament foundations for subsequent Christian reflections on divine transcendence. These were the teachings that the early church assumed and, with the assistance of Greek philosophy, further refined with their own set of apophatic conceptual tools. The main focus of the book is a sevenfold exposition of that theological refinement. Smith concludes by looking towards possible future theological developments within this apophatic tradition. Drawing on the theological methodology of historic Christianity, he indicates how a synthesis of the biblical teaching on the otherness of God with philosophical traditions other than those inherited from Greek philosophy is also possible. (shrink)

Widely circulated cultural conceptions about women who have committed violence recurrently place them in positions of otherness in relation to what is considered as being normal, valuable womanhood. This article explores ways in which Finnish women imprisoned for violent crimes grapple with this troubled relation between womanhood and violence in their enactments of gendered identities. The analysis is based on a novel, discursive-affective approach to positioning that can accommodate complexity and context-specific variability in enactments of identities. Four different, recurring (...) modes of positioning are discussed in the analysis: aligning with forcefulness, aligning with vulnerability, -aligning with demonization and aligning with motherhood. By shedding light not only on the complexity and fluidity of these gendered identity enactments but also on their affectively ambivalent dimensions, the analysis contributes to attempts at countering reductionist views about women who have committed violence and the gendered dichotomizations that they work to reproduce. (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)

이 글의 목적은 『존재와 다르게』에 나타난 레비나스의 주체 이해에서 타자성에 근거한 주체의 고유한 문제들을 찾아 타자와의 가까움에서 파악할 수 있는 주체의 실천적 윤리를 검토하는 것에 있다. 그 저서는 사랑, 속죄 등과 같은 종교적 윤리를 다분히 내포하고 있지만 실제로 그 실천을 가능케 하는 주체의 본질이나 그 문제들을 집중적으로 다루게 되면서 그의 저서들 가운데 현대적 주체 이해에 관한 가장 많은 철학적 논쟁들을 불러일으키고 있다. 그의 사유를 발전시키고 있는 타자성은 사심 없음, 서로 마주 향하기, 본의 아니게, 대신함 등과 같은 주체에 관한 논쟁적인 개념들을 (...) 도입하고 있다. 특히 그의 주체성은 가까움을 토대로 특히 ‘서로 마주 향하기’(l’un-pour-l’autre)에서 타자에게 조건 없이 향하는 필연성을 수반한다는 것도 지적할 수 있는데 이것은 타자에의 심령주의를 실천하며 주체 너머로 초월적인 통시성을 열게 하는 것이라는 점에서 의미가 있다. 대신함의 윤리적 행위는 이것을 구체적으로 실천한다. 그의 주체 윤리는 다분히 유일신에 대한 종교적 실천을 강조하고 있지만 타인과의 관계를 떠나 그것이 가능하지 않다는 점에서 책임 있는 주체로서 인류애를 실천해야 한다는 점을 분명히 밝히고 있다. (shrink)

This paper explores the ability and desire of the embodied self to “shape-shift”—to experience from within the capacities of animals, or natural phenomena like trees and mountains. Shape-shifting is discussed insofar as it manifests in a broad range of cultural domains, including children’s play, mythico-religious iconography, spiritual practice, sports, the performing arts, and so on. This potential for shape-shifting is grounded not simply in our evolutionary history and biological kinships, but in the phenomenology of the lived-body. Our own powers are (...) explored, expanded, and transformed through our communion with the non-human world. (shrink)

Countless differences between Hegel and Husserl notwithstanding, there is a common element in both of their accounts of the genesis of otherness. According to both, only if one delves into the interiority of self-consciousness, can one account for the rudimentary appearance of the Other. Following the Hegelian and Husserlian variants of such a strategy, this paper argues that: at the primitive levels of self-consciousness, subjectivity is intersubjective through and through; an irreducible distance separates the Other from the self, due (...) to which plurality cannot be surpassed by totality. In contrast to the view which sees these claims as though they were irreconcilable with each other, this paper shows how each of them calls for its apparent opposite. While it is common to establish the unanimity of these claims in opposition to Hegel, or Husserl, or both, this paper shows how such a concordance itself emerges from an Auseinandersetzung between them. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sunyata and Otherness:Applying Mutually Transformative Categories from Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in ChristologySusie Paulik Babka“The universe is expanding,” the physicists tell us. “But doesn’t an expansion of something mean the presupposition of boundaries?” my naïve mind inquires, thinking too much in terms of discrete substances. Can “something” expand “into” nothing, “into” emptiness? Shot through with “dark energy” (the name an intellectual signifier allowing physicists to speak of the ineffable), the (...) immensity of the universe teaches a lesson in humility before mystery and the radically new. Dark energy makes up 74 percent of the universe and is responsible for increasing the rate of the universe’s expansion; it may be explained as the energy of empty space, or space devoid of matter and gravity. Although an unobservable phenomenon, dark energy penetrates the known universe as that which counteracts gravity’s relationship to matter, causing a negative pressure in regions of the universe devoid of matter to expand. Hence, the energy of emptiness is the reason for the universe’s expansion; emptiness is the reason reality is better described by rapid change and impermanence than stasis and immutability.While it would seem that these developments do not impact religious thinking, the Dalai Lama and others have argued that because science helps us understand the nature of reality, it affects the paradigm in which we consider the veracity of religious ideas. In his words, “if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”1 This is a bold statement, challenging both East and West to consider that when derived from only one source, even our most treasured religious ideas are narrowly conceived.The Western worldview has kept pace neither with the challenges of cosmic and subatomic physics nor with a more sophisticated global community. Since Parmenides in the pre-Socratic era, Western thought has been dominated by Greek philosophical categories, in which the perfection of beings is regarded in immutability and stasis, and things ideally tend toward independence or self-sufficiency. These categories [End Page 73] not only are inadequate to describe reality discovered through scientific means but also fail to articulate the meaning of the religious and cultural encounters taking place between East and West. Writes Joseph O’Leary, “The encounter with Buddhist thought enhances the hermeneutical task of theology, by opening up the possibility that Christian truth today can be more luminously presented in a discourse influenced by Buddhist analytical methods and ontological insights than in the old frameworks formed in dialogue with Greek ontology.”2Deconstructing substance ontology in the West suggests not only that science is a valuable conversation partner to religion but also that religions be conversation partners with each other. Christians should consider how divine or ultimate reality is manifest in other religions and abandon claims to exclusive truth. As Joseph O’Leary argues,The religions need each other, whatever their utter self-sufficiency on the plane of abstruse theological claims. The religions, as human historical trajectories, are inevitably marked by incompleteness and tragic failures. The tensions between them are not to be suppressed by dogmatic self-affirmation, but to be interpreted as the tension of “truth” itself, making itself felt within the finitude and brokenness of the human language striving to express it.3Truth for the Dalai Lama is “pursued by means of critical investigation,” requiring conversation with modern thought forms as well as both religious and secular Western traditions. If Christian theology is to be relevant today, it must continue to deconstruct the classical metaphysical categories that impede the appreciation of what is possible or true, especially in the encounter with non-Christian and non-Western thought, culture, and religious practice. Interreligious encounter necessitates the questioning of ontotheology, the classical metaphysical logic that refers to the rational basis for naming God, the supreme being, with supreme attributes, such as eternity, immutability, omniscience, and omnipotence. Ontotheology is related to the substance ontologies that describe the relation between God and the world and East and West in terms of dualism that according to Paul Knitter “so stresses the difference between two realities, so separates them... (shrink)

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)

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 the Letter of Humanism, Heidegger reinterprets the Greek notion of ethos as designating the way in which human beings dwell in the world through a “unifying” language. Through various down strokes in the autobiographical and psychopathological literature on schizophrenia as well as in literary texts and literary criticism, this paper, experimental in its effort, argues that the language productions of schizophrenia and poetry, each in its own way, seem to fall outside this unification of a language in common. Furthermore, (...) it argues that this “falling outside” is related to radical experiences of “alienation” and “otherness,” which call for an alteration of conventional language. However, whereas poetry appears to open new linguistic possibilities, schizophrenia runs the risk of reducing language to the silence of incomprehensible “nonsense.” The paper ends with the suggestion that a poetic employment of language may hold a double potential with regard to the understanding and possible treatment of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. (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)