Recognition and the Other, p. 9
belonging to another country; foreign, alien. Of an enemy: That is ‘of one's own household’: lit.
and fig. Of habits: Pertaining to one's family life, private, domestic.")
To Levinas, who draws from the Talmud and Jewish theology, the other is also a stranger
and unfamiliar -- unfamiliar most particularly in the sense of being un-familied, not one of us.
Indeed, Levinas even draws the link between the stranger and the one whose family has been
dismembered when he invokes the Biblical triplet of "The other is the stranger, the widow, the
orphan" (1969, 77). But unlike in the other
1
sense, to Levinas the other
2
is the moral center, to
whom one owes everything. To Levinas the other is always first, not last. "To recognize the
Other is to recognize a hunger. To recognize the Other is to give. But it is to give to the master,
to the lord, to him whom one approaches as “Vous" in a dimension of height." (75)
So we have
two senses of the other:
The "other
1
" -- the marginalized, alienated, and oppressed position, the immoral margin.
The relation to the other1 is one of oppression and alienation, dispossession.
The "other
2
" -- the sacred, the moral center, the on high, where the relation is one of
moral priority.
At first glance, there's something vaguely paternalistic about the Levinasian move to take
responsibility for "Everything." There's a presumption about it -- it is but a short leap from
taking responsibility for the other to speaking for the other.
3
But Judiasm teaches that the
encounter with the Other is not one of transcending or leaving the self.
3
And as Alcoff (1997), reminds us, we need closely examine our impulses to speak on behalf of others.
“In particular, the practice of privileged persons speaking for or on behalf of less privileged persons has
actualy resulted (in many cases) in increasing or reinforcing the oppression of the group spoken for"
(1997, p. 231).
Convention