Iraklis Ioannidis, “Prolegomena to Altruism: By migrating the concept of the Other, the Other is not an affinity but the ontological counterpart to death”
Iraklis Ioannidis is a PhD candidate at the University of Glasgow. You can access Iraklis’s complete paper by clicking here: download.
Abstract
The modern tradition has put us in a position to look for the Other from an egoistic, egological perspective. The Other and the self are linked through resemblances and similarities, while concepts such empathy and consensus, tolerance and affirmative action are building our morality. But all these are conditioned on an egoism inherent in a cartesian cogito. Indeed, as Sartre and Henry have acknowledged, the cogito is the only foundation which we can use. Yet, in a Kantian mannerism, just because knowledge of self and Other start from the cogito it does not follow that such knowledge arises out of it. It is high time to migrate from this perspective. Through a phenomelogical reduction of Rejection in intimate relationships, I shall trace a link which reveals the Other as, to just borrow a phrase from Marcel, the Ontological Counterpart to Death.