Otherness matters: Beauvoir, Hegel and the ethics of recognition

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This study critically explores the meaning of difference in continental philosophy. Concomitantly, it reflects on the norm, with regard to, firstly, the authorities within the philosophical community who take it upon themselves to distinguish, on a 'corporate and/or intellectual level, between the normal and that which is different from the norm; secondly, the apparatus of limitation employed to constitute, legitimate and reinforce this distinction, alongside distinctions between the conventional and the peculiar, the traditional and the marginal, the philosophical and the non-philosophical, the essential and the secondary or supplementary, as well as, the same (or subject) and the other.The focus on these distinctions is narrowed to the field of phenomenology, more particularly, how the anthropologistic readings of Phenomenology of Spirit by the exponents of early French phenomenology not only add force to the canonical reception of Hegel as a follower of a philosophical tradition governed by solipsism and individualism, but also perpetuate two traditional concepts; to wit, otherness as something threatening that must be overcome and self-other relationships as inexorably violent. A reinterpretation of the dialectic of recognition reveals not only Hegel's appreciation of the degree to which subjectivity is indebted to otherness, but also his notion of friendship as the reciprocal preservation of the other's otherness. This notion of friendship is appropriated by Simone de Beauvoir, whose engagement with Hegel constitutes a radical departure from French phenomenology; by implication, normal practice. Beauvoir, both personally and in her work, confronts the philosophical community with the short-sighted, often destructive, ways in which it delimits the canon, particularly with regard to its 'othering of women and its disregard for the specificity of difference.In keeping with the anthropological spirit of the respective readings of Hegel, the study itself takes the form of an autobiography. It traces the intellectual journey of a non-Western, non-white, non-male scholar, from her sense of not belonging in the world of continental philosophy, to her critical engagement with Hegel, mediated by Beauvoir. In the process it aims to show that otherness matters and how it matters. Furthermore, it calls for writing and reading differently so as to encourage non-hegemonic philosophy.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University