Sunday, February 21, 2010

The Other and the Self

Much of what Levinas wrote reminded by of Freud. I'm not sure it was anything specific, but the idea of the self being partially defined by the Other seemed rather Freudian to me. I realize that this is not exactly what Levinas meant, and I may be misinterpreting what he wrote, but it seemed to me that part of what allows you to defined yourself is how you define others.

It's very hard to define oneself without introducing negatives into the description. When a person says "I am an Christian" they partially mean "I am not Jewish or Muslim or Hindu." And indeed, if Christianity was the only religion in the world, calling oneself a Christian would be unneccesary. It could be assumed.

But it is not, and so it cannot simply be a background detail. The existence of the Other is what allows the existence of the Self. Try to come up with a complete definition of yourself in which you in no way refer to what you are not. Really think about all the words you choose to use in your definition. The simplest descriptive words seem to be where this will become a problem. What is good? The opposite of evil. What is red? It isn't orange, yellow, green, blue or purple.

This ties into Freud because I see parallels with the idea of the child developing its view of its self by its relationship with its parents, and the division of the self into the Id, the Ego, and the Super-Ego seems to be a sort of othering of the self. I may be misunderstanding Levinas, but the way in which the other defines the self really intrigued me.

2 comments:

  1. And I forgot about Lacan, of course. That would make all of this make more sense, wouldn't it?

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  2. I think you're on to something, in that Freud and Lacan give us the psychological framework from which to approach Levinas' ideas about the I and the other. Levinas talks about the differences between the I and the other, and discusses the trace, as if they are inevitable and inherent without giving much evidence in terms of what about humans that makes these things inherent. Does that evidence come from Freud and Lacan?

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