Almost all unethical behavior can be traced to the human mistake of considering other human beings as mere means to certain ends. Thinkers like Buber & Levinas remind us of the simple fact that if we start with our own particular individuality then it should also help us internalize the fact that others are also particular identities which cannot be essentialized or objectified. If we really know and recognize our own selves i.e. if we are aware of our own particular problems, experiences, contingencies, our difficulties, struggles, miseries, responsibilities, etc that other people cannot understand or objectify similarly other people are “real” individuals with similar particularities that call for our sympathy and not reductive judgment.
Buber would get uncomfortable even if someone said “I fully know so and so, I know him/her or I know what he/she is upto” because such a formulation totally “objectifies” the other. A human being is not a particular object that we predetermine for certain uses. The “other” human being is “infinite” as Levinas would say and thus no one can claim to have exhausted or fully known someone inside out. This unknowableness evokes a sacred feeling for the “other”. Abstracting the “other” in terms of colour, race, wealth or some other attributes/accidents and saying “I know so and so fully” is the root of all sin against the other.
Human being fundamentally lives in relationships; but for any relation to exist, there should be a lively independent “other” to participate with, what Buber called “I-Thou” relationship and not “I-It” relationship. Our own identity is borrowed from other; if other doesn’t exist, our own identity loses meaning; the “I” needs “You”; this whole life for Buber is nothing but “dialogue”/encounter with the other. If there is no other i.e. if we have objectified everyone into (stereotyped) static dead matter then who is there to recognize us?
Buber and Levinas, both being Jewish thinkers, were writing in the backdrop of Nazi violence against Jews; this became their central concern i.e. asking the question as to how such violence against fellow human beings was possible at all? Reducing the “other” to stereotyped “identities” demonizes the “other” which in turn makes violence against other not only possible but easy.
Similarly Levinas’ whole philosophical project was a critique of the whole western philosophical thought in which the “other” is reduced down to an “object” to be mastered like rest of nature. Owing to the Cartesianism and Scientific outlook, human being, within modern western philosophical conception, is atomized into nothingness where as Levinas registers the other human as an un-analyzable “human being” and not an object to be dissolved away. The “other”, for Levinas, is “infinite” i.e. a challenge to our totalizing knowledge. The “other” (who I fail to know fully) warrants my humility before it because it forms a limit to my knowing. Thus my behavior with the “other” should be fully open ended i.e. authentic, sincere, genuine rather than presupposing in my head that I have already got this person figured out in which case one ends up talking to their own biases about other people in their heads and not with real living people outside; the idea of totalizing knowledge i.e. reducing a person down to one habit or ideology or race or wealth or good looks or aptitude of any kind is the highest unethical act for Levinas.
The limitlessness of the “other” demands my genuine openness and humility to other because the other is really transcendent i.e. I can never fully fathom the other; I can always learn from the “other”. Therefore, ethics for Levinas is not like Kant’s rational formula based morality but a basic intuitive responsibility to the utter transcendence of the “other”; it is a pre-cognitive “response” to the other. One wonders in awe as to how beautifully Levinas manages to redeem “transcendence” whilst celebrating “immanence” (i.e. plurality of the “other”) which is one of the most central points in all traditional metaphysics.
Rather than presupposing what the other boils down to, every “other” (human being) represents a totally fresh face of infinite i.e. a unique perspective/a unique subjectivity that demands my respect, attention and humility. I can never know how someone else looks at that tree or that food or that emotion or life in general; that completely other perspective of the “other” is eternally beyond my reach and understanding.
Similarly, Levinas points out as already mentioned above that the “other” actually defines me. We need the “other”. Objectifying “others” i.e. rejecting the sanctity of the “other” is therefore at our own peril because if the “other” goes then our own lively existence also goes because we become lonely as there is no one to recognize us; we become surrounded by dead walls. One recalls Lacan here who would say “the self is the other” because individual ego is itself constructed by the “other”.
Lacan points out that what goes on within a human psyche – i.e. all the inner chaos unknown to other people – is disproportionately different from how (composed) one looks on the outside; therefore by this very existential necessity others always misunderstand us or in a way stereotype us and vice versa. This is the reason Lacan critiqued the multibillion dollar fashion industry because any sort of tinkering with the external features of the body will never reveal our actual true selves rather it hides it more and thus real, authentic, sincere connection with others is further postponed still more. In almost all human relations, the primary root cause of all conflict is caricatured presumptions regarding the “other”.
In all self centered pursuits of fame, wealth and lust, the “other” people inevitably are perceived as mere tools for certain ends. A person wishing other people to praise him/her is in essence objectifying them as a mere means for their petty end. Similarly, in many human relationships, one’s own ego is at the centre & as they turn out they are never fruitful. All such pursuits (according to the traditional wisdom) end up with loss of joy and inner resentment simply because the “other” in essence is sacred. For an individual person the “other” in actual fact comes as God’s manifestation & thus commands deep humility and respect.
(Author has done Masters in Philosophy from JNU Delhi. He can be reached on: [email protected])
