The Problem of the Otherness in Contemporary Western Philosophy

Abstract

This article reviews the problem of the otherness in contemporary Western philosophy . The peculiarities of the representation of the category of the otherness in the 21st-century anglophone continental philosophy were analyzed. A theoretical base of the research consists of the works by Richard Rorty, Bruno Latour, Richard Kearney, Nancy. Fraser, Dan Zahavi, Chad Kautzer, Eduardo Mendieta, and Slavoj Žižek. Within the frameworks of an Anglophone philosophy, we made a comparison of the 20th-century pragmatist approaches based on the exceptionalism and the exclusion of the Absolute Other from the intersubjective consensus and of the modern neopragmatist tendencies shaped on the principles of the generalized patience and extension of the framing of the subjectivity with the post-territorial regulation. The hermeneutical and phenomenological problems of the otherness typical for continental philosophy were covered with the analysis of the genealogy of the feeling leading to the victimization of the Other, its identification with Me, or its recognition with the preservation of the own identity. The author also analyzes ways to find a social consensus in the conditions of the antagonism between the emancipatory interests of different marginalized groups. Generally, the ways of adequate coexistence, which support the universal solidarity in a situation the global challenges humanity, had been demonstrated. That is why, finding out of a compromise in the analysis of the problem of the Otherness will be achieved with a realization of the following factors: all-affected principle, formed on the basis of the equal agency for all the subjects of communicative action for consensus with the help of a network activism, and a realization of the principles of a diacritical hermeneutics on the basis of the empathy to the Other and the termination of his/her marginalization. For this, it was offered to gain the equal rights for all the living forms for their own modes of existence to avoid antagonism between different social groups and to predict the impact of the obscurantist elites on the mass consciousness.Manuscript received 06.09.2020