Suchergebnisse

Alterity or otherness is a central notion in cultural anthropology and philosophy, as well as in other disciplines. While anthropology, with its aim of understanding cultural difference, tends to take otherness as a fact, there have been vigorous attempts in contemporary philosophy, particularly in phenomenology, to answer the fundamental question: What is the Other? This book brings the two approaches to otherness - the hermeneutical pragmatics of anthropology, and the radical reflection of philosophy - together, with the goal of enriching one through the other. The philosophy of the German phenomenologist Bernhard Waldenfels, up to now little known to anthropologists, has a central position in this undertaking. Waldenfels's concept of a responsivity to the Other offers to cultural anthropology the possibility of a philosophical engagement with the Other that does not contradict the project of making sense of concrete empirical others. The book illustrates the fertility of this new approach to alterity through a broad spectrum of themes, ranging from reflections on theory formation, via discussions of race and human-animal relations, to personal meditations on experiences of alterity

In this commentary to Heinz Streib's article "Wisdom and the Other," I provide a different reading of Bernhard Waldenfels' responsive phenomenology. In contrast to the author, I stress the relationality of Waldenfels' conception of the radical Other which can only appear experientially by withdrawing from a meaning-bestowing, ordering response. It is only indirectly, through the inevitable insufficiency of our responses that the Other or alien presents itself. The intertwinement of alienness and order, I argue, leads to a responsive ethics in which morality und amorality must be distinguished contextually and situationally, not in absolute, timeless terms. This is problematic for Streib's attempt to operationalize the radical Other in wisdom research, in at least two respects. For one, to integrate the radical Other as an evidential object into psychological models of wisdom goes against the alienness of the Other in Waldenfels. Secondly, from the perspective of a relational responsive ethics, wisdom cannot be defined by certain psychological and ethical traits. This second point is illustrated by Waldenfels' understanding of Socrates which deviates significantly from the one presented in the article.

Reigniting a tradition of learning from experience, Search After Method is a plea for livelier forms of anthropology. The anthropologists in the collection recount their experiences of working in the field, framed within a range of anthropological debates. The book thus provides accounts of lived experiences from both extensive and contemporary fieldwork as well as offering solutions for how to evolve the art of anthropological research beyond what is currently imagined