The Other European Views of
Assessment
Despite numerous efforts by lawmakers, philosophers, theologians, and poets, the deep gulf between self and the Other has continued to plague the modern world. Although Jews gained more freedoms after the early nineteenth century and were increasingly integrated into Christian society, by the 1890s anti-Semitism had reached new levels of intensity, making possible the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the Holocaust, and subsequent pogroms in Poland and Russia following World War II and continuing into the early twenty-first century. The world continues to struggle with the dialectics of self and other, in intellectual and popular culture, in economic and military terms, and in issues regarding the legal rights of immigrants, refugees, prisoners of war, criminals, and others who society at large does not accept or tolerate (Levinas, pp. 145–149. Ancient man regarded barbarians or even members of neighboring city-states as other. Medieval people used images of monsters to characterize believers of other religions as dangerous infidels or heretics. These as well as homosexuals, apostates, the possessed, and even women were considered to be the Other, both threatening and dangerous (Goodich). In the early twenty-first century, dominant societies have created a variety of new images of the Other, such as illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, political refugees, Muslim terrorists, and imagined creatures from outer space (Schreiner).
The content of the theoretical template of the Other has changed over the centuries but its fundamental binary opposition that the self always establishes barriers to the Other in order to create an identity—a process that is possible only through deliberate differentiations—remains. While not inherently hostile or dangerous, in most cases, throughout history people have tended to cast the Other in the worst possible light because the self usually chooses a path toward itself by rejecting the Other and establishing a close-knit community (family, village, church group, country, and people). Since the Middle Ages individual writers, poets, philosophers, and theologians have argued in defense of the Other and have made serious attempts at breaking down the rigid barriers between it and the self, demonstrating that open-mindedness and tolerance are values that have long been important in human society. In other words, arguments for the humane, integrative treatment of the Other have been proposed throughout history, with the idea of tolerance arising in different contexts in different cultures and historical periods. Since the creation of the U.S. Constitution and the Code Napoléon, however, Western societies, particularly, have struggled, more or less successfully, to establish institutional frameworks and legal, social, economic, and religious conditions through which the constructive interaction between self and other have become increasingly possible (Wierlacher, 1993).
See also Anti-Semitism; Demonology; Enlightenment; Heresy and Apostasy; Humanity; Mysticism; Occidentalism; Orientalism; Toleration.
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Albrecht Classen
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