The question of the other in French phenomenology (original) (raw)

2011, Continental Philosophy Review

I would like to show how with Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas, we have to do with three different ways of understanding the experience of the other. For Sartre it is a visual experience, the experience of being looked at by the other, so that the experience of the other is understood as a confrontation; for Merleau-Ponty, the experience of the other necessarily implies coexistence and what he calls ''intercorporeality,'' so that for him the other is never to be found in front, but instead beside me, in reciprocity with me; for Levinas, the experience of the other is the experience of a non-reciprocity, of an assymetrical relation, because the experience of the other is for him an ethical and not an ontological experience, and because this experience of the face of the other is the experience of a speaking and not in the first place corporeal presence. There are consequently three different ways of finding an access to the other : the look for Sartre, intercorporeality for Merleau-Ponty and the face for Levinas. Keywords Sartre Á Merleau-Ponty Á Levinas Á The other Á The face Á Intercorporeality Our experience is at first experience not only of the world but also of the others, in the sense that in daily life, we are always already involved in a relation with the others and we consider that their existence goes without saying. But as soon as we try to think the experience of the other, we are confronted with problems. With the experience of the other, we are in the same situation as we are with the experience