LOGOS OF THE REPLY FACING THE PATHOS OF THE ALIEN ONE

Abstract

Summary. The Objective of the article is to comprehend the issue of the Other One and the Alien One by examining it through the prism of responsiveness (i.e., the ability to provide answers) as a phenomenon of human being-ness. As Methodological Foundations for the Research, the author has employed the phenomenology tradition, hermeneutics, and dialogue – all of which serve as methods of research in the realm of humanities and allow to analyse phenomena of human being-ness in a manner whereby scientific discourse is employed. The article is built upon the concepts of dialogue-based personalism and also on researches into the Other One and the Alien One that are rooted in the ethical issues pertaining to the essence of dialogue and serve as grounds for the responsive ethics (i.e., the ethics of providing answers). The present work is centred around Bernhard Waldenfels’s ideas on how to response to the Alien One and on Emmanuel Lévinas’s ideas on the matter of responsibility for the Other One. The Academic Novelty consists in the fact that analysis has been undertaken into the causes of the shift in accents from the Other One to the Alien One which has been observed in the contemporary discourse; it also consists in the fact that the issue of the Other/Alien One has been viewed through the prism of the categories of “pathos” and “logos”; and, finally, in the fact that responsiveness-construed as the ability to come up with an answer (response) to the Alien one-shall serve as grounds for the ethos of such rationality which is the output of interpassivity (‘the illusion of activity’) and which allows to smoothen the superficiality and the unreasonable persistence of communicative forms. Conclusions. The issue of the Other One in contemporary academic investigations morphs into the issue of the Alien One-due to multiculturality, globalisation processes, the crisis of identity and subjectivity. That said, the conjunction of dialogue-centred philosophy and responsive phenomenology reveals new horizons in the cause of research into the subjectivity of human being-ness and culture as a variety of dialogue-centred coexistence. Viewed from such a standpoint, a combination of concepts brought forward by Bernhard Waldenfels and Emmanuel Lévinas allows us to outline the foundations of the responsive ethics which stems from the pathosdriven nature of the Alien One; which is able to prevent the Alien One from radical incompliance with the logos of the One’s Own One; but which nonetheless supplies one with resources to come up with a response to the Alien One. The latter elicits the activity of the subject-who, in turn, is then able to provide this response.