ABSTRACT
The subject, once understood as the self, is positioned in relation to the other. The self-other relationship can be taken as providing, in different ways, the place of the subject; the subject is in its already present relation to the other.1 It is the subject’s positioning that provides the locus of the ethical. While there may be necessary ethical reason to allow the otherness of the other to be, there
could be no such thing as absolute alterity. The absolutely other would be simply unrecognisable. For the presence of the other to function as that which demands an ethical response, the other must be both same and other; the other must have this position at one and the same time. The copresence of sameness and otherness depends upon some type of recognition. The simultaneity of time is what allows for the introduction of this form of complexity. At any one time the sameness of the other must endure along with its otherness. The force of this description pertains once it becomes important to take up the particular determinations of human existence. Within such determinations the self is defined as both self and other. The self can recognise its own being as an other in the claims for its autonomy. Autonomy becomes the assertion by the self not of its selfhood per se, but of its alterity. The possibility that such an assertion could be given any credence relies, at the most minimal level, on an enduring and shared conception of self. And yet the situation is more demanding than it seems. There are two additional factors that need to be sketched prior to any conclusions being drawn. The first pertains to the recognition of alterity and the second to that which delimits the place and positioning of the autonomous subject. These two positions are obviously interrelated. Addressing them, therefore, will demand that consideration be given to their necessary connection.
