The human being is the other of the human being

Man is the other of man. I remember having used this title in another article of mine long ago. Since we are accustomed to otherness (as in categorizing, othering) generally being given a negative meaning, the idea that man is a wolf to man can readily come to mind from here as well. Yet this otherness is the most fundamental level of human existence. The station of otherness is a station exempt from definitions, from categorizations, from being consumed within our conceptions. It is the most protected state of the Other.

The place where a human being begins to become human is where he meets the other, begins to know himself through the other, and, as he comes to know himself, becomes able to see his difference too.

Without difference, it would be impossible for people to know one another; no one could tell anyone apart from anyone else. We distinguish ourselves from the other by our difference, and the other from ourselves by his difference.

Just imagine for a moment that all people were identical to one another. No one would even want to think what kind of situation would result. All of the human being's manifestations in this world begin with, or continue from, an infinite and boundless differentiation. Difference is also the foundation of identity. Perhaps in our Turkish the word does not convey that meaning in the same way, but in Western languages, while "identity" expresses a person's sameness with himself that never repeats in any other form, this sameness also includes his differentiation from the other.

The components that make up our identity as human beings never recur in a second human being. The face, height, build and bodily form of each of the 8 billion people on earth are entirely unique. Each person's fingerprint differs from every other; in each person's eye retina and DNA, he realizes his identity and his sameness with himself by differentiating himself from others, in a way that his own singularity does not repeat. This difference holds not only with the 8 billion people living today but with all the people who have ever lived.

This differentiation is in itself one of God's greatest miracles. We have been created from a male and a female and made to exist among "peoples and tribes so that we may know one another" (Hujurat). Our differences are an inevitable consequence of our existence as human beings. We have been made different, that is, other, to one another. But this otherness and difference are not for establishing superiority over one another, for nurturing a megalomaniac admiration of ourselves, or for putting on a narcissistic air of superiority toward others.

Of course, the forms in which these differences manifest themselves can easily seduce human beings into this megalomania and this narcissism. Yielding to that seduction diverts the human being onto a path that takes him out of his humanity, and it has been the path onto which man, ever since the day he came into being, has been constantly seduced and led astray without ever learning his lesson. Iblis, who put forward his own difference (that he was created from fire) and refused to prostrate to Adam, was of course the first to stray onto this path. That is why Iblis became the pioneer of racist thought and feeling. The interesting and ironic side of the matter is that the racism he first represented has not been surpassed by today's racists. Racism has always manifested itself as such a primitive, such an archaic and such a contemptible idea.

Difference is also a trial for the human being. The Other is not man's enemy, adversary or hell; on the contrary, he is man's trial, his door opening to paradise, and the field in which he can realize his own humanity. The Other is also where our human responsibility toward him, and therefore ethics, begins. How are we going to treat the Other?

What are the Other's rights against us?

The Jewish Ten Commandments say: you shall not kill the Other, you shall not lie to him, you shall not steal his property, you shall not engage in usury or prostitution with him. Yet at the top of finance capitalism based on interest, of the arms trade that causes mass deaths, of the porn and prostitution sector, and of the world of propaganda and advertising, there are Jewish names. Israel's massacres, its seizure and theft, its financial exploitation, and every sort of human rights violation are not lacking either. Against whom does it do this? Against the Other.

There is a strange situation here, of course. Years ago in Tezkire magazine we had published an interview with the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, indeed the philosopher of the Other and of the philosophy of ethics. In it Levinas was asked precisely about this contradiction displayed through Israel. His answer was of course not simple, and it came after some hesitation, but its consequences were chilling. However much he bent and twisted his words, it meant this: Palestinians were not counted as Other. For they did not even possess a humanity that Jews would need to take into account. They were the enemy, and they did not hold the status of Otherness in which the rules of ethics (the ten commandments) apply. Therefore they deserved that oppression by Israel. The property of those who are not counted as Other can be stolen, their children can be killed, their homes can be seized, and they can be lied to. Because they have no share in the book, they are ummi, they are gentiles, they are enemies, and they do not deserve to be treated as human beings.

For Levinas, Otherness is not an opposition; it is actually a category to be held transcendent and to be respected. But only 'those who are of us' could enter this category, as an honor. Yet the Other, as the name itself says, is someone else, someone else in his foreignness that we can never encompass, never exhaust and never fully know.

Indeed, ethics begins precisely in our attitudes toward the Other, and this widespread contradiction always requires this question: Who is the Other? How do we define him? In defining him, are we not actually pushing him into our own categories and dissolving him within our own identity? A definition that removes his difference is of course not adequately just either, but what of considering ourselves exempt from every kind of ethical responsibility toward him on the grounds that he is different...

Are Muslims the other to one another? Is the Other those who are not Muslim? Is otherness a category of being whose boundary can be drawn this simply?

How much of the good we want for ourselves can we want for the other? Are we dreaming of a world worth living in only for ourselves, or do we have a solution, an ethic, an approach that ensures the good and happiness of others as well?

From this question, what path leads to a political philosophy that will be a balm for the heart and a hope for humanity? Let us go a little further.