Other (philosophy)

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The Other is a fundamental concept in continental philosophy and psychoanalysis, referring to alterity—that which is not the self and cannot be fully assimilated to the subject’s identity, consciousness, or agency. Rather than denoting merely another empirical person, the Other designates a structural, symbolic, or ethical exteriority through which subjectivity, desire, language, and social meaning are constituted.

The concept becomes central in nineteenth- and twentieth-century European thought, particularly in German idealism, phenomenology, existentialism, ethical philosophy, and Lacanian psychoanalysis, where it plays a decisive role in theories of recognition, alienation, desire, law, and ethics.


Historical Background

German Idealism and recognition

A decisive philosophical articulation of alterity appears in G. W. F. Hegel, for whom self-consciousness is not self-grounding but emerges only through recognition by another self-consciousness. In the Phenomenology of Spirit (1807), the master–slave dialectic demonstrates that the subject becomes aware of itself only through a conflicted relation to an Other whose recognition is necessary yet unstable.[1]

This insight—that subjectivity is mediated by alterity rather than preceding it—exerts lasting influence on later existential, phenomenological, and psychoanalytic theories.

Existentialism and objectification

In Jean-Paul Sartre’s Being and Nothingness (1943), the Other is experienced through the gaze, which objectifies the subject and produces alienation and conflict. The self becomes aware of itself as seen, judged, or fixed from the standpoint of the Other, introducing a constitutive tension between freedom and objectification.

Simone de Beauvoir extends this analysis in The Second Sex (1949), arguing that within patriarchal culture woman is positioned as the Other—defined relationally and subordinately to man, rather than as an autonomous subject. This formulation becomes foundational for feminist theory and later critiques of structural domination.[2]

Levinas: The Ethical Other

A radically different account of alterity is developed by Emmanuel Levinas, for whom the Other is ethically prior to the self. In Totality and Infinity, Levinas argues that the face of the Other confronts the subject with an infinite ethical demand that cannot be reduced to knowledge, reciprocity, or ontology. Ethics begins not with autonomy or rational law but with responsibility to the Other, whose alterity remains irreducible.[3]

Levinas’ account strongly influences post-war ethical philosophy but diverges sharply from psychoanalytic approaches, which locate alterity not primarily in ethical encounter but in language and symbolic structure.

The Other in Psychoanalysis

Freud and implicit alterity

In Sigmund Freud, alterity is not formalized as a distinct philosophical category, yet it is implicit in the figures of authority, prohibition, and identification that structure psychic life. The father, the law, and the superego function as internalized Others that mediate desire and conflict, particularly in the Oedipus complex.[4]

It is with Lacan that the Other receives a systematic and technical formulation.

Lacan: The Other and the Symbolic

Imaginary other (little other)

In Jacques Lacan’s theory, the imaginary other (French: l’autre, lowercase) belongs to the Imaginary register and refers to the specular counterpart encountered in identification, rivalry, and narcissism. In the mirror stage, the ego is formed through identification with an image that appears coherent and whole, producing a misrecognized unity structured by rivalry and alienation.[5]

Symbolic Other (big Other)

The symbolic Other (French: l’Autre, capitalized) designates the locus of language, law, and symbolic authority. It is not another person but the structural position from which meaning, norms, and speech are articulated. The subject enters language by alienating itself in the signifiers of the Other.

Lacan’s formulation that the unconscious is the discourse of the Other indicates that unconscious formations are structured by signifiers that precede and exceed the individual subject.[6]

The symbolic Other is structurally incomplete—it lacks ultimate guarantee—a fact later formalized by Lacan through the notion of the barred Other.

Desire, Lack, and Recognition

Lacan’s dictum “desire is the desire of the Other” does not mean that desire aims at another person but that desire is articulated through the symbolic field in which the Other’s demand is presumed. Desire arises from the subject’s encounter with lack—both its own and that of the Other.

This structural lack gives rise to the objet petit a, the object-cause of desire, which is not a satisfiable object but the remainder produced by the subject’s entry into language.[7]

For both Hegel and Lacan, recognition is constitutive of subjectivity, yet in neither case is it harmonious: recognition is mediated by conflict, misrecognition, and structural opacity.

Feminist and Postcolonial Extensions

Beyond psychoanalysis and philosophy, the concept of the Other has been widely employed in feminist, postcolonial, and cultural theory to analyze systems of domination.

Building on de Beauvoir’s formulation, feminist theory examines how gendered subjects are constituted through asymmetrical relations of otherness. In postcolonial theory, thinkers such as Edward Said analyze how colonial discourse constructs colonized peoples as exotic, inferior, or dangerous Others, thereby stabilizing the identity of the colonizer.[8]

Theoretical Significance

Across philosophical and psychoanalytic traditions, the Other functions as a structuring limit: something essential to subjectivity that cannot be fully known, mastered, or integrated. Whether figured as recognition, law, language, the gaze, or ethical demand, the Other marks the point at which the self encounters alterity and loses its illusion of autonomy.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. 1807. Trans. A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.
  2. ↑ de Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex. 1949. Trans. H. M. Parshley. New York: Vintage, 1989.
  3. ↑ Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. 1961. Trans. Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969.
  4. ↑ Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id. 1923. Standard Edition, Vol. XIX. London: Hogarth Press, 1961.
  5. ↑ Lacan, Jacques. Écrits. 1966. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977.
  6. ↑ Lacan, Jacques. The Seminar, Book XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. 1964. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: W. W. Norton, 1978.
  7. ↑ Evans, Dylan. An Introductory Dictionary of Lacanian Psychoanalysis. London: Routledge, 1996.
  8. ↑ Said, Edward. Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978.
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