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For the final element of our consideration we take our clue from the insight of Levinas. In developing our theme we have seen it is characteristic of the attempt to adhere to the metaphysics of presence that there is an effort to reduce absence to being a converted mode of presence, or at least having presence being more primordial than absence. Another way of saying this is that the metaphysics of presence requires the reduction of otherness to sameness, the making being homogeneous in order that being in the mode of presence be a privileged notion. We maintain that nowhere is this more evident than in the philosophical problematic which is concerned with the Other, with other people, other subjectivities. We shall undertake in this chapter an examination of Husserl's doctrine of intersubjectivity. We shall see that Husserl's teaching on the Other is determined by epistemological considerations. That is, the movement of Husserl's thought is one of reducing the otherness of the Other in order to bring the Other into presence. As Levinas indicates, this is the traditional orientation of Western philosophy. It is precisely at one with the metaphysics of presence.

DOI: 10.1007/978-94-010-1387-1_5

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