Philosophy of Radical Alterity in 21st Century - Between the Other and the Alien

• Applicant: Dr. Sergei Stepanishchev, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Theoretical Philosophy ; Practical Philosophy
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 560026562

This research proposal seeks to explore and resolve a profound deadlock within contemporary philosophy of alterity, where otherness is prioritized - ontologically, epistemologically and ethically - over sameness that is questioned either as a malignant misconception about how the world really is, or as a contingent, violent, egotistic, blind, primitive and imperialistic force, dissolving and excluding the alterity instead of engaging in a more progressive and complex, although more risky - ethical - relation of encountering it face-to-face with all its promises, threats and demands. The deadlock arises between two versions of philosophy of alterity: (the anthropocentric) philosophy of the Other, created by Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida in the second part of the 20th century, and what I call the contemporary (anti-anthropocentric) philosophy of the Alien (I use this name as an umbrella term roughly synonymous to what is alternatively known as post-Humanist/post-Anthropocene thinking) emergent in the second part (some earlier) of the 20th - beginning of the 21st centuries. Both of them are interested in radical beyond and what is fundamentally absent. Both defend radical otherness while attacking and rejecting the sameness — repressive, imperialistic power structures that exclude or marginalize alterity. At the same time - and this is the paradox - these two perspectives attack and defend as “the same” and “the other” diametrically opposite things. Literally, one attacks what the other defends. And what especially lets one feel uneasy with this configuration is that it’s possible, almost inevitable, to see the philosophy of the Alien, from the point of view of the philosophy of the Other, as no less than a betrayal of its very basics, and vice versa. If for Levinas and Derrida the Other is ultimately human, while all the rest of the world is just a multitude of manifestations of the Same, anonymous il y a, for philosophy of the Alien the Same is manifested in humanity and its carbon chauvinism, exceptionalism and inability to think its own contingent and meaningless nature, resulting in ecological catastrophes and “empire of human access”, while the real Other is recognized as ultimately non-human Alien, the Real/matter itself, a thing, an animal, an elementary particle, an extraterrestrial or a cyborg. While both lines of argumentation are convincing, taken separately, together they form a deadlock, to the extent when from the point of view of the first the second seems the utter betrayal of its very essence and vice versa. Without navigating a way out of this philosophical impasse, it becomes challenging to develop a comprehensive ethics of Alterity that is adequate for the 21st century — a time when humanity must reckon with climate change, mass extinction, emergent artificial intelligence, and the ongoing deconstruction of traditional boundaries between nature and culture.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position