Talk:Other (philosophy)

Redirect

The Other redirects to Subject-object problem. Hyacinth 07:04, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The Other is now an article on the movie. — Frecklefoot | Talk 18:34, May 5, 2005 (UTC)

Checking

This page was barely coherent, so I've rewritten it. I'm not a philosopher though, so it needs checking. Also, I've added some invisible queries within the text that need answering.The Singing Badger 18:27, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Women

This is a good introduction but it should be more greatly emphasised that the other is not just women. Otherness also comes out of race, religion and so on. Even beyond this everyone feels other at some point. Even a rich, white man can be made to feel other through social slights. $Insertformulahere$i love being an other person

I see nothing in the article which indicates that the other is just women. The first example given, in the introduction, is Asians construed as the other by Europeans. Hyacinth 06:13, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

You could also talk about Occidentalism as some scholars have written about the way non-western peoples stereotype and Other Westerners(I think Bernard Lewis talks about it or describes it, and Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit have written a book on it.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.218.55.207 (talk) 22:38, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

why no criticisms?

this introduction sucks balls! every other page expresses some sort of criticisms of the thought that is being described, I think that some should be added to this page. mainly from the essay written by Slavoj Zizik titled "Smashing the neighbor's face." Zizek expresses several very interesting, and convincing, arguments against the ethic of the other, most specifically the justifications made by levinas. (Impaler2g19 05:25, 5 December 2006 (UTC))

Yes, the Introduction is deeply wrong. The Other is not first something to do with concepts and then second something to do with persons. The term is constitutively defined (Hegel, Sartre, Fanon) in relation to subjectivity and, specifically the thesis that self-conscious beings require recognition from another self-conscious being in order to exist as such. This thesis thus contrasts with the assumption of individualism that individuals (self-conscious beings) can simply be assumed to exist first before any interaction with others. The issues about subjects and mutual recognition should be the starting point of the article.86.138.0.210 (talk) 14:10, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, this entire article is rooted in post-structural theory. (although I'm not sure what masticating testicles has to do with this problem...) There should be a conscious distinction between between structural Other (aka Big Other) and post-structural other (little other). Zizek has already been mentioned, I would also add Ranciere to the structuralist proponents of Other. People smarter than I could probably propose a few more. Wikipedia- due to its democratic (anarchic?, haha) nature- tends to lag well behind when it comes to trends in theory and I'm guessing this is why this article reveals a clear bias toward post-structuralism (a theory which was cutting edge post 1968 and has now become rather mainstream.) I would argue that post-structuralism's popularity has sealed its demise. I attended a screening of local experimental films a few weeks back and I heard one of the pretentious (also wealthy) patrons refer to an attendance at a "post-modern party." I bit my tongue. Theory and "the many", sigh.

Two Calvin Thomases

In the "some other quotations" section, there's a link to Calvin Thomas. The Calvin Thomas listed in the sources is the 21st-century scholar Calvin Thomas (critical theorist), for whom I just created a stub. Is the Ferdinand de Saussure quote something from that Calvin Thomas, writing about de Saussure, or is it something that de Saussure wrote himself, quoting the linguist Calvin Thomas, who was his contemporary? I couldn't tell from the context — the 19th century Calvin Thomas was also a linguist, so de Saussure could have been quoting him, but the 21st century Calvin Thomas is a theorist who has written on the concept of the Other, and he could have quoted de Saussure. If anyone knows which is being referenced here, please ensure that the link points to the right place. Thanks. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 18:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Copyright Violation

Hey y'all. This article is one huge copyvio. See here [1]. Eclectek ^{C T} 15:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

It is not the whole article, just three sections. The offending material was added at 03:32, March 16, 2007 by User:74.102.64.140. It has been removed. --Blainster 09:09, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Vegan advertisement.

At the end of the "History of the Idea" section, am I the only one who thought the final addition was completely superfluous and unnecessary? It adds nothing to the article itself, or the understanding of the concept, nor is it philosophically or historically important or relevant. It's just a meaningless interjection of vegan propaganda with no real connection to the concept.

The section in question: "The Other manifests in the ethical theory of vegan feminist Carol J. Adams in the form of the absent referent. This refers to a psycho-social detachment between the consumer and the slaughtered animal which occurs when people eat meat."

I'd remove it, but I imagine this discussion panel is here for a reason. - AceRoccola 05:38, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I agree whole-heartedly, the sentence in question does not sinc with the work and adds little to it except to provide an example of the concept in use from a particularly radical perspective. The last thing this article needs is to fill itself with a glut of misc. examples as the concept is so pervassive that it has seeped into countless gender and ethnic studies. --70.190.102.19 (talk) 13:43, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Surely though, since that section describes many 'forms' the Other is given, the Otherisation of the non-human fits alongside the Otherisation of the non-male and non-white/European etc? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.44.64.142 (talk) 04:42, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

No, remove it if you feel it is irrelevant, others will comment on your change if they disagree. The discussion page is for things like major and persisting disagreements. Otherise we dive in and alter if we feel we can justify our case. TonyClarke (talk) (a vegan!) —Preceding comment was added at 12:24, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't really understand this article much/at all. Especially what Beauvoir is saying. That this culture is concerned with men to the detriment of women? AND that we are wrong to think that gender differences are to do with the self [that some difference in gender can make two people distinct]? SO is Beauvoir saying that those philosophers mentioning "the Other", other than to say "this is not Other to that", are oppressing minorities? Just that seems a bit weak; is it impossible to consider women, so that a man cannot be Other? Yeah but mostly the idea of "the Other" is meant to I guess preserve individuality, and leave concepts incomplete, and [like most ethics] claim everyone must be responsible not selfish. See if you are the Other then we have different obligations, but then again my obligations go beyond myself or the claims I make [I am obliged to the Other]; if it is decided that the article is fine as it is then even if I disagree I shouldn't change it. THAT'S sort of how I see it: the idea is good. Anyway the idea is certainly difficult and this article doesn't help much imo. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.150.97.215 (talk) 02:15, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

My point is mostly that doesn't Levinas use this concept. Surely most philosophers would say that Levinas is a better philosopher of ethics than Michael Warner, even Beauvoir. Perhaps the confusion is because this article begins by defining the term as one of continental philosophy; but then dives into what seems a bit like an anthropological definition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.150.97.215 (talk) 02:47, 7 July 2008 (UTC)

Husserl

Doesn't the Existential use of the concept of the Other go back to Husserl's work on intersubjectivity? If so, why isn't that mentioned? -- 213.6.14.165 (talk) 21:43, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it does and should be. Andrewa (talk) 15:06, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Theory of Others

Someone has put together Theory of Others which is suppose to be a joke or something. Could a more experienced editor help get it removed?--Ducio1234 (talk) 02:52, 14 March 2009 (UTC)

History of Idea

Rimbaud was not the first to use the phrase, nor was Hegel even "among the first". In a commentary on Levinas i remeber reading that it has been used as far back as Plato - I don't have the source material for that though - could someone look into this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ross.Brighton (talk • contribs) 05:06, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

Indivudation /* History of the idea: Levinas quote */

What is indivudation? It's not in OED or Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. I inserted a wikilink to nothing (redlink) in hope that some cleverer soul can do at least a stub to add to the understanding of this article. Maryna Ravioli (talk) 01:58, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Do you mean individuation? Oulipal (talk) 08:59, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Who?!

It is interesting to see that someone most academics would have never heard of made it to the bibliographical list, with an essay title cryptic to the point of asininity:

Zuckermann, Ghil‘ad (2006), "'Etymythological Othering' and the Power of 'Lexical Engineering' in Judaism, Islam and Christianity. A Socio-Philo(sopho)logical Perspective", Explorations in the Sociology of Language and Religion, edited by Tope Omoniyi and Joshua A. Fishman, Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 237–258.

It seems unintelligent to include this paper -which has had absolutely no impact on the academic world- and not include in the same list any works by Edward Saïd. It would not surprise me if Ghil‘ad Zuckermann had edited himself into this article. I honestly do not see who else would have thought of doing so. Oulipal (talk) 14:39, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

I totally agree with Oulipal. We could think that Ghil'ad Zuckermann had edited it himself, or other enthusiastic supporters had. I am a linguist but I have never heard of him in my field as well. I do not understand why there's a lot of information about him on Wikipedia, either. It might be better to check if it is edited by someone from where he is/was, and whether articles on him are made by him for a publicity stunt, or not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.204.136.52 (talk) 06:25, 24 May 2012 (UTC)

All these words and there's like nothing there

Alot of this sounds like a person who thinks they're profound but they're not getting high and then being told to write something as profound as possible.

Reply to the Editor

Yes, the obscure language of this edit indicates an in-crowd definition of the subject, which renders the matter inaccessible to the layman reader.

I am reviewing the provided sources, and shall clean up the text.

Chas. Caltrop (talk) 12:08, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

This article contains both an unreasonable amount of field-specific jargon and a bizarre lack of basic vocabulary pertaining to other fields. The phrase "action term," for example, would be a "verb" in ordinary parlance; the longer phrase, besides adding two syllables, makes the prose less clear by substituting an unfamiliar paraphrase for a simple and ordinary noun. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:602:900:1021:E859:BC0C:8989:C0B1 (talk) 16:48, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

master slave dialectic?

Hegel calls it Lord and Bondsman, not master and slave as Marxists have used it. The former refers to much more than a struggle between classes (as the latter implies) and rather involves a struggle between two different forms of consciousness. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.84.68.252 (talk) 05:32, 1 March 2013 (UTC)

Merger proposal

The article alterity should be merged here, since they deal with the same topic. Evenfiel (talk) 17:49, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Oppose – In Continental philosophy, the relation between the terms "same" and "identity" is not the same as the relation between the terms "Other" and "alterity". The term "Other" is usually used in the context of ethics (see also Face-to-face), while the term "alterity" is usually (but not exclusively) used in the context of ontology (sometimes along with the term "indeterminacy"). Thus, I would be reluctant to support a merger of the two articles. --Omnipaedista (talk) 08:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Name conventions

Hegel, Fichte, Husserl, Sartre... This is fine for students of philosophy who are familiar with their works I suppose. But shouldn't people first be referred to by their full name for identification? 184.98.127.78 (talk) 20:34, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

Reply to Editor 184.98.127.78

Yes, the obscurantism of the language of this edit indicates an in-crowd definition of the subject, which renders the matter inaccessible to the layman reader. I am reviewing the provided sources, and shall clean up the text.

Chas. Caltrop (talk) 12:05, 15 August 2016 (UTC)

Capitalization

Many philosophical terms are capitalized in this article. Does that conform to MOS guidelines? WCCasey (talk) 15:11, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Requested move 11 August 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved DrStrauss talk 19:43, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

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Other (philosophy) → Other – User:HapHaxion (talk) requested this as an "uncontroversial technical move" request "to avoid Election box templates linking to this page if a candidate's party is labeled as 'Other'." This is a completely baseless rationale that could have been solved by fixing the links on the templates themselves. He then edited the Other page to soft redirect to Wiktionary, instead of Other (philosophy) or even Other (disambiguation). I have edited Other to redirect to Other (philosophy) as there is no indication that the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of Other has changed. This leaves the current status of Other redirecting to a parenthetical primary topic, which is redundant, and thus Other (philosophy) should be moved back to Other. 9³ 20:38, 11 August 2017 (UTC) Edited for strikethrough: change to oppose move of Other (philosophy) to Other; support changing Other from Wiktionary redirect to DAB page (currently at Other (disambiguation)) per Andrewa's comment. 9³ 21:06, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose - Other (philosophy) is a concept probably unknown to most readers. Certainly surprising to the find it as the main article rather than a dab page listing all the Other/The Other options. In ictu oculi (talk) 07:23, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

@HapHaxion: you look justified in concern about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:WhatLinksHere/Other In ictu oculi (talk) 07:25, 12 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I suppose I should have clarified for others also. The reason I listed previously was what I was thinking originally when proposing the move (which still holds true), but too many other things link to the page to make it about a specific topic. Maybe move Other (disambiguation) to Other to solve that issue also? HapHaxion _{(talk / contribs)} 01:39, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

That sounds good. 9³ 03:34, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

I can help with the links if there isn't a bot that can do that. 9³ 03:37, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. No primary topic here. -- Necrothesp (talk) 10:13, 14 August 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose and strongly support moving the DAB to he base name. Edmund Husserl is one of my heroes and part of my philosophy major, but frankly even most philosophy professors in Australia would regard his views as not mainstream (sadly IMO, and I think his day will come). Currently, there's no justification for regarding this common (but not universal) English translation of one of his German terms (yes, he wrote in German) as the primary topic. Andrewa (talk) 09:58, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Requested move 30 December 2017

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Not moved. ToThAc (talk) 18:46, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

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• Other (philosophy) → Other
• Other → Other (disambiguation)

– I was utterly astonished to find out that instead of landing on the article about a prominent concept that is widely known across the humanities, a search for "other" took me to a disambiguation page, not a single one of whose other entries is actually known as "other": all are titled "The Other" (and no, "Other" by itself doesn't make much sense as a title, so it's not plausible that readers looking for any one of those obscure films or pieces of fiction could be confused about the presence or absence of a definite article). The RM decision from a few months ago should be reversed and the article moved back to the title it used to have since its creation more than a decade ago. – Uanfala (talk) 21:56, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Pinging participants in previous discussions: 93, In ictu oculi, HapHaxion, Necrothesp, Andrewa, No such user, Narky Blert, Anthony Appleyard. – Uanfala (talk) 21:56, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose. In August 2017, I said: "From what I've seen so far, about half the links to Other relate to Other (philosophy). About a third (the verbal use) relate to Othering. The rest are the usual mixed bag - Other Awards/Languages/Parties etc. where no link is in any way useful. With this amount of confusion, I consider that there is no WP:PRIMARYTOPIC, and that Other should be turned into a DAB page once the incoming links have been cleaned up". I also said: "I also ask this question, in case it be argued again that Other (philosophy) is WP:PRIMARY – what percentage of English speakers know what The Other is? I suspect, less (and possibly a lot less) than 1%". See Talk:Other#Requested move 31 August 2017.

I stand by what I said then. If half the links to a so-called WP:PRIMARYTOPIC are plain wrong, that is unhelpful to readers, is bad for the project, and says to me that there is no WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. Bad links like those hardly ever get fixed, no bot could possibly pick them up. My perennial example is tetrahedron, where the Platonic solid is unquestionably WP:PRIMARYTOPIC; but that page slowly but inevitably collects links which should be to Tetrahedron.

Forcing a WP:PRIMARYTOPIC in unclear cases guarantees that Wiki will over time accumulate more and more bad links. It's difficult enough trying to keep on top of the 600+ bad links to DAB pages created every day. A single extra click is a worthwhile price to pay to ensure that readers get to the topic they are looking for. "Widely known across the humanities" is not the same as "widely known to Wiki readers". We editors write for people who don't know the subject, not for those who already do. Narky Blert (talk) 22:31, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

If any editor wishes to fix incoming links to this specific article, then it's immaterial what its title is. The question of which topic is primary doesn't even arise as there are no other articles contending for the primary title. The related concept of "othering" is covered here as well (in the last paragraph of the lede), and Othering was only recently retargeted to a paragraph about the spin-off meaning at Discrimination; I think it should be repointed back here. I'm not sure I'm seeing the relevance of the question what percentage of English speakers know what The Other is?. The question we need to be asking in this context is what percentage of readers who search on wikipedia for "other" are looking for (anything other than) The Other. – Uanfala (talk) 22:56, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Two entries have just been added to the dab page for Other (album) and Other (Lustmord album), so the PTOPIC issue does arise after all: but again I don't think anyone in a sane state of mind would deem them to be challenging the primary topic status. – Uanfala (talk) 18:57, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

In that the primary topic criteria require the topic to be considered against all other claimants to the article name taken together, these new links are relevant. The claim that the concept in philosophy (etc) is primary was at least shaky before, and it's even shakier now. Andrewa (talk) 21:13, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

"If any editor wishes to fix incoming links to this specific article, ..." And who would that be, then?

I'm nearing the end of my second run through User:DPL bot's list of known bad links to DAB pages, fixing what I can and flagging the rest as {{dn}}. My first run took about 8 months, my second run should take about 5; my future runs will (I hope) take less time still. I have no inclination at all to adopt pages poorly chosen as WP:PRIMARYTOPIC to watch them for new bad links, and I shall not do so. Narky Blert (talk) 01:41, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

See #Discussion below. Andrewa (talk) 10:10, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Incoming links to Other have been fixed, see here. The reason the page was first moved, as I understand it, was due to Other being linked in political party infoboxes. 9³ 23:36, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

Correct. Ease of linking is one of the considerations on which WP:AT is based. Andrewa (talk) 21:13, 31 December 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:NWFCTM. Nothing shows it is a primary topic to people who don't study the humanities._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 22:39, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. I've reflected on this a great deal since the last RM, and ISTM that this is a classic case of reader experience being best served by a DAB at the base name. This means for example that any editor who links to other from an article gets a helpful message on their talk page from the excellent DPL bot, so the vast majority of these links, many if not most of which would otherwise go to the wrong page, are fixed immediately. Andrewa (talk) 03:41, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
  • That's kind of what Narky Blert was saying above. But what this amounts to is the bizarre situation of letting the reader-facing topic structure of the encyclopedia to be determined by back-room considerations of how DPL maintenance reports are generated. – Uanfala (talk) 17:38, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
    • It's far from the most bizarre thing about Wikipedia. And it would be even more bizarre if we compromised reader experience by basing our decisions on how we think these back-room considerations should work, rather than on the way they do work (and mostly work well IMO). If you think you can improve on the way DPL-bot works, talk to the operator user:JaGa (no ping deliberately, I think we need to work out more of what the proposal is before bothering them). But yes, my main point was one of the several points User:Narky Blert made in their !vote above (and I don't think your replies there addressed any of them, frankly). Andrewa (talk) 20:51, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose per WP:NWFCTM and WP:ASTONISH. Disambiguation is working just fine, and is the best solution in this case. The philosophical concept is not WP:PTOPIC. CookieMonster755✉ 04:36, 31 December 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose. As already stated, no clear primary topic here. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:05, 3 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose. I agree with Andrewa's position below - just because Other is not a candidate title for any other article, "Other" is a likely search term for almost any of the numerous articles listed on the Other dab page. I believe that's true to a degree sufficient to mean this article is not the primary topic for the "Other". But, then, I haven't seen any page view stats on all those Other articles. If they're all relatively insignificant then I reserve the right to change my opinion on this. --В²C ☎ 00:10, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
  • The current article receives 6.13 times as many views as the next most-viewed article and gets slightly (1.18x) more views than all the rest combined ([2] [3]: providing two links as the number of articles exceeds the tool's limit; these numbers include "Othering" and the various "The Other" but do not include PTMs or entries without articles of their own). – Uanfala (talk) 00:50, 4 January 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose: Other is a word, it could mean anything. And per WP:NWFCTM and above "others" said. Let There Be Sunshine (talk) 09:36, 5 January 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

not a single one of whose other entries is actually known as "other" [4]

The question of which topic is primary doesn't even arise as there are no other articles contending for the primary title. [5]

I have a different interpretation of the guidelines, obviously, but this may bear investigation.

Both these comments by the nom seem to assume that other topics are only relevant to the decision to disambiguate if the ambiguous title is needed for an article on these other topics. That's the opposite of what I think both the spirit (clearly) and letter (perhaps less clearly) of the guidelines indicate. For example, if a title is not needed for its primary topic, that doesn't make it available for another topic, instead it becomes a primary redirect.

This is a far more complex case, but the same principle applies. Other topics for which better titles exist remain relevant to deciding whether the philosophical concept is primary. And by both significance and search likelihood (which I have often described as the two criteria of primary topic but they're really two aspects of the same one) there is (perhaps as a result) no primary topic in this case, IMO. Andrewa (talk) 10:10, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

This is a really novel interpretation of the primary topic criteria, maybe you'll get more meaningful feedback if you bring it up at WT:DAB? Fwiw, I've never seen partial title matches or vaguely related terms ever be taken into account when deciding the primary topic. – Uanfala (talk) 13:33, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Andrewa, from the plain wording of Is there a primary topic? (IMO that guideline overstresses the desirability of picking a WP:PTOPIC, but that would be a different discussion. I am arguing on the basis of the current guideline.)

IMO there is one question which should decide all issues like this – What will most help our readers? In this instance, it's a DAB page. Most readers will never have heard of the specialist philosophical usage. Why try to confuse them?

I have posted at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Other, inviting comments. Narky Blert (talk) 21:25, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

FWIW (because all Wikis have different rules). In French Wiki fr:Autre is a DAB page, linking to fr:Autrui for the philosophical meaning. The English article Other (philosophy) links to the German article de:Othering; which is about the philosophical term and is not about Othering in the English sense. de:Ander, de:Der Andere and de:Die Andere are all DAB pages in German Wiki. I haven't found a German page with "Ander" or the like in the title which relates to The Other. Narky Blert (talk) 21:45, 3 January 2018 (UTC)

"What will help our readers?", asks Narky Blert. That's the point of WP:PTOPIC, and why we try to determine whether there is one here. I mean, if most people searching with "other" are searching for this article, then what would help our readers the most is putting this article at Other. Given the page view counts noted above, I'm beginning to think maybe this is the PTOPIC after all. --В²C ☎ 02:37, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

The recent retargetting of The Other from The Other (1972 film) to this page illustrates the danger of choosing a WP:PTOPIC when there isn't one. It broke 25 links: 3 related to philosophy, 3 to the novel, 2 to the band, 1 to a ballet, 1 to both novel and 1972 film, and the remaining 15 to the 1972 film. I have just retargetted The other to this page. There were 7 incoming links, all of which related to philosophy, which I fixed per WP:FIXDABLINKS. Narky Blert (talk) 10:24, 4 January 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Capital letters for "Other", "Othering", etc?

• Having looked over MOS:CAPS I can't find anything to indicate that capitalised "Other", "Otherness", "Othering", etc is consistent with the MOS, which implies that the article needs correction. (Same goes for the capitalised "Self".) However, I haven't already done this because I may have missed something.

The issue of capitalisation has been raised before by WCCasey (talk · contribs) who also questioned whether this article complies with WP:MOS. Since it definitely isn't a proper noun, the only case for keeping the current capitalisation I can see is that it may be especially common in academic/scholarly sources.

My understanding is that although it is common in philosophy, it's not overwhelmingly so to the extent that it would be weird not to capitalise "the Other". For example, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article for Emmanuel Levinas apparently only capitalises "the Other" in book titles even when referring the specialist term.

My anecdotal experience is that "Other" may be capitalised in the context of continental philosophy (a practice that I suspect may be influenced by German, where all nouns are capitalised, although it also seems popular with people who like Lacan so maybe it's French thing), however this is not a universal practice and it is actually uncommon in other contexts where the philosophy of "the Other" has been influential, such as the sociology and politics of othering. I don't recall ever seeing "othering" capitalised as is done in this article and it seems like it's done here for consistency only. However, this isn't really my field so I could be dead wrong about this.

I suggest de-capitalising "the Other" and associated terminology in this article. -- Scyrme (talk) 03:50, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

@WCCasey: Hello, hope you don't mind the ping. I know it's been a while, but after seeing this article I decided to check the talk page to see if this conversation has already been had. Doesn't seem like it has, since no-one replied to you until now. -- Scyrme (talk) 03:50, 13 December 2021 (UTC)

In my experience it's about half-half on capitalization, and it does tend to be more Europeans who capitalize. But for me it's often useful, just for ease of reading, for it to be capitalized. M.luochuanensis (talk) 20:34, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

If it's an arbitrary preference then Wikipedia's manual of style should take precedence, and I haven't seen anything in the MOS which would justify this usage of capitals. – Scyrme (talk) 22:18, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

A Large Part of this Article Reads As Advocacy

complaining, not an actual request, consider answered as N/A Dronebogus (talk) 12:31, 4 August 2022 (UTC)

While some of what is written here identifies various authors’ views on the concept of the other, a large part descends into just some post-structuralist grad student waxing rhapsodic about his political views. These can be found, not surprisingly, when the subject of race, gender, and post colonialism are broached. The amount of rewriting it would take is significant, even to get it to the point of coherent let alone an objective description of the matter. Whole paragraphs would best be trashed, such as on racial aspects. I have no inclination to do so since the topic is so ludicrous and arcane to begin with, but it reflects poorly on Wikipedia (then again, what else is new). Sychonic (talk) 22:48, 14 July 2022 (UTC) Please be more specific about what text/sources you object to. Dronebogus (talk) 14:46, 16 July 2022 (UTC)