“Can the radical other be operationalized?” A commentary to Heinz Streib’s article “Wisdom and the Other: Responsiveness in Development between the Egocentric and Xenocentric Style”

Abstract

In this commentary to Heinz Streib’s article “Wisdom and the Other,” I provide a different reading of Bernhard Waldenfels’ responsive phenomenology. In contrast to the author, I stress the relationality of Waldenfels’ conception of the radical Other which can only appear experientially by withdrawing from a meaning-bestowing, ordering response. It is only indirectly, through the inevitable insufficiency of our responses that the Other or alien presents itself. The intertwinement of alienness and order, I argue, leads to a responsive ethics in which morality und amorality must be distinguished contextually and situationally, not in absolute, timeless terms. This is problematic for Streib’s attempt to operationalize the radical Other in wisdom research, in at least two respects. For one, to integrate the radical Other as an evidential object into psychological models of wisdom goes against the alienness of the Other in Waldenfels. Secondly, from the perspective of a relational responsive ethics, wisdom cannot be defined by certain psychological and ethical traits. This second point is illustrated by Waldenfels’ understanding of Socrates which deviates significantly from the one presented in the article.