Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

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Understanding narratively, understanding alterity

Philip Lewin

pp. 375-383

Abstract

Phenomenology's systematic exploration of how a world comes into existence for knowers – knowers who are often conceptualized as individual and ostensibly isolated – requires that it provide some account of the constitution of alterity. In this paper, I address this issue by arguing that we apperceive alterity in terms of the intentionality of behavior. A corollary of this argument is that the apperception of an alter as specifically human is a secondary attribution, following the primary apperception of intention. I further argue that the intentionality of behavior is understood through the projection of a narrative frame, or a "protonarrative," onto the alter's behavior. I suggest that protonarrativity is the form that experience takes as its ontological condition. Our living is not simply known to us reflectively as protonarrative; rather, experience is lived as protonarrative.

Publication details

Published in:

(2005) Human Studies 28 (4).

Pages: 375-383

DOI: 10.1007/s10746-005-9003-4

Full citation:

Lewin Philip (2005) „Understanding narratively, understanding alterity“. Human Studies 28 (4), 375–383.