Doing Unto Others: A Phenomenological Search for the Ground of Ethics Richard Oxenberg Hume is famous for having said that you cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. But this leads to a puzzle. If you cannot get 'ought' from 'is' then where does the 'ought' come from? To say that it is societally conditioned doesn't resolve the dilemma. Society might condition the particular things ought is applied to, but the concept of 'ought' itself must be already present, already meaningful, in order for it to be applied to anything at all. Whence comes this concept? If it can't be derived from what is, where can it be derived from? Perhaps we can gain some insight by asking why 'ought' cannot be derived from 'is'. This has to do with the presumed value-neutral quality of the 'is'. It is impossible to come to the conclusion that something has value from facts which are all value-neutral, for the simple reason that one cannot validly introduce into the conclusion of an argument anything that was not already implicit in the premises. If you do not begin with a value statement you cannot conclude with one. If all that exist are value-neutral facts, then it is impossible to arrive at a value-laden imperative. Kant attempted to derive the categorical imperative – that one ought always to behave toward others in such a manner that the maxim of one's action can be made a universal law – from our rational nature. But why 'ought' one always to behave rationally – especially if one can show that to behave 'irrationally' in a particular circumstance can gain one an advantage? Kant here has the same problem that Hume noted. He would need to show the value of rationality itself in order to support his claim. But if he defended the value of rationality on any other grounds than itself, say on utilitarian grounds, his entire ethic would be subverted. He must say that rationality, as such, is intrinsically valuable in itself, regardless of its utility for procuring other goods. But how can a claim to intrinsic value be supported? It cannot be supported by argumentation, for this would 2 entail subordinating it to another value from which it might be derived – but then it would not be intrinsic. Intrinsic value can only be pointed to. This leads us to phenomenology. Phenomenology is that discipline which proceeds through 'just looking', and then working out the implications of what is seen. The 'just' in the phrase 'just looking' is not to be dismissed, for it is critical. In phenomenological investigation one endeavors to 'just look' without making any presuppositions, even those concerning the independent existence of what is looked at. Through such presupposiontionless looking one endeavors to reduce one's experience of the world to just what appears – the basis upon which all that we subsequently suppose about the world must be founded. Thus, through phenomenological investigation one aims to experience the evidentiary ground of all knowledge. Can we find a legitimate basis for ethical imperatives through just looking at the phenomena that appear to us? That is the question of this essay. As ethical imperatives pertain to our relation to others, the first thing we will need to consider is how others themselves are revealed to us. To do this we will consider Husserl's treatment of the constitution of the other as presented in his fifth Cartesian Meditation. Then we will ask whether we can find a ground for ethical life on the basis of how the other is manifest. Solus Ipse Husserl begins by noting that some may think the phenomenological reduction will lead inevitably to what he calls a 'transcendental solipsism' (CM 88). Through the phenomenological reduction we restrict ourselves to a consideration of only those phenomena that appear. But the subjectivity of others, by the very fact of their otherness, does not and cannot appear. "Transcendental reduction," writes Husserl, "restricts me to the stream of my pure conscious processes and the unities constituted by their actualities and potentialities. And it seems obvious that such unities are inseparable from my ego and therefore belong to his concreteness itself" (CM 88). 3 If these unities are inseparable from my ego, then how can I become aware of a 'unity' (the subjectivity of the other) that is distinct from my ego? The other's subjectivity is also a 'stream of pure conscious processes' which, if they were to appear to me as such, would be, insofar as they appear to me, indistinguishable from my conscious processes. In other words, I cannot have immediate knowledge of the other's subjectivity, as I do my own, without being that subjectivity, as I am my own. But in that case the other would cease to be other. We would meld into one. It follows that the other qua other cannot be known to me in any immediate way. The other's subjectivity, as such, can never be a phenomenon for me. This leads to a problem for phenomenology itself. The claim of Husserlian phenomenology is that the entire edifice of what we legitimately believe can ultimately be explained through reference to what is immediately given. This claim is necessary if phenomenology is to serve as the primordial foundation of knowledge, as Husserl wishes. But the other's otherness, by the very fact that it is other, can never be immediately given. How, then, do we come to be aware of it? This is the problem Husserl sets out to solve in the fifth Meditation. Reduction to Ownness To do so, he begins by restricting awareness to only that which can be said to be known immediately, the phenomena that appear within the sphere of my 'peculiar owness,' without any presupposition as to their existence in themselves or for others. From this stance we can then ask the question, "How can my ego, within his peculiar ownness, constitute under the name 'experience of something other,' precisely something other..." (CM 94). That is, how do we come to see the world as existing in its own right apart from our experience of it, when our only immediate knowledge of it is through such experience? How can otherness manifest itself through that which is immediate? When we have reduced ourselves to the sphere of ownness, not only does the existence of other subjectivities become questionable, but the entire objective world is called into question. How do we come to regard anything as existing outside of our experience of it? The question is not 4 whether an independent world exists – this is a fundamental assumption Husserl's phenomenology is not out to challenge – but how we come to be aware that one does. How can otherness show up when all 'showing up' is immediate? Only when we discern how we come to know the other can we determine whether or not, in the very way in which we know the other, there is an ethical implication. The Body One of the first things I note when I have reduced the world of my experience to the sphere of my peculiar ownness, is that, of all objects that appear to me in experience, my own body is unique. It is "the sole Object within my abstract world-stratum to which, in accordance with experience, I ascribe fields of sensation...the only Object in which I 'rule and govern' immediately..." (CM 97). The moment I recognize that I am embodied in a spatio-temporal form, and that my body, thereby, exists in relation to other objects that are not my body, I am able to see myself as physically related to a world of objects 'outside of me' (my body). But this leads to a paradox. On the one hand, I am a member of a world full of objects that appear 'outside of me,' but on the other hand, this very world, including those things that I take to be 'outside of me,' is revealed to me within the sphere of my ownness. Thus, there is an 'I' (my 'human ego') whom I look at as a member of the world of objects that are other than it, and there is the 'I' (my 'transcendental ego') who looks, and thereby intends, both this human 'I' and the world of objects to which it is related. The first is seen as a member of a world that transcends it all about, and the second has this world, in a sense, within it, as its intended object. Otherness The transcendental ego, thus, constitutes both my human ego and the world to which it is related, but in doing this establishes a division between the two. There is that which pertains specifically to my embodied human ego, that which I call I, and there is that to which my human ego is related, that which, to the extent that it does not belong to that which I call I, is seen as 5 other. Thus, the transcendental ego divides its experience into two spheres: self and other. But, says Husserl, "every consciousness of what is other, every mode of appearance of it, belongs in the former sphere." (CM 100) The consciousness of what is other is thus distinguished from the actual being of the other itself; the former belongs to the sphere of ownness and the latter to the sphere of otherness. Thus, there need be no immediate experience of the otherness of the other in order for both spheres to be constituted by the transcendental ego through its immediate experience. It is consciousness of the other, which consciousness is itself not other, that leads to the sense of the other's otherness. Thus, we never have to leave the sphere of immediate experience to understand how, within that sphere, otherness might be constituted. But for Husserl, the self/other distinction created by the transcendental ego to account for the difference between one's own body and one's experience of that which lies outside one's body is not the basis upon which the real transcendence of the world can be recognized. The body/other division only gives us the distinction between the human ego and its world of 'other' objects. Both of these, however, are given within the transcendental ego. In a sense, we have shown how the unreflective person might rid herself of solipsism, but we have yet to show how the phenomenological philosopher can. If we are to escape 'transcendental solipsism,' then, we must be able to recognize that the transcendental ego is itself confronted with an other. This we can only recognize in the experience of other subjects who, because their subjectivity is fundamentally hidden from us, must fall outside the sphere of the transcendental ego itself. Husserl contends that the recognition of the otherness of objects (their otherness to the transcendental ego) is ultimately mediated for us by this prior recognition of the otherness of other persons, for whom those objects must also exist. It is only because I recognize that worldly objects exist for other persons as well as for myself, that I must finally recognize such objects as separate existents that transcend my private experience. The question we are led to, then, is how do we come to experience the otherness of the other person. 6 Appresentation The problem we must overcome, as we have said, is that the subjectivity of the other person is never immediately available to me. "If it were," writes Husserl, "if what belongs to the other's own essence were directly accessible, it would be merely a moment of my own essence, and ultimately he himself and I myself would be the same" (CN 109). We must, thus, experience the other's subjectivity, which can never be directly presented to us, through what Husserl calls an 'appresentation.' That is to say, along with experiencing the other's body, we must experience as 'there too,' but hidden from our gaze, the other's subjectivity. Appresentation is something that occurs in our experience of objects as well. We can never see all six sides of a three-dimensional object at once. Immediate looking always presents us with one side or another; we see the object only in perspectives and profiles – never in its wholeness. Yet when we casually look at an object we are not aware of seeing only fragmentary perspectives – we do, indeed, experience the object as a whole. The desk, although I see it only in profile, is nevertheless experienced as a whole desk and not as a mere collection of profiles. Our ability to experience the object as a whole is a result of an appresentation of the hidden sides of the object as we look at one of its sides. "[T]he strictly seen front of a physical thing always and necessarily appresents a rear aspect and prescribes for it a more or less determinate content" (CM 109). Thus, although we see only one side of the object, we 'anticipate' (qua appresentation) its other sides as well, and this permits us to synthesize the object as a unitary whole. The result is that our experience is not of a world of miscellaneous perspectives, but of self-integrated and interrelated objects. Analogously, says Husserl, when we look at another person, the always hidden 'inside' of that person, his or her subjectivity, is appresented to us along with the person's outward appearance. But the appresentation of the person's subjectivity presents a problem that we don't encounter with the object. In the case of the physical object what is appresented is always subject to verification through direct perception, and has in fact been verified for us time and again in the course of past experience with that object or objects like it. We can anticipate what the hidden 7 sides of the object will look like because we have seen them before, and we can have confidence in what is appresented to us because we can always turn the object around and verify whether or not it is the way we anticipate. In the case of a physical object, then, the content of the appresentation comes from prior experiences with the object itself. But no matter how we orient ourselves to the human 'object' we can never make its subjectivity appear. No prior experience has disclosed this subjectivity directly so that we can now apperceive it in the present case. From where, then, do we get the idea of the other's subjectivity? What is it, precisely, that is appresented to us when we apprehend this subjectivity? It cannot be a prior experience of this subjectivity, for that has never been and could never have been presented to us. There must be something in the sphere of our ownness that we attribute to the other, thereby providing the content for what is appresented: "The perception that functions as the underlying basis [of the appresentation]," writes Husserl, "is offered us by our perception of the primordially reduced world, with its previously described articulation – a perception going on continually within the general bounds of the ego's incessant self-perception" (CM 110). Or, put more simply: What we attribute to the other is something of our experience of ourselves. Pairing This occurs, according to Husserl, through what he calls a 'pairing association': "In a pairing association the characteristic feature is that, in the most primitive case, two data are given intuitionally...in the unity of a consciousness and that, on this basis...they found phenomenologically a unity of similarity and thus are always constituted precisely as a pair" (CM 112). In a pairing association what is directly perceived in the one object can serve as the basis for what is apperceived in the other. The two data are associated with one another through their similarity, and this allows the one to be constituted through an apperception of what was originally perceived in the other. In the case of myself and the other, the two data that are paired are our respective bodies. 8 When I perceive the body of another, and recognize it as similar to mine, a phenomenological pairing takes place, in which what is directly perceived as belonging to the body I have the greater access to (my own) is apperceived as belonging to the other body as well. Thus, as I am aware that my body is that of an animate organism, having a psychic life consisting of a stream of subjective experiences, so I apperceive that the other is also an animate organism having a similar subjective life. My apperception of the other as a subject is a result of my direct awareness of myself as one. In a sense, then, I apperceive myself in the other. Of course, I do not imagine that the other is simply another 'me' inhabiting a separate body. I am aware that unlike the 'me' that I have direct access to, I have only indirect access to the 'me' of the other – and this indirect access confirms the other in his or her 'otherness.' The other is, precisely, not me just insofar as I do not have direct access to the other's subjectivity as I do my own. Furthermore, the other's body, though similar to mine, is different from mine both in its physical appearance, and more importantly, in its behavior. The other does not behave like me at every moment, thus I cannot pair every moment of my subjectivity to the other's. Rather, I notice that the other behaves as I might were I experiencing such and such a feeling or motivation. I am able to apperceive the other's subjectivity at any particular moment just insofar as I have had experiences that have led to behavior on my part that is similar to the behavior the other is exhibiting. In this way, I know the other through my knowledge of myself. A criticism sometimes leveled against Husserl here is that I often see the other, not in terms of what my subjectivity would be were I behaving like the other, but in terms of how the other's behavior is affecting me – thus I may see the other as angry or loving, not because I associate my experience of being angry or loving with the other's behavior, but because the other's behavior makes me feel threatened or loved. This would imply a primordial apprehension of the other as, precisely, an other that affects me, experienced without the intermediary of any 'pairing association.' In this case, I do not attribute, by analogy, my own subjective states to the other, but 9 I have an immediate experience of the other in terms of the subjective states the other produces within me. For Sartre, indeed, this is the primary way in which the other is manifest. He maintains that we have just such an apprehension of the other when we experience ourselves as caught in the other's gaze. It is, of course, possible that both these positions are correct, and represent different modes of access to the other. I can have an immediate awareness of the other as affecting me and/or a mediate awareness of the other as he or she actually is in his or her own subjectivity, by analogy with myself. Indeed, the phenomenology of each of these ways of experiencing the other may be quite distinct, and the final impression I have of the other may result from how I balance these two. We will return to this point when we consider the ethical implications of our way of apprehending the other. The Ground of Value We are now in a position to consider some of the ethical questions we began with. Before we can tackle the domain of ethical value, however, we must attempt to get clear on the ground of value itself. Where does value come from? Is it manifest in the private sphere of my own experience and, if so, how? In Ideas 2 Husserl speaks of the perception of immediate and mediate value in the experience of a violin: To begin with, the world is, in its core, a world appearing to the senses and characterized as "on hand," a world given in straightforward empirical intuitions and perhaps grasped actively. The Ego then finds itself related to this empirical world in new acts, e.g., in acts of valuing or in acts of pleasure and displeasure. In these acts, the object is brought to consciousness as valuable, pleasant, beautiful, etc., and indeed this happens in various ways; e.g., in original givenness. In that case, there is built, upon the substratum of mere intuitive representing, an evaluating which, if we presuppose it, plays, in the immediacy of its lively motivation, the role of a value-'perception' (in our terms, a value reception) in which the value character itself is given in original intuition. When I hear the tone of a violin, the pleasantness and beauty are given originarily if the tone moves my feelings originally and in a lively manner...and similarly is given the mediate value of the violin as producing such a tone. (I2 196) 10 I quote this passage at length because it allows us to bring up a number of important points. To begin with, Husserl seems to regard value as something of an overlay upon originally 'straightforward' (and presumably value-neutral) empirical intuitions, as if first of all we are aware of things as sensory objects and only later do we note their having value. With this I would disagree. It is easy to see how Husserl might arrive at this conclusion while engaged in what he regards as the scientific pursuit of phenomenological investigation, for the scientific attitude itself entails a certain practical disengagement from the phenomena as they appear. But I think that Heidegger gets it more right when he says that our original perception of things, when we are not being self-consciously scientific, is in terms of their 'readiness-to-hand,' i.e., their utility and function – in a word, their 'value.' What makes a desk a desk, for instance? It is not its shape, size or color – for all these are variable. It is the use to which we put it. Thus, a table can become a desk and a desk a table without any change to the empirical object. We merely need change its function. This indicates that the identity of objects, as we experience them, has more to do with their value than with their empirical form. First of all, we constitute the objects of the world in terms of that in us which values, and only later, through abstraction, might we come to regard them as mere empirical objects – what Heidegger calls 'present-at-hand.' We are, originally and primordially, valuing beings. But Husserl makes an important distinction when he speaks of the immediate value of the violin's tone, which is experienced as pleasant or beautiful, and the mediate value of the violin itself, which has value only insofar as it produces such beautiful tones. Let us call the value of the violin itself 'secondary value,' and the value of the tone 'primary value.' Things of secondary value have value only insofar as they conduce to something of primary value. The tone, we say, has primary value. But to be more precise, it is not the tone itself that has primary value, but the hearing of the tone, with all the emotional and mental resonances entailed in this hearing. I do not merely hear but feel the tone. It produces a multi-faceted sensation of pleasure – emotionally, sensually, and mentally. These feelings are not mere perceptions of something 'other,' as is my visual perception of the violin. These feelings are qualifications of me myself. They are 11 qualifications of my own subjectivity. I am not, first of all, a valuing being because I assign value to things I perceive. Rather, I assign value to things I perceive because I am first of all a valuing being. I experience my own subjective states as having value-meaning (i.e., as being meaningful in having value). I am an original, ontological, matrix of value. I am that wherein value abides – the primary value to which all secondary value refers. My being is the realm and arbiter of value. Only because of this can I 'perceive' value in things. Let us look at the phenomenon of value more closely. I value the violin for its tone. The tone itself is phenomenally indistinguishable from the subjective modifications it produces in me. These subjective modifications have intrinsic value, their value lies in themselves and not in anything they serve to produce. The intrinsic nature of their value is manifest in the fact that I experience them as of a positive or negative sort. If instead of a beautiful tone I hear a highpitched screech from the violin I am repulsed. The subjective modifications I undergo are negative; they are accompanied by a wish to be rid of them. This 'wish,' of course, need not be brought to explicit cognition. The 'wish' is immanent in the negativity or positivity of the subjective modifications themselves. Thus, my subjective modifications come in various evaluative flavors; some are positive, some negative, and some a complex mixture of the two. Again, we do not have to deliberately evaluate subjective modifications to determine their primary value, for this is immediately given. (Although we do have to evaluate them to determine any possible secondary value they may have – as a temporal being my state at present has implications for my future states, such that a present negative may be valuable in helping to achieve a future positive. Thus, a subjective state may have both primary and secondary value, and these may differ). But, in all cases, my subjective states have an immanent (primary) valuemeaning prior to any evaluative deliberations. As a valuing being, then, I value myself implicitly. All secondary valuing must refer to a primary value that is of value in itself. Such primary value can only be a subjective state of some sort, for only a subjective state can feel itself, and thereby know itself as of intrinsic value. 12 Human beings, we shall say – with a nod to Heidegger – are caring beings. That is, they are intrinsically concerned about their own subjective states. Language gets in the way of clarity here. It is not that we are concerned about our subjective states, as if these subjective states were something separate and distinct from our caring about them – rather these states are inherently 'caring' states; they, in a sense, care about themselves. Their caring for themselves is immanent to them; which is the same as to say that they have intrinsic value. It might be pointed out, further, that such self-relational caring is not necessarily selfish caring. Our caring might be wholly focused upon the welfare of someone else. The mother cares for the child, with little thought to herself. But even in caring for the welfare of the child, this welfare affects her, her caring. She is happy if things go well for the child and troubled if they do not. Her concern might be entirely a concern for the other with no thought to her own 'empirical' self. But still, the very concern she has for the other seeks its own satisfaction. It is still a caring that is implicitly concerned with itself, as caring. Thus, all caring is self-reflective. It is always a caring about itself as well as the objective thing cared about. The Imperative of Caring In every instance of caring, then, there is an implicit demand. It is a demand for the satisfaction of caring. This satisfaction may take the form of a release from physical pain or mental distress, a fulfillment of desire, a retention of a pleasurable state, etc. Depending upon the nature of the caring itself, satisfaction can come in many forms. But every caring seeks some satisfaction, and has, as one of its potentials, the possibility of failing to be satisfied. Caring, thus, is, by its very nature, teleological; it is oriented toward a goal, its satisfaction. This demand for satisfaction that caring makes is, again, inherent to caring itself. Caring does not strictly 'make' such a demand, it is this demand in its very being. Caring, insofar as it is caring, entails an imperative that it be satisfied. But I am not simply a hodgepodge of instances of caring. Rather, as an empirical ego, I am a synthetic unity in which these instances are organized and prioritized, allowed expression or 13 suppressed, given prominence or held in abeyance. My ego is a strategy for resolving the terms of my caring. At the level of the ego I come to regard myself as a unity of value. This unity makes a unified demand to all others: it demands that its value be respected as such. This, I would say, is the birth of the ethical 'ought.' The self-valuing ego, on the basis of the intrinsic value of its caring, makes a demand that it be respected for what it is; i.e., a being of intrinsic value. The 'ought' simply expresses the imperative of caring itself. Caring prescribes that others 'ought' to respect its value. Thus, the being of caring contains within itself its own demand for respect. Such respect, we might note, is articulated in the Kantian formula that all 'rational' beings be treated as ends. We would say the same, except we would substitute 'caring' for 'rational.' All caring beings are, by the very fact of their caring, ends in themselves. This is their ontology. Thus, to acknowledge this, and behave accordingly, is only to acknowledge what they are. In this sense, then, 'ought' is indeed derived from 'is,' but only because the ought already is – it is inherent to the being of caring itself. The Ethical Imperative We can now tie together our discussion of value with Husserl's phenomenological account of the constitution of the other in the fifth Meditation. Insofar as my subjective being makes an inherent demand to be respected, and insofar as my knowledge of the other's subjectivity is the result of a 'pairing association' with my own subjectivity, I cannot acknowledge the other as other without also acknowledging that the other's being makes the same demand as mine. I must acknowledge that the very same demand that I experience directly in myself, in my own subjectivity, is to be found in the other as well. I know the validity of my demand because I have direct access to the caring that is its source. I, therefore, know the validity of the demand of the other, for I know that its source is an analogon to mine. Thus, just as I recognize that I ought to be respected as a caring being, so I implicitly recognize that the other ought to be respected also. The ethical ought is inherent to the other's being, and I know of it because of the ethical ought inherent to my own. To deny the validity of the other's ought would be to deny the validity of my 14 own, for they have the same basis. I cannot, therefore, accept that it is right to violate the other without implicitly allowing that it is right that I be violated as well – but I cannot allow such a thing, for I would be opposing the demands of my own being if I did so. Thus, I must acknowledge the right of the other to respect.1 This, then, is the ethical imperative. It is, as will be noted, the insight that underlies the Golden Rule. One must treat others as one would be treated by others, because others, as other caring beings, have the same intrinsic value as oneself. One can learn of the intrinsic value of others through reflection upon the intrinsic value of oneself. One has direct access only to one's own intrinsic value; and this is because all intrinsic value is subjectivity. A denial of the ethical imperative emanating from the other is an implicit denial of the imperative emanating from oneself. Thus, the rule of ' retributive justice' is simply the converse of the Golden Rule. The Golden Rule says: You should do to others as you would have done to you. Retributive justice says: Be prepared to have done to you what you do to others. These rules are mirror images of one another. Both reflect the fact that the other and I, as caring beings, stand in the same relation to the ethical imperative. But now we run into a difficulty. If Husserl is right about the appresentation of my own subjectivity in the other, and this has the ethical implications we have claimed, how is it that we so often treat others unethically – and do so, often, casually and distractedly, without recognizing that we are doing it? If we truly see ourselves in the other would we not always be vividly aware of our ethical responsibilities to the other? This pertains to the criticism brought against Husserl's account earlier. As a matter of fact, I do not always regard others as they are in themselves, but often only as they are for me. I may apprehend the other, not through a pairing association with myself, but in terms of how I react to the other's behavior. Thus, Peter may be viewed as repugnant, not because repugnance is something pertaining to the being of Peter (which it could not be, for as a caring being, Peter is a 15 being of intrinsic value) but because I feel repulsed, for whatever reason, when Peter enters the room. Perhaps Peter reminds me of someone who has hurt me in the past. Perhaps I have learned to be prejudiced against people of Peter's type. Precisely to the extent that my primary determination of Peter is as a being I react to as opposed to a being I associate with, I am failing to recognize Peter as of primary value in himself, and taking him only as of secondary value for me. This is an unethical stance. It fails to acknowledge the 'ought' inherent to Peter's being. These two ways of apprehending the other, then, imply two different ethical positions – only one of which is true to the ethical imperative as it emanates from the other's caring. The reactionary mode of apprehending the other is ultimately narcissistic and exploitative; it sees the other only as a phenomenon within the sphere of my 'peculiar ownness,' something existing for me, and hence fails to see the other as the person he or she is. This is an inherently unethical mode of apprehension. But there are also unethical modes that may be rooted in the pairing association itself. For instance, to the extent that I have self-contempt, and to the extent that I apperceive the other through a paring association with myself, my very self-contempt might translate into contempt for the other; I lash out against others who manifest what I (secretly) fear or despise in myself. This suggests that an ethical relation to others requires a healthy relation to self. There is much more to be explored here, but we will have to leave these considerations for another occasion. Conclusion Thus, we have answered the questions we began with. 'Ought' can indeed be derived from 'is' because reflection reveals that being is not value-neutral. We do not need to go hunting for the derivation of the ethical 'ought' in elaborate metaphysical theories. It is already inherent to our own being, and discoverable through phenomenological reflection. The fact that my only entry into the other's subjectivity is through seeing it as an analogon to mine, forces me to realize that I am ethically responsible to the other as the other is to me. The only alternative to such an acknowledgment is solipsism, in which I refuse to recognize the otherness of others and come to 16 see them as existing strictly for me. Solipsism, it is often said, is not a viable position, and no one seriously entertains it. But to see the other as of mere secondary value for me is itself a kind of solipsism, for it fails to acknowledge the other as an other – i.e., as a being of independent value. In the course of ordinary life, then, we are more solipsistic than we suppose. And this realization has implications for human community. The establishment of real community entails an acknowledgment of the being-value of others, and thus must be built upon an ethical foundation. We cannot truly participate in the intersubjective world of community to the extent that we take an unethical stance – not simply because it would lead to conflict but, more fundamentally, because such a stance entails a kind of intersubjective blindness. Without seeing others as others (deserving of care and respect) there is no real community – we are then reduced to ourselves alone. To rise above our own lonely isolation, then, we must be respectful of the 'ought' inherent to the other's being. 17 1 It might be objected that, by this logic, I can escape acknowledgement of my ethical responsibility to others simply by denying that others have an ethical responsibility to me. This is technically true, but the question is whether such a denial is ontologically possible. Can we honestly cease to care how we are treated by others without this involving a degradation in our relation to self? I believe the answer is no. But suppose, for the sake of argument, that someone were to insist that she, as a matter of fact, makes no ethical demand upon others. What we might say of such a person is that she has thereby defined herself outside of what we might call 'the circle of moral regard' – that is, she has defined herself as a being having no moral status. There are many things outside the circle of moral regard – tornadoes, diseases, hurricanes – that are a potential menace to us but to which we have no moral obligation. The most prudent response of society to such a person would be to destroy her. She would be a potential menace to us, and we would have no ethical obligation toward her (by her own insistence). Of course, the moment she protested such mistreatment she would, by that fact, have redefined herself as within the circle of moral regard. But my suspicion is that no one with a healthy sense of self can honestly define himself or herself as outside the circle of moral regard; i.e., can honestly cease to care how he or she is treated by others. Works Cited Husserl, Edmund, Cartesian Meditations (CM), Klumer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands, 1995. Husserl, Edmund, Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, Second Book, (I2), Klumer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands, 1989.