120      |     Ekpoma Review, Volume. 5 No. 1., 2019   

 

 

 

LEVINAS’ THEORY OF ALTERITY  
AND THE SKETCHING OF AN 

EPISTEMOLOGY OF OTHERNESS 
 

 

 

 

Abstract 

This paper argues for an epistemology of otherness; an 

epistemology which pursues knowledge not just from the 

knower’s perspective, but also from the known or object of 

knowledge or in a particular way, from the other person’s 

view which is referred to in this paper as the other. It 

develops this thesis from the ethical Alterity of Emmanuel 

Levinas, which privileges the other over the self. This 

mirrors the postmodernist efforts which react against the 

linear and the objectivist outlook of traditional and classical 

philosophy. The outlook of traditional philosophy was 

largely individualistic. The implication of this according to 

Levinas is a philosophy shrouded in egoism and for 

epistemology, our grounds for knowledge claims could be 

partial or incomplete. An epistemology of otherness, 

therefore, argues for an intersubjectivist epistemology as an 

option that can produce a wholesome epistemic situation. It 

argues that deference to the other both as a source of 

knowledge and justification of our beliefs would produce 

more warranted grounds for knowledge. This paper 

concludes that this option would help diminish all forms of 

epistemic injustices and imbalances to our knowledge 

claims. This essay adopts an expository-analytical method 

in both shedding light on the ethics of intersubjectivity of 

Emmanuel Levinas and against this backdrop,  advance an 

epistemology of otherness which this paper argues and 



     Levinas’ Theory of Alterity and the Sketching…      |     121 
 

concludes can lead to knowing the other better and 

consequently, having a more inclusive epistemic situation. 

 

Keywords: Otherness, intersubjective epistemology, the other, 

Alterity, Levinas 

 

Introduction 

In Book IV, Chapter 1 of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s epic novel, The 

Brothers Karamazov, published in 1880, the Russian philosopher 

and existentialist writes “know, dear ones, that every one of us is 

undoubtedly responsible for all men and everything on earth, not 

merely through the general sinfulness of creation, but each one 

personally for all mankind and every individual man. This 

knowledge is the crown of life for the monk and for every man”1 

These talismanic lines mirror a philosophical tradition which 

characterizes the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas. The 

philosophical tradition it represents is postmodernism. In 

philosophical terms, “postmodernism shares something with the 

critique of enlightenment values and truth-claims mounted by 

thinkers of a liberal-communitarian persuasion; also with neo-

pragmatists like Richard Rorty, who welcome the end of 

philosophy’s presumptive role as a privileged, truth-telling 

discourse.”2 Postmodernism came as a “reactionary” philosophy and 

maintains that there can be newer ways of doing things rather a 

linear pattern. As a movement, it is characterized by pluralism, 

scepticism, subjectivism or relativism and an acute sensitivity to the 

role of ideology. This is in contrast to the linear way of doing 

philosophy in the era prior to it.  

With postmodernism, western philosophy moved its 

frontiers from an individualized pattern of philosophy to newer 

ways that favour the social or ‘the other’ dimension. By a direct 

reference, it reacts to the individualism of modern western 

philosophy. From the Cartesian tradition, individualism 

characterized philosophical outlook. It is the individual that knows, 

thinks and acts. Hence, Rene Descartes’ famous cliché, cogito ergo 

sum (I think, therefore I am).  For a long time in philosophy, ‘other 

minds’ constituted a problem, because of this individual 



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characterization of philosophy. From Descartes to Locke, Berkeley 

to Hume, Kant to Hegel, the subject of any philosophy was an 

individual. Individualism characterized modern philosophy. 

Individualism refers to the political, social or moral outlook which 

emphasizes individual interests, independence and freedom as 

opposed to statism, communitarianism or collectivism that stresses 

the interests and goals of the state, group or community.3 The 

cultural context of the modern period was a reaction to the 

dogmatism and dominance of religion and the Church in the 

medieval period. With the Copernican revolution and the new 

science in the modern period, the focus shifted from the church or 

institutions to the individual. Thus, there was an elaborate emphasis 

on the individual and this influenced philosophical discourses. 

Dostoevsky’ works are precursory to this era with his leaning on the 

“other”, responsibility and ethics. Thus, with postmodernism 

philosophy moved from the “individual” to the “collective”, from 

the “I” to the “other” and from the “ego” to the “alter ego”. 

The aim of this paper is an attempt to sketch out an 

epistemology of otherness using the alterity of Emmanuel Levinas 

as a critical departure point.  Epistemology investigates the scope 

and limits of human knowledge. It questions whether we can know 

everything about our world and if not, what can we know and what 

can we not know how much of what we claim to know can be 

ascertained to be true?4 This essay, therefore, pursues an 

epistemology that seeks to know from the other person’s perspective 

rather from the knower’s perspective. It is believed engaging the 

other in its proper context would provide more evidence for belief 

formation or knowledge. Levinas’ original contribution is that ethics 

precedes metaphysics, that ethics is the true prote philosophia5 or 

first philosophy. The thrust of his contribution is premised or 

grounded on his claim that all traditional ethics and philosophy is 

grounded on egoism, which understands my relation to myself as the 

primary relation6. This again mirrors the individualism which 

characterized modern philosophy. Levinas argues that against this 

egoism, my responsibility to the other is the fundamental structure 

upon which all other structure rests. Levinas’ philosophy 

deconstructs the previous foundation for philosophy and 



     Levinas’ Theory of Alterity and the Sketching…      |     123 
 

reconstructs a new one. It is this ethical substructure that we shall 

leverage upon to advance an epistemology of otherness. 

 

Philosophical Understanding of Otherness 

The notion of the “other” is an eclectic theme that regained 

prominence in a great deal with 20th century French Philosophy. It 

means different things in different fields. In philosophy, however, it 

is primarily understood as the other human being in his or her 

differences.7 Sisay Mengstie explains it as “the way of defining 

one’s own “self” or one’s own “identity” in relation to others”8. By 

this interpretation, the other refers to the special qualities of each 

group that makes them different or unique in relation to another.9  

The other does not, therefore, designate just an individual, but a 

broad way of understanding “difference” and “identity”. It can, 

therefore, stand for an individual, for a race, a social-economic class, 

physical ability, gender group, sexual orientation or even a nation. 

In the field of sociology and cultural studies, the term “other” is 

often used conterminously with the word, “difference”. 

 The concept of the other in philosophy, first featured clearly 

in the works of John Stuart Mill in his examination of the problem 

of other minds. The problem of other minds is the problem of 

justifying the commonsensical belief that others besides oneself 

possess minds. Antecedents of this position are, however, found in 

the works of Descartes. In Mill’s discussion, it was in reference to 

the consciousness of the self or mind. Edmund Husserl's on the fifth 

of the Cartesian Meditation picks up the notion of the other which 

he refers to as the alter ego.  Husserl’s discussion of the other was 

in reference to the phenomenology of consciousness.  

However, it was with Levinas that this notion of the other 

was freed from these phenomenological and epistemic problems. 

Levinas criticized the abstraction associated with the other, 

especially in the work of Husserl. He criticized Husserl for reducing 

the other to an object of consciousness alone, which is more like an 

isolated ego. With Levinas, the other was then explained in terms of 

the ethical relation than a mere abstraction. The other of Levinas is, 

rather, another individual that is largely unknowable to the 

interpreting self but demands responsibility. In his Totality and 



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Infinity, Levinas speaks of the other as “that which calls to me, calls 

for a response from me, is the very source of all language and 

culture, and hence is a source of instruction”10. The other is another 

person who demands responsibility. In Husserl, the other is defined 

by the self and is faceless, in Levinas; the other is understood 

differently from the self and has a face.  

Another French scholar with a similar ethical account on the 

other is Paul Ricoeur which he developed in his major work on 

intersubjectivity, Oneself as Another, (1992)11. While Ricoeur’s 

thought on the other squares with Levinas on responsibility, 

Ricoeur’s other is reductive. He reduces the other to the self, an 

account that has been largely criticized. Dermot Moran explains that 

Levinas’s chief target in his discussion of the other is in reply to 

Husserl’s Fifth Cartesian Meditation. Levinas is critical of Husserl’s 

account of the other, because, for Levinas, Husserl reduces the 

Alterity of the other to the sameness of myself, that is to say, I 

experience the other as same as myself.12  The difference between 

Husserl and Ricoeur is Ricoeur’s emphasis on a responsibility which 

is a furtherance of Levinas’ ethical Alterity.13 

Conversely, Simeone de Beauvoir introduces the other as 

“difference” in her book, The Second Sex (1949) in which she 

criticizes the dominance of patriarchy and the stereotyping of 

women. In this work, the woman is the other. It is from this notion, 

othering as a philosophical term takes on the notion of prejudice, 

inequality, marginality14 and an inferior contrast of one to the other. 

This notion of the other in De Beauvoir’s work was influenced by 

Hegel’s dialectic of identification and distantiation in the encounter 

of the self with some other in his “Master-Slave Dialectic.15 16 The 

historical and political dimension of this master-slave dialectic 

concerns the relationship between the feudal lords and the serfs and 

from the psychological dimension, Brons Lajos explains involves 

self-consciousness. From the political and historical dimension, the 

other involves an “inferiorization” or marginalization”, while from 

the psychological dimension Hegel refers to the other as not-self. It 

is on this view Simeone De Beauvoir builds on to develop the theme 

of the other as a marginalized or unequal second. From this 

philosophical construct, Lajos explains othering, thus: 



     Levinas’ Theory of Alterity and the Sketching…      |     125 
 

A process through which identities are set up in an 

unequal relationship. [It] is the simultaneous 

construction of the self or in-group and the other or 

out-group in mutual and unequal opposition through 

the identification of some desirable characteristic 

that the self/in group has and the other/ out-group 

lacks and/or some undesirable characteristic that the 

other/out-group has and the self/in-group lacks. 

Othering thus sets up a superior self/in group in 

contrast to an inferior other /out-group, but this 

superiority/inferiority is nearly always left implicit.17 

 

From De Beauvoir’s construction of the other, othering 

now describes the reductive action of labelling a person as someone 

who belongs to a subordinate social category defined as the other. 

The practice of othering is the exclusion of persons who do not fit 

the norm of the social group, which is a version of the self.18 This is 

different from the notion of otherness which refers to the 

characteristics of the other. 

There is yet another notion of the other that is fostered in the 

works of the Jacques Lacan, sometimes referred to as the “French 

Freud”. Brons describes this account as a much more abstract 

notion, he explains:  
 

“the Other” as something (more than someone) 

outside of and/or in some way opposed to the self 

This is (part or aspect of) Lacan’s “big Other”. 

Building on Freud, but also influenced by Kojeve’s 

interpretation of Hegel, Lacan distinguished little 

other and big Other, which he represented in pseudo-

mathematical notation as a and A (the first letter of 

“autre”, French for “other”). Little other or a is a 

reflection and projection of the self (of the “ego” in 

particular); big Other or A is radically other and 

includes both other subjects and the 

(institutionalized) relationships between the self and 

those others.19 



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Lacan’s idea brings two important points to the fore: (i) the central 

role of language in constituting identity and (ii) the fact that identity 

is fundamentally gained in the gaze of the powerful.20 The different 

notions of the other make it a polymorphous theme in philosophy, 

nevertheless with slight nuances. 

 Otherness as an adjective of the noun ‘other’ refers to the 

characteristics of the other, the state of being different from an alien 

to the social identity of a person and to the identity of the self.21 

Otherness as a philosophical discourse deals with the characteristic 

of “Who?” and “What?” of the other which is different from the self. 

 The concept of otherness in philosophy is also known as 

Alterity, which means the “other of two” from the Latin alter which 

means “the other (and not the one)”. The term Alterity is an 

encounter with “the other”. In philosophical phenomenology, the 

term Alterity can be said to gain modern conception and 

consummation in the works of Emmanuel Levinas. Peter Fenves 

explains this conception thusly: “while studying the work of Husserl 

and Heidegger, Levinas came to realize that the phenomenology of 

the other cannot be accomplished in the same manner as the 

phenomenology of consciousness or the hermeneutics of 

existence.”22  Levinas refutes the grounding of philosophy on the 

cogito (consciousness or thinking), rather, he gave primacy to the 

other. Levinas returns to the idea of subjectivity which he presents 

as ‘welcoming the other’, as hospitality and in it, the idea of infinity 

is consummated. The idea of infinity in philosophy means that 

which is irreducible or that which constitutes the smallest unit of 

anything. The problem of infinity goes back to Zeno of Elea23 and 

Anaxagoras.24 From Descartes methodic doubt and deconstruction 

of all philosophies, that which is irreducible is the cogito or 

consciousness, but for Levinas, it is the other. Levinas argues that 

“infinity overflows the thought that thinks it”.25 Infinity is not to be 

understood subjectively as “an incidental notion forged by 

subjectivity to reflect the case of an entity encountering on the 

outside nothing that limits it, overflowing every limit, and thereby 

infinite”.26  Levinas attributes infinity to that which remains outside 

the subject, for the infinity of the other is Alterity.27 Otherness or 

Alterity in Levinas is not just the alter ego. In Husserl’s 



     Levinas’ Theory of Alterity and the Sketching…      |     127 
 

phenomenology, the alter ego would just be another like I am or 

would be the other. For Levinas, the other is a step beyond, one 

moment in the future.28  He also argues that the other can never be 

reduced to the same – not to the identity of the cogito (epistemology) 

nor to the sameness of being (ontology) – and so ethics becomes, for 

Levinas, ‘first philosophy’. Otherness as Alterity takes on a radical 

version with Levinas and other scholars have taken a moderate 

position in other scholars like Paul Ricoeur.  

 

Levinas’ Theory of Alterity 

Levinas was born in 1906 in Lithuania which was part of pre-

Revolutionary Russia. He was born into an orthodox Jewish family. 

The surrounding culture in Russia then tolerated Jews. In 1914, the 

First World War broke out and the family moved to Ukraine. There 

he immersed himself in Russian literature, especially the works of 

Nikola Gogol, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy where he 

experienced some ideological influence from their works. In 1923, 

he proceeded to Strasbourg University in France, where he gained 

his licence in philosophy. In Strasbourg, he was introduced to a 

number of works and scholars, particularly Husserl’s 

phenomenology. He later bagged his doctorate from the same 

university and was a naturalized citizen of France in 1931.  

When France declared war on Germany, he was ordered to 

report for military duty. During the German invasion of France in 

1940, his military unit was surrounded and forced to surrender. 

Levinas spent the rest of World War II as a prisoner of war in a camp 

near Hannover in Germany. Levinas was assigned to a special 

barrack for Jewish prisoners, who were forbidden to practice any 

form of religious worship. Life in the camp was difficult, but his 

status as a prisoner of war protected him from victim to the 

Holocaust. Many members of Levinas’ family were killed in 

the Holocaust29, however, and the impact of this large-scale 

massacre left its mark on Levinas, both personally and 

philosophically. His best-known work is Totality and Infinity an 

Essay on Exteriority (1961). The effect of the wars, the killing of 

Jews and the living conditions of people gave rise to his philosophy 

of consideration for the other, which is a philosophy of 



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intersubjectivity; that is, how we relate to the other subject and the 

need to deconstruct philosophy from metaphysics is the first 

philosophy to ethics. 

 

Alterity is central to Levinas’ philosophy. In his, Time and the 

Other, he explains Alterity as that which: 

appears as a non-reciprocal relationship – that is, as 

contrasting strongly with contemporaneousness. The 

Other as Other is not only an alter ego: the Other is 

what I myself am not… It can be said that the 

intersubjective space is not symmetrical. The 

exteriority of the other is not simply due to the space 

that separates what remains identical through the 

concept, nor is it due to any difference the concept 

manifest through spatial exteriority. The relationship 

with Alterity is neither spatial nor conceptual.30 

 

Levinas’ equation of the alter ego with sameness can be misleading. 

I can never really make the other fully present in myself and that is 

the meaning of Alterity. Levinas is trying to safeguard the other 

from violation, oppression and inferiorization, hence, his use of 

Alterity begins with a sense of responsibility to the other. 

Consequently, upon the earlier established constitution of the other, 

Levinas holds that it is superior to the self. Levinas’s refusal to 

equate alter ego with Alterity is to reject any possibility of 

synchronicity and reciprocity, wherein, for instance, the self does 

not do good to him or herself, he projects the same on the other. In 

his attempt to make the other absolutely distinct, Levinas comes to 

his specific use of Alterity.  Levinas explicitly argues: 
 

To be sure, the other that is announced does not 

possess this existing as the subject possesses it; its 

hold over my existing is mysterious. It is not unknown 

but unknowable, refractory to all light. But this 

precisely indicates that the other is in no way another 

myself, participating with me in common existence. 

The relationship with the other is not an idyllic and 



     Levinas’ Theory of Alterity and the Sketching…      |     129 
 

harmonious relationship of communion or sympathy 

through which we put ourselves in the other’s place.31   

    

It suffices to mention that Levinas’ critique of Husserl makes him 

refute the alter ego with the self; this marks a relationship with the 

future, wherein Husserl it marks a relationship with the present. 

Alterity marking a relationship with the future means a prescriptive 

obligation of the self to the other. With Levinas, otherness takes on 

radical Alterity which is a responsibility and an encounter with the 

other’s “face”. By “face”, Levinas does not mean the literal 

perception of the face consisting of the eyes, forehead, ears, lips, 

etc., but rather in the manner the other presents him or herself as the 

other, that is, his/her irreducibility and transcendence.32 Levinas 

remarks that “the relation with the face can surely be dominated by 

perception, but what is specifically the face cannot be reduced to 

that”.33 The face is not merely an appearance. It does not entail mere 

perception or description of what we know. But in the face-to-face 

encounter, I am not facing a thing merely of perceptual 

comprehension, but of responsibility. The other by virtue of its 

appearance commands a response different from knowledge. Arnel 

Palado argues that “although I inevitably have knowledge of the 

Other’s manifestation and the demands put on me, the epiphany 

needs a response beyond my pre-theoretical perspective. Hence by 

the other’s appearance, he also gives commands”.34 The command 

that comes from the epiphany of the other is ethical and not a 

compelling manipulation. In the words of Levinas: 
 

The first word of the face is the “Thou shall not kill”. 

It is an order. There is a commandment in the 

appearance of the face as if a master spoke to me. 

However, at the same time, the face of the other is 

destitute; it is poor for whom I can do all and to 

whom I owe all. And me, whoever I may be, but as a 

“first-person”, I am he who finds the resources to 

respond to the call.35 

 

In Levinas, the other’s command implies a challenge and a 

responsibility. This command does not appeal to my goodness but 



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to my responsibility. Further, the appeal does not change with a third 

other. The command is irrespective of perception. This does not also 

diminish the freedom of the self or ego. The challenge of moral 

responsibility is akin to Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative. 

Kant describes the moral command as categorical because, this 

imperative cannot be split into means and ends, it commands an 

action which is good in itself and which is thus necessary to a will 

that orients itself on reason. It is not a hypothetical imperative. 

William Lawhead clearly corroborates this explanation, "the moral 

law is presented to us as a categorical imperative. It tells you what 

you ought, should, or must do, but it does not depend on any prior 

conditions, or subjective wants and wishes, and it contains no 

qualifications. It takes the form, "Do X!" It is not preceded by an “if 

clause”, for it tells you what you are morally commanded to do 

under all conditions and at all times”.36 Levinas like Kant believes 

that the imperative springs from reason alone and is rationally 

consistent. Kant expresses the first formulation of his categorical 

imperative thus: “There is, therefore, only one categorical 

imperative. It is: “Act only according to that maxim by which you 

can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”.37  

The second formulation of his categorical imperative is, 

“Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in 

that of another, always as an end and never as a means only”.38 

Kant's formulation is similar to the biblical so-called golden rule, 

“do unto others what you want to be done to you” (Matt 7:12). There 

is however a lot of pre- Greek Bible texts referring to this principle 

like Herodotus’s. Nevertheless, Kant explicitly warns his readers to 

understand his second formulation as a version of the golden rule. 

Kant considers the golden rule as trivial because it does not refer to 

the foundations of obligations towards oneself and others. Later 

scholars, of course, fought Kant on this assumption, but Kant 

himself despised the golden rule. Although both Kant and Levinas 

can be dubbed examples of deontological ethics (from the Greek 

word, deon,  meaning duty or obligation) in contrast to teleological 

ethics(a theory of morality that derives duty or moral obligation 

from what is good or desirable as an end to be achieved), there are,  

however, some differences in them. Whereas, Kant calls his 



     Levinas’ Theory of Alterity and the Sketching…      |     131 
 

proposition “metaphysics of morals”, Levinas calls his, the “Ethics 

of ethics”. Nevertheless, Levinas does not believe, our duty to the 

other should be as we would treat ourselves; rather, we should treat 

the other in a superior manner.  

 In Levinas’ Alterity which begins from responsibility, he 

argues that it does not diminish freedom, rather, it commits our 

responsibility to the other in a strong way. For Levinas, 

responsibility precedes freedom. He says, “I am responsible for him 

without even having taken on responsibilities in his regard; his 

responsibility is incumbent on me”.39 This responsibility of care is 

the tie between me and the other, whether we accept or refuse to 

accept, whether we do know of it or not know, whether we are able 

to or unable to do something concrete for the other.40 What Levinas 

attempts to do with this I-Other relationship of care and 

responsibility is to withdraw philosophy from the egoism that 

according to him has shrouded it. He argues that most philosophy 

understands the relation to oneself as the primary relation. This is 

clearly mirrored in the works of Descartes, Hobbes, Locke and 

Freud. He argues, therefore, that my responsibility to the other is the 

fundamental structure of upon which all other social structures 

rest.41  

 For Levinas, the first question of philosophy is not 

ontological, why is there something rather than nothing, but ethical: 

how can my being justify itself? He argues that ethics is foundational 

for all other issues since human being already lives in the midst of 

others. Dermont Moran interprets Levinas’s philosophy as “a kind 

of humanism; a “humanism of the other man”, one which wants to 

speak of the other, not objectively in the third person, but addressing 

the other directly, in the vocative case, invoking his or her proper 

name”.42 The ethical outlook of Levinas’ philosophy makes him 

describe philosophy from its Greek etymological roots, Philos and 

Sophia, not understood as ‘love of wisdom’, but he understood as 

the ‘wisdom of love’. With this interpretation, Levinas disrupts and 

repositions the foundations of philosophy from the domain of 

ontology to that of ethics. The discourse on Levinas’ Alterity opens 

up a number of considerations for ethics, epistemology and even 

ontology. One point is clear; Levinas withdraws philosophy from 



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individualism to otherness and from objectification of knowledge to 

subjectivity of knowledge claims.  

 

Alterity and Epistemology: Towards an Epistemology of 

Otherness 

Levinas’ thoughts on Alterity leave a lot of epistemological 

questions open. Epistemology which concerns itself with how we 

know what we know and what we can know is an open-ended 

discipline. The fact that human knowledge is really finite makes 

epistemology dynamic. Philosophy deals with knowledge not only 

as a first-order activity of producing knowledge but, also as a second 

order enterprise of criticizing and justifying the grounds of 

knowledge produced in other disciplines.43 The activity of justifying 

the grounds of knowledge is the focus of epistemology. The 

epistemological questions provoked by Levinas’s Alterity begins 

with a question like: how can we really know the other person? In 

the Kantian-Hegelian tradition, truth is made relative to the subject. 

Can we really know the other without a relationship?  relationship? 

Does the pre-reflective self-consciousness mind really know? Are 

there not forms of othering, in which we base knowledge of the other 

on the perceptual conditions and terms, and do not seek the other’s 

position or perspective? Are there not claims of epistemic injustice 

to the other, when the claims and beliefs are based only on the 

subject alone without comprehending all the circumstances of the 

other? These are the questions an epistemology of otherness asks. 

 An epistemology of otherness is socially-oriented. By the 

token, it falls into the domain of epistemology known as social 

epistemology. Social epistemology departs from traditional 

epistemology by critiquing its foundational assumption that only 

individuals can know. Social epistemology, on the contrary, argues 

that there are social sources of knowledge and consideration outside 

an individual domain to the other enters into a social domain. When 

we talk about the testimony of the other as a source of knowledge 

rather than my individual perception alone, then we are talking of 

social epistemology. The other becomes an epistemic agent, who 

knows and can be relied upon in forming beliefs. Social 

epistemology which is a program epistemologists have engaged in, 



     Levinas’ Theory of Alterity and the Sketching…      |     133 
 

in the last thirty years more vigorously seeks to address the 

epistemic imbalances from individual epistemology by dealing with 

social conditions, relations within a social system. This is, precisely, 

what Alterity pursues, seeking the perspective of the other. In an 

epistemology of otherness, the other becomes a source of 

knowledge. Thus, knowledge is no longer determined from the 

perceiver’s perspective alone, but also from the “object”, which 

Levinas calls the other. Since Levinas gives primacy to the other 

before the self, an epistemology of otherness becomes a variant of 

social epistemology, and it investigates truth from the social 

conditions and relations of the other.  

 An epistemology of otherness is normative in its approach. 

Steve Fuller, who is a prominent figure of a variant of social 

epistemology argues that his vision of social epistemology is 

committed to normativity. The normative approach is committed to 

organizing the means available to bring about or maintain a 

desirable state of affairs.44 This approach keeps opening the scope 

of the norms. Traditional epistemology arguably seeks the 

objectification of knowledge. It means there are objective and linear 

paradigms for judging truth and knowledge. However, Edmund 

Gettier with his epochal paper, “Is Justified True Belief 

Knowledge?”45 Published in 1963, contested the dogmatism of 

objective paradigms. Since then, there have been new philosophies 

that favoured new ways and methods of searching for truth and 

knowledge. These are reflected in the philosophies of Richard Rorty 

with his epistemological behaviourism, Thomas Kuhn’s thought on 

scientific revolution and even Paul Feyerabend’s methodical 

pluralism. It is this similar idea of normativity that is mirrored in 

Levinas’s Alterity.  

 From Levinas’s critique of traditional philosophy, he saw 

western metaphysics as a grand project of totalization, of reducing 

everything to the sphere of the ego, the self and thereby eliding the 

difference between being and thought. It means whatever is thought 

of or represented in thought we take alone to be true. The weakness 

of this approach is that it limits being to self-conception or self-

knowledge. For Levinas, philosophy must always be an attempt to 

defend the priority of the other and resist its reduction to the sphere 



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of sameness. The philosophy of the same is what has grounded all 

knowledge to involve objectification with a violation of the object. 

This can create an epistemic injustice and imbalance with regards to 

knowledge production. In contrast, an epistemology of otherness 

argues for an intersubjective epistemology. This is in contrast with 

epistemic relativism. Epistemological relativism may be defined as 

the view that knowledge (and/or truth) is relative – to time, to place, 

to society, to culture, to historical epoch, to conceptual scheme or 

framework, or to personal training or conviction – so that what 

counts as valid knowledge depends upon these variables.46  

 An intersubjective epistemology in this sense would imply one 

that takes what a subject or a group of subjects holds to be true as 

being true on the basis of valid reasons for such beliefs. In this case, 

knowledge is not just a function of the subject’s epistemic virtue(s), 

but also those of the object. Justification of beliefs in intersubjective 

epistemology involves factors beyond the internal faculty of the 

subject (internalism) but also external (externalism) to it. 

Justification theory for intersubjective epistemology is primarily 

context-dependent.  Thus, intersubjectivism can come in either an 

individualistic form or a social form. In the former, this theory relies 

on the object which is the other, while in the latter, the other takes 

on a collective nature beyond an atomic individual. This can help to 

understand that what happens in the social sphere is not just 

independent of the subject. For instance, when you are talking to me 

and I appear to be expressionless, you may conclude that I am bored 

by what you are saying. It may be that as you spoke, my mind went 

to a bad experience which changed my feeling. An intersubjectivist 

epistemology would investigate into what made my feelings change, 

rather than relying on the justification that was taken from my 

expression. Levinas’ Alterity is premised on a defense of 

intersubjectivity. In Levinas, the other is everything which resists 

such totalizations and which resists violence. The other means that 

which cannot be objectified. Intersubjectivity is contrary to totality. 

This is explained by Levinas in his major work, Totality and Infinity 

as a defense of intersubjectivity. 

 An epistemology of otherness seeks to address the problem of 

epistemic injustice from perceptual understanding and othering. 



     Levinas’ Theory of Alterity and the Sketching…      |     135 
 

Epistemic injustice refers to “those forms of unfair treatment that 

relate to issues of knowledge, understanding and participation in 

communicative practice”47. This term was coined by Miranda 

Fricker in 2007. The term, othering, on the other hand is the process 

of treating someone as different, inferior, prejudiced or looked-

down than oneself. It is a form of inferiorization and prejudicing. 

Allie Bunch48 categorizes three different forms of epistemic 

injustice in the process of othering as (1) Discriminatory epistemic 

injustice which involves the dehumanization of the other or out-

group, (2) Testimonial epistemic injustice which comes as reduced 

credibility and silencing. Silencing comes from non-reciprocity (3) 

Distributive Epistemic injustice which refers to the refusal of 

resources for the other or group. An epistemology of otherness 

offers non-oppressive ways of knowing. An epistemology of 

otherness involves epistemic responsibility. Epistemic 

responsibility involves taking responsibility for our individual 

beliefs. Responsibility is at the heart of Levinas’s Alterity. An 

epistemology of otherness would not be totalizing but prioritizing 

the other in forming a judgment about him/her. 

 

Conclusion 

The ethical Alterity of Emmanuel Levinas has been examined in this 

paper as a template for developing an epistemology of otherness. 

Differences in social relations have brought to light imbalances and 

sometimes even forms of injustice. The search for knowledge is a 

Herculean task and scepticism of different kinds has challenged 

what we can know from different sides. Thus, the task of 

epistemology is to secure what we know from errors and make our 

knowledge claims warranted. In the light of a self-absorbed and the 

individualistic nature traditional objectivist epistemology has been 

shrouded in, the human epistemic situation can be said to be 

incomplete. The desire to have a wholesome epistemic situation 

opened the threshold for social epistemology. The focus of social 

epistemology is assessing new pathways we can know. One of such, 

is how we can know from not just from the knower’s perspective 

but also from the objects. This is an intersubjective epistemology 

which this work has described as an epistemology of otherness. This 



136      |     Ekpoma Review, Volume. 5 No. 1., 2019   

 

paper has argued that it is in knowing the other better, that we can 

well relate with him/her and not see him/her as an object to be 

violated. The epistemology of otherness prescribed in this paper 

seeks to eliminate the possibility of epistemic injustice and false 

claims. The aim is to achieve truth of the other, his/her appreciation. 

Without claiming to be a perfect agenda, the epistemology of 

otherness is a step towards knowing the other better.  

  
ENDNOTES 

1 Dostoevsky Fyodor, The Brothers Karamazov. Transl. from the Russian by 

Constance Garnett,   New York: The Lowell Press, 2009.  p 202. 
2  Docherty Thomas, “Postmodernism” in Honderich Ted (ed), The Oxford 

Companion to Philosophy, second edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005 
3 Fidelis Chuka Aghamelu & Emeka Cyril Ejike,  “Hegel’s Contributions To 

Modern Individualism And Totalitarianism” in  http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/og.v13i 

1.12 
4 Jimoh Anselm, Certitude and Doubt A Study Guide in Epistemology, Second 

Edition, Benin: Floreat Publication, 2017, p. 8. 
5 The term, “prote philoophia”, was coined by Aristotle for Metaphysics. It is the 

most general abstract science and thus conceived as the foundation of philosophy 

itself. See, Aristotle, Metaphysics, IV, 1, 1003 a21. Levinas on the other hand, 

declared that rather than metaphysics, ethics is the first philosophy. 
6   Dermon Doran, Introduction to Phenomenology, London: Routledge Taylor 

and Francis Group, 2000. Pp 320-321. 
7 Derrida Jacques, “Other” in Honderich Ted (ed), Ibid. 
8 Mengstie Sisay, “ Constructions of “Otherness” and the Role of Education: The 

Case of Ethiopia” in Journal of Education Culture and Society,  No. 2, 2011, p. 7 
9 ibid 
10  Levinas Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity An Essay on Exteriority, Translated 

by Alphonso Lingis, Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 1979. P. 46 
11 Paul Ricoeur, Oneself as Another, trans. K. Blamey (Chicago & London: The 

University of Chicago Press, 1992). 
12 Moran Dermot, Introduction to Phenomenology, London: Routledge Taylor and 

Francis Group, 2000. pp.  337-338 
13 See Dierckxsens Geoffrey’s “Otherness and Desire in Paul Ricoeur’s 

Hermeneutics of the Self” in https://repository.uantwerpen.be/docman-

/irua/d34db6/d606e14f.pdf 
14 Jimoh Anselm “Justice and the Othered minority Lessons from African 

Communalism” in Elvis Imafidon (ed), Handbook of African Philosophy of 

Difference: Switzerland: Springer, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-

04941-6_12-1 
15 Brons Lajos, “Othering an Analysis” in Transcience,  6 (1), 2015,  p. 69 

                                                           



     Levinas’ Theory of Alterity and the Sketching…      |     137 
 
                                                                                                                                  
16  See also, G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, translated by A.V. Miller 

with analysis of the text and foreword by J. N. Findlay (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 

1977). 
17  Lajos, p. 70. 
18 “Othering", The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought, Third Edition 

(1999), p. 620. 
19 Brons, p. 74. 
20 Jimoh, “Justice and the Othered minority: Lessons from African 

Communalism”, ibid.  
21  Miller, J.  "Otherness". The SAGE encyclopedia of qualitative research 

methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc. 2008, pp. 588–591.  
22 Fenves Peter, “Alterity and identity, Post modern theories of” in Routledge 

Encyclopedia of Philosophy, version 1.0, London and New York: Routledge, 

1998. 
23  Zeno opens up the problem of infinity with his paradoxes on infinity. He argues 

against the Pythagorean theory of the plurality of things. According to the 

Pythagoreans, everything in the universe is made up of units. Now, these units, 

says, Zeno, are either with size or without size. If they are, they can always be 

divided up which means they are infinitely divisible. And since they are infinitely 

divisible they must be made up of infinite units. In other words, everything in the 

universe is made up of an infinite number of units. But whatever is made up of 

infinite number of units must be infinitely great. It follows therefore that 

everything in the universe is infinitely great. Now, let us take the second 

alternative and say that these units are without size. In that case, says, Zeno, they 

must be infinitely small. And if everything in the universe is made up of infinitely 

small units, it follows that everything in the universe is infinitely small. See, 

Omoregbe Joseph, A Simplified History of Western Philosophy, vol. one Ancient 

and Medieval Philosophy, Lagos: Joja Educational Research and Publishers 

Limited, 1999. P. 16. 
24 Anaxagoras’ philosophy begins by wading into the ultimate stuff of reality by 

attempting to reconcile the theories of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Empedocles 

had proposed four elements as the constitutive of all reality. Anaxagoras 

leveraging on Empedocles’ thought, argues that each of these four elements are 

themselves a combination of several different particles. In other words, there are 

particles of all things in everything. This is how Anaxagoras describes his notion 

of the infinite. See, Omoregbe, Joseph, A Simplified History of Western 

Philosophy, Ibid. p. 20. 
25 Levinas Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. 

Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh Duquesne University Press, 1969, p. 25. 
26 Ibid. p. 26. 
27 Friedman Randy, “Alterity and Asymmetry in Levinas’s Ethical 

Phenomenology”, The Journal of Scriptural Reasoning, vol. 13, Number 1, 2014, 

p. 6. 
28  Ibid, p. 11. 



138      |     Ekpoma Review, Volume. 5 No. 1., 2019   

 
                                                                                                                                  
29 Holocaust refers to the genocide during World War II in which Nazi Germany, 

aided by its collaborators, murdered over six million Jews. This is an estimate of 

over two-third of the Jewish population of Europe between 1941 and 1945. 
30 Levinas Emmanuel, Time and the Other. Translated by Richard A. Cohen. 

Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1987. P.84. 
31  Levinas, Time and the Other, p. 74.       
32  Arnel Palado, “Emmanuel Levinas on the Other and the Third Party” in 

https://ustedu.academia.edu/ArnelPalado. 
33 Levinas Emmanuel, Ethics and Infinity: Conversation with Philippe Nemo, 

translated by Richard Cohen, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1985, Pp 

85-86. 
34  Arnel Palado, “Emmanuel Levinas on the Other and the Third Party”, Ibid.  
35  Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversation with Philippe Nemo, p. 89. 
36  Lawhead William, The Voyage of Discovery, A Historical Introduction to 

Philosophy, second edition, London: Wadsworth Group, 2002. P. 342. 
37 Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, translated by Lewis 

White Beck, Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merill, Library of Liberal Arts, 1959, 39. 
38  Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, p. 47. 
39  Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversation with Philippe Nemo, p. 96. 
40 Ibid, p. 97. 
41 Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 79; 51 
42 Dermont, Introduction to Phenomenology, p. 321. 
43 Owolabi Kolawole, “The Nature and Problems of Knowledge” in Owolabi 

Kolawole (ed) Issues and Problems in Philosophy, Ibadan: Grovacs Network, 

2000. P. 49. 
44  Fuller Steve, “ A sense of Epistemic Agency Fit for Social Epistemology” in 

Reider Patrick, Social Epistemology and Epistemic Agency Decentralizing 

Epistemic Agency, New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. P. 21. 
45 Gettier Edmund, “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” in Analysis, vol. 23, no. 

6. June 1963. Pp. 121-123. 
46  Harvey Siegel, “Relativism” in Jonathan Dancy and Ernest Sosa (eds), A 

Companion to Epistemology, Oxford: Blackwell, 1992. Pp 428-429. 
47 Kidd, Ian James; Medina, José; Pohlhaus Jr., Gaile (2017). "Introduction to the 

Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice". In Kidd, Ian James; Medina, José; 

Pohlhaus Jr., Gaile (eds.). Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. Routledge. 

p. 1. doi:10.4324/9781315212043 
48 Bunch Allie, “Epistemic Violence in the Process of Othering: Real World 

Applications and Moving Forward”, in Scholarly Undergraduate Research 

Journal at Clark: Vol. 1, Article retrieved from https://commons.clarku-

.edu/surj/vol1/iss1/2/