





















































Mask and Otherness between Recognition and Concealment: Notes on the Self and the You


Elementa
Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology 
and Empirical Perspectives

1 
(2021) 

1-2

Pierpaolo Limone
Editorial 7

First Section

Slavoj Žižek
The Vagaries of the Superego 13

Ricardo Espinoza Lolas
Nature and Pandemic 33

Paolo Ponzio
Mask and Otherness between Recognition and Concealment: 47 
Notes on the Self and the You

Daniela Savino
“Liquid” Identity and Otherness in the Phenomenon 61 
of Religious Alienation: The Loss of Critical Thinking 
and the “Barter” of the Self in the System of Communion

Francesca R. Recchia Luciani
The Sexistential Vulnerability of Bodies in Contact 85 
in the Philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy

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Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives

Second Section

Martina Rossi
Universal Design for Learning and Inclusive Teaching: 103 
Future Perspectives

Marco Ceccarelli
A Historical Account on Italian Mechanism Models 115

Giusi Antonia Toto - Alessia Scarinci
Cyberfeminism: A Relationship between Cyberspace, 135 
Technology, and the Internet

Luigi Traetta - Federica Doronzo
Super-Ego after Freud: A Lesson not to Be Forgotten 153

Federica Doronzo - Gianvito Calabrese
Functioning of Declarative Memory: Intersection 163 
between Neuropsychology and Mathematics

Giuliana Nardacchione - Guendalina Peconio
Peer Tutoring and Scaffolding Principle for Inclusive Teaching 181

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Mask and Otherness 
between Recognition and Concealment: 
Notes on the Self and the You
Paolo Ponzio
Università degli Studi di Bari (Italy)

doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2021-0102-ponz
paolo.ponzio@uniba.it

Abstract

From Martin Heidegger to Emmanuel Lévinas, from Hannah Arendt to Paul Ricouer: 
the continental tradition of twentieth-century thought has built its narrative around 
the themes of otherness, crossing the theme of the mask that fulfills its function precisely 
in the dialectic identity/otherness (idem/alter to put it in technical terms). It is also true 
that when one thinks about what is a “mask” it could only be possible to wonder what 
lies behind it, what stands in the way. The mask itself is divisive and defensive, yet, at the 
same time, it exposes itself, acts (like an actor who moves freely on stage and, nevertheless, 
is forced to stick to the development of the script). And also about the “otherness” it could 
be said that it hides and reveals itself at the same time; it is the totally other and, at the 
same time, the overturned self (almost an “I” which is more and “other than” me, of 
Ricouerian memory). It is the foreigner, but also the welcome guest, as Lévinas attests; it 
is at the same time the refugee, the immigrant, the pilgrim or the wanderer (to use the 
Nietzsche of “Human Too much Human”). 

Keywords: Heidegger; Lévinas; mask; otherness; self. 

1. The mask as a paradigm of existence

To highlights some of the outlines, however, I would like to begin this 
intervention with some passages from a well-known Novella by Pirandello, 
The train has whistled, in which one of the many Pirandellian masks – 

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Mr. Belluca – for many years lived the unhappy condition of a “meek and 
submissive” employee to his boss, “circumscribed”, as some work colleagues 
called him. 

Circumscribed, poor Belluca, within the very narrow limits of his arid job as 
a computist, with no other memory than open items, simple or double items 
or reversals, and deductions and withdrawals and settlements; notes, ledgers, 
rags and so on. Mobile filing cabinet: or rather, old donkey, who pulled the 
cart silently, always in one step, always along the same road, complete with 
blinders. 

Well, one evening Belluca had fiercely rebelled against his head of office, and 
then, at the bitter reproach of this, he almost hurled himself at him, giving 
everyone “a serious argument to the supposition that it was a real and own 
mental alienatio”. 

It seemed that his face, all of a sudden, had widened. It seemed that the 
blinders had suddenly fallen off, and the spectacle of life had suddenly 
opened up around him. It seemed that all of a sudden his ears were 
unclogged and he perceived voices for the first time, sounds never heard 
before. […]

What does it mean? – then exclaimed the head of the office, approaching 
him and taking him by the shoulder and shaking him. – Ohé, Belluca!

Nothing, – Belluca replied, always with that smile between impudence and 
imbecility on his lips. The train, Mr. Cavaliere. 

The train? What train? He whistled. 

What the hell are you saying?

Tonight, Mr. Knight. He whistled. I heard it whistle… – The train?

Yes sir. What if he knew where I got! In Siberia… or or… in the forests of 
the Congo… It’s done in an instant, Mr. Knight! […]

The other clerks, at the shouts of the furious head of office, had entered the 
room and, hearing Belluca speak like this, had mad laughter. 

Then the head of the office – who must have been in a bad mood that 
evening – shocked by those laughter, was on a rampage and had beaten up 
the meek victim of so many cruel jokes of his. Except that, this time, the 
victim, to the amazement and almost to the terror of everyone, had rebelled, 
had railed, always shouting that madness of the train that he had whistled, 
and that, by God, now no longer now that he had heard the train whistle, he 
could no longer, no longer wanted to be treated like that. 

They had grabbed him by force, harnessed him and dragged him to the 
madhouse. 

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Here he still went on talking about that train. He imitated the whistle. Oh, 
a very plaintive whistle, how far away, in the night; heartfelt. And, immedi-
ately after, he added:
– Let’s go, let’s go… Gentlemen, where to? for where?
And he looked at everyone with eyes that were no longer his own. Those 
eyes, usually dark, without luster, frowned, now laughed at him very lucidly, 
like those of a child or a happy man; and phrases without construct came 
out of his lips. Unheard-of things, poetic, imaginative, bizarre expressions, 
which astonished all the more, since it could not in any way be explained 
how, by what miracle, they flourished in the mouth of him, that is to one 
who had never dealt with anything else until now. than of figures and regis-
ters and catalogs, remaining as if blind and deaf to life: a computer machine. 
Now he spoke of blue fronts of snowy mountains, raised to the sky; he spoke 
of slimy cetaceans which, voluminous, on the bottom of the seas, made a 
comma with their tails. Things, I repeat, unheard of. […]
Gentlemen, Belluca, he had forgotten for many and many years – but just 
forgotten – that the world existed. 
Absorbed in the constant torment of that unfortunate existence of his, 
absorbed all day in the accounts of his office, never a moment’s respite, like 
a blindfolded beast, yoked to the rod of a nòria or a mill, yes sir, he had 
forgotten for years and years – but really forgotten – that the world existed. 
Two evenings before, he threw himself to sleep exhausted on that sofa, 
perhaps due to excessive tiredness, unusually, he was unable to fall asleep 
immediately. 
And, suddenly, in the deep silence of the night, he had heard a train whistle 
from afar. 
It seemed to him that his ears, after so many years, who knows how, suddenly 
became unclogged. 
The whistle of that train had torn him apart and suddenly carried away the 
misery of all those horrible distresses of his, and almost from an uncovered 
tomb he found himself wandering yearning in the airy void of the world that 
opened enormously all around him. 
He instinctively held on to the blankets that he threw on himself every night, 
and he ran with his thoughts behind that train that went off into the night. 
There was, ah! there was, outside that horrible house, outside of all its 
torments, there was the world, so much, so far away, to which that train 
was going… Florence, Bologna, Turin, Venice… so many city, in which he 
had been as a young man and which still, certainly, that night sparkled with 
lights on the earth. Yes, he knew the life that was lived there! The life he once 
lived there too! And that life went on; he had always followed, while here, 

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like a blindfolded beast, he turned the shaft of the mill. He hadn’t thought 
about it anymore! The world had closed for him, in the torment of his home, 
in the arid, bristly anguish of his computisteria… But now, behold, he was 
returning, as if by violent pouring, into his spirit. The moment, which struck 
for him, here, in this prison of his, flowed like an electric thrill through the 
whole world, and with his imagination suddenly awakened he could, behold, 
he could follow it through known and unknown cities, lands, mountains, 
forests, seas… This same thrill, this same heartbeat of time. There were, 
while he lived this “impossible” life here, many and many millions of men 
scattered all over the earth, who lived differently. Now, in the very moment 
that he was suffering here, there were the solitary snowy mountains that 
raised their blue foreheads to the night sky… Yes, yes, he saw them, he saw 
them, he saw them like this… there were the oceans… the forests…

And, therefore, he – now that the world had returned to his spirit – could 
somehow console himself! Yes, occasionally rising from his torment, to take 
a breath of fresh air into the world with the imagination. (Pirandello, 1956-
1987, pp. 588-594)

Here: reality happens and, in its occurrence, it imposes itself on the 
conscience of man who opens up to it. And with the reality that happens, 
the mask falls and the stature of the man who becomes aware of himself 
stands out clearly: a consciousness that is only possible in front of others. 
But what does it mean “reality happens”? What is the meaning of a such an 
event as the one described by Pirandello in his Novella? The imposition of 
reality manifests, on the one hand, the inescapability of what happens – its 
character as an event, or event – on the other hand, the need for attention 
with respect to the experienced event: the magnificence and exceptionality 
of the experience. 

Luigi Pirandello is echoed by Jean-Paul Sartre, the existentialist 
philosopher and great writer. He reflects the experience of everyday life 
in the metropolis, with its subways, its buses, the loneliness of individuals 
in the crowd, the disintegration of the individual accelerated in the years 
between the two wars and his being “abandoned under millions of looks”. 
One could say, like one of the protagonists of the novel Il rinvio, that the 
gaze of the other, as well as being disturbing, is also a guarantee for my 
existence, the proof that I am not a nullity, that I am a “value” and I “am” 
worth something.

The “humanistic” turning point of the postwar period will be in 
Sartre’s opinion based on the consideration that it is precisely the absence 
of foundations or values that encourages man to build his own ends by 
himself. And this necessity that engages the individuality of every man will 
no longer see the individual “alone in the face of his choices, isolated in an 

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essentially hostile social universe”: his choice will be in the sign of a social 
relationship, albeit not necessarily harmonious. 

You have certainly experienced, in the subway, in the foyer of a theater, 
on the train, that sudden sensation is unbearable of being spied on from 
behind. You turn around, but the curious one has already lowered his nose 
to the book […]. It is very easy for me to tell you what that gaze is: because 
it is nothing, it is an absence (and not a presence); here, imagine the darkest 
night imaginable. It is the night that looks at you. But a dazzling night; 
the night in full light, the secret night of daylight. I am bathed in black 
light […]. What anguish to suddenly discover that gaze as a universal center 
from which I cannot escape. But what a rest, too! I finally know that I am. 
I transform to my use and to your greatest indignation the word imbecile 
criminal of your prophet, that “I think, therefore I am” that made me suffer 
so much – and I say: you can see me, therefore I am. I no longer have to bear 
the responsibility of my sticky dissolving: he who sees me badly makes me 
be, I am as he sees me. (Sartre, 1977, pp. 384-385)

For J.-P. Sartre, the consciousness thrown into the world is structurally 
conditioned by everything that surrounds it: the other, the world, is the 
antagonist, the danger, the Being-in-itself. My conscience (Being-for-itself ) 
lives in it, however, it would be empty and vain without that (Bodei, 1997, 
p. 134): the gaze of the other, as well as disturbing, is therefore a guarantee 
that my existence exists. 

With the “I think”, in opposition to Descartes’s philosophy, as well as Kant’s 
philosophy, we reach ourselves in front of the other and the other is as certain 
for us as we are certain of ourselves. In this way man, who grasps himself 
directly with the “cogito”, also discovers all the others, and discovers them as 
the condition of his own existence. He realizes that he cannot be anything 
(in the sense that a man is said to be witty, or that he is bad, or that he is 
jealous), if others do not recognize him as such. To obtain any truth about 
me, I must obtain it through the other. The other is essential to my existence, 
as well as the knowledge I have of myself. In these conditions, the discovery 
of my intimacy reveals to me, at the same time, the other as a freedom placed 
in front of me, which thinks and wants only for me or against me. Thus, we 
immediately discover a world that we call “inter subjectivity” and it is in this 
world that man decides what he is and what others are. 
Choice is possible in a certain sense, but what is absolutely not possible is 
not to choose […] man finds himself in an organized situation, in which he 
himself is engaged; he engages the whole of humanity with his choice and 
cannot avoid choosing […]. In any case, whatever he does, it is impossible 
that he does not take full responsibility in the face of this problem […] he 
chooses himself in the presence of others and you choose yourself in the 
presence of others. (Sartre, 1993, pp. 64-65, 68-69) 

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The philosophical references that could be suggested are many, starting 
from the considerations of Hannah Arendt, of The origin of totalitarianism, 
to the Lévinas of Totality and infinity. Yet it seems significant, once again, 
to have recourse to literature. 

In her novel La storia di lei, Elsa Morante inserts “a real story, 
indeed a sort of fairy tale or parable”, which is tremendously significant 
of the dramatic possibility that man has to frustrate himself and reality 
in a single shot. In the artistic field, De Chirico’s metaphysical painting 
appears as evidence of the impossibility for men to escape the absurdity 
of existence. 

I will bring you “l’énigme d’une journée” one of these days; for the painting 
by M.lle Laurencin I thought today of the title of “mystère d’un moment” 
because the various things represented there appear in all the unexpected of 
certain moments in which the intimate essence of the objects appears to us 
in all the meta-physical reality. The similarity that exists between these imag-
inations that I have and the things as they appear in life can be compared 
to the similarity that exists between the physiognomy of a person, who sees 
himself in a dream, and the physiognomy of the same person in his reality; 
and at the same time it is not the same person. I am therefore convinced that 
I have shown a new path in art. (de Chirico, 2008, p. 601)

2. The mask of totalitarianism, or the denial 
of otherness

The twentieth century was crossed by an era – the consequences of which, 
perhaps, have not yet completely disappeared – in which what becomes 
distinctive is the loss of reality and the other, the cancellation of difference 
as a factor of perturbation with respect to the affirmation of a Absolute 
self. Totalitarianisms are – to quote Adorno – a system in which the law 
of unity applies, of the “programmed” elimination of the different, of the 
non-convergent in power (Adorno, 1994, pp. 62-63). The penalization of 
deviations, the manipulation of consciences, as well as the forced cultural 
leveling, are clear indications of how the Nazi-Fascist and Communist 
totalitarianisms and the American-style social conformism have reduced 
the plurality of men to mere gender difference. 

There was an Esse Esse who, for his horrendous crimes, one day, at dawn, 
was taken to the gallows. He still had about fifty steps left to the point of 
execution, which took place in the same courtyard as the prison. And in this 
crossing, his eye by chance landed on the crumbling wall of the courtyard, 
where one of those wind-sown flowers had sprung up, which grow where 

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it happens and feed, it would seem, on air and rubble. It was a miserable 
little flower, made up of four purple petals and a pair of pale leaflets; but, 
in that first rising light, the Esse Esse saw, to her amazement, all the beauty 
and happiness of the universe. And he thought: If I could go back, and stop 
time, I would be ready to spend my entire life in the adoration of that little 
flower. Then, as if doubling, he heard his own voice within himself, but 
joyful, clear and yet distant, coming from who knows where, shouting at 
him: Truly I tell you: for this last thought you had about death, you will be 
safe from hell! All this, to tell you, took me a certain interval of time, but 
there it lasted half a second. Between the Esse Esse that passed among the 
guards, and the flower that appeared on the wall, there was still, more or less, 
the same initial distance: just a step. “No!”. Esse shouted to herself, turning 
back furiously, “I don’t fall back, no, in certain tricks”. And since he had 
both hands hindered, he crushed that flower with his teeth. Then he threw 
it to the ground, stamped it underfoot. And he spat on it. Here, the story is 
over. (Morante, 1974, pp. 604-605)

Beyond the effectiveness of this text, what emerges is the denial of what 
happens, as Mario Luzi said, in some verses of his Book of Hypatia: “From 
ignorance to certainty there is an intermediate moment of foreknowledge 
in which it is still possible for the mind to deny what happened” (Luzi, 
1978, p. 79). 

Prescience, as Luzi understands it, is the prejudice that is constituted 
as the hermeneutic principle of every event. For this reason, in the face 
of the event of reality (what happens as unexpected, as unplanned), what 
urges is a sort of simplicity which can allow us not to put anything between 
us and what happens. 

3. Mask and otherness, between veiling 
and recognition

The thematic couple, mask and otherness, finds in one of the most impor-
tant thinkers of the twentieth century, Martin Heidegger, the one who, 
perhaps more than any other – fully grasping the nihilistic spirit of our 
age – has rethought the being of man and the meaning of being in terms 
of an absolute finitude: absolute because it characterizes the being that we 
are and the very truth of being as a permanent difference from the entities 
present in the world and, therefore, as impossibility, hiding and oblivion. 
The giving of being and the fulfillment of man, in fact, lie precisely in 
this event of retraction, which would then be the mysterious root of 
nihilism, by virtue of which, in the meantime the truth of being is “lost” 
(as Nietzsche, upon others, would have described it speaking of our age as a 

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final outcome of the long history of an error); in reality it is preserved and 
given as the very mystery of “nothing”. 

In the Heideggerian perspective, this movement takes place in 
wandering – or rather wandering, as the German philosopher himself calls 
it – an absolutely insuperable condition for man in his relationship with 
being and, ultimately, as the event of “to be himself ”. To “err” or “wander” 
is not just the opposite of the truth, but it constitutes its secret heart. And 
in fact for Heidegger if we intended the truth as it was attested in the 
course of the classical-Christian tradition, that is to say as an “adaptation” 
of the intellect to the thing, we would risk to miss its original ontological 
dimension; we would reduce it to the comparison and correspondence of 
two already pre-determined entities (the intellect and the thing) – precisely 
missing or forgetting the truth as the truth of being itself, which always 
differs from the entity. 

If, on the other hand, we go back to the primitive Greek sense of 
aletheia, that is to the unveiling of entities (thinking this sense even more 
radically than the Greeks themselves did, at least starting from Plato), 
then we will show the mysterious sense for which the unveiling of entities 
(truth as adaptation) necessarily implies and is permanently based on a 
“veiling” of being, which as veiled must remain as it is in order to safe 
its own truth, and which can never be adequate by an intellect. Here lies 
the original ontological meaning of the error: ultimately it coincides with 
the fact that being, withdrawing into concealment with respect to the 
revealed entity – that is, according to traditional language, with respect 
to the “true” entity – is thought of as an essential “non-truth”. But it is 
a non-truth that should in no way be mistaken with a deception or a 
falsehood, but must be interpreted as that veil that allows the genuine 
custody of being. Let’s hear it from Heidegger’s own words, taken from 
a conference dating back to 1930 and entitled precisely On the essence of 
truth:

Conceived from the point of view of truth as revealing [something that 
comes out of concealment and manifests itself as an entity], the veil is then 
non-disclosure [the very being that withdraws from the entity] and there-
fore is non-truth authentic and more appropriate to the essence of truth. 
(Heidegger, 1987, p. 149) 

This means that, while man, with his own ontological behavior, leaves the 
entity from time to time – which always manifests itself within a horizon of 
calculability and worldly concerns – at the same time is to veil the totality 
of being, that is to say, the giving of being itself as the incalculable, the 
indeterminable and the elusive. And it should be noted that according to 

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Heidegger these two movements are not simply opposite and alternative to 
each other, but they belong to each other. Heidegger continues:

The veiling of the entity in its totality, the authentic non-truth, is older than 
any evidence of this or that entity. It is even older than the very letting-be 
[the being], which, while it reveals, already holds veiled and behaves in rela-
tion to the veil. What does letting be guarded by this reference to veiling? 
Nothing less than the veiling of what is veiled in its totality, of the entity as 
such, that is to say: the mystery. It is not a particular mystery relating to this 
or that thing, but the only fact that in general the mystery (the veiling of the 
veiled) pervades and dominates as such the being of man. (Heidegger, 1987, 
p. 149)

Here is the greatness, but also the “stop” of the Heideggerian gaze: on the 
one hand he pays attention to the mystery as that which is not part of our 
calculation, that is, to that dimension of truth that coincides with being 
itself; but on the other hand he identifies the mystery only with the veiling 
of what is veiled, without being able to see that, together with this, indeed 
even more than this, the mystery lies precisely in the unveiling of the veiled 
(which instead for him means the entry into the realm of the calculable), 
that is, in the manifestation of being that hides itself precisely in the entity 
that shows itself. 

Being-there [that is, the being of man], as it exists, preserves the first and 
broadest non-disclosure, the authentic non-truth. The authentic non-
essence of truth is the mystery. […] But speaking in this way of non-essence 
and non-truth impacts beyond measure the usual way of thinking and gives 
the impression of a forced juxtaposition of imaginary “paradoxes”. Since it 
is difficult to eliminate this impression, it is necessary to give up this way of 
speaking, which is paradoxical only for the common doxa (opinion). For 
those who know, however, the “non” of the original non-essence of truth as 
non-truth refers to the not yet experienced context of the truth of being (and 
not only of being). (Heidegger, 1987, pp. 149-150)

If the essence of truth is the manifestation of the entity, the permanent 
remaining hidden of the being is in turn veiled – it is “mystery” –, and 
therefore it will also withdraw with respect to essence (as non-essence) 
and with respect to truth (as non-truth). This is precisely the ambiguous 
domain of erring or wandering: getting lost in the calculable being forget-
ting the being that remains veiled, but also ensuring that non-essence and 
non-truth continue to precede, hidden and forgotten, every essence and 
every truth. 

But in its taking measures, humanity is diverted from the mystery. That 
insistent turning to practicable reality and this persistent turning away from 

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the mystery mutually imply each other. Indeed, they are the same thing. […] 
Man’s restlessness, which pushes him to move away from the mystery to turn 
to practicable reality, and which makes him pass gradually from one object 
to another of current reality, without noticing the mystery, is wandering [ 
Irren]. Man errs. It is not that man falls into wandering [Irre], but he is 
already always moving in wandering […]. The wandering, for which man 
goes, is not something that, so to speak, passes close to man and into which 
he sometimes falls, as in a hole; on the contrary, wandering is part of the 
intrinsic constitution of being-there in which historical man is involved. 
(Heidegger, 1987, p. 151)

These are the same terms of the great Jewish tradition, for which erring as a 
sin means severing the relationship with the mystery. But here the mystery 
itself is no longer a presence because it too withdraws from our existence, 
so much so that a few lines further down Heidegger will say that erring, 
which he had previously said to be not noticing the mystery, is precisely 
“the domination of the mystery in wandering” (Heidegger, 1987, p. 153). 
From this alone, according to Heidegger, freedom can be born: a letting-
being that is always, at the same time, a letting-being veiled. 

With respect to this position, contemporary thought wonders if and 
what could be a different path: if there is, that is, the possibility of recogni-
tion and where is the place where such recognition takes place. It takes 
place in the relationship with otherness, since is precisely the relationship 
that constitutes the place where truth dwells and it is possible to find the 
other and find oneself, a place where one can meet with the other-from-
oneself and the other-of-itself. 

This inseparable circularity between truth and relationship is part of the 
imprinting that constitute the foundation of our being, for which a deci-
sive paradigm shift is required: from a truth conceived and transmitted 
as a-temporal and a-spatial content (dogmatic paradigm) or as intimately 
oriented to praxis (moralistic paradigm) to a truth perceived and transmitted 
“within a relationship”. (Salonia, 2007, pp. 152-153)

It is Martin Buber who in 1923, in an essay entitled Me and you, identifies 
the answer to overcoming loneliness – the existential condition of modern 
man – in the interpersonal and community relationship: “Man becomes 
I in contact with you”, and again, paraphrasing the Johannine prologue 
“In the beginning is the relationship” to indicate how the relationship is 
at the origin, it is the you that constitutes the I, is the encounter that gives 
meaning to his humanity (Buber, 1993, pp. 79, 72). The relationship, 
in fact, is not a mere psychological-sentimental attitude, but “an original 
ontological structure”, as Poma writes in the introductory essay to Buber’s 
work (Poma, 2004, p. 15). 

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In confirmation of this originality of the relationship, the Bible, in 
the text of Genesis we read as follows: “And the Lord God said: ‘It is not 
good for man to be alone: I want to make him a corresponding help’” 
(Genesi 2,18). It is extraordinary to think how the relationship is precisely 
a thought of God who recognizes in the solitude of man a non-good and 
how it is the initiative of God to create the woman, to invent the relation-
ship that is companionship, comparison, help, conflict and dialogue. 

It is in the mature surrender to the other that one grows in the rela-
tionship, and in surrendering oneself there is always both the risk of not 
being understood, of not being listened to, of being used, and the possi-
bility of finding a You willing to understand, to feel as leghein, to dialogue, 
to enhance, to confront. 

Of all the affairs of existence, it is the relationship that is the most 
difficult and tiring, especially when, wanting it to remain over time, it 
requires care, attention, a healthy dose of transfers and self-affirmations. 

Certainly, there is the danger that the dyadic relationship expires into 
relativism, a fact that occurs precisely when the triadic dimension of the 
relationship is forgotten or overlooked, a dimension made up of diversity, 
novelty, storytelling, interpretation (Stern, 1987). Daniel Stern, speaking 
of the development of the child, writes that around the age of 2-3 the 
self-narrative (or verbal) arises, a necessary phase of the child’s develop-
ment, because it is in knowing how to speak that he begins to differentiate 
himself from the other. The language of an individual, the way he speaks, 
the way he uses grammar say a lot about that individual’s identity and 
relational competence. Stern, speaking of the triadic dimension of the 
relationship, argues that the story without the other becomes narcisism; 
You and I without a story is symbiosis; Me, you and story is maturity, 
precisely because telling yourself to another means not only talking about 
yourself, but also about something else and about others. Stern seems to 
echo Jacques Derrida who writes on the importance of the mediation of 
the third, which is co-original, because it does not belong to either the I 
or the You, and is necessary for the maintenance of the relationship itself. 
Without this mediation one would fall into fusion and solipsism (Derrida, 
2008). The third cannot and must not be reduced to either the You or 
the I. The tertium in the relationship becomes an unavoidable word, indis-
pensable for the relationship to remain or become healthy. 

As Buber says, man is always relational and, if you want to under-
stand his specificity, you need to be able to grasp the relational texture. If 
it can no longer be relational, it means that something in its development 
has not worked. It may not be intentional, in the sense that it is not aware 
of what it feels and what it wants, but our being in relationship always has 

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our intentionality in itself, that is, what we want and where we want to go. 
But the awareness of one’s intentionality is an even higher step. Emmanuel 
Lévinas, in Totality and infinity, shifts the focus from simple relationality, 
identifying the key word of his philosophy in the idea of visage. The Face 
is a question, an appeal, an epiphany of the Other, recalling an ethic of 
responsibility and value. Whoever is willing to welcome the face renounces 
possession and accumulation. The subject who welcomes the total other-
ness of the face is not aimed at himself and his knowledge, he is consecrated 
to service. And, however, unlike modern thought, here there is no dialectic 
but mere delivery to the event: an event that is relationship with Others, 
in which the Ego and the Other do not remain linked in their relationship 
but are self-absolving, so as to free themselves from any objectivistic claim. 

The fundamental question of existence is man-with-man, that is, 
relationship, mutual belonging, reciprocity. The latter is a fact that has no 
equal in nature and leads to the affirmation that the root of all reciprocity 
is in the recognition of otherness: no longer, therefore, the “we symbiotic” 
typical of the totalitarianisms of the twentieth century, but of the “we 
relational”, a new dialogic reality that in many respects still needs to be 
thought, constructed and lived. 

In this fluid society of ours, there is a real back and forth between 
the identity of us and the heterogeneity of the Ego and the Alter-Ego, the 
irrepressible root of all reciprocity. And it is on this dimension of interre-
lation that belonging is based, as a contemporary declination of belonging 
and belonging to the world, as belonging to oneself and belonging to the 
other. 

The relationship in reciprocity presupposes a decision and is born 
in the movement of welcoming the other, it grows by opening itself to 
the You and to the infinity of the other: this first possibility of opening 
establishes every other opening, including the gnoseological one, since the 
experience of the other, and therefore of the infinite, is irreducible: it is the 
experience par excellence. 

Absolute experience is not a revelation: a privileged manifestation of the 
Other, a manifestation of a face beyond form. Ambiguous form of a supreme 
presence that dominates those who welcome, that comes from above, unex-
pected, and therefore teaches its newness. The face is a living presence, is an 
expression, every moment undoes the form it offers, an adequate form to 
present oneself as the Other to signify and have a meaning; it is meaning 
without context. (Lévinas, 1977, pp. 64-65)

However, this dialectic today risks to be not productive, since the man of 
“nowadays” lives as if he were threatened by the dominance of his own 
selfhood and the tyranny of otherness. 

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The dialogical We of the encounter risks being translated into a 
useless and equivocal sentimentality, into compensatory paternalisms, into 
spiritualistic, sensualistic or hedonistic encroachments. The attempt to let 
the “We” live is not in itself a guarantee of a true encounter. There is always 
the possibility of the meeting’s fall, its setback, its failure. When “my” world 
has to become “our” world at all costs and the other is reified, we arrive at 
a decline in narcissistic egoity, which is a symptom that never sleeps in our 
societies, which welcomes more monolithic certainty than a dialogic truth. 

As Bauman recalled in an interview on identity in 2002, taking up 
a poster posted on the walls of Berlin after the war, there is a mosaic that 
characterizes our daily life:

Your Christ is a Jew. Your car is Japanese. Your pizza is Italian. Your democ-
racy Greek. Your coffee Brazilian. Your vacation Turkish. Your numbers 
Arabic. Your alphabet Latin. Only your neighbor is a foreigner. (Bauman, 
2003, p. 20)

References

Adorno, T. W. (1994). Contro l’antisemitismo. Manifestolibri. 
Bodei, R. (1997). La filosofia nel Novecento (e oltre). Feltrinelli. 
Buber, M. (1993). Il principio dialogico e altri saggi. Edizioni San Paolo. 
de Chirico, G. (1914-1916). Lettere di Giorgio de Chirico a Guillaume Apolli-

naire. In Metafisica b (2008, n. 7-8). Letter addressed to Guillaume Apol-
linaire dated January 31, 1914 (the date is presumed from the indication of 
the day in the header of the same letter). The letters by Giorgio de Chirico 
are conserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Site Richelieu-
Louvois, Département de Manuscrits occidentaux: NAF 27148 and NAF 
27158. We follow the transcription made by Silvia Tusi and published by 
K. Robinson. 

Derrida, J. (2008). Psyché. Invenzioni dell’altro, Vol. 836. Editoriale Jaca Book. 
Heidegger, M. (1987). Dell’essenza della verità. In Segnavia. Adelphi. 
Lévinas, E. (1977). Totalità e infinito. Saggio sull’esteriorità, Vol. 92. Editoriale Jaca 

Book. 
Luzi, M. (1978). Libro di Ipazia, Vol. 195. Rizzoli. 
Morante, E. (1974). La Storia. Einaudi. 
Pirandello, L. (1956-1987). Novelle per un anno, Vol. I. Mondadori. Published for 

the first time in the columns of the Corriere della Sera in February 1914, 
the novel Il treno ha fischiato was included by the author in the volume 
La trappola in 1915, published by Treves. 

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Paolo Ponzio

Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical Perspectives – 1 (2021) 1-2 
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Poma, A. (A cura di). (2004). Martin Buber. La parola rivolta all’uomo occiden-
tale, saggio introduttivo. In Il principio dialogico e altri saggi. Edizioni San 
Paolo.

Salonia, G. (2007). Odòs. La via della vita. Genesi e guarigione dei legami fraterni. 
EDB Edizioni Dehoniane. 

Sartre, J.-P. (1977). Il rinvio. Mondadori. 
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L. Marghieri Biocca. Bollati Boringhieri. 
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Riassunto

Da Martin Heidegger a Emmanuel Lévinas, da Hannah Arendt a Paul Ricouer: la tra-
dizione continentale del pensiero novecentesco ha costruito la sua narrazione intorno ai 
temi dell’alterità, attraversando il tema della maschera che svolge la sua funzione proprio 
nella dialettica identità/alterità (idem/alter per dirla in termini tecnici). È anche vero 
che quando si pensa a cosa sia una “maschera” non si può che chiedersi cosa ci sia dietro, 
e cosa si “frappone”. La maschera stessa è divisiva e difensiva, eppure, allo stesso tempo, si 
espone, agisce (come un attore che si muove liberamente sulla scena e, tuttavia, è costretto 
ad attenersi allo sviluppo del copione). E anche dell’“alterità” si potrebbe dire che si na-
sconde e si rivela allo stesso tempo; è il totalmente altro e, allo stesso tempo, l’io rovesciato 
(quasi un “io” che è più e “altro da” me, di ricoueriana memoria). È lo straniero, ma 
anche l’ospite gradito, come attesta Lévinas; è allo stesso tempo il rifugiato, l’immigrato, 
il pellegrino o l’errante (per usare il Nietzsche di “Umano troppo umano”).

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How to cite this paper:
Ponzio, P. (2021). Mask and otherness between recognition and concealment: Notes on 
the Self and the You. Elementa. Intersections between Philosophy, Epistemology and Empirical 
Perspectives, 1(1-2), 47-60. doi: https://dx.doi.org/10.7358/elem-2021-0102-ponz

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	Elementa_1-2021-1-2_00b_Sommario.pdf
	Editorial
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	First Section
	The Vagaries of the Superego
	Slavoj Žižek
	Nature and Pandemic

	Ricardo Espinoza Lolas
	Mask and Otherness
between Recognition and Concealment: Notes on the Self and the You

	Paolo Ponzio
	“Liquid” Identity and Otherness
in the Phenomenon of Religious
Alienation: The Loss of Critical
Thinking and the “Barter” of the Self in the System of Communion

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	The Sexistential Vulnerability of Bodies in Contact in the Philosophy
of Jean-Luc Nancy

	Francesca R. Recchia Luciani

	Second Section
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and Inclusive Teaching: Future
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	A Historical Account on Italian
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	Cyberfeminism: A Relationship
between Cyberspace, Technology,
and the Internet

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	Super-Ego after Freud: A Lesson
not to Be Forgotten

	Luigi Traetta 1 - Federica Doronzo 2
	Functioning of Declarative Memory: Intersection between Neuropsychology and Mathematics

	Federica Doronzo 1 - Gianvito Calabrese 2
	Peer Tutoring and Scaffolding
Principle for Inclusive Teaching

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