From the Real Other to the Ultimate Other

The central claim I attempted to defend in this book is the primacy of the subject, including vis-à-vis the other, as it comes forth in the epistemic, ethical, and hermeneutical realms. In the epistemic aspect, the subject is the one who acknowledges the other as a subject and negates his existence as an object. In the ethical aspect, the subject is the agent who takes upon herself her experiences vis-à-vis the other and, finally, the subject is the being who interprets the modes of the subject’s appearance as a real self. Without the subject’s action, the other could not have appeared as a real self, and this appearance is itself contingent on the ethic of inner retreat that releases the subject from the temptation to objectify the real self. In a realm founded on the primacy of the subject, then, the ontological primacy of the other is increasingly significant.