Tolerance and the Landscape of Others

Date of Award

2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Flakne, April

Keywords

Deleuze, Gilles, Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Otherness

Area of Concentration

Philosophy

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore and develop a theory of otherness, relying on the existing methodological, ontological, and otherness-related writings by both Gilles Deleuze and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The first part begins with a methodological approach that maintains a priority of the immanence of experience, which gives only an implicated or "indirect" ontology as the immanent conditions of those experiences. Next, I offer a critique of Merleau-Ponty's ontological framework and its implications on otherness, suggesting that his ontology loses the priority of immanence. After this, I suggest that Deleuze's ontological concept of chaos functions to maintain this priority of immanence, allowing for a conception of otherness without appeal to identity or resemblance. The second part then explicates my theory of otherness, derived from Deleuze's conceptualization of the other as "the expression of a possible world." By exploring the limits of this conceptualization, along with Merleau-Ponty's notion of another as always- already being "near" to us and our world, I argue that this limit can be found in the expression of what is experienced as non-sense, one that shows a fundamental difference between this world and an other. I conclude by suggesting a potential for bridging this difference, followed by a new concept of tolerance in relation to this theory of otherness.

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