Key Arguments

• Otherness is a universal characteristic of Being and underlies why definitions are distinctions.
• Inorganic multiplicity shows otherness abstractly; organic life shows variation even within a species.
• Only humans can express distinction and communicate themselves (not merely needs or affects); thus otherness and distinctness become uniqueness.

Source Quotes

Signs and sounds to communicate immediate, identical needs and wants would be enough. Human distinctness is not the same as otherness—the curious quality of possessed by everything that is and therefore, in medieval philosophy, one of the four basic, universal characteristics of Being, transcending every particular quality. Otherness, it is true, is an important aspect of plurality, the reason why all our definitions are distinctions, why we are unable to say what anything is without distinguishing it from something else.

Otherness, it is true, is an important aspect of plurality, the reason why all our definitions are distinctions, why we are unable to say what anything is without distinguishing it from something else. Otherness in its most abstract form is found only in the sheer multiplication of inorganic objects, whereas all organic life already shows variations and distinctions, even between specimens of the same species. But only man can express this distinction and distinguish himself, and only he can communicate himself and not merely something—thirst or hunger, affection or hostility or fear.

But only man can express this distinction and distinguish himself, and only he can communicate himself and not merely something—thirst or hunger, affection or hostility or fear. In man, otherness, which he shares with everything that is, and distinctness, which he shares with everything alive, become uniqueness, and human plurality is the paradoxical plurality of unique beings. Speech and action reveal this unique distinctness.

Key Concepts

• Human distinctness is not the same as otherness—the curious quality of possessed by everything that is and therefore, in medieval philosophy, one of the four basic, universal characteristics of Being, transcending every particular quality.
• Otherness in its most abstract form is found only in the sheer multiplication of inorganic objects, whereas all organic life already shows variations and distinctions, even between specimens of the same species.
• In man, otherness, which he shares with everything that is, and distinctness, which he shares with everything alive, become uniqueness, and human plurality is the paradoxical plurality of unique beings.

Context

Same section; conceptual clarification of distinctness versus otherness and the elevation to human uniqueness.