The notion of ‘the feminine Other’ is a vexed one for feminists. In the opening pages of The Second Sex Simone de Beauvoir asks, ‘Are there women, really? Most assuredly the theory of the eternal feminine still has its adherents who will whisper in your ear: “Even in Russia women still are women”.’ For de Beauvoir the verbal symmetry of ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine is merely a matter of linguistic form. In the real world of work and love—in life in general—man is the norm and woman is man’s ‘other’, thus her famous remark, ‘He is the Subject... she is the Other’, the ‘not man’ defined by men.

Levinas may be a ‘recent read’ for many of us but already, writing in 1949, de Beauvoir quotes him; ‘Otherness’, says Levinas, ‘reaches its full flowering in the feminine, a term of the same rank as consciousness but of opposite meaning.’ T suppose’ de Beauvoir comments, ‘that Levinas does not forget that woman, too, is aware of her own consciousness. . . . But it is striking that he deliberately takes a man’s point of view. When he writes that “woman is mystery”, he implies that she is mystery for man. Thus his description, which is intended to be objective, is in fact an assertion of masculine privilege.’3 And one which, we can note with de Beauvoir, can stand in a long line of philosophical evocation of ‘the female’ and ‘the feminine’ from the pre-Socratics to Nietzsche and beyond.

In the existentialist rubric of The Second Sex de Beauvoir sees the problem as this—a woman, like anyone else, is an autonomous freedom, yet she discovers herself in a world where men force her to assume herself as the ‘Other’. Woman, philosophically speaking, lacks her own subjectivity.

There are ambiguities in the title: Other Discourses. What are these discourses and who speaks them? Discourses of others, of those who are not the same? Discourses by the same about those who are other, and about otherness itself, about an absolute Other, which would also be the other of discourse itself? And then, almost immediately upon these questions, as if folded within them, come other questions. Can we hear the discourses of others, if they really are other? Can we have discourses about others which do not reduce them to the limits of our own discourses? Can there be any discourse about otherness itself, about an absolute Other, if it is indeed the other of discourse, beyond discourse?

Even if it were possible to pursue all these questions in a single essay, this is not that essay. Here I pursue only some of the questions in the direction of the philosophical authorship of Emmanuel Levinas.

My concern is with the phenomenon of self-definition, and particularly with the self-definition of one group over against another group. I shall consider two test-cases, one ancient and the other modem, the selfdefinition of Ancient Israel in relation to the Canaanites as evidenced in the Hebrew Bible, and the self-definition of Christians in relation to Jews in the Christian experience of reading the Hebrew Bible as Old Testament.’

Self and Other in Ancient Israel

I begin with the distinction between Israel and Canaan as presented in the Bible. This case illustrates how complex can be the mixture of reality and fantasy in the self-definition of a nation. Some words from the book of Deuteronomy:

Israel presented herself as being distinctive, a people set apart. This emphasis marks the biblical story from Genesis 12 onwards; in the call of Abram, Israel is effectively called to be a people, T will make of you a great nation’ (Gen. 12.2). The story of Jacob and Esau is all about Israelite identity over against others. Jacob represents Israel; through his craftiness, he triumphs over Esau, who represents the enemy Edom (See especially Genesis 27).

Two areas of interaction have contributed to the essential identity of Christianity from earliest to contemporary times. One relates to an external phenomenon, that is to say, Christianity as an entity encountering something it distinguishes from itself; and the other to an internal phenomenon, relating to an encounter from within which has allowed one group to be dominant The external encounter is between Christianity and Judaism, and the internal encounter is between male and female. Both are named by orthodox voices as the ‘Other’, both raise problems for Christianity today, although the solutions may be diametrically opposed.

There has been growing attention given to anti-Judaism in earliest Christianity, and the contemporary implications of this have been an issue taken up by a number of scholars over die past twenty years. Furthermore, writers such as Charlotte Klein, Rosemary Radford Ruether, and John Gager were also aware that the attitudes of previous generations of scholars reflected anti-Judaism in their work. Charlotte Klein, in particular, noted the pejorative use of phrases such as ‘Spatjudentum’, late Judaism’ which German scholars used to describe the Judaism of Jesus’ day. Today scholars of both Jewish studies and Christian origins would readily describe the same period as early Judaism, understanding that Judaism and Christianity both gained their essential identity during the first century c.e. What were those scholars of past generations telling us about their attitude to the Jewish people of their own day in their use of such a phrase? That Judaism was coming to an end with the advent of Christ? That Judaism should have ended with Christ? That Christianity succeeds Judaism?

In this article I wish to argue against a particular conception of nature as a tool for the understanding and appraisal of people’s sexual lives. That conception is one which sees people as having a determinate sexual nature as part of their biological inheritance, their physical constitution. This sexual nature is then used to determine sexual norms: what is in accord with nature is good, and what is against nature is bad. I believe that this approach to human sexuality is mistaken and misleading.

Human sexual behaviour is very various and, as far as we can tell, always has been. But human societies have rarely if ever been content to allow free range to the full variety of sexual desires and tastes. Human societies develop conventions governing sexual activities, encouraging some and restricting others, and limiting them to certain contexts. Modem anthropological, literary and historical scholarship has placed a great deal of emphasis on the fact that these conventions too are very various; the rules governing what kinds of sexual behaviour are acceptable and which are not have varied greatly from time to time and from place to place. And, whatever the rules, transgression has been constant. People have for one reason or another not wanted or have found themselves unable to behave themselves sexually as required by their society. They have not done what they were expected to do or, more often, they have done what they were expected not to do. In every society some transgressions are treated as more serious than others, and societies have varied in which transgressions they treat as serious.

It is important to realise just how different the norms governing sexual behaviour can be in different societies. I will briefly mention two examples to illustrate this. Much studied has been the case of ancient Greek paedophilia.

I am associating Privacy with “Do not disturb, I want to be left alone”. On the face of it, this is an egoistical anti-social standpoint. But is there anything that can be said for being anti-community? In this paper, for the sake of argument, I align myself with this attitude because from this position I can make certain observations and raise questions related to the other.

Whether we like it or not, the mood of the day favours privacy rather than community. Individual privacy is more and more sought and jealously guarded.For many people community is bad news. It evokes a sense of restriction and narrowness rather than openness, conflict rather than harmony .One has only to think of, Islamic community, Serbian community, Protestant community, Roman Catholic community, David Koresh’s community at Waco, the European Community—all these give out negative signals. Even ‘basic community’ has echoes of an in-group and can be seen as a form of protest or elitism. Sometimes it seems as if the only communities that have any popular appeal are fictional ones like Ambridge or Coronation Street. These are fanciful, idealistic creations, real life is much more grim. Survival depends on individual effort. This rejection of community is often the result of its failure to satisfy our needs or its degeneration into such positions as extreme nationalism. But a denial of community often leads to a sense of isolation and loneliness. We can note that both the 1991 General Household Survey of the U.K. (published in 1993 and the recent Report into European Lifestyles by MINTEL draw attention to the fact that over a quarter of all British homes are single person households and about 14% of households are people living alone.