The book grapples with one of the most difficult questions confronting the contemporary world:
the problem of the other which includes ethical political and metaphysical aspects. A
widespread approach in the history of the discourse on the other systematically formulated by
Emmanuel Levinas and his followers has invested this term with an almost mythical quality¿the
other is everybody else but never a specific person an abstraction of historical human
existence. This book offers an alternative view turning the other into a real being through a
carefully described process involving two dimensions referred to as the ethic of loyalty to the
visible and the ethic of inner retreat. Tracing the course of this process in life and in
literature the book presents a broad and lucid picture intriguing to philosophers and also
accessible to readers concerned with questions touching on the meaning of life ethics and
politics and particularly relevant to the burning issues surrounding attitudes to immigrants
as others and to the relationship with God the ultimate other.
