CHAPTER III

THE HUMAN KNOWLEDGE OF THE OTHER: THE OPENING OF THE PROBLEM OF CULTURE AND OF HISTORY.

            We know the other departing from the common perceived situations. The present situation implies the past situations than the virtual situations. And the unity of the perceived situations constitutes our human environment. However, the human behavior as such transcends the perceived environment referring itself to the world constituted by the intellectually known and by their unlimited implications. We know the other as playing roles or as making itself one of the parts implied in my situation and in my world. In short, the other as we know him/her becomes part of my world.

            The developed roles of others and especially the mode of developing them are sometimes difficult to recover, to relive, to know… More often, we always discover that the environment and the world of others are different from ours. We learn that their way of living the environment and of behaving themselves is not always immediately perceptible and comprehensible.

            We discover obstacles in our way of knowing the other due to the diversity of personality and of the corresponding perspectives of the world. Several "means-end" structure of the behavior of others escapes us (technical procedures, financial operations, ideals…). But do we qualify these as abnormal? For example, emotional disturbances and sexual deviations in which the perceived environment and corresponding attitudes (already those of other sex constitute a little enigma: "mystery of a lady", and similar), judgments of values, means and ends… they seem to be abnormal, inaccessible, they are repugnant… Or the pathologies of language,[1] which assume varied forms (diversified expressions in the troubles of the motive execution of the phenomena, regarding troubles of the construction of phrases: in syntax, troubles found in adapted words: in paradigms…), and they derive from various causes: from fine cerebral lesions to the existential free behaviors to their roots.[2] Through psychosis (for example, schizophrenia, manic depressions, etc.), which render illness. We note that the passage, which this whole psycho-behavioural anomaly shows extreme complexity of elements and of structure of normal human behavior, they push us to study it systematically and contribute to the knowledge of it (we think of the role of pathological psychology: Sigmund Freud, Karl Jaspers, Bisnwanger, Kurt Goldstein, etc.)

The other rarely reveals itself thus the difficulty in perceptive-intentional recovery and the difficulty in intellective comprehension. A good deal of this happens on the level of experiential life and on that of knowledge and of values. But there is more: as an "I" itself, the other also develops and changes. This usually happens in the growing stage more so during the adult stage. We think through perceptive apprehension and the motor, to the attitudes and affective tendency, to imagination, to the intelligence, to values, to choices… And the perceived environment as the world of ideas and of values, they developed themselves with them. The difficulty in the knowledge of the other derives – at least to a good measure – from the fact that "I" - the child and the young - find myself in a stage of anterior development from others older. And the "I" adult and old does not remember well anymore of my previous stage of development. And added to this is the simple fact that our developments and the respective changes can be in divergent stages.

            Now, we live in cognitive and affective contact with others and in expressive communication with them. However, the mode and direction of such developments and changes (especially during infancy, more flexible and faster in changing) in all aspects of life, do not only depend on the natural environment. Perhaps, they are especially shaped by the behavior of the human community in which they live. If the groups, to which we belong, differ one from the other, we will purely be diverse. In fact, many times our gestures done unconsciously and the behavior of our organism have led us to an embarrassing misunderstanding.

            Therefore, from the consideration of the knowledge of the other, we are led to admit the differences of personality. This is on account of the environment and perspective in reference to the world not only among individuals but also among human groups. Thus, on account of this discovery, there is proper possibility to open ourselves to the problem of culture and cultures, of the cultural world, and the cultural worlds. And this is because culture – as we will see, is not only understood as human behavior per se. Rather, the cultural world is the environment as corresponding to such behavior, while their diversification in cultures and worlds is rooted in the openness and freedom of human behavior as this ultimately includes the infinite intellective-volitive activity and transcendent in its formal object.

            And as the human being develops himself/herself under the influence of the group, s/he remains opened and free, and the other – however difficult – is knowable. The human being and his/her world are constantly "becoming", always susceptible to developments and changes, and such "becoming" remains susceptible to the influences partly of other men and the diverse worlds: here is the root of history.

            Now, we must know, connecting with nature and human existence, as purely with the physical world and transcendence, that it would be culture and history, which are the dimensions of the entire humanity in space and time. Already in the modest daily encounter, of experience, knowledge and values with other human beings, there is the mode of opening itself to that unmeasured dimension and introducing us to it.