Gadamer's Ethics of Play by Vilhauer Monica;

Author:Vilhauer, Monica;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books

FOUL PLAY: A SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO THE OTHER

First, Gadamer tells us, “There is a kind of experience of the Thou that tries to discover typical behavior in one’s fellowmen and can make predictions about others on the basis of experience” (TM, 358). In this type of experience, the Thou is approached as a natural object to be observed and examined. The examining “I” who approaches the Thou as a “thing” stands at a distance from his object (on guard against being influenced by its behavior) so that it may objectively categorize its qualities, calculate its movements, and discover the “truth” harbored inside the thing—that is, its “nature.” The knowledge that the “I” acquires through his study of the Other-as-thing is meant to enable him to anticipate the thing’s future behavior and develop some sort of control, mastery, or dominance over it. This particular manner of approaching another human being and trying to understand him—an approach characterized by distance, objectification, and dominance—is, in short, that of the natural scientist. In this case the I-Thou relation is reduced to an I-It relation.

We can see almost immediately how this approach to the Other impedes the sort of dialogical play-process that would allow a higher, mutual understanding to develop. Approaching the Other as a thing, rather than a person who has something significant to say from which one might learn, means immediately closing one’s ears to the “claim to truth” of the Other. A patient might experience this sort of approach to the Other at a doctor’s examination if the doctor, for instance, does only physical tests, talking with the patient only insofar as he can get answers to factual questions like “does this hurt?” In this scenario, the doctor neither asks about nor listens to the patient’s own knowledge of the history of his illness and the past failed attempts at solving it. The doctor may even leave the room before offering his diagnosis (interpretation) of the problem, or explaining his reasons for prescribing the drug or course of therapy that he hands off to the nurse to administer. In this case the patient experiences being an object of study that is passively undergoing a procedure of observation, but he experiences no real dialogue in which knowledge is shared and a higher understanding is reached. In this case neither the patient nor the doctor learns what the other can contribute to a greater understanding of the specific ailment at hand, since no dialogue about this subject matter is undertaken.

A second important problem with the scientific approach to the Other is entangled with the first problem mentioned. The scientific approach to the Other not only fails to achieve the goal of a higher understanding of some subject matter, it actually involves a fundamental attitude of disrespect toward the Other. Treating the Other as an object, instead of a human being who has something of value to say, means disregarding (in Kantian language) the “dignity” of the Other and ignoring his humanity. Gadamer explains: “From

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