Constructions and the Other

Abstract

The paper is an attempt to revise critically the analytical view on (negligence of)
privacy and secrecy. The exposition relies on Lévinas’ conception of ethics and the
Other. Whereas for the post-analytical philosophy there is no private language and a
person is who she is taken to be (by the other people), I try to show that there is a
variety of certain real analogues of private languages, and that the concept of
willing privacy points the distance to the Other, proposed by Lévinas. To doubt my
own (mis)construction of my counterpart is not an epistemological enterprise,
necessary for the functioning of the space of discourse, but an ethical admittance of
the Other’s being “end in itself”.