Altruism or the Other as the Essence of Existence

Download or read book Altruism or the Other as the Essence of Existence written by Iraklis Ioannidis and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-03-22 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Iraklis Ioannidis offers fresh, yet radical, philosophical insights into the much contested topic of altruism. Whereas the debate on altruism, since time immemorial, consists in trying to determine whether we are biologically altruistic or not, Ioannidis explores altruism otherwise. Following Nietzsche, he traces altruism to the phenomenon of promising or giving one’s word. His analysis provokes us to think that our possibility to exist cannot be realized without this event. Ioannidis’ passage to altruism attempts to perform altruism while exploring it. By reversing the axioms of classical phenomenology, what he calls unbracketing, he welcomes in his writing space any discourse, any human expression which could help the philosophical investigation.