Does Morality Begin with the Other?
In When the Other Appears on the Scene, Umberto Eco asks a simple but profound question:
Where does morality come from?
Do people behave morally only because they believe in God?
Do we need religion, metaphysical principles or absolute rules before we can know that hurting another human being is wrong?
Or can ethics begin somewhere closer to ordinary human experience?
Eco’s essay developed from an exchange with Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini. The Cardinal asks what can provide a firm basis for morality for someone who does not appeal to religious faith or transcendent values.
Eco’s answer begins with the other person.
Before discussing complicated moral theories, Eco begins with something all human beings share:
the body.
Across different cultures and languages, human beings experience basic physical realities.
We know what it means to see and hear.
We know hunger and thirst.
We experience pleasure and pain.
We understand movement, sleep, fear and suffering.
And because we know these things through our own bodies, we also understand what it means to have them taken away.
We do not want to be tied up, beaten, wounded, silenced, segregated, tortured or prevented from thinking and speaking.
From this basic human experience, Eco begins to move toward ethics.
If I understand that pain matters to me, can I recognise that it matters to another person too?
If I do not want my dignity violated, can I understand that another person has the same claim?
This gives us the first important question:
Can our own vulnerability teach us to respect the vulnerability of others?
But Eco does not stop with the body.
Something changes completely once the other appears.
Human beings do not become fully human in isolation.
We need other people.
We need their response.
We need recognition, communication, affection, respect and relationship.
Eco argues that we cannot fully understand who we are without the presence and response of others.
This is the heart of the essay.
Ethics begins with relationship.
The other person places a limit on my actions because the other person is not simply an object in my world.
They too experience pain.
They too think.
They too speak.
They too seek recognition.
They too have a world seen from their own point of view.
Once we recognise this, morality becomes more than a rule imposed from outside.
It becomes part of what it means to live with other human beings.
But Eco also recognises a serious difficulty.
Human history is full of violence.
People have tortured, enslaved, persecuted and killed others.
How is this possible if recognition of the other is so fundamental?
Eco suggests one disturbing answer.
Human groups have often limited the meaning of “the other”.
They recognise members of their own community as fully human but treat outsiders as inferior, foreign or even less than human.
The moral circle becomes too small.
This raises a question that remains deeply important:
Who do we include when we say “people like us”?
Family?
Community?
Religion?
Nation?
Race?
Or every human being?
The history of morality can therefore also be understood as the slow expansion of recognition.
People gradually learn that rights they claim for themselves must also belong to people who are different from them.
Eco does not pretend that recognising the other automatically makes people good.
Religious believers can knowingly do wrong.
Non-believers can also do wrong.
Having a moral principle does not guarantee moral behaviour.
The real challenge is deeper.
Do we genuinely see the other person as someone whose needs, pain and dignity matter as much as our own?
This leaves us with difficult questions.
Can morality exist without religion?
Is our shared human body enough to provide the beginning of universal rights?
Why do human beings find it easier to recognise the humanity of some people than others?
Can we understand ourselves without other people?
Does respecting another person begin with recognising our common vulnerability?
How far should our moral responsibility extend beyond family, community and nation?
And perhaps most importantly:
What changes in our behaviour once we truly recognise that the person before us is another “I”, not simply an object in our world?
Eco’s answer is not a complicated system of moral rules.
It begins with something more fundamental.
We meet another human being.
We recognise something of ourselves in them.
And through that recognition, our freedom acquires a limit and our responsibility begins.
Perhaps the central message of When the Other Appears on the Scene can therefore be expressed simply:
Morality begins when we recognise that the other person’s humanity matters as much as our own.
- Eva Ierides is a Contributor to Agora Dialogue, participating in its work of reflection, dialogue and engaged citizenship.
- Dinos Toumazos is Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Agora Dialogue, an independent initiative dedicated to sharing knowledge and ideas, promoting engaged citizenship and encouraging responsible leadership.