IB Philosophy 1.2.3 Relations to Others Notes

From Knowing Others, to Relating to Them

1. The previous two topics in 1.2 asked whether the self exists (1.2.1) and whether the self or the other can be known (1.2.2). Section 1.2.3 takes the next step: granted that others exist and can be known, what is the nature of our relations to them, and how do those relations constitute who we are?
2. The central question of this topic is: Is how we define 'the other' part of how we define 'the self'? If the self is partly constituted through its relations, as Jonardon Ganeri argued in 1.2.1 and Simone de Beauvoir argued in 1.2.2, then examining the types of relation we stand in to others is examining the very structure of selfhood.
3. Philosophers across traditions have identified multiple dimensions of self-other relations: biological (kinship, family), social (civic life, professional roles, institutions), psychological (friendship, love, care), and spiritual (religious community, shared transcendent meaning). Each dimension shapes selfhood in a different way.
4. Confucius’ (551-479 BCE) philosophy provides the most systematic account of how the self is constituted through its relations to others.
5. For Confucius, there is no self apart from one's relational roles: the person is fundamentally a node in a network of relationships.
6. This topic connects backward to cultural identity (1.1.3): culture is the medium through which relations to others are structured. The particular forms that biological, social, psychological, and spiritual relations take are always culturally shaped, varying across traditions and historical periods.
7. It also builds on de Beauvoir’s analysis in 1.2.2, where she showed that how we define the Other carries ethical and political weight. This topic asks the next question: what do good, genuine relationships with others actually look like?
8. The topic points forward to social structures (8.1.1), which will examine how formal institutional arrangements shape and sometimes constrain the relational dimensions of selfhood. The relations explored here are the building blocks out of which social structures are formed.
9. A key philosophical tension runs through this topic: do our relationships with others simply happen to us from the outside, or do those relationships actually make us who we are from the very start?
10. Western individualism typically assumes the former, while Confucian and many non-Western traditions assume the latter.

Confucius and the Relational Self

1. Confucius (Kong Qiu, 551-479 BCE) is the founder of Confucianism, one of the most influential philosophical traditions in East Asian history. His teachings are collected in the Analects (Lunyu), assembled by his disciples after his death.
2. At the centre of Confucian philosophy is the concept of ren (benevolence or humaneness). The Analects contain over one hundred references to ren, consistently characterising it as the highest human virtue and as something that can only be realised through loving and caring relations with others.
3. For Confucius, the self is fundamentally relational: persons are defined not by isolated properties (such as Descartes' idea that the self is a thinking substance, a mind that exists independently of everything around it) but by the roles they occupy within a structured network of relationships: to be a person is to be a son, a friend, a citizen, a mentor, or a minister.
4. Confucian philosophy identifies five cardinal relationships (wu lun): ruler and minister, parent and child, husband and wife, elder and younger sibling, and friend and friend. Each relationship is governed by specific virtues and obligations, and together they constitute the social fabric within which the self is formed.
5. When an elderly father falls ill, the obligation of filial piety (xiao) is not something his son works out from scratch by consulting general rules: it is part of what it means to be a son.
6. To neglect his father would not merely be a bad act but a failure of selfhood itself: the relational role is part of who you are, not just a constraint on a self that exists independently.
7. The concept of li (ritual propriety) is equally important: it refers to the ceremonial forms, social norms, and proper conduct that structure relations. Li is not mere etiquette but the grammar of human social life, the system of practices through which persons coordinate, recognise, and fulfil their relational roles.
8. The junzi (exemplary person or gentleman) is the Confucian ideal of a person who fully embodies the virtues appropriate to each of their relationships. The junzi is not a self-made individual but a person who has perfected their relational roles, becoming a worthy son, a loyal minister, a true friend.
9. Confucius's account of the relational self directly answers the topic's core question: yes, defining the other is part of defining the self. To define someone as a parent is simultaneously to define oneself as a child, with all the obligations, dispositions, and forms of care that entails.
10. This contrasts sharply with Western individualist traditions, which typically picture the self as fully formed before it enters any relationships, then choosing to join communities or make friends from a position of independence. For Confucius, such a fully formed pre-social self is a philosophical fiction: the social relations come first.

The Four Dimensions of Self-Other Relations

1. The framework’s requirement to address biological, social, psychological, and spiritual relations reflects how deeply the self is shaped by others. Each layer reveals a different part of who we are and a different way of connecting to others.

Biological and Social Relations

1. Biological relations (kinship, family, species membership) are the most fundamental form of self-other relation: we are born into a web of relationships we did not choose, including parents, siblings, and ancestors.
2. These relations shape our earliest sense of identity, attachment, and obligation before we are capable of reflection.
3. Yet biological relations are never merely biological: they are immediately socially and culturally interpreted, and what it means to be a son, daughter, or sibling varies enormously across cultures.
4. Biology provides the material for kinship, but culture and practice give it meaning.
5. Social relations include civic bonds, professional roles, institutional membership, and the relations of citizenship.
6. Aristotle, in the Politics, argues that the human being is by nature a zoon politikon (political or social animal): a person who can live entirely outside a community is either a beast or a god, not a human being.
7. Language itself is inherently social, existing to communicate judgments about justice and the good that can only arise within a community: social relations are therefore not optional extras added onto a self that already exists, but part of what makes us human in the first place.
8. Imagine a child raised in complete isolation, never hearing language or interacting with another person: such a child would fail to develop the very capacities that make a being human, including reasoning about justice, forming plans with others, and caring about the good.
9. For Aristotle, this thought experiment shows that social relations are not optional additions to an already-formed self but preconditions for human personhood.

Psychological and Spiritual Relations

1. Psychological relations (friendship, love, care, rivalry) are the most intimate and individually shaped forms of self-other relation.
2. Martin Buber, in I and Thou (1923), distinguishes the I-It relation (treating the other as an object to be used or categorised) from the I-Thou relation (encountering the other as a full, irreducible subject).
3. Buber argues that the I-Thou encounter is not something one person makes happen on their own: it arises between persons together, and in doing so it shapes both the I and the Thou at the same time.
4. Not all relations shape us equally: it is the I-Thou encounters that most profoundly make us who we are.
5. Spiritual relations are the broadest and most encompassing: relations to a religious community, a shared tradition, or a transcendent source of meaning. These relations connect the self to something beyond individual psychological bonds, grounding identity in shared sacred practices, narratives, and obligations that extend across time.
6. Emmanuel Levinas, in Totality and Infinity (1961), argues that the face of the Other (the sheer presence of another person's vulnerability, most visible in their face) is the ground of all ethics: it places an unconditional obligation on us that arises before any social rule or calculation of self-interest.
7. Consider a stranger approaching on the street asking for help: before any assessment of desert or cost, the sheer presence of their face already makes a moral demand.
8. For Levinas, this ethical relation to the Other is not derived from self-interest but is the foundational structure of human existence: defining who I am always begins with how I respond to the Other's claim on me.
9. Across all four dimensions, a common pattern emerges: the self is not a finished thing that then steps into relationships, but is shaped and built up through each relational layer.
   1. Sever the biological, social, psychological, and spiritual relations, and the self does not remain: it is impoverished or dissolved.

Defining the Other, Defining the Self

1. The core question of this topic can now be answered directly: yes, how we define the other is part of how we define the self, and the two shape each other at the same time. Every category we use to define the other implies a matching category for the self.

Asymmetry, Dialogue, and the Politics of Definition

1. This mutual constitution is most visible in asymmetric relations: to define someone as a student is to define oneself as a teacher, and to define someone as a stranger is to define oneself as a native.
2. To define someone as an enemy is to define oneself as a member of the opposing camp: the self-other boundary is always relational, not intrinsic.
3. De Beauvoir’s application of Hegel’s master-slave dialectic in The Second Sex (see 1.2.2) showed the political stakes of this: by defining women as the Other (passive, close to nature, defined by their body), patriarchal culture simultaneously defined men as the Subject (active, rational, free). Defining the other was simultaneously a self-privileging act.
4. Charles Taylor, in Sources of the Self (1989), argues that identity is always dialogically constituted (built through conversation and exchange with others): we develop a sense of who we are through dialogue, through the language and frameworks provided by our community, and through the judgements and recognitions of the people who matter to us. There is no “self” that existed before all this dialogue.
5. Since identity is built through dialogue, misrecognition (being consistently defined by others in a degrading or false way) is a genuine harm to the self, not merely an offence to feelings. As Taylor argues, communities that withhold recognition from their members damage those members’ ability to form a healthy sense of who they are.
6. Consider an indigenous community whose knowledge systems are systematically dismissed by colonial institutions as 'superstition' rather than 'science'.
7. Over generations, this misrecognition does not merely offend. It deprives community members of a framework for self-understanding, and as Taylor argues, recognition is not a courtesy but a condition of healthy selfhood: withhold it, and you damage the very identity of those you refuse to see.

Spiritual and Confucian Applications

1. The spiritual dimension of self-other relations adds a further layer: how a tradition defines the divine or the sacred determines what kind of creature the human being is in relation to that sacred source.
2. A tradition that defines God as a loving father defines the human as a beloved child, while one that defines ultimate reality as impersonal defines the human as a passing configuration of matter.
3. In a Christian community where God is understood as a loving father, a bereaved parent does not experience grief in a vacuum: the community’s belief that the child is ‘with God’ provides a shared framework of meaning that shapes how the parent understands themselves and their loss.
4. Confucius's five relationships provide a concrete answer: to define another as a parent is to obligate myself to filial piety (xiao), and to define another as a ruler is to obligate myself to loyalty (zhong).
5. To define another as a friend is to obligate myself to faithfulness (xin): in each case, the definition of the other constitutes part of who I am.
6. Relations to others are not just accidental facts about a self that already exists: they are part of what makes the self possible in the first place. A full account of personal identity (1.1.1), identity over time (1.1.2), and cultural identity (1.1.3) cannot be given without understanding the relational structure that underlies them.
7. Understanding relations between people is the foundation for understanding how society works.