The Caterpillar’s Question: Contesting Anti‐Humanism’s Contestations

Abstract

The caterpillar’s question is the question Wonderland’s caterpillar posed to Alice: Who are you? This is a question Alice finds she cannot answer. According to postmodernist anti‐humanism, Alice cannot answer the question because there is no coherent Alice there to answer it, no unitary subject of consciousness. This paper contests the anti‐humanist denial of a coherent subject of experience. While it is conceded that phenomenologically, we may have difficulty today identifying who we are essentially, it is argued that, conceptually, we cannot do without the ontological category of the person as a unified center of consciousness.

Merleau‐Ponty and Nagarjuna – Ethics Within the Self of the No‐Self

“…Before we continue into the next section, I would like it to be duly noted that this essay does not in any way deny the necessary conventionality of the human self, the individual self, or personhood in regard to morality/ethics. I agree wholeheartedly with Douglas V. Porpora that “When in the face of the moral claims of the oppressed, we relinquish the privileges of our own superordinate position, we do so because we encounter the oppressed other as a ‘thou,’ as a self who addresses us” (Porpora, 1997, p. 253). This cannot be denied one iota in a paper encouraging morality and not nihilism.…”

“…This cannot be denied one iota in a paper encouraging morality and not nihilism. “The I‐thou relationship is fundamental to the material being of the social creatures we are” (Porpora, 1997, p. 254). And this paper in no way denies that relationship.…”

“…And this paper in no way denies that relationship. For as Porpora also rightly tells us, “Only a coherent thou can address us with moral claims, and in response to that address, we are called to be thou's ourselves, to respond as an I, self to self” (Porpora, 1997, pp. 253‐254).…”