Abstract

Kant's formalism remains unreal if it cannot be concretized in a historical ethos. An ethos belongs—with texts, contexts, structures, processes, networks, etc.—to an economy of customs and opinions, which presupposes that participating individuals have been and are being initiated and acculturated to it. The analysis of education, transmission, and transition unveils the irreducible—noneconomic and non-textual— essence of addressing and interlocution, without which no culture could exist. The otherness that is involved implies, but is not confined to, "you." The third and I myself are also other by imposing the same inescapable responsibility for them on me