Abstract

Husserl's analogical argument suggests that the Other is understood as another human being like me insofar as the Other has a body like mine, which is a semaphore signalling a conscious life. Ortega y Gasset takes exception to Husserl's formulation, suggesting that Woman's appearance is so different from Man's, the body cannot be regarded as a point of similarity linking self-experience with experience of the Other. ;Ortega's focus on the body's sex is misguided, though the spirit of his criticism deserves exploration. Unlike sex, which is part of the physical body, gender is an expressive difference that complicates the analogical approach. Through a phenomenological analysis of bodily expression, gender is discovered as a feature of the quality of movement, which is the exteriorization of the Ego's interior experience of its embodiment. The quality of movement discloses how the Ego lives its body, or how the individual experiences being in the world. The feminine individual displays "psychic saturation," while the masculine individual displays "psychic restraint"; the former appears as an increased intensity in the sensation, awareness, and attention with which the Ego experiences its body, while the latter appears as a decreased intensity. ;While the phenomenological description of gender-difference does complicate Husserl's analogical argument, it does not preclude it. The analogy is substantiated by the descriptive analysis of gender and the account of the expressive body it entails. Accompanying the quality of movement, gesture, and the context that situates the meaning of gesture, round out the expressive body's appearance. These elements point up the expressive body's concrete significance as the condition for the analogy. The body can function as the common term in the analogy because it is a unity of meaning encompassing gesture, and the quality and context of gesture. Though there may be differences characterizing the content of these constituents, the structure of expressive disclosure is the same for the individual and for the Other. Underscoring this concrete significance of the expressive body for the analogy, the discussion of gender restores the Other from an epistemological problem, to a concrete existential problem arising in everyday experience