A theme that has occupied quite a bit of my thinking the last few years is that of ‘identity and otherness’. It appears to me as if there is a universal need for human beings to have a clearly defined identity, hence we all ask ourselves who we really are? This endeavor into the realm of the deep existential questions is obviously not always conducted with rigor and intellectual sharpness but the problem of being–what it means to exist–are in one way or another dealt with by all of us.

In his book Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton University Press, 1994), the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor explains that human identity is partly shaped by the recognition, or non recognition, of others. Basically this means that we’re all in need of other people to affirm our existence to understand ourselves as actual ‘beings’. If Taylor is right, and I believe that he is, this…