Abstract
This study asks for the link between epoché and alterity. In order to accomplish this, the investigation develops its own method based on the eidetic variations of Edmund Husserl and the act of empathy of Edith Stein, which consists of the processual "passing through" six examples of the epoché.
The ex-amples are: the epoché in ancient skepticism, the practice of Samatha and Vipassanā and the experience of awakening (bodhi) in Buddhism, the contemplation (Nachdenklichkeit) by Hans Blumenberg, the epoché of Edmund Husserl, the epoché of Natalie Depraz, Pierre Vermersch and Franciso Varela and the epoché of Hans Rainer Sepp. After this "passing through" the examples are revealed to be variations of one gesture which is closely linked with alterity: on the one hand the encounter with radical otherness marks the triggering moment of the epoché and on the other hand the epoché allowes to changes one's stance and attitude towards the alterity.
To deepen the understanding of the relation between the epoché and alterity the corporeal positioning of human existance and thus its general relation otherness is analyzed in the light of the Oikology of Sepp and the process of the epoché. Alterity will be thematized as the otherness of the other, the otherness of the impenetretable sourounding human existance, as one's own otherness and, in regard to religious experiences, to the otherness of the absolut other.
Following Emmanuel Levinas concept of the visage, it becomes possible to describe the proto-ethical potential of the epoché as a pathway to an abstaning stance. For the epoché makes it possible to encounter the other without assimilating the other, adapting to and losing itself in the other, or simply withdrawing into oneself.