“Otherness,” also known as Alterity, is vitiated as a concept by its inbuilt essentialism, indeed more so than most large general ideas are. Anything can be “other,” except the self itself; and may not a self have parts, or aspects? So the word’s denotation is endless. All the same, like some other large vague concepts, or ideas which barely exist, (such as legal fictions or imaginary numbers), or which are doomed to failure (like the handicapping of horses or golfers), otherness can help us understand phenomena which resist recognition because they lie scattered, hence unexamined. They are good to discover things with.