Philosophy
Neither self nor other exists first on its own. Each appears when an original union is negated by separation, and that separation is then itself negated back into connection. The result is two distinct persons who remain bound to each other.
The word for a human being can mean people who exist in the world by supporting one another, not a single self-contained individual. On this view it is hard to think of anyone as completely an individual. What we are is made up of the relations we stand in.
Grounding ethics in our bonds with others corrects moral theories that overstate the lone individual. It also raises two hard questions. Is there room for individual rights against the community? Are moral truths real, or just whatever local practice happens to be?
Betweenness is not a fixed state but a practical, active process. Union keeps splitting apart and then reconnecting. Ethical life happens inside this continuing cycle of joining, separating and rejoining, not in isolated choices made by detached individuals.
Refusing to answer speculative questions about ultimate reality need not be evasion. It can be a radical practical answer that turns attention away from abstract theory and toward the actual problem of how humans exist together.