Here is Derrida talking about the other:
We often insist nowadays on cultural
identity – for instance, national identity, linguistic identity, and so on. Sometimes the struggles under the banner of
identity, national identity, linguistic identity, are noble fights. But at the same time the people who fight for
their identity must pay attention to the fact that identity is not the
self-identity of a thing, this glass, for instance, this microphone, but implies
difference within identity. That is, the
identity of a culture is a way of being different from itself; a culture is different
from itself; language is different from itself; the person is different from
itself. Once you take into account this
inner and other difference, then you pay attention to the other and you understand
that fighting for your own identity is not exclusive of another identity, is
open to another identity. And this prevents
totalitarianism, nationalism, egocentrism, and so on. That is what I tried to demonstrate in the book
called The Other Heading: in the case of culture, person, nation, language,
identity is a self-differentiating identity, an identity different from itself,
having an opening or a gap within itself. That totality affects a structure, but it is a
duty, an ethical and political duty, to take into account this impossibility of
being one with oneself. It is because I am
not one with myself that I can speak with the other and address the other. That is not a way of avoiding responsibility. On the contrary, it is the only way for me to
take responsibility and to make decisions.
(Caputo, 12f)
Having
just seen 258 words about the other from Derrida, consider 250 words on the other
from Nietzsche.
Too close. – If we live together with another person too closely,
what happens is similar to when we repeatedly handle a good engraving with our bare
hands: one day all we have left is a piece of dirty paper. The soul of a human being too can finally become
tattered by being handled continually; and that is how it finally appears
to us – we never see the beauty of its original design again. – One always
loses by too familiar association with friends and women; and sometimes what
one loses is the pearl of one’s life.
(HH 428 complete)
In parting. – It is not in how one soul approaches another but
in how it distances itself from it that I recognize their affinity. (HH II 251 complete)
The first thought of the day. – The best way of
beginning each day well is to think on awakening whether one cannot this day give
pleasure to at any rate one person.
If this could substitute for the religious practice of prayer, then this
substitution would be to the benefit of one’s fellows. (HH II 389 complete)
A testimony to love. – Someone said: “There are
two people upon whom I have never thoroughly reflected: it is a testimony of my
love for them.” (HH III 301 complete)
Rare abstemiousness. – It is often no small
sign of humanity not to wish to judge another and to refrain from thinking about
him. (D 528 complete)
To the solitary. – If we are not as considerate of the honour
of other people in our private soliloquies as we are in public, we are not
behaving decently. (D 569 complete)
From
which author would you like to read another 300 words about the other? Who is
clear? Who is obscure?
