IZAZOV STRANOG
THE CHALLENGE OF THE FOREIGN

Summary/Abstract: This paper is a brief and concentrated introduction to a key problem of Bernhard Waldenfels’ research: the problem of “das Fremde”. The term has several meanings in English, standing mainly for “foreign”, “alien” and “strange”. Waldenfels’ thesis is that “something foreign” does not constitute any of the traditional philosophical concepts, and that all of those concepts, like our culture in general, is posited on the exclusion of “the foreign”. Nevertheless, a degree of challenge from the foreign is always perceptible: something foreign is always present in our experience. Waldenfels distinguishes different modes of foreign presence, distinguishes it from the simple “other”, and claims that “foreign” is always something that belongs to a different order, an order different from our own: foreign is something “extra-ordinary”. With that difference in mind, Waldenfels finally shows how “foreign” is not an absolute object: there is no “general foreign”, for the same reason that there is no “general left”. Foreign is an unstable term, which cannot be either totally determined or totally avoided. The possible cultural roots and consequences of this problem are especially emphasized.

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