Strangers: The Social Construction of Universality and Particularity

Most of our contemporaries are strangers. Little do we know of their life, less still do we understand. We assume that, were we to communicate with them, we would need to overcome mutual misunderstandings — an obstacle arising from the unclarity, or perhaps even the impenetrability of signs that denote each side's intentions. We can imagine this kind of difficulty if we use a foreign language as a metaphor, or if we recall a visit to a land where a foreign language is spoken. The difficulty with reaching agreement as to the proper form of life, which provides the substance for the image of stranger, is patterned after the difficulty of understanding an unfamiliar language. As Wittgenstein suggested, to understand is to know how to go on.