| Summary: | This text was born out of a curious parallelism. Both Heidegger and Derrida happened to be, at one
point of their biographical and philosophical paths, before a Japanese man. Also, they both decided to write
about this “encounter” (a notion that has a degree of importance in both their philosophies). In doing this,
they decided to employ and invest into this alterity and availability, although differences are readily noticeable.
Their respective medium choices — for Heidegger the deep, enclosed intimity of language as Gespräch, for
Derrida the travelling openness of a letter (what else?) — can be seen as a first glimpse of their final endeavors.
Presenting the oncoming questions, — somehow reducible to one, “How can we communicate with the other/
Other?” — through a series of crossed chapters eventually focusing on Derrida, is justified by the impression
that, as in polyphony, each of the two voices/tracks [traces] reveals something hidden in the other. Laying the
one upon the other lets not only perceive their dissonances and disparities, but lets emerge from their own
supplementary encounter — their playing tag — a set of subtler, flavorful questions.
|
|---|