Fremde sind wir uns selbst

The stranger emerges when the awareness of my difference appears within me, and he ceases to exist when we all recognize ourselves as strangers. Based on a phenomenology of lived experience of strangeness that also acknowledges the moments of happiness and the liberating aspects of such experiences, the author brings to mind moments in Western history where the stranger has been contemplated, accepted, or rejected, but where within the horizon of a religion or morality, the possibility of a society without strangers could also be dreamed of. The stages of this recollection lead from Greek and Jewish history through early Christianity with Paul and Augustine, the early modern period including Dante, Machiavelli, Montaigne, up to the Enlightenment, including the French Revolution, and the Romantic period.