When the stranger becomes an enemy

Abstract

The hate speech that flows through the net and the media, upsetting any debates, really poses an inconvenient question about a deep human issue: the fear of the stranger as the face and the representation of everything which does not belong to one’s own immediate range of knowledge and relationships. The philosophical reflection has often investigated, particularly in the XX century, the conditions of existence of a negated, or delayed, or trumped condition of being “other”, which appears to characterize the contemporary times, and often leads to a linguistic, moral, spiritual and even democratic poverty, spreading racism and renewed xenophobia as the new keywords of a logos interrupted in its dia-logic and humanly fecund dynamics. This paper intends to highlight some episodes of this philosophical reflection, attempting to conjugate philosophical and pedagogical practices within the contemporary, digital relationality.