Abstract

The stranger is strange, the xenos is xenikos. What is strange, however, is captured neither by the fear of the presence of an original corruption, a non-Greek at the presumed origin of Greek philosophy, which would threaten its privilege; nor by the presence of an êthos in general that allows for hospitality towards the xenos, understood as both guest and host. Rather, that which is most strange about the xenos and its êthos is that which never simply presents itself – and that is what Heraclitus “implies” in saying: êthos anthrôpô daimôn. Thus, the origin of the origin of the hatred of the xenos is the strangeness of implication, which has implications for how we think about the stranger, and how we act towards the implied strangeness of the stranger.