A Vida Examinada

"The responsible being is the one who thinks they've never been responsible enough. They've never taken care enough of the other. The other is so in excess of anything you can understand or grasp or reduce. This in itself creates an ethical relatedness. A relation without relation. Because you don't know, you can't presume to know or grasp the other. The minute you think you know the other, you're ready to kill them. You think: 'Oh, they're doing this or this, they're the axis of evil, let's drop some bombs.' But, if you don't know, if you don't understand this alterity, it's 'so' other that you can't violate it with your sense of understanding. Then you'll have to let it live, in a sense."
Avital Ronell