""Radical alterity" means the irreducible, at-the-root Otherness of the Other. In other words, one of our deep-seated duhs is that other people are fundamentally not knowable and cannot be made into objects of the self. We can't live inside someone else's feelings. But we can have face-to-face encounters with them, which is pretty terrific, and we can start dialogue from this point, accepting the Others mystery/unknowability/whatever you want to call it, and going from there."
-Mike Young

(Levinas, Buber)