Stranger (as a sociological form) is the conceptual unity of 'wandering' and 'fixation'.
Potential wanderer - someone who hasn't belonged to the group from the very beginning, that he imports qualities into it that cannot stem from the group itself.
Unity of nearness and remoteness (he, who is close by, is far and vice versa).
Argument: in relations of and with the stranger, elements that increase distance and repel, produce a pattern of coordination and consistent interaction.
Stranger = trader (history of economics).History of European Jews. The stranger is no 'owner of soil' - both in physical and figurative sense.
Objectivity of the stranger (a look from the outside). It is not a non-participation, but a positive and a specific kind of participation.
Objectivity = freedom (no commitments). Also potentially a danger (danger comes from the outside).
Abstract nature of the relation to the stranger: we share general qualities with the stranger, and specific differences from merely general features with the more organically related individuals.
General common features add coolness, as well as warmth, to relationships (a feeling of contingency of precisely this relationship).
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All of the above have preponderance over any individual elements of particular relationship.
Estrangement is present even in the most intimate human relationships. (First love is a feeling of uniqueness that goes away and gets replaced by skepticism).
Possibilities of commonness. Jealousy - these possibilities which are thrown between us like shadows, like a mist, but after having taken a more bodily form.
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A different kind of strangeness (Greek - Barbarian), where precisely the general attributes are disallowed to the other. But it's a non-relation; no positive meaning.
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Medieval times: fixed tax for the Jews (not the bearer of certain objective contents), varied for Christian citizens.
Closing notes: the stranger, in spite of being inorganically appended to the group, is its organic member. The peculiar unity of her position cannot be determined other by saying that it is composed by nearness/distance: there's a special proportion and reciprocal tension that produces the particular, formal relationship to the "stranger".