I’ll say this simply, then I’ll say it thoroughly and repellently. (Mark Twain: “I’d write you a shorter letter, but I haven’t the time.”)

Simple version:

I am both like and unlike you in the way that now is both like and unlike an hour from now.

Ugly version:

I think I just understood Heidegger a little deeper, and I wanted to jot down the idea.

Heidegger distinguishes two conceptions of time, “clock time” and lived time (I can’t remember the exact term, and I never scanned the passage). “Clock time” abstracts all moments and makes them equivalent points on a time-line, constituted of an infinite series of moments, each its own “now”. Heidegger saw this abstraction as an alienation from the present and its true relation to past and future, which is one of recollection and anticipation. I read this years ago, so I may have it wrong, but this is how I recall it now, and it is this conception, right or wrong, that I am treating as “Heidegger’s”.

It occurs to me that this same style of abstraction occurs when we abstract a Thou as another I. “We” is taken to be an infinite aggregate of I-subjects.

Our relating of the present moment to some future moment in the future is analogous to my relating my own I to a Thou. The relation preserves an element of likeness, but it also preserves an essential difference. The essential difference is this: the relation is between the I (or the present) — in which it is rooted —  and a projection, the Thou (or the future) — toward which the relation extends. But the I and the present is essentially and immediately constituted of relationships, whereas the object of these relationships is not — not immediately, but through the mediation of the present I. But the relationship I presently have with these projected objects is… that they are essentially constituted of relationships just as I (or the present) is.

Now I’ll say it again, this purely for my own satisfaction, but probably with total loss of comprehensibility:

The immediate (I/now/here) mediates, and this act involves mediation and the mediate. (The mediate = mediated entities.)

Mediation is the essential being of the immediate.

Mediation is also the being of the mediate, in one or two ways depending on the nature of the mediated.

The I-it mediation derives a mediated it-object out of its (more properly, “my”) synthetic activity.

The I-Thou mediation may also derive a mediated Thou-subject out of its (“my”) synthetic activity that takes my Thou-subject as one who mediates and whose mediation can be understood.

The I-Thou relationship — to relate to an other as Thou — means the other can be understood.

To understand is to pursue the immediate mediation taken to be the essential being of the Thou, just as immediate mediation is the essential being of I. This is the Golden Rule.

The act of understanding entails pursuit of change of the immediate, of I, right now, here where I am. This requires faith, both in the existence and value of the immediacy of Thou.

*

To understand another person means to pursue experiencing that person’s world, and the medium for this pursuit is faithful dialogue. This occurs between friends, and it is friendship. Which comes first? They happen together. Friendship is mutual pursuit of mutual understanding. The degree of success is less important than the degree of faith.