"And When is Now?" (On Some Limits of Perfect Intelligibility)

This article examines the notion of "intelligibility" as it appears in recent writings of Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida on friendship. The two writers demonstrate very different understandings of the "intelligible" and its limits by and in language. At issue is the question of "intelligibility" in relation to historical transformation, and thus also in relation of "tradition" as a process involving interpretation, selection and exclusion.