On his own account, the "opening of Heidegger's questions" may have made Derrida's work possible, but it is with Levinas that he claims to be in absolute agreement. Even once stating that he was "ready to subscribe to everything that [Levinas] says." In subsequent chapters we will discover that this claim is both true and false, in the sense that while Derrida accepts much of Levinas's thinking, he does so on the basis of supplementing it. Before examining the manner in which Derrida does this, I want to outline Levinas's account of alterity and the role language plays therein.