Formative encounters with the other: examining the structural differences between Bonhoeffer and Levinas
In this paper, I offer an account of the structural differences, neglected in the literature, between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Emmanuel Levinas, showing how Bonhoeffer’s account of persons and responsibility is differentiated through creation, fall, and redemption, whereas Levinas’s account of ethica...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Taylor & Francis
2023
|
| In: |
International journal of philosophy and theology
Year: 2023, Volume: 84, Issue: 1, Pages: 35-54 |
| Standardized Subjects / Keyword chains: | B
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich 1906-1945
/ Lévinas, Emmanuel 1906-1995
/ Self
/ Responsibility
/ Sin
/ Church
|
| IxTheo Classification: | KAJ Church history 1914-; recent history NBE Anthropology |
| Further subjects: | B
Phenomenology
B Bonhoeffer, Dietrich B Selfhood B Responsibility B Levinas, Emmanuel |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | In this paper, I offer an account of the structural differences, neglected in the literature, between Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Emmanuel Levinas, showing how Bonhoeffer’s account of persons and responsibility is differentiated through creation, fall, and redemption, whereas Levinas’s account of ethical selfhood offers itself as a kind of transcendental account of persons in which the self is structured by its encounter with the other which commands responsibility. This difference (situationally differentiated vs. transcendental) plays out in two ways – the role of the will in ethical selfhood and the identity of the primal governing agent in the encounter with others. Bonhoeffer’s account, through its differentiation into different modes of existence, allows for the possibility of different stages and modes of the encounter with the other, and thus allows for the incorporation of one model of encounter at one stage, and another model at a different stage. As a consequence, Bonhoeffer’s account includes and develops upon the kind of demand-based account Levinas offers. This can serve as an advantage over Levinas’s model insofar as it provides a ‘multi-modal’ framework to absorb other views into one’s own in a way that a transcendentally conceived framework of selfhood does not. |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 2169-2335 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: International journal of philosophy and theology
|
| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1080/21692327.2023.2186470 |