From Response to Responsibility: A Study of the Other and Language in the Ethical Structure of Responsibility in the Writings of Bonhoeffer and Levinas by Yinya Liu, M.Phil. Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Presented to: The Department of Philosophy National University of Ireland, Maynooth 29th October, 2010 Head of Department of Philosophy: Dr Michael Dunne Supervisor: Dr Michael Dunne CONTENTS Preface v Abbreviations viii Introduction 1 Chapter I The Concept of Responsibility and its Centrality in Ethics 6 Section One: The Etymology of the term ‗Responsibility‘ 6 Section Two: The Pre-Socratic Philosophers on Responsibility 9 Section Three: Aristotle‘s Account of Responsibility 10 Section Four: A Brief Review of Contemporary Theories of Responsibility 15 § 1.4.1 Agential Theory – Accountability/ Imputability 19 § 1.4.2 Social Theory – Representative Action 21 § 1.4.3 Dialogical Theory – Answerability 24 Section Five: A Turning Point: The Need to Rethink Responsibility 28 Section Six: The Significance of the Shared Historical Background to Bonhoeffer and Levinas‘s Reflections on Responsibility 31 Chapter II The Inter-Connectedness between Boundary, Possibility, Limitation and Ethical Responsibility in Man 34 Section One: Barth‘s Distinction between the Wholly Other and Man, The Word of God and the Word of Man 35 § 2.1.1 Wholly Other and Kenotic Christology 36 § 2.1.2 Martin Buber‘s Influence of the ‗I-Thou‘ Relation on Barth‘s Thought 38 § 2.1.3 Divine Revelation and Human Response 40 § 2.1.4 ‗God is dead‘ and Barth‘s Kenotic Christology as Precursor of the ‗Non-Religious Interpretation of Christianity‘ 44 § 2.1.5 The Human Kerygmatic Response 47 § 2.1.6 Dialectic and Analogy: Analogia Relationis, Analogia fidei, Analogia entis 47 § 2.1.7 Modes of the Essence of Language 52 § 2.1.8 Theology of the Word and Revelational Ethics 54 Section Two: Bonhoeffer‘s Connection Between Christ and Man 60 § 2.2.1 Christ and the Social Interpretation of Christology 66 § 2.2.2 Image of God, Obedience to God and Freedom from God 66 § 2.2.3 I-Form and You-Form in the Interpretation of Christology 69 § 2.2.4 Valued-related Time and Revelation: Pen-ultimate and Ultimate 75 § 2.2.5 Non-religious Interpretation of Christology as Social Theologically-Oriented Ethics 78 § 2.2.6 Humanity in Adam and Broken Community 79 § 2.2.7 Being-in-relationship: the Social Significance of Revelation and Correspondence to Reality 81 § 2.2.8 Non-religious Interpretation of Christianity 83 § 2.2.9 Some Preliminary Conclusions: Man, Limitation and Possibility, and the Boundary Between the Condition of Possibilities and the Connection of Limitations which Implicate Responsibility 88 ii Chapter III Bonhoeffer‘s and Levinas‘s Critique of Heidegger‘s Analysis of Being, Language, Responsibility and Dasein 90 Section One: Three Stages in the Development of Heidegger‘s Religious and Anti-religious Thought 92 Section Two: Heidegger as a Key Dialogue Partner of Bonhoeffer 97 § 3.2.1 The Meaning of Being (Sinn von Sein) and from Being to Dasein 98 § 3.2.2 From Logos to Anti-Logos (Christology) 101 § 3.2.3 Bonhoeffer‘s Critique of Bultmann‘s Dependence on Heidegger ‗s Philosophy 104 § 3.2.4 Bultmann‘s Existential De-mythological Interpretation 105 § 3.2.5 Bonhoeffer‘s Critique of Bultmann‘s Dependence on Heidegger‘s Philosophy Re-Visited 108 § 3.2.6 On Language: Heidegger‘s Non-ethical Concern and Bonhoeffer‘s Ethical Concern 110 Section Three: Heidegger as a Key Dialogue Partner of Levinas 112 § 3.3.1 Levinas‘s Relationship to Husserl and Heidegger 113 § 3.3.2 Levinas‘s Response to Heidegger‘s Ontological Difference 114 § 3.3.3 Being and the Other 115 § 3.3.4 Temporality (Synchrony) and Diachrony 119 § 3.3.5 Levinas‘s Response to Heidegger‘s Thought on Language 123 § 3.3.6 Language in the Early and Later Heidegger 124 § 3.3.7 Levinas‘s Response to Heidegger‘s Thought on Language Revisited 129 § 3.3.8 ‗Face and Language‘ in Heidegger and Levinas (Ethical Significance of ‗Face-to-Face‘) 135 Chapter IV The Ethical Significance of Responsibility and the Manifestation of the Other in Language 141 Section One: The Other and the Face 142 § 4.1.1 From Phenomenological Ontology to Ethics 142 § 4.1.2 The Other and the ‗Face‘ 146 § 4.1.3 The Other and Exteriority (of the Face) 147 § 4.1.4 The Traditional Interpretations of the Other 147 § 4.1.5 Separation: How the Other Becomes the Other 152 § 4.1.6 From Separation to Incarnation: Exteriority 156 and Incarnate Subject § 4.1.7 Incarnate Subject: Buber Contrast Levinas 158 § 4.1.8 Ethical Significance of the Face 161 Section Two: The Face and Language 165 § 4.2.1 The Silence of Face and the Silence of Language 166 § 4.2.2 The Face is the Beginning of Language: Levinas‘s Structural Explanation of Language 16 7 § 4.2.3 Face as An Ethical Expression of Language 171 § 4.2.4 Ethical Significance of Language (The Said and The Saying, History/ Time) 174 § 4.2.5 Ethical Significance of Time in Language 176 § 4.2.6 Responsibility in the Saying and the Said 180 § 4.2.7 Proximity and Substitution in Responsible Discourse/ Relationship 184 § 4.2.8 Conclusion: Infinite Responsible Significance of Finite Response 190 iii Chapter V The Ethical Structure of Responsibility 193 Section One: Is Phenomenology of Sociology Sufficient for the Exploration of the Ethical Structure of Responsibility? 194 § 5.1.1 Schutz‘s Sociological Reflections on the Phenomenon of the ‗We‘ 195 § 5.1.2 The Role of the Other in the Ethical Structure of Responsibility 202 § 5.1.3 The I-They and I-We Relationship 203 § 5.1.4 The I-Thou and I-God Relationship 204 § 5.1.5 Responsible Relationship: Face-to-Face 208 Section Two: The Role of Language in the Ethical Structure of Responsibility 210 § 5.2.1 Language in History and Time 212 § 5.2.2 Language in Memory and Responsibility 215 § 5.2.3 Responsibility as A Response to the Other 220 Section Three: Re-thinking Responsibility (I): Religion in the Ethical Structure of Responsibility 223 § 5.3.1 Analysis of Religion in the Ethical Structure of Responsibility 223 § 5.3.2 Re-consideration of Religion 224 § 5.3.3 Religion and Its Ethical Significance 227 § 5.3.4 Responsibility and Religions 230 Section Four: Re-Thinking Responsibility (II): Western and Chinese Perspectives on Religion, Ethics and Responsibility 232 § 5.4.1 The Importance of an Analysis of the Ethical Structure of Responsibility from Western and Chinese Perspectives 232 § 5.4.2 From Innate Knowledge to Moral Language 236 § 5.4.3 From ‗To be Oneself‘ and ‗Having no Self‘ 240 § 5.4.4 From Ren to Responsibility 244 Conclusion 249 § 1 Responsibility, Freedom, Subjectivity and the Other 250 § 2 Responsibility for the Other and Dialogue 252 § 3 Language and the Possibility of Human Self-Understanding 253 Bibliography 257 iv PREFACE The problem of responsibility is a topic that has been extensively investigated from the pre-Socratic period until nowadays. The concept of responsibility is also a developing and dynamic concept that reflects our understanding of history, our interaction with other persons in a society, and our response to living situations. The questioning of the ethical significance of responsibility was paradoxically raised in the 1940s, after World War II. Since that time, not only has the problem of responsibility but also the significance of morality been radically questioned, especially within the fields of philosophy and theology. This study aims at re-thinking and arguing for the ethical structure of responsibility, in light of Dietrich Bonhoeffer‘s and Emmanuel Levinas‘s thoughts. Chapter one presents the origin of the problem of responsibility, the development of different theories of responsibility, the historical background of Bonhoeffer and Levinas and the reason why we need to rethink this concept regarding these two thinker‘s thoughts. Chapter two then presents Bonhoeffer‘s question ‗what is man?‘ by discussing his consideration on the issue of language in his ‗non-religious interpretation of Christianity‘ and on the issue of Christ as the Other in his Christological articulations. Chapter three further analyses Heidegger as an essential link between Bonhoeffer‘s and Levinas‘s thoughts. Chapter four turns to the investigation of Levinas‘s question ‗who is the other?‘ as an answer for Bonhoeffer‘s question, by discussing his consideration on the issue of language in the form of response and on the issue of the Other as an incarnate subject. Chapter five provides a systematic analysis of the ethical structure of responsibility with regard to ‗the Other‘ and ‗language‘ as two indispensable elements. In this chapter, too, we apply this structure to a discussion of some central issues in religion, pluralism and Western-Chinese communication. Much attention has been paid to the phenomenological background of Levinas‘s ethical elaboration of the concept of ‗the Other‘ and the diachronical analysis of ‗the Saying‘ and ‗the Said‘. Much has also been written so as to interpret Bonhoeffer‘s ethical consideration of his Christology as well as his statement of v ‗non-religious interpretation of Christianity‘ with regard to the role of ‗language‘. Little, however, has been said about the inspired relationship between these three elements: ‗the Other‘, ‗language‘ and ‗ethical concern‘, especially in relation to the concept of responsibility advanced by these two thinkers. This is the essential reason for writing this study, and we argue that these three elements constitute the ethical structure of responsibility. Along with our analyses of and discussions on the similarities, the differences and the relationships between Bonhoeffer‘s thought and Levinas‘s thought, these three elements will be further interpreted, discussed and constructed into a stable and comprehensive ethical-structure.