신학담론으로서 타자윤리의 가능성과 한계

Abstract

This article explores whether Emmanuel Levinas's ethic of the Other can be regarded as a theological discourse. After publishing Totality and Infinity, there have been many serious questions of the relationship between transcendence and immanence; infinity and the finite among many philosophers and theologians. Interestingly enough, Levinas tries to mediate these concept by his ethic of the Other. I examine how Levinas integrate these two areas in his ethic of the Other. As a french phenomenologist, Jean-Luc Marion already mentioned, this kind of attempt has confronted a double-bind dilemma. One is that it would be a question of phenomena that are objectively definable but lose their religious speciality; and the other is that it would be a question of phenomena that are specially religious but cannot be described objectively. In order to explore his ethic of the other as a medication of philosophy and theology, one needs to examine his critique of theodicy. Levinas rejects theodicy because the history of twentieth century is sufficient proof of the falsity of theodicy. He asserts that every attempts to justify suffering for the theological vindication of God's justice through theodicy is bankrupt. Any kind of condolence for the sufferer is merely ‘my’ imposition and offensive rationalization as an interpretation coming from me. Through this rationalization, the other's suffering is meaningful to me though it is meaningless to the sufferer. Thus theodicy is a theological form of the doubling evil that occurs in rationalization of the suffering of the other. While refusing the use of theodicy to justify other's suffering Levinas argues that one can only meet the trace of God in taking a responsibility for the other. Ethics precedes epistemology because he understands ethics primarily as the moral obligation for the Other, which comes from infinity. Levinas wants to reconstitute the origin of all moral knowledge in the Other who has been darkened by the manipulating power of the self. The Other teaches the self about her destitution, vulnerability, and defenseless in the primary frankness of the revelation that only the face can convey. Thus the face is opened up in consciousness by the separation implied in the idea of infinity. The face's infinity is present only as the trace of an absolute alterity. The only access we can have to God is the face-to-face relationship with other persons. Levinas enables philosophy to be liberated from a tendency towards the theoretical and redirects its concerns to practical engagement. This place of engagement is a encounter of transcendence and immanence; philosophy and theology.