악의 평범함(banality)에 사로잡힌 영혼을 위한 목회상담

Abstract

This research deals with how the conventionality of bureaucratized and regulated language disabled human reason through the case of Adolf Eichmann, who was an achievement-oriented Nazi as well as an A-class war criminal accused of the massacre of the Holocaust. This research also probes how this disabled human reason disregarded the other person’s suffering. Eichmann did not regret his crime until he walked to the execution ground. Totalitarianism does not accept the distance of respectful separation for others or the differences between the other and the subject. In pastoral counseling, an inter-subjectivity study frequently presupposes a symmetry between self and other. However, Emmanuel Levinas asks a question in the inter-subjectivity between the subject and the other. Levinas affirms that true hospitality and understanding does not equate the other with the subject or reduce the other to the subject, but they begin with an asymmetrical relationship that accepts the differences of each other. In this paper, I understand the asymmetrical relationship between Peter and the crippled man in the Bible. The displaced expectations of Peter and the crippled man created a mystery. However, from the perspective of Levinas, it was a totalitarian sympathy. In other words, to be the same as the subject swallows the other. Therefore, the subject and the other are to meet in an attempt to ‘understand’ rather than to ‘empathize.’ Additionally, it includes the possibility to receive both the subject’s and the other’s wounds. A new possibility of empathy, rather, begins with accepting the paradox of unavailable empathy due to the distance between the other and the subject. Therefore, Symmetry Counseling is not possible. but healing occurs when the subject is responsible for the suffering of others.