Karol Wojtyla and Emmanuel Levinas on the embodied self: The forming of the other as moral self-disclosure

Abstract

The 'other' has taken on an increased theological significance for the Church in the advent of post-modern reflection, resulting in a myriad of possibilities for those who would reflect on the significance of the other in relation to the 'self', largely in connection with various theories of embodiment. Following Karol Wojtyla's (John Paul II) emphasis on the given-ness of the body I wish to illustrate a way in which the other might be understood theologically, informed by the insights of the continental philosophical tradition, specifically Emmanuel Levinas' phenomenological outline of the other as a key locus of ethical reflection. Bringing Levinas' continental philosophy into dialogue with Wojtyla's philosophical theology, it will be argued that the other must be re-approached in terms of their subjective self-disclosure, centring upon the en-fleshed and bodily form of the human person, who confronts us as a reflection of both that which is most other to ourselves (the divine) and paradoxically that which most resembles ourselves (the human). The other is always an en-fleshed subject and in their action, their subjective identity is disclosed on the relational level. © The author 2009.