Freedom, Responsibility, and Religion in Public Life: From Luther to Levinas and Arendt

Abstract

While Luther affirmed the believer's freedom in relation to the world, he described the human being as unfree in relation to God from whom we receive everything and without whom we can achieve nothing good. This article reconsiders the relation between autonomy and heteronomy in the context of a phenomenology of listening: if faith comes from listening (ex auditu) and auditus is not a human capacity, but rather the effect of God's Word that operates within the human being, how is our (un)freedom to be understood? Further, if a human being's self-relation is expressed by the 'voice' of conscience, which can be ignored only at the cost of losing the unity with oneself, how is responsibility to be conceptualized when the call comes both from 'within' and from 'without'? Finally, what are the implications of this view of the person for the role of religion in public life and the ways in which religious conflicts can be resolved? In an anachronistic thought experiment, Luther is brought into a posthumous dialogue with those that he excluded from the discussion: the Jews. In particular, his view concerning the justmentioned questions is contrasted with insights by Emmanuel Levinas and Hannah Arendt.