The Limit of Responsibility: Engaging Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Ethics in a Globalizing Era

This volume frames the question of responsibility as a problem of agency in relation to the systems and structures of globalization. According to Ricoeur responsibility is a “shattered concept” when considered too narrowly as a problem of act, agency and individual freedom. To examine this Esther Reed develops a short genealogy of modern liberal and post-liberal concepts of responsibility in order to understand better the relationship dominant modern framings of the meanings of responsibility. Reed engages with writings by major modern (Schleiermacher, Hegel, Marx, Weber) and post-liberal (Buber, Levinas, Derrida, Badiou, Butler, Young, Critchley) theorists to illustrate the shift from an ethnic responsibility built on notions of accountability and attributions to an ethic responsibility that starts variously from the 'other'. Reed sees Dietrich Bonhoeffer as the most promising partner of this theological dialogue, as his learning of responsibility from the risen Christ present now in the (global) church is a welcome provocation to new thinking about the meaning of responsibility learned from land, distant neighbour, (global) church and the bible. Bonhoeffer's reflections on the centre, boundaries and limits of responsibility remain helpful to Christian people struggling with an increasingly exhausted concept of accountability. Cover Contents Abbreviations Acknowledgements Foreword Preface Framing the Question Accountability Attribution Unbearability Thoughtlessness Plurality Spectacle Genealogy of a Concept Capacity Possessed by the Self Inherent in Individual Freedom Subsumed within a Totalizing Logic Bourgeois Diversion Integral to Instrumental Rationality Having an Affinity with Capitalism Why Bonhoeffer? Responsibility and the Problem of ‘Act’ Self and Other Bonhoeffer’s Critique of Hegel Responsibility as Corollary of the Problem of Selfhood Responsibility in Freedom Responsibility and the Problem of ‘Being’ Responsibility Reversed Christ the Limit The Concrete Church and the Problem of Guilt Responsibility: Miteinander, Füreinander, Stellvertretung Being miteinander in Sin Postcolonial Readings of Bonhoeffer Revisiting Bonhoeffer’s Ecumenical Work Learning in Silence Being füreinander across Global Inequality Tax Holding Corporations to Account Why Human Rights Agendas Matter Stellvertretung as the Lived Meaning of Responsibility Stellvertretung Learned from the Land Giving the Land a Voice Truthing Confronting the Vices of Hubris ‘Sell all that you have’? The Mining and Faith Reflections Initiative Partners in Sustainable Development? Overcoming the Resource Curse? Responsibility Lived as Church Learning from Advocacy Agents Responsibility as Political Event Focused on the Empirical Church Maintaining a Chalcedonian Framework Church under Judgement The Politics of Pentecost Empowerment Penultimate Conclusions Biblical References Bonhoeffer Works Names Subjects "This volume frames the question of responsibility as a problem of agency in relation to the systems and structures of globalization. According to Ricoeur responsibility is a "shattered concept" when considered too narrowly as a problem of act, agency and individual freedom. To examine this Esther Reed develops a short genealogy of modern liberal and post-liberal concepts of responsibility in order to understand better the relationship dominant modern framings of the meanings of responsibility. Reed engages with writings by major modern (Schleiermacher, Hegel, Marx, Weber) and post-liberal (Buber, Levinas, Derrida, Badiou, Butler, Young, Critchley) theorists to illustrate the shift from an ethnic responsibility built on notions of accountability and attributions to an ethic responsibility that starts variously from the 'other'. Reed sees Dietrich Bonhoeffer as the most promising partner of this theological dialogue, as his learning of responsibility from the risen Christ present now in the (global) church is a welcome provocation to new thinking about the meaning of responsibility learned from land, distant neighbour, (global) church and the bible."--Bloomsbury Publishing.