Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Ethical Self: Christology, Ethics, and Formation

Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work has persistently challenged Christian consciousness due to both his death at the hands of the Nazis and his provocative prison musings about Christian faithfulness in late modernity. While much debate surrounds claims regarding the continuity of Bonhoeffer's thought—especially from his early work and Christocentric anthropology to his later commitments to responsibility and faithfulness in a "world come of age"—there are central motifs that pervade his work from his doctoral dissertation to the prison writings.

Clark Elliston's Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Ethical Self not only suggests that a concern for otherness permeates all of Bonhoeffer's work, but also that a constructive vision of Christian selfhood is defined by its orientation towards otherness. With Bonhoeffer as both the origin and point of return, Elliston engages in a dialogue with both Emmanuel Levinas and Simone Weil, both of whom stress the role of the other for self-understanding, albeit in diverse ways. By reading Bonhoeffer "through" their voices, one enhances Bonhoeffer's already fertile understanding of responsibility.