Living at the Margins of Life: Encountering the Other and Doing Theology

This article gives a Levinasian-inspired analysis of ethics at the margins of life. It begins by considering our present day obsession with technology and how it depersonalises the human condition, creating self-centredness. The concept of ethical transcendence is the basis in which the language of theology might be truly used beyond ontology, phenomenology and the category of objectivity. The ideas of the face, encounter, passivity, exposure and transcendence are the basis for a theological language of alterity. The Other or, the poor ones at the margins of life, precedes our knowledge, commitment and practice. The face of the Other is like a trauma that awakens, commands and ordains us to responsibility to the point of expiation, even exposing us and sharing in their wounds. Testifying for the Other's wounds and outrage is glory in the sense of witnessing to both Christ and those at the margins of society.