Abstract

The theme of the "Other" dominates post-Cartesian thinking. Specifically, what is the relation of the knowing subject to the Other , if both self and Other are supposed to be counterparts and partners--a Thou meeting the other's I--and if each exceeds the other's experience? Twentieth-century theology, too, has reconsidered the Cartesian basal subject from which the existence of others and God proceeds. Karl Barth is a major representative of one approach to this theme. Throughout his theological career Barth tries to overcome a subject-centered theology wherein God is not allowed to appear as God--the Other as Other--and wherein the claim of the Other goes unheeded. ;In this dissertation, the issues of otherness are first examined. In Barth's earliest theology , the believer's subjectivity is the locus for God's otherness, while the claim of the Other is said to lodge in God's kingdom as manifested in social democracy. During his "dialectical" period, Barth rejects cultural and social norms, as well as the objectification of God, so that he may affirm the total divine otherness and the divine freedom to speak the Word. In the Church Dogmatics, Barth locates God's otherness in God's triune being, the divine self-correspondence and the divine correspondence to human beings. Anthropology and creation are grounded christologically. Barth defines human otherness in terms of the human being's being-determined as covenant partner with God and being-for- and -with-others in analogous correspondence to the divine self-othering and the divine election. ;During all of Barth's theological periods, otherness is grounded in the unique otherness of Jesus Christ, so that the conditions of intersubjectivity and subjectivity alike are grounded in the incarnation. This grounding is shown to be, at once, the great solution and the great dilemma of Barth's treatment of the theme of otherness. Each theological period is shown to have internal difficulties in addition to advancements of the discussion