Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Persons in relation to God
- Part II Social relations
- Part III Interpersonal relations
- 4 The redemptive transformation of relations: dialogue
- 5 Personal integrity: centredness and orientation on others
- 6 Ethical resistance: testing the validity of disagreements
- Part IV Political relations
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Glossary
- Index
6 - Ethical resistance: testing the validity of disagreements
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I Persons in relation to God
- Part II Social relations
- Part III Interpersonal relations
- 4 The redemptive transformation of relations: dialogue
- 5 Personal integrity: centredness and orientation on others
- 6 Ethical resistance: testing the validity of disagreements
- Part IV Political relations
- Epilogue
- Notes
- Glossary
- Index
Summary
The concluding remarks of the previous chapter return the discussion to an issue I raised earlier but have not yet answered; how conflicts in understanding and in expectation are to be dealt with. Every communication involves the claim to be genuine (rational and truthful) and to be orientated towards an appropriate mutuality of understanding (reasonable codification of the relation), but not every such claim will be capable of vindication, for communication and relation may be subject to intentional or unintentional distortion. This immediately raises the questions: how can we tell when a claim is false, and what do we do when we think it is? In discerning the validity and truth of a claim and the proper course of action, the main issue will be the proper location of ethical resistance. This may be re-expressed in the question: when and how is it right to resist another's codification proposal and the intention, expectation and understanding of the partners with which this is intertwined?
A genuine openness to the other in answer to Christ's call is not unstructured in such a way that it could allow the other to become the formative principle of the relation. That would entail an abandonment of one's own individuality, which is structured by Christ's presence as a transcendent point of orientation to and for others and therefore as a point of resistance to them.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Call to PersonhoodA Christian Theory of the Individual in Social Relationships, pp. 162 - 190Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990