Philippine E-Journals

Levinas, Catholic Conscience, and the Mass

Veronica Chiari Dy-Liacco

 

Abstract:

In Catholic teaching, the voice of God resounds in the depths of every human being in their conscience, which human beings possess by their very nature. This teaching finds a parallel in Levinas's phenomenology of ethical life. In Levinas, the ethical life begins apart from the exterior influences of culture and society. It stands against the totalizing influence of being and constitutes a break from being and its reversal. This reversal reveals the innermost secret of subjectivity, which reveals oneself as having always been responsible through a commanding voice other than me but is nevertheless found within. Calling this phenomenon the "originary commitment", Levinas evokes the image of Israel entering a covenant on Sinai. As in the Catholic teaching on conscience, it is the discovery of a law within oneself that is not of one's own making but which one is compelled to obey. Like the image of Israel facing God on Sinai, the Catholic Mass, with its Eucharistic image of Christ, is the prime space for forming this ethical and spiritual interiority against the totalizing effects of being, toward a life of genuine love and freedom