Abstract

Starting from the question of the identities—in a given text—of author and reader, subsumed under the broader question of “self” and “other” in exteriority, this essay attempts a theological response in three critical moments: the first follows the transcendental tradition of Western thought from the turn towards transcendental subjectivity to the collapse of the dialectics of subjectivity in “postmodern” thought; the second moves the problem of exteriority from the realm of recognition that of promise and expectation ; and the third formulates a Trinitarian ontology of distance that accommodates this eschatology