How is the face ethically significant?

Plan
-Intro
-Context. Western philosophy led to the holocaust (violence arguably stems from
a certain Western conceptuality), what does this mean for ethics? How can this
be avoided also, what has been done wrong before.
-the face as prior to ontological classification.
-sense of separate self as crucial to Levinas ethics of the face. Focus on how
Levinass claims about the sensible self make possible possible his claims about
ethics. Levinas separates the self from the totality.
-Ethics as first philosophy the primacy of the face to face. Only in enjoyment
does the I crystallize(TI, 144). Selfhood is formed through enjoyment, which can
continue unabated until the encounter with the face of the Other, that which
cannot be contained, comprehended and encompassed. The face cuts across
enjoyment, questions the self and is unassimilable.
-Constant tension between ethics starting with the ego (like much of Western
philosophy), and ethics starting with the Other. In articulating the epiphany of
the face, Levinas argues how conflict is secondary with respect to the meeting
with a face. Face is ethically significant because it both commands and has
authority, but also supplicates.
- the blurring of lines between the other that is encountered and a a possible
Divine Other, beyond essence, is a puzzling aspect of Levinas philosophy still
debated by scholars. Does Levinas see the Other as the Divine itself?
-Ethics is the encounter with the Other. The encounter with the face is ethics.
-what does levinas mean by the face? what is the face?
Not that there is a cause and effect relationship, such that Levinas thought can
be explained by reference to the Holocaust, let alone be reduced to a reflection
on this event.
Notes
Criticism: if the face to face is a reciprocal and reversible event, then the other
is never present face to face (Merleau-Ponty (Schroeder 114, Schroeder, Brian.
Altared Ground: Levinas, History, and Violence. New York: Roudedge, 1996.))
-The others face is prior to ontological classification and thus can only be
described apophatically before we can speak about the face the face speaks
(TI 66) -it can only be described in that it expresses.
-Whenever the face speaks to us, the first content of expression is this
expression itself (ti 51).
-Anxiety over ones uncanny thrownness into the world is therefore not at stake when I encounter the Other
face to face on his or her own terms. Instead of being an occasion for realizing my freedom (as both Heidegger
and Sartre would claim) and thus for personal empowerment, this encoun ter puts me in debt to the Other and
makes me realize my responsibility for that Other.

-The otherness does not lie behind the surface of somebody we see, hear, touch
and violate. It is just his or her otherness. It is the other as such and not some
aspect of him or her that is condensed in the face. So the whole body expresses,
our hands and shoulders do it as well as our face taken in its narrow sense. (65,
levinas and the face of the other)
Totality and Infinity repeatedly tells the reader that the face of the other calls
the egoism of the ego into question and subsequently commits that ego to a
path of infinite responsibility for the other. The reading proposed here has
interpreted that moment not as an empirical, psychological event in the life of an
adult ego but as the moment in which the subject or ego is first constituted.
-If we reflect on the fact that the speech of the others face privileges the
imperative, we understand that the face is not something seen, observed,
registered, deciphered or understood, but rather somebody responded to. I can
only and only I can respond to the injunction of a face (see ti 305); disregarding it
would be a response as well. (69, levinas and the face of the other)
The wisdom of love in the service of love Roger Burggraeve
-Levinas clearly opts for responsibility-to-and-for-the-Other as the basis for a
humane society. (86) This goes against the Hobbesian idea of human rights and
the law founded in the ego. Levinas decision rests on his philosophical analysis
of the epiphany of the Face of the Other.
-Possible objection that Levinas meeting of face to face is actually the original
situation of conflict in which subjects stand over against one another as rivals
and enemies. (86) Levinas responds with a renewed analysis of violence and
war, attempting to show that conflict is indeed secondary with respect to the
meeting with a face precisely because it necessarily presupposes it: in a hidden
way, the Good presides over the compromise of self-interested and yet rational
peace (AR 5/4-5). (86)
This response exemplifies the Husserlian inspiration for Levinas method.
-Levinas argues that the true essence of ethics, peace and human rights are
obscured by what is more readily visible (the egocentric approach to freedom
and peace.
- Conflict and war involves more than the antagonism of egotistical free subjects
meeting one another it also involves the recognition of the other. The face of
the other forces the ego to recognise the other in its separateness and
exteriority, as Other: war involves a presence which always comes from
elsewhere, a being that appears in a Face (TI 198/222) (87)
-Levinas comes to the conclusion that all violence and war is preceded by
structurally, if not temporally a situation in which two subjects stand eye-toeye. The primary experience is that of an Other who turns directly to me. (88)
-To bluntly overtake the other, to use him or even kill him, is possible only by
turning away from him and acting as if he is not an Other deserving of respect.
Denial of the Other necessarily presupposes recognition of the Other. (88) War
can be produced only where discourse has been possible: discourse subtends
war itselfViolence can aim only at a face. (TI 200/225) It is in this sense that
Levinas can affirm that the face to face has an ultimate and fundamental

meaning (TI 53/80-81, 196/221).

- these conclusions require some clarification as to how the I-Other relation is
not originally overpowering, reductive or totalising, but rather peaceful or
fundamentally without violence. (88)
-The significance of the Other is secured neither in the horizon of the
surrounding world, nor in evolution, history or any other system or totality. The
Other exceeds every historical, sociological, psychological and cultural
framework of meaningThe otherness of the Other does not consist in the fact
that in comparison with me he proves to have certain features which typify him
and not me. In everyday parlance, we tend to say that something is other
because it has its own characteristics or properties (88)
-The Other is ultimately, irreducibly and radically Other. The other is not relative
to the Same or the ego. The Other person is unique. (89)
-the Others facial expressions and, by extension, relation to his body permit
a certain basic characterology and psychosomatics, from which one can no
doubt deduce or at least hypothesize a great deal about his personality. But the
face of the Other reveals itself precisely in breaking through its form and plastic
image, in exceeding them and thus expressing the otherness of the Other as a
mystery. (TI 126/152-153) That is to say the Face of the Other cannot be fixed
and contained in their appearance at any given moment, the Other is more than
their appearance. (90) An aesthetic description reduces the otherness of
the Other.
-The Other is essentially beyond every typology, characterology, diagnosis and
classification, in short, every attempt to know and comprehend him. He makes
all curiosity ridiculous (TI 46/74). (90)
-Levinas description of the face refuses assimilating it with a persons visible
countenance in a way which parallels the biblical prohibition against fashioning
representations of God. (90)
-Alterity is precisely the experience of a givenness which both submits itself to
thinking and at the same time withdraws from it. Alterity that of God and that
of the Other is that which makes appear the essential inadequacy of all
attempts to think and understand it.(91)
-The conceptualising ego will never be in a position to completely grasp and
know the Other. The face is the site of what will forever remain ungiven it
appears in disappearing; it shows itself by withdrawing. (92)
-The primary, most fundamental content or message of this self-expression is
nothing but the essential quality of the Other her absolute otherness and
irreducibility. It is not the what of the expression which is important here, but the
that. The fact of her expression is the announcement of her very presence, her
appearing as Other which may also be the content of her expression (TI
170/196). (93)
-The expression of the face comes to me from elsewhere and brings me more
than could be found within myself namely, the real message or revelation
of the presence of the Other (TI 22/51). The face does not awaken me to
something already slumbering within, but teaches me something completely
new: The absolutely new is the Other [Autrui] (TI 194/219). Such an Other is

my Teacher; his very appearing instructs me magistrally about his irreducible

altered, but without possibility of my having discovered that instruction myself,
in the depths of my own soul. (93) The face is revelatory.
-The separateness and otherness of the Face manifests itself not only as
inexorable and irreducible, but equally as strangeness-destitution and
exceptional vulnerability (TI 47/75, 275/299) (94)
-The Other is so radically other, outside the security of the selfish egos own
world, that they are helpless, destitute, uprooted, homeless and in need of care,
literally estranged. (94)
-The transcendence of the face is at the same time its absence from this world
into which it enters The strangeness that is freedom is also strangeness-asmisery The nakedness of his face extends into the nakedness of the body that
is cold and that is ashamed of its nakedness. Existence kathauto(in itself) is, in
the world, a destitution (TI 47/75). (94)
-This helplessness might be articulated through expressions such as what can I
do for you?, how can I help?
-Through its very appearing as naked otherness, thus as the powerless and
needy poor, stranger, widow and orphan, the face as it were invites, or stronger,
challenges the ego as it strives after happiness and greater power to now grasp
the Other is his weakness. The face which is naked and mortal seduces me into
reducing him to myself, leads me to acts of violence and even murder (DVI 244245/161-163). (95)
-In the unprotected eyes of the face I discover myself to be his potential
murderer. In this sense, I discover in the poverty of the Other a substantial
strength, a radical resistance to my totalising and reductive greed. The Face
appears as opposition: it stands over and against me and confronts me as a
radical halt or no, as absolute resistance to all of my concerns (DEHH
173/105). (95-6) The resistance of the face forces one to realise that to
manipulate the Other in their weakness, while possible, is forbidden.
This is the central notion to the ethical the core of the ethical.
-The radical resistance says you shall not kill.
-the face is the remarkable fact that does something to me, that affects me and
de-neutralises me. It does so precisely through the revelation of its
transcendence as prohibition against destroying or denying it. This non-neutral,
non-indifferent fact is literally a wonder, or better the wonder par excellence.
(96)
-formulated positively the face implies a duty to respect and promote the
Other in his irreducible otherness to do him justice in both his strength
(irreducible unicity) and weakness (alienation-as-misery). (96)
-Through this prohibition against murder, the ego and the Other are not only
radically separated from one another, but also on different levels. This
discrepancy depends not on the difference between their respective properties
not on any difference in their psychological dispositions and moods at the time of
their meeting, and not on any difference in social status (TI 190/215) but on the
ego-Other conjuncture itself. Through its commanding character the Other
stands over me as a law bearing down on me from a height which is ethical.
As such, the Other is not my equal but rather my superior: not only my

Teacher, revealing something radically new to me namely, his irreducible

alterity but my Lord and master, who from an ethical height inspires me with
awe. Questioning me and laying hold of me unconditionally (TI 74-75/100-101).
(97)
-This affirmation of the faces absolute resistance to the murderous greed of the
ego does not yet account for the full measure of its ethical significance. At this
point it would still be possible to interpret that resistance in terms of mutual
violence between competing freedom. Were the Other to appear purely and
simply as freedom, as in-dependent and strong, then one would have to
conclude that he is no more than a rival to the ego, caught up with him in a
struggle to the death In other words, what makes the resistance of the face
non-violent, or ethical? (97)
-It is precisely the humility of the Other, or rather her humiliation, the depth
of suffering where her altered truly lies, that the prohibition expressed in her
face becomes ethical. As irreducible and obtrusive strangeness, the face does
indeed command the egos recognition and hospitality. But, deprived and
destitute, she can not compel this from the ego neither by physical force nor by
moral persuasion. (97-98)
-Hence does the Other not only appear as the egos superior, but also
commends herself essentially to its care. The face can therefore only ask, or
appeal to the ego for help in her misery Levinas speaks of the timidity of a
face that does not dare to dare. As first word, as word before all words, the
face is a request not yet brutal enough to request anything, not yet
courageous enough to solicit recognition and hospitality. It is a beggars
request that with bowed head and downcast eyes is uttered almost inaudibly,
out of fear that it will be refused (TI 209/232-233). (98)
-a command is ethical only if it is directed to a free being, calling it to duty but
without compelling or convincing it in any way, whether physically,
emotionally, demagogically, diplomatically, financially, or through intimidation,
bribery, blackmail or manipulation. Conversely such a call for help is also ethical
only if it is undeniable and unconditional, containing a categorical imperative.
-The face, then, is ethical because it is both a command and a call for help, or
better because it commands only insofar as it also calls for help (TI 48/75). (98)
The gift of the other Andrew Shepherd
-At the heart of Levinas philosophy is an attempt to change the nature of the
Western philosophical tradition For Levinas, totalizing philosophies, in their
quest to find meaning in ontological questions, are indifferent to the Other and
exhibit anti-humanist tendencies which lead ultimately to the horrors of the
Holocaust. Such philosophy, Levinas believes, is not merely incapable of
responding to the ethical challenges posed by the post-holocaust world, but is,
itself, partly to blame for a world of inhumanity. (18-19
-Levinas contends that the history of Western philosophy from Plato to Heidegger
can be interpreted as an attempt at universal synthesis, a reduction of all
experience, of all that is reasonable, to a totality wherein consciousness
embraces the world, leaves nothing outside of itself, and thus becomes absolute

thought. (Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 75)

-Levinas philosophical project centers around his use of Descartes idea of
Infinity. In his Third Meditation Descartes argues that when we think of and
conceive of infinity, infinity itself exceeds the idea one can have of it. While for
Descartes this structure of infinity was applied to the divine God always
exceeds the concept of God that we as a subject think Levinas takes this
Cartesian concept and applies this formal structure of thought, which
emphasizes inequality, non-reciprocity and asymmetry, to the relationship of the
subject to the human Other. For Levinas, the absolute exteriority of the other
person means that the Other can never be assimilated or incorporated into a
totality. The Other is infinite. (19)
-Shepherd argues that Levinas concern with metaphysical philosophy is that in
its attempt to understand God through the language of ontology, God ceases to
be transcendent. Similarly, metaphysical philosophy is in danger of lapsing into
forms of conceptual idolatry, and furthermore, metaphysical thinking draws
attention away from the plight of the Other and fails to lead people into ethical
action. (19-20)
-To posit the transcendent as stranger and poor one is to prohibit the
metaphysical relation with God from being accomplished in the ignorance of men
and things. The dimension of the divine opens forth from the human face It is
here that the Transcendent, infinitely other, solicits us and appeals to us The
atheism of the metaphysician means, positively, that our relation with the
metaphysical is an ethical behaviour and not theology, not a thematization, be it
a knowledge by analogy, of the attributes of God. (TI, 78)
-Levinas posits that the priority of the ethical, an irreducible structure upon
which all other structures rest, (TI, 79) is demonstrated in the Transcendence of
the Other. (22)
-My ethical relation of love for the other stems from the fact that the self cannot
survive by itself alone, cannot find meaning within its own being-in-the-world,
within the ontology of sameness (Levinas, Ethics of the Infinite 60)
-If one conceives that one understands or comprehends the Other, and if the
relationship with them is based on correlation, reciprocity and equality, then one
has actually totalized the Other. *22)
-The face is present in its refusal to be contained. In this sense it cannot be
comprehended, that is encompassed. It is neither seen nor touched for in visual
or tactile sensation the identity of the I envelops the alterity of the object, which
becomes precisely a content. (TI, 194)
-Levinas places an emphasis on the flesh and blood of physical reality, but a
desire to avoid any system of totality. The face operates, therefore, as an
epiphany, an element which is not captured through consciousness, but rather
which captures the subject with its ethical demands. For Levinas, the gaze of
the face supplicates and demands(TI, 75). (23)
-In Totality and infinity the response of the subject to the Other appears at times
dependent on cognition: To recognize the Other is to recognize a hunger. To
recognize the Other is to give. (TI, 75) (24)

Self and salvation David Ford

-Levinas puts forward ethics as first philosophy, in which responsibility for the
other is primary and is the pivot of a radical critique of that Western tradition
which has culminated in this century of violence and mass death. Levinas
therefore is speaking out of the experience of the Shoah and is testifying to
peace and goodness in a civilisation which he sees as drastically distorted. (31)
-The face is an epiphany, a revelation. What matters is not its
phenomenality, its particular form and features which might be represented in
an image, but its appeal, its expressing its signifying. It is primarily an ethical
relation in which I find myself summoned to responsibility for the one who
appeals to me. (37)
-Levinas attempts to diagnose what has gone most fundamentally wrong in
Western civilisation and its intellectual tradition. (47)
The Face of Things Silvia Benso
-Levinas commemorates Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, to the
memory of those who were closest among the six million assassinated by the
National Socialists, and of the millions and millions of all confessions and all
nations, victims of the same hatred of the other man, the same anti-semitism.
(OBBE V)
-to many philosophers, Auschwitz appears not merely as an accidental
degeneration in the history of Western thought, a deviation from the norm that a
more scientific, coherent employment of rationality could have rectified,
corrected, and thus avoided. Rather, Auschwitz appears as the ultimate, but
direct consequence of a way of thinking that deeply informs the Western
philosophical tradition. Such thining is characterized by the supremacy of the
subject (and its reason) as the only authority capable of granting reality
conceived in oppositional terms as the object, or the other-than-the-subject its
truth and meaning. (xxv)
-Ethics is the name that has been given, primarily by Levinas, to the field where
a meaningful intersubjective relation with the other can happen, a relation that
does not annihilate the possibility that the other be the source of its own
signification. (xxvii)
-To the question who is the Other? one should respond: Autrui is face where
face names the way in which the other presents himself exceeding the idea of
the other in me (TI 50). (31)
-The face then, is already language, discourse, the first word (TI 199( by which
the Other, opposing not some superlative of power, but precisely the infinity of
his transcendence (TI 199), forbids the violation and profanation of his or her
being. To see a face is already to hear: You shall not kill. The Other is thus the
one who speaks (TI 198) in a command which is also an appeal, an invocation to
freedom and goodness, a solicitation that concerns me by its destitution and its
Height (TI 200). (32)
-the Other, in his signification prior to my initiative, resembles God (TI 293).
Yet, as Levinas asserts very explicitly in Totality and Infinity the Other is not the
incarnation of God (TI 79). (34)
-

Face to Face in Dialogue Jeffrey Murray

-the event of the Holocaust stands as a crisis for ethical thinking. (24)
-Arising out of his phenomenological description of the Other, Levinas discovers
that the Other is the source of ethical obligation. This is the first and most
important part of his tripartite thesis. (32)
-Please note that for many readers of Levinas, the face of the Other is itself
the trace of the absolute Other (God) and of ethical responsibility as such
Whether the face of a concrete other person is the trace of a more ultimate
ethical reality does not detract from the power of Levinas description of the
Other as the immediate source of ethical responsibility. Hence, for present
purposes, the face of the Other can be considered to be the source of ethical
obligation. (33)
-morality is not a branch of philosophy, but first philosophy (TI, 304)
-For him [Levinas], ethics is not originally an attribute of the self; it is instead the
primordial attribute of the Other. Responsibility does not inhere in the self and
does not issue forth from within the self, but rather inheres in the Other and
issues forth from the Other. Responsibility is not in the first instance mine.
Rather, I am called to responsibility by the Other. The call to responsibility
sounds from the Other. (35)
-Unfortunately, Levinas is not always entirely clear about this central distinction.
On the one hand he talks frequently in Totality and Infinity so as to foreground
the activity of the self in the ethical relation. For example, he states that it is my
responsibility before a face that constitutes the original fact of fraternity, and
that the face summons me to my responsibility (TI 214 and 215). (35)
-On the other hand, Levinas more often foregrounds the primordial role of the
Other in the ethical relation. (35). E.g.: the ethical relationship which subtends
discourse is not a species of consciousness whose ray emanates from the I; it
puts the I in question. This putting in question [i.e., ethics] emanates from the
other. (TI 195)
-Levinass conception of ethics suggests that one should do unto an Other as he
or she would have you do unto him or her the focus is on the Other from whom
the original summons to ethics emanates. (39) It might be objected that if
applied normatively, this could lead to some absurd scenarios, e.g. farmers
renting land would prefer to have their land rent-free. However, Levinas account
of ethics is not a normative rule-based system, it is a phenomenological
description of the experience of ethics. (40)
Encountering the modern subject in levinas Leora Batnitzky
-by appreciating the actual argument of Totality and Infinity, we can grasp
Levinas's central philosophical claim, which is not, as many might believe, a
claim about the self's obligation to the other. (7)
-What then is the argument? As is well known, Levinas contends that ethics is
first philosophy. My obligation to another person, Levi-nas claims, logically
precedes anything that we can say about the nature of being. The most
fundamental fact of my humanity concerns this obligation I have to another
person. Levinas means to upset the equation between self and other, politics and
ethics, and indeed be-tween totality and infinity. By virtue of its own language, it

is possible to read Totality and Infinity as establishing these dichotomies. Yet

Levinas's philosophical goal is much more complex. He intends to show not that
there is a dichotomy between self and other, politics and ethics, or totality and
infinity, but rather that the latter term in each of these pairs makes possible the
former term, without subsuming the reality of the former term into itself. In the
case of self and other, this means that Levinas argues not for altruism, which
would be the view of ethics based on a dichotomy between self and other, but
for an ethics of infinite responsibility that makes truly independent selves
possible. But these arguments, along with Levinas's radical claim about ethics,
grow out of his initial contention concerning the separable self. Indeed, Levinas's
entire argument in Totality and Infinity hangs on his con-tentions about a truly
separable, independent self. (9)
-Husserl argues for a view of the ego as distinguishable from the historical self
and the self's being-in-the-world. Heidegger, in contrast, maintains that the self
only gains its identity through its being-in-the-world (11)
-A discussion of the ways in which Husserl tried to work this tension out
is beyond the scope of this essay.
-One might think that, based on his view of the primacy of ethics, Levinas's
notion of the self would be closer to Heidegger's than to Husserl's. But Levinas
maintains, contra Heidegger, that identity is not wholly relational but rather
separable. In this, he returns to Husserl's notion of a truly separable self, though
this self for Levinas is not an ego in terms of cognitive function. Rather, he
argues that the truly unique, separate self is one that can be encountered
phenomenologically only by way of an appreciation of sensibility and sensation.
Unlike Husserl's transcendental ego, Levinas's ego is not a thinking self but a self
that senses itself as uniquely separated from being. For Levinas, in order for the
ego to think, it must first be separate from being, it must sense it-self as itself.
(12-13)
-It is the self's sense of itself as a separable, independent self that is the core
philosophical argument of Totality and Infinity. Against Hei-degger, Levinas
maintains that there is a separable subject whose iden-tity cannot be reduced to
any web of relations. From Levinas's point of view, Heidegger's "mine" reduces
the self to nothing, while Husserl's "mine" overly cognizes the identity of the ego.
Levinas's attempt to make ethics first philosophy is captured in his "mine," which
contra Husserl is not a cognitive matter and contra Heidegger transcends so-cial
and historical relations. Levinas's "mine" concerns my unique re-sponsibility for
the other person. This responsibility is "mine" alone and I am uniquely defined by
it. I do not possess this responsibility; rather, this responsibility is me. But in
being me, my unique responsi-bility requires a self who experiences itself as
unique, a self who stands outside of the social and historical order. (13)
--For all his analysis of the moods of Dasein, Heidegger, Levinas suggests, has
not taken the mood of satisfaction seriously because he has reduced our
understanding of things to their use. He argues, against Heideggerian
phenomenology, that hunger is not related just to the need for food but also to
the possibility of contentment.12 In attempting a phenomenological analysis of
contentment, which he also calls "enjoyment," Levinas stretches the limits of
Husserl's notion of intentionality, claiming that the self senses itself as a

separate, isolated, and independent self in a noncognitive way (TI, 134) (15)
(12. It is not that in the beginning there was hunger; the simultaneity of hunger
and food constitutes the paradisiacal initial condition of enjoyment (TI, 136)
-Throughout Section II of Totality and Infinity, Levinas provides detailed analyses
of the ways in which the "I" separates itself from the world in the surplus
produced by sensibility. The "I," he insists, is a separate subject that cannot be
subsumed into being or the objects of the world. (16)
-If we take as true the description of the separable self, then we must recognize
that this self is made possible only by way of its relationship to the face of
another. (18)

The ethical importance of being human: God and Humanism in Levinas

philosophy Pat J. gehrke
-Diehm makes an excellent case, referencing specific and direct passages from
Levinas, that face does not refer to the specific front of the head where the
eyes, nose, and mouth are located. Instead, Diehm argues, the face can manifest
throughout the human body ,in a hand, the shoulder, the whole of the sensible
human being, or any sensible part thereof (5456) (430)
-What Levinas refers to as the face is not adorned by convention, clothed in
sociality, or even capable of being connected or contained in a social order. It is,
as Hyde would call it, naked, or in Levinass terms, extreme immediate
exposure, total nudity (God 138). (430)
-Whenever Levinas describes what the face is it is always described in terms
of what the face communicates, the way the face opens one up, calls one out of
oneself. The face, thus, is not an object of knowledge, it is not a thing that is
seen or felt or can be erased, but it is an authority, a value, a calling, a nudity, a
weakness, and a commanding that is outside of being and not-being and cannot
be contained in either language or thought. (431)
-If the face is commanded value and authority, then what is that value or
command? It is believing that love without reward is valuable (Paradox
177). Love, as in the being-for-the-other that is the basis of the ethics, without
reward, as in without even a hope or desire for reciprocation or result. It is a
belief that love is valuable, regardless of whether that love can have any effect,
produce any result, or even be returned. This truly unconditional love for the
other is the command and authority that includes the simple Thou shall not kill
but also commands an affirmative obligation of owing everything to the other.
(431)
-The face shares this status with the infinite and with alterity as ultimately
unthinkable and unknowable, even if it commands me with all the ethical
authority possible to owe everything I am to the other, to be for the other. (431)
-Levinas was never hesitant to note certain similarities between his notion of
God and his notion of the face, noting the similarity between the face of the
other, the trace of Infinity, or the Word of God as being something other than

being, representation, theme, or object of any field of knowledge (Alterity 169).

(432)
-Hyde notes this tendency when he writes that the face is how God, at least
indirectly, shows Gods face: by way of the face of the other (94). This is not a
mere similarity in description or a simple commonality in thought or even just
different ways to reach a similar point. Instead, for Levinas, the face of the other,
the Infinite, and the Word of God are the same commanding authority, the same
weakness and nudity that can call of me to give everything I have, to offer my
very being to be for the other. As Levinas put it, there is, in the face, the
supreme authority that commands, and I always say it is the word of God. The
face is the locus of the word of God (Alterity 104). (432)
-Thus, Levinas is more than consistent to be skeptical about the face of the dog
or the snake and to claim that all ethical responsibilities for the non-human other
emerge only as resultant of the uniquely human ethics that is before all being.
(435)
To the other: an introduction to the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas
Adriaan Peperzak
-The otherness of the Other is concretized in the face of another humanI can
see another as someone I need in order to realize certain wants of mineWe all
belong to different communities, in which we function more or less well on the
basis of reciprocal needs. I can also observe another from an aesthetic
perspective, for example, by looking at the colour of her eyes, the proportions of
his face, and so on. But none of these ways of perception allows the otherness of
the other to reveal itself. (19)
-The others face (i.e., any others facing me) or the others speech (i.e., any
others speaking to me) interrupts and disturbs the order of my, egos, world; it
makes a hole in it by disarraying my arrangements without ever permitting me to
restore the previous order. For even if I kill the other or chase the other away in
order to be safe from the intrusion, nothing will ever be the same as before. (20)
-When Levinas meditates on the signigicance of the face, he does not describe
the complex figure that could be portrayed by a picture or painting (20)
(Focusing on the aesthetic detracts from the others otherness)
-In order to concentrate on the others otherness, Levinas often stresses the
nakedness of the others face: if I am touched, if I am conscious of being
concerned, it is not because of the others beauty, talents performances, roles or
functions but only by the others (human) otherness. (20)
-Since they [the others] show and present precisely those realities that do
not fit into the universal openness of consciousness, they cannot be seized by
the usual categories and models of phenomenologythe other comes towards
me as a total stranger and from a dimension that surpasses me. The otherness of
the other reveals a dimension of height (hauteur): he/she comes from on
high. (20)
-According to Descartes third Metaphysical Meditation, all human consciousness
contains not only and not primarily the idea of itself but also and precedingly the
irreducible idea of the infinite, that is, and immediate and a priori given
relation of the conscious subject to a reality that can neither be constituted nor

embraced by this subjectAlthough Descartes identifies the infinite with God

(i.e., the God of the traditional, late scholastic philosophy), we can consider the
formal structure he discovers to be the structure of my relation to the other in
the form of another human being. When I am confronted with another, I
experience myself as an instance that tries to appropriate the world by labour,
language, and experience, whereas this other instance does not permit me to
monopolise the world because the Others greatness does not fit into any
enclosure not even that of theoretical comprehensionthe mere fact of
anothers existence is a surplus that cannot be reduced to becoming a part or
moment of the Same. The Other cannot be captured or grasped and is therefore,
in the strictest sense of the word, incomprehensible. (21)
-Levinas reserves the word phenomenon for realities that fit into the totality of
beings ruled by egological understanding. Since the other cannot become a
moment of such a totality, it is not a phenomenon but rather an enigma not to
be defined in phenomenological terms. (21) (infinity of the other)
-The way the other imposes its enigmatic irreducibility and nonrelativity or
absoluteness is by means of a command and a prohibition: You are not allowed
to kill me; you must accord me a place under the sun and everything that is
necessary to live a truly human lifethe others facing me makes me responsible
for him/her , and this responsibility has no limits. (22)
-The immediate experience of anothers emergence contains the root of all
possible ethics as well as the source from which all insights of theoretical
philosophy should start. The others existence as such reveals to me the basis
and the primary sense of my obligations. (22)
-The radical human desire is, however, too deep or great to be fulfilled; it
wants the absolute and infinite, which does not fit into the comprehension and
capacity of the desiring subject. The answer given by the absolute in the form of
the invisible other is not a species of satisfaction but rather an infinite task: the
task of my responsibility toward everybody I shall meet. (22)
-The Other, rather, shows his infinity as the most naked, poor, and vulnerable of
all weaknesses. A human face has no defence. (64)
-Face is the word Levinas chooses to indicate the alterity of the Other
forbidding me to exercise my narcissistic violence. (64)
-The Others face is the revelation not of the arbitrariness of the will but its
injustice. Consciousness of my injustice is produced when I incline myself not
before facts, but before the Other. In his face the Other appears to me not as an
obstacle, nor as a menace I evaluate, but as what measures me. For me to feel
myself to be unjust I must measure myself against the infinite. (116)
-critique of Levinas interpretation of Descartes infini, j.-f. lavigne, lide de
linfini
-The infinity of the others face, that is, its exteriority and absoluteness, its
impossibility of being ranged among the phenomena of my world and of being
seen as a figure against a wider background, is the only possible revelation of
the infinite as described before. (142)
-Face, speech, and expression are the concrete manners by which the
irreducibility of the Other comes to the fore and surprises me, disrupts my world,
accuses, and refuses my egoismThe only adequate response to the revelation

of the absolute in the face is generosity, donation. (142)

-The others face (or speech) is not similar to a work or to language as structure
or text or literary tradition; its infinite resistance to my powers is not a power
but an expression that forbids and commands me ethically. The first revelation of
an astonishing otherness that cannot be reduced to a moment of my world is
neither the splendour of the cosmos nor the task of my self-realisation; it is the
living interdiction of killing this vulnerable, defenceless, and naked other in front
of me. This revelation gives me an orientation and bestows a meaning on my
life. (164)
-
-The face-to-face is a sincere and sober response more concerned with not doing
violence than with aesthetic enjoyments. The instruction brought to me by the
emergence of a face is neither a dogma nor a miracle but the initiation of a
meaning. (165)