Levinas on Face A Preliminary Exploration of Levinas's Ethical Phenomenology

Abstract

According to Levinas, there exists a totalizing characteristic within the Western philosophical tradition that reduces the other to sameness. This subjectification of the other implies a violence towards the other. In resistance to this totalizing violence, Levinas endeavors to construct a theory with ethics as the first philosophy. By introducing an absolutely external other and shifting the focus from the "self" in phenomenology towards the absolute heterogeneity of the "other," Levinas establishes an ethics of the other. This is built on the foundation of a "face-to-face" relationship, creating a framework where the ego bear an infinite responsibility towards the other. On one hand, the other disrupts my exclusive possession of the world through the presence of their face, rejecting my conceptual grasp. On the other hand, through discourse, the other makes an ethical plea to the ego, and the ego bear an absolute responsibility towards the other, becoming a "hostage" to the other. The central theme of Levinas's ethics is the other, focusing on the primal experience of face-to-face encounters where the other precedes my understanding of existence and knowledge objects.