THE FACE AS A REASON TO ACT

Levinas regularly claims that the “epiphany of the face” or our engagement with the face of the other person – our being hostage to the other, accused by the other, traumatized by the other, summoned, called, and so forth – all that gives rise to substitution and responsibility – is radically particular. It is an asymmetrical relation between each self and each and every other person, but it is uniquely particular in its character. The I is a particular I, and the other is a particular other person – and of course also each and every particular other person. But what is particular from one point of view is general from another. In a sense, for each of us in our social lives, all pain and suffering, all human existence impinges on us, calls us into question. Each of us primordially is a target of all human suffering and all human need. That is what is primary for each of us, what each of us is, first and foremost. We are responsible infinitely and boundlessly. As we live, then, we do not begin as selfish magnets; rather, we begin as unlimited selflessness and proceed, as we must, to compromise that selflessness, that hostageship. Each of us, like Leibniz's individual substances or monads, mirrors or expresses the world, but whereas for Leibniz that expression is representational and appetitive, for Levinas it is responsible and responsive.