Emmanuel Levinas – The Face of the Other (1947-1974)
This text is a preview of History of the Reception of Hegel, volume II, to be published in 2026 by Reflexivity Press.
Why Do We Begin with Levinas?
Levinas formulates the basic question most clearly: is Hegel’s philosophy of totality still tenable after Auschwitz? His answer is a radical “No.” But this “no” is developed so systematically that it itself becomes a philosophical system – and thereby falls into a performative contradiction that we must analyze.
We begin with Levinas because he formulates the alternative most sharply: totality versus infinity. Hegel stands for totality – everything is mediated, integrated, sublated. Levinas sets against this: the infinity of the Other, which withdraws in principle from totalization. This opposition structures the entire discussion that follows.
Intellectual-Historical Framing: Who Is Levinas? To What Is He Reacting?
Emmanuel Levinas was born in 1906 in Kaunas (then part of the Russian Empire, today Lithuania), the son of an educated Jewish family. In 1923 he went to Strasbourg, studied philosophy, then in 1928-1929 studied with Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger in Freiburg. He was among the first to bring German phenomenology to France.[1]
The Catastrophe: In 1939 Levinas, as a French citizen, was called up for the army. In 1940 he was taken as a German prisoner of war. As a French officer (and by concealing his Jewish identity) he survived in a POW camp near Hanover – but his entire family in Lithuania was murdered: father, mother, brothers. His wife and daughter survived in hiding in France.[2]
After 1945 Levinas initially worked as director of the École Normale Israélite Orientale in Paris – a school for North African Jewish teachers. Academic recognition came only late: in 1961 his habilitation (at age 55!), in 1967 a professorship in Poitiers, from 1973 at the Sorbonne.
The Philosophical Question: How can one still philosophize after this experience? Levinas’s teacher Heidegger had joined the National Socialists in 1933 – philosophy was compromised. Husserl’s phenomenology, which Levinas admired, had not prevented the catastrophe. Hegel, who had been rediscovered in France in the 1930s (through Alexandre Kojève), seemed through his totality to contribute to violence.
Levinas’s answer: one must change the foundations of philosophy. Not ontology (being), but ethics must be first philosophy. Not the Same (identity), but the Other must be the starting point.
The Steelman Position: Totality and Infinity (1961)
Levinas’s main work “Totalité et Infini” (1961, English “Totality and Infinity”) is a complex, difficult book – part phenomenological description, part ethical appeal, part polemical demarcation. We reconstruct the core thesis.[3]
The Basic Distinction: Totality Versus Infinity
Totality is, for Levinas, the basic structure of Western philosophy – from Parmenides through Hegel to Heidegger. Its principle: everything is traced back to a principle, all difference is sublated into identity, everything foreign is made a moment of the system.
In Hegel this is clearest: being and nothing are moments of becoming. Consciousness and object are moments of spirit. The individual and the state are moments of ethical life. Everywhere: mediation, integration, sublation.
Levinas’s diagnosis: this totality is violence. For it recognizes the Other only insofar as it becomes a moment. The Other has no right to its own being – it is only a “stage,” a “passage,” a “moment.” The philosophy of totality subsumes, categorizes, integrates – and thereby: dominates.
Infinity is Levinas’s alternative. Not Hegel’s “bad infinity” (the endless progression), but a positive transcendence: that which withdraws in principle from totalization. This infinity shows itself in the face of the Other person.
The Face – The Ethical Epiphany
The center of Levinas’s philosophy is the experience of the face (visage). When I look into another person’s face, I experience something that cannot be objectified:
The face speaks – not in words, but in its mere appearing. And what it says is an imperative: “Thou shalt not kill.” This imperative is not derived, not grounded, not mediated. It is original – prior to all ontology, prior to all being.[4]
The face is naked, vulnerable, mortal. Precisely in this vulnerability lies its power: it appeals to me, it challenges me, it makes me responsible. And this responsibility I cannot refuse – I am always already delivered over to it.
Levinas’s radical thesis: this ethical relation to the Other is more fundamental than all ontology. Not “What is being?” but “What do I owe the Other?” is the first question of philosophy. Ethics before ontology – this is the inversion of the entire Western tradition, which from Aristotle to Heidegger asked about being.
The Critique of Hegel: Dialectic as Violence
For Levinas, Hegel is the pinnacle of the philosophy of totality. In Hegel’s system everything is mediated:
Recognition – central for Hegel – is for Levinas still violence. For in the master-slave dialectic both fight for recognition. The struggle to the death is the starting point. And even the mutual recognition at the end is symmetrical – both recognize each other reciprocally, but this reciprocity reduces the Other to a moment of my self-constitution.[5]
Levinas’s alternative: the ethical relation is asymmetrical. I am responsible to the Other – without the Other being responsible to me. Responsibility is one-sided, not reciprocal. The Other is not “my mirror” (as in Hegel), but a stranger who comes toward me.
Dialectic – for Hegel the movement of the concept – is for Levinas a reduction of the Other to the Same. The negation of the negation is a return to self. The foreign becomes a moment of the own. Difference is sublated into higher identity. Everywhere: totality.
History – for Hegel the unfolding of reason – is for Levinas violence. “World history is the world court of judgment” – this sentence is, for Levinas, appalling. It means: what happens is rational. The victors are right. The victims are “moments” of progress. Auschwitz would then be – one hardly dares to say it – a “necessary negation” on the way to a higher synthesis.[6]
Levinas’s refusal is absolute: no. History is not judgment. The victims are not moments. The Other is not integrable. There is a transcendence that withdraws from the system.
The Positive Philosophy: Beyond Being (1974)
In his second major work “Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence” (1974, “Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence”) Levinas radicalizes his position.[7] Now it is no longer just about ethics before ontology, but ethics beyond being.
Substitution: Levinas introduces the concept of substitution. I am responsible for the Other – to the point of substitution. Not as a free decision, but as the original structure of my subjectivity. The subject constitutes itself through responsibility for the Other, not through reflection on itself (as in Hegel).
The Trace: the Other leaves a trace – but this trace is no sign that points to a signified. It is the trace of that which leaves no trace – of the infinite, of the transcendent, ultimately: of God. Levinas writes a negative theology, without saying so directly.
The Saying and the Said: Levinas distinguishes between the Saying (le Dire) – the event of communication, self-exposure, self-answering – and the Said (le Dit) – the content, the statement, the system. Philosophy as system is always only “Said” – it misses the “Saying,” the original ethical event.
The Problem: But Levinas writes books! He formulates theses, develops concepts, argues. His “Saying” necessarily becomes “Said.” He cannot escape this. This tension is productive – but it points to a performative contradiction that we must now analyze.
Sublation I: What Is True in Levinas’s Position?
Levinas grasps a real dimension that can indeed become problematic in Hegel: the danger of the violence of mediation. If everything is to be sublated, integrated, totalized, there is a danger that the Other is recognized only as a moment of the system – not in its own dignity.
The Justified Intuition: Limits of Systematization
The Shoah shows in a horrifying way where total systems can lead. The National Socialist machinery of annihilation was highly “systematic” – bureaucratically organized, rationally planned, efficiently carried out. As we saw in Volume 1’s chapter on fascism: industrial annihilation was a triumph of instrumental reason, not a relapse into barbarism.[8]
Levinas’s warning is justified: any system that wants to explain everything, that no longer recognizes an outside, that no longer allows transcendence – such a system tends toward violence. For what cannot be integrated must be eliminated.
Hegel himself was aware of this danger – his critique of “understanding,” which “fixes and separates,” also aims at the danger of subsumption. But Levinas is right: Hegel’s affirmative thinking of reconciliation does not contain this self-critique explicitly enough. The sentence “The actual is rational” can – read in isolation – become a justification of injustice.
The Radicality of Asymmetry
Levinas’s insistence on the asymmetry of the ethical relation grasps something important: ethics cannot be reduced to reciprocity. “I am responsible to you only if you are also responsible to me” – that would be a contract, not ethics. Responsibility for the Other is unconditional.
This is an important corrective to Hegel’s theory of recognition, as developed in the Phenomenology. There, recognition is ultimately reciprocal – both self-consciousnesses recognize each other mutually. But what about the helpless, the sick, the dying? They cannot recognize reciprocally – and yet (or precisely because of this) we are responsible to them.
Levinas’s ethics of the vulnerable Other captures this dimension: the face, which says “Thou shalt not kill,” appeals to me without power. Precisely powerlessness is the ground of responsibility.
The Critique of Historical Optimism
Levinas’s refusal of Hegel’s philosophy of history is unavoidable after Auschwitz. The sentence “World history is the world court of judgment” – if it means that everything that happens is rational – is no longer tenable after the systematic murder of six million Jews.
Levinas grasps: there are events that cannot be “sublated,” that cannot be understood as “moments” of a higher whole, that remain irreducible. Auschwitz is such an event. It cannot be “mediated,” cannot be integrated into a higher synthesis, cannot be justified as a “necessary negation.”
Levinas shares this insight with Adorno. Adorno’s dictum “To write a poem after Auschwitz is barbaric” (later modified to: lyric poetry must express suffering) formulates a similar intuition: there is an excess of suffering that cannot be aestheticized, cannot be conceptually captured, cannot be reconciled.[9]
Sublation II: The Inner Contradictions Emerge
As justified as Levinas’s critique is – his positive position falls into performative contradictions reminiscent of the aporias we know from Adorno’s negative dialectic and from Karl Barth’s dialectical theology.
First Contradiction: Systematicity Despite Anti-Systematicity
The Problem: Levinas writes books, develops a systematic philosophy, uses Hegel’s own concepts (totality, infinity, mediation, negation). He argues over 300 pages in “Totality and Infinity,” over 250 pages in “Otherwise than Being.” He develops concepts such as “face,” “trace,” “substitution,” “Saying and Said” – this is conceptual work, this is system.
Levinas cannot escape the systematicity he criticizes. Every philosophical presentation, every conceptual development, every argumentative justification is already totalization. The “Saying” necessarily becomes the “Said.”
The Parallel to Adorno: Adorno’s “Negative Dialectics” (1966) wants to develop a “dialectic without synthesis” – but the book is systematically structured, has three large parts, develops concepts consistently. Adorno practices dialectic while asserting its impossibility.[10]
The Parallel to Barth: Karl Barth’s dialectical theology (1920s) wants to defend the “wholly Other” of God against all natural theology – but Barth writes the monumental “Church Dogmatics” (13 volumes!), a highly systematic work. He cannot preserve God as “wholly Other” and at the same time speak about him.[11]
Levinas’s Own Reflection: Levinas is aware of this problem. In “Otherwise than Being” he thematizes the tension between “Saying” and “Said” – the “Saying” must become entangled in the “Said” in order to be communicated at all. But this reflection does not solve the problem, it only names it.
Second Contradiction: The Sociality of the Third
The Problem: Levinas describes the two-person relation – I and Thou, face to face. This relation is asymmetrical, ethical, immediate. But what happens when a third party appears?
In “Totality and Infinity” Levinas gives a startling answer: as soon as a third appears, justice becomes necessary. Justice requires comparison – to whom do I owe more? Comparison requires mediation – general rules that apply to all. Mediation requires institutions – law, state, administration.[12]
This means: Levinas must introduce everything he has criticized: totality, system, mediation, institutions. The ethics of the face cannot become social philosophy without transforming itself.
The Parallel to Hegel: What Levinas here calls the “Third” and sees as a problem is exactly what Hegel calls objective spirit and explicates as necessary mediation. Hegel shows: immediate relations (family, friendship, love) are important – but they must concretize themselves in mediated institutions (law, state, world history) if they are to become universal.
Levinas admits: “Justice is not possible without the measure that totality brings with it.”[13] This is an astonishing concession. It means: totality is necessary – at least on the level of social philosophy.
Third Contradiction: The Describability of the Infinite
The Problem: Levinas claims that the infinite withdraws from all conceptuality. The face cannot be objectified, cannot be categorized, cannot be totalized. But Levinas describes the face – over many pages, with many concepts.
How does Levinas know of the infinite, if it withdraws from all knowledge? How can he speak of it, if it withdraws from all language? Every description is already objectification, every statement already totalization.
The Parallel to Kant: Kant said: the thing-in-itself is unknowable. But he knew that it is unknowable – so he had, after all, a kind of knowledge of it. Fichte and Hegel criticized this as a contradiction: if I know that X is unknowable, I already have a knowledge of X.[14]
Levinas’s position is structurally similar: the infinite is indescribable – but I can describe that and how it is indescribable. This presupposes a meta-level on which I can speak of the limit of description. But this meta-level is itself already conceptual – hence capable of totality.
Fourth Contradiction: The Universalization of the Particular
The Problem: Levinas writes as a Jewish philosopher after the Shoah. His philosophy is existentially motivated by the experience of total annihilation. The face, which says “Thou shalt not kill,” is also the face of the murdered family members, of the six million.
But Levinas formulates his philosophy universally – not as a “Jewish ethics,” but as first philosophy for all. The ethical relation to the Other is supposed to hold for every person – not only for Jews, not only after Auschwitz, but always and everywhere.
Here a tension appears: the particular (the specific experience of the Shoah) is elevated to the universal (the basic structure of all ethics). But this universalization is itself an act of abstraction – exactly what Levinas criticizes in Hegel.
The Question: is Levinas’s ethics really universal? Or is it a specific answer to a specific historical catastrophe that is stylized into general ethics? This question is not meant disrespectfully – it only shows: Levinas too cannot escape the tension between particular and universal.
Sublation III: Systematic Placement
Levinas shows the limit of Hegelian mediation – but his alternative cannot be carried through consistently. Ethics before ontology leads to an unconceptualized practice – but practice without concept becomes blind.
What Remains Productive?
Sensitivity to the violence of systematization: Levinas teaches us to be suspicious of systems that want to explain everything. Every system has an outside – that which cannot be integrated. This outside must not simply be eliminated (as in totalitarianism), but must be recognized as a limit.
The asymmetry of responsibility: ethics is not only reciprocity. Responsibility for the helpless, the vulnerable, the Other is unconditional – this is an important supplement to Hegel’s theory of recognition.
The critique of historical optimism: after Auschwitz one can no longer naively say: “History is rational.” There are events that remain irreducible, that cannot be justified as “moments” of a higher synthesis.
What Remains Problematic?
The impossibility of non-systematicity: one cannot philosophize without concepts, argue without mediation, criticize without system. Levinas’s own philosophy proves this: it is systematic, even if it does not want to be.
The necessity of social philosophy: “face to face” cannot be the whole of ethics. As soon as more than two people are present, one needs institutions, mediation, comparison, justice – that is, exactly what Hegel calls “objective spirit.”
The question of mediation without violence: Levinas shows the problem, but not the solution. The task remains: how can one mediate without dominating, integrate without subsuming, systematize without totalizing?
The Direction for a Contemporary Reception of Hegel
Levinas’s critique is productive if one does not read it as a rejection of Hegel, but as a demand for the self-limitation of the system. A philosophical system must think its own limits along with it – not as a deficiency, but as constitutive.
Hegel himself had approaches to this: the “resistance of experience” (which does not simply dissolve into concepts), “determinate negation” (which not only negates, but preserves), “recognition” (which recognizes the Other as constitutive). These moments must be made more explicit.
The task: systematicity with self-limitation. A system that knows it cannot integrate everything, that it has an outside, that the Other is not only a “moment.” Such a system would be self-critical reason – not a renunciation of reason (that would be irrationalism), but reason that recognizes its own finitude.
On Levinas’s biography: Marie-Anne Lescourret: Emmanuel Levinas, Paris: Flammarion, 1994; Salomon Malka: Emmanuel Levinas: His Life and Legacy, Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2006. ↩︎
Levinas’s family was murdered in Kaunas in 1941. His wife Raïssa and daughter Simone survived in hiding in a convent in Orléans. See Malka: Emmanuel Levinas, pp. 78–112. ↩︎
Emmanuel Levinas: Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1961. ↩︎
Levinas: Totality and Infinity, pp. 281–285: “The face speaks. It speaks, insofar as it is that which forbids murder.” ↩︎
On the critique of Hegel’s recognition see: Levinas: Totality and Infinity, pp. 69–74; as well as Robert Bernasconi: “Hegel and Levinas: The Possibility of Reconciliation and Forgiveness,” in: Archivio di Filosofia 54 (1986), pp. 325–346. ↩︎
Levinas refers critically to Hegel’s dictum “World history is the world’s court of judgment” (from the Philosophy of Right §340) in: Emmanuel Levinas: “Quelques réflexions sur la philosophie de l’hitlérisme” (1934), in: Les imprévus de l’histoire, Paris: Fata Morgana, 1994, pp. 19–32. ↩︎
Emmanuel Levinas: Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974. ↩︎
As shown in Volume 1, Chapters 21 and 24: fascism was hypermodern technology for antimodern purposes. Extermination was industrially organized—a triumph of instrumental reason. ↩︎
Theodor W. Adorno: “Cultural Criticism and Society” (1949), in: Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. 10.1, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1977, p. 30: “To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.” Later modified in Negative Dialectics (1966): art must express suffering but cannot return to normality. ↩︎
Theodor W. Adorno: Negative Dialectics, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1966. On the critique see: Rolf Wiggershaus: Die Frankfurter Schule, Munich: dtv, 1988, pp. 618–642; as well as the analysis in Volume 2, Chapter 7. ↩︎
Karl Barth: Church Dogmatics, 13 vols., Zurich: Theologischer Verlag, 1932–1967. On dialectical theology see: Eberhard Jüngel: Barth-Studien, Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1982. ↩︎
Levinas: Totality and Infinity, pp. 290–296: “The third party looks at me in the eyes of the Other […] justice remains justice only in a society where there is no distinction between those near and those far.” ↩︎
Ibid., p. 295. ↩︎
Johann Gottlieb Fichte: “First Introduction to the Wissenschaftslehre” (1797), in: Gesamtausgabe I/4, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1970, pp. 186–208. Fichte criticizes Kant’s “thing-in-itself” as contradictory: if we know it is unknowable, we already have a piece of knowledge about it. ↩︎