Within the book, Emmanuel Levinas is the phenomenological limit case: methodologically akin to the Husserl–Heidegger line, ontologically its explicit antagonist. He stands close enough to the substance-ontological-relational line (Spaemann, Wojtyła, Boethius, Thomas) to stand within the same question — the question of the Other as Other — and far enough from it to answer that question from the opposite pole.
Key Contribution
Levinas’ fundamental philosophical move is an inversion: ethics is first philosophy. It is not ontology that grounds obligation; rather, obligation carries being. In the face (French visage) of the Other, the I experiences an address that precedes all thematization and whose first word is imperative: “You shall not kill” (Totalité et Infini, section III, B 3). This inversion is directed against the “philosophy of totality” (Parmenides, Hegel, Heidegger), in which the Other is always absorbed under concepts of the Same.
Core Concepts
Face (visage)
The face is not the perceived countenance, but the epiphany of that which withdraws from all disposal. It “speaks” before it says anything. In it, an infinity (in the sense of the Cartesian idée de l’infini) breaks into the immanence of the Same. Hence it cannot be imaged — no photo, no avatar, no simulation can be a face, because their availability violates precisely the structural condition that constitutes the face.
The Other (Autrui)
Autrui is not an “alter ego” as in Husserl (Fifth Cartesian Meditation), but radical transcendence within the finite. The Other comes “from on high” (d’en haut), not as a mirror image and not as a contracting party among equals. This asymmetry is constitutive: my responsibility for him is not balanced out by his responsibility for me.
Saying and Said (Dire / Dit)
In Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (1974), Levinas unfolds the conceptual pair: the Saying is the pre-propositional exposure of oneself to the Other, the “me voici” — “here I am.” The Said is the thematic solidification in which the Saying is inevitably betrayed. The face belongs to the level of the Saying: event, not content.
Substitution and Being-Hostage
The ethical concept of the subject in the late work: the subject is not a self-in-consciousness, but substitution — in responsibility it stands in the place of the Other, is hostage (otage) for him, prior to any choice. This radically inverts the modern model of the subject: to be a subject means sub-jectum in the literal sense — being subjected to the Other.
Il y a
From De l’existence à l’existant (1947) and Le temps et l’autre (1948): the anonymous, impersonal “there is” — being without entities, brute facticity. Explicitly directed against Heidegger’s “es gibt Sein”: what in Heidegger is gift is in Levinas horreur, from which only the hypostasis of an existent and, finally, the ethical relation deliver us.
The Ontological Tension
Levinas’ inversion collides with the book’s substance-ontological-relational line at the very point where the two do opposite things: Spaemann grounds obligation in the being of the Other. Because the other human being is a being with a rational nature, a substance in Boethius’ sense, a someone, recognition is owed to him. Recognition follows being; it does not constitute it — hence Spaemann’s thesis “There are no potential persons.” Wojtyła’s Personalistic Norm says the same normatively: the person is to be affirmed for her own sake — as what she is, prior to any response.
Levinas refuses this order. Even the being of the person remains within the sphere of essence, which is transcended in the Dire. The obligation is not there because the Other is something determinate, but because his face calls me out of every determination. Substance-thinking and face-thinking both rescue the Other as Other — but from opposite poles: Spaemann through the What prior to recognition, Levinas through the call prior to every What.
Where the two converge is unmistakable: both reject the reduction of the Other to object, function, or datum; both hold fast to the priority of the concrete Other over the universal; both determine obligation as lying before choice. Spaemann formulates this ontologically (agere sequitur esse), Levinas ethically (face before subject). Against the functionalism of a Locke, Parfit, or Singer, both stand on the same side.
An open research question concerns the relation between face and concept of person. Dominique Janicaud (Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française, 1991) charged that Levinas’ face works only because he tacitly presupposes a theological-personal determination of the Other. Jean-Luc Marion (Étant donné, 1997) transposed the tension into a phenomenology of givenness. Simon Critchley (The Ethics of Deconstruction, 1992) sees in Levinas’ late concept of substitution an implicit conception of the subject after all — not a substance, but an ethical structure. For the book’s ontology of the person this means: Levinas cannot be carried over into a substance ontology, but neither can he be read without an understanding of what enables him to speak of the face of the Other in the first place. Semantically, that presupposes a person, even if Levinas ontologically chooses a different vocabulary.
A specifically substance-ontological appropriation of Levinas by Günther Pöltner — co-editor of the volume Phänomenologie und Philosophische Anthropologie (Königshausen & Neumann 2011) — would be the obvious follow-up question, but it is not reliably documented in the available research. It remains a research desideratum.
Place in the Book
In the book, Levinas does not appear as a principal witness for the substance-ontological-relational concept of person, but as a phenomenological boundary post: in him it becomes visible how far an ethics of the Other can carry without a substance ontology — and where it tacitly presupposes an ontology of the person after all. He is load-bearing for the chapters on encounter, address, and the face, and he supplies the sharpest argument against attempts to pass off a simulation of the Other (avatar, AI persona, parasocial relationship) as a substitute for personal encounter: non-availability is the structural condition on which every AI pseudo-encounter structurally founders.
Sources: Research status as of 24 May 2026.
Further sources:
- Théorie de l’intuition dans la phénoménologie de Husserl (1930). Paris: Alcan (French first edition; Engl.: The Theory of Intuition in Husserl’s Phenomenology, Northwestern University Press 1973)
- De l’existence à l’existant (1947). Paris: Fontaine (Engl.: Existence and Existents, transl. A. Lingis, Nijhoff 1978)
- Le temps et l’autre (1948). In: Le Choix, le Monde, l’Existence, Cahiers du Collège philosophique 1, Arthaud (Engl.: Time and the Other, transl. R. A. Cohen, Duquesne University Press 1987)
- Totalité et Infini. Essai sur l’extériorité (1961). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff (Phaenomenologica 8) (Engl.: Totality and Infinity, transl. A. Lingis, Duquesne University Press 1969) — main thesis of the ethics of the face, section III
- Autrement qu’être ou au-delà de l’essence (1974). The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff (Phaenomenologica 54) (Engl.: Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence, transl. A. Lingis, Nijhoff 1981) — Saying/Said, substitution, being-hostage
- Strasser, Stephan (1978): Jenseits von Sein und Zeit. Eine Einführung in Emmanuel Levinas’ Philosophie (Engl.: Beyond Being and Time. An Introduction to Emmanuel Levinas’ Philosophy). The Hague: Nijhoff (first comprehensive German-language study)
- Casper, Bernhard (1984): “Illéité. Zu einem Schlüsselbegriff im Werk von Emmanuel Levinas”. In: Philosophisches Jahrbuch 91, 273–288
- Liebsch, Burkhard (ed.) (2016): Der Andere in der Geschichte. Sozialphilosophie im Zeichen des Krieges. Ein kooperativer Kommentar zu Emmanuel Levinas’ „Totalität und Unendlichkeit” (Engl.: The Other in History. Social Philosophy under the Sign of War. A Cooperative Commentary on Emmanuel Levinas’ “Totality and Infinity”). Freiburg: Alber
- Critchley, Simon (1992, 3rd ed. 2014): The Ethics of Deconstruction. Derrida and Levinas. Oxford: Blackwell (3rd ed. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press)
- Janicaud, Dominique (1991): Le tournant théologique de la phénoménologie française. Combas: Éclat