Levinas’s face-to-face ethics rejected Heidegger’s collective Being-with

Evidence

As Levinas reflected on this experience, it helped to lead him to a philosophy that was essentially ethical, rather than ontological like Heidegger’s. He developed his ideas from the work of Jewish theologian Martin Buber, whose I and Thou in 1923 had distinguished between my relationship with an impersonal ‘it’ or ‘them’, and the direct personal encounter I have with a ‘you’. Levinas took it further: when I encounter you, we normally meet face-to-face, and it is through your face that you, as another person, can make ethical demands on me. This is very different from Heidegger’s Mitsein or Being-with, which suggests a group of people standing alongside one another, shoulder to shoulder as if in solidarity — perhaps as a unified nation or Volk. For Levinas, we literally face each other, one individual at a time, and that relationship becomes one of communication and moral expectation. We do not merge; we respond to one another. Instead of being co-opted into playing some role in my personal drama of authenticity, you look me in the eyes — and you remain Other. You remain you. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 627

Categorization

• DEFINE: Crisply defines the Levinasian face and the ethical encounter, contrasting it with Heidegger’s Mitsein and Buber’s I-Thou.
• XREF: The face-to-face vs shoulder-to-shoulder contrast maps onto the reader’s interest in how Existentialism moved away from Heidegger, and later structuralists’ critique of the unified subject. — connects to: Levinas recast Heidegger’s Being as a terrifying, inhuman affliction — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 624; Levinas made the ethical relation to the Other foundational to existence itself — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 628; Heidegger’s ontological being-with cannot explain concrete relations with particular others — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 703 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Heidegger’s ontological being-with cannot explain concrete relations with particular others #corroborates (0.90) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 703
• Levinas made the ethical relation to the Other foundational to existence itself #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 628