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ETHICS WITH A HUMAN FACE

Eduardo Jose E. Calasanz

I was made to understand that at the beginning of this workshop,

Dr. Edna Manlapaz, the head of the Technical Committee of the CHEDProgram for the Humanities talked about Ethics with a Human Face. I

think it is but proper that we end with a philosopher who has made a

reflection on the experience of the encounter with the human face as the

starting point and focus of his philosophizing.

Emmanuel Levinas was born on 1906 and died on Christmas Day,

1995. He was born in Lithuania at the time when Lithuania, one of the

Baltic States, was still part of the Russian Empire. His first language was

Russian. He grew up on the Russian classics and then studied in France in

the University of Strasbourg where he worked in the theory of intuition in

Edmund Husserl. He was one of the first philosopher in France to work onEdmund Husserl. He was even able, in fact, to do a semester with Martin

Heidegger at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany. He

settled in Paris in 1930 and became a French citizen. He spent the years of

the Second World War as a prisoner of war while the rest of his family

was assassinated in Lithuania. Only his wife and daughter survived.

I would like to do this expos of a very complex philosophy in four

moments or four parts. The first part is the starting point. Levinaswhole

reflection begins in a concrete situation where violence is the order of the

day. There is violence both on the individual, on the interpersonal, and on

the social levels. The social level includes both the national and

international arenas. Violence is a datum of experience and Levinas

situates this situation of violence in what he calls, following Spinoza, the

desire of every being to persevere in its being. The Jewish-Dutch

seventeenth-century philosopher Spinoza, a contemporary of Descartes,

speaks of what he calls the connatus essendithat every being by its very

being desires to remain, desires to conserve itself, in its being, to

persevere in being. It is this act of self-preservation or auto-conservation

that defines itself as a being. Levinas interprets Heidegger following this

same line when Heidegger speaks of Dasein as the only being for whom its

being-itself is in question, its being-itself is an issue, and that therefore,

Dasein tries to be itself authentically. It is this movement towards

authentic self-being that defines the very being of Dasein. For Levinas,

both this idea of connatus essendi and Heideggers notion of authentic

being betray an essentially centripetal movement. In other words, the

concern of the individual being is turned towards itself. In this centripetal

movement there is a certain allergytowards the other. In other words,

the attitude towards what is not-self, what is not ako, what is not the

individual self is one of allergy.The allergytakes different forms: fear,

insecurity, aggressivity. All of these normally intertwine. And it is this,

Levinas say, which defines our own natural attitude towards the rest of

the world, the rest of being, the rest of the universe. It is an allergy

towards the other as Other. It is our natural attitude, to use the term of

Husserl.

Focusing now on the human experience, we tend to see that the

natural, the radical goal of all our lives, our activities, our movements isthat of enjoyment. Without taking any moral judgment, what Levinas is

trying to do is to engage in a phenomenological description. He is not

saying that this is good or bad, but simply, This is what we experience,

what happens.This is not yet the moment of moral judgment. Our goal is

one of enjoyment and what characterizes enjoyment precisely, is the

intensification of the centripetal movement. In other words, in enjoyment,

ultimately, whatever we are enjoying, we are enjoying ourselves. For

example, you just had merienda. I dont know if the merienda was

delicious or if you enjoyed it, but think of a merienda that you would

enjoy. Think, for example, when you enjoy a ripe guyabano. When youplunge your teeth into that guyabano, when you suck the juice out of the

guyabano flesh in your mouth, you enjoy. One is enjoying the guyabano,

but ultimately, Levinas says, one is enjoying oneself. When one is enjoying

the fact of enjoying the guyabano, one is enjoying ones maintenance in

being, ones life, ones identity, the fact that Im enjoying and not enjoying,

and the like. So, on the level of purely sensible enjoyment of the senses,

you have this basically centripetal movement.

This centripetal movement is also found in the experience of

possession which at its origin is simply the postponement of enjoyment.

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In other words, you have something which you can enjoy but which you

need not necessarily be enjoying immediately although its there at hand,

ready to be enjoyed. Once more, in any kind of possession, the orientation

is towards the self, towards the I.

This orientation towards the self holds true even when you come

to an experience like work. At f irst hand, work seems to confront me withan Otherthere is something which is not myself. Take not that Levinas

uses workhere in a very general senseany kind of action which seeks

to transform matter. It can be as simple as making a shoeone of

Aristotles favorite examples. When making shoes, the shoemaker

transforms leather into a human artifact. It could also be the work of

building a house which means domesticating a certain placewhat was

once simply an empty lot full of cogon grass is now defined humanly, is

now defined according to human needs in accordance with the

satisfaction of certain wants, certain desires, so that you no longer simply

have an empty field full of cogon where nature goes its own way, as itwere, but that space will now be re-defined, will be transformed according

to my ends, my goals, my needs. In other words, the Other will always be

in function of certain goals, certain ends I have in mind. The activity that I

call work is the transformation of matter according to my own image

and likeness, according to my own goals, according to my ideals, according

to my categories. This is what we do with an empty space, a vacant lot,

wood, stone, leather or any other thing when we work on them. We

transform, and thats the dignity and greatness of work precisely. Work

transforms nature into human nature, as it were, into a nature that is now

redefined by certain human intentionalities. But once more, in thatexperience, the origin of meaning which imposes or gives meaning will

always be the self.

Even when we, Levinas says, come to the realm of thought, of

thinking or knowing, there is a movement of immanence. Those of us who

have a scholastic background would be familiar with this idea. What is

otherthis chair, this experience, this phenomenon, this object in nature,

by the act of knowing them becomes in me, becomes immanent. If one

were a Kantian, for example, one would say that ultimately, what

constitutes the object of knowing is its being situated within the

categories: the intuitions of sensibility of space and time, the categories of

understanding, causality, finality, relationship and others, the three

transcendental ideals of totalitythe self, the world and God. Once I can

situate anything within that system, then it becomes an object, then I can

say, I know.Once more, its always a process of rendering what is other

as immanent, what is other the same, what is not me, ultimately me.

Levinas uses the metaphor of ingestion or eating which, I think, is

very apt. what happens when you eat, for example, spaghetti? Once you

have ingested that spaghetti, that spaghetti is broken down into certain

basic elements: carbohydrates, fats, and other components and then it

becomes part of your body. What began as other ends up becoming part of

us and what does not become part of us, we eliminate. But the whole

process is one of making the other, what is not-self, not-I, ultimately self, I.

Thus, Levinas says, it is this metaphor of eating, of ingestion, that

you find in the experiences of enjoyment, possession, work, and thinking.

It were as if youre still working with an other but the whole point isprecisely to reduce the alterity, the otherness of that Other, such that you

find, to use the Hegelian formula, yourself in what is not-self. In other

words, the point is to be at home, to be in ones own dwelling in a foreign

land, in what is other. It is to make what is foreign, precisely domestic. So

thats the first pointLevinas situates the whole phenomenon of violence

as ultimately rooted in this natural attitude, in this natural phenomenon.

Second point. There is however, he says, an experience which

seems to break loose or break away from this generalized experience of

ingestion, of allergy towards the other, of immanentization, to use a

technical term which means rendering immanent what is transcendent.

He locates this particular experience in what he calls the banal fact of

conversation.

Incidentally, maybe I can refer to the two texts I suggested for

your reading. There are two texts: an easy text and a difficult text. The

easy text is the short one: Spirit and Violence.It was written in 1950-1,

(and published in English as one of the essays in Difficult Freedom: Essays

of Judaism [Baltimore: The John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1990]), an early text

of Levinas. The other one, a later text, was given as a lecture in 1967 and

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published in 1968. Its longer, a bit more difficult, more dense, but I find it

more foundational. I would not recommend the second text, the difficult

text, for our students. That would be really more for the teacher and for

the graduate student of philosophy, but I think the first one, the short easy

text, would be accessible to an undergraduate student.

This experience of conversation, of simply speaking, is what theanalytical philosophers call the speech situation. In this speech situation,

in any kind of speech situation, you have at least three elements or three

poles and ones reflection can focus on any one of these poles. You have

the pole of the matter being talked about (pinag-uusapan). You have the

pole of the person doing the speaking (kumakausap) as well as the

interlocutor, the one spoken to (kinakausap). Levinass whole reflection

on the speech situation focuses on the interlocutor. What does it mean to

have to face someone? This is what happens when you speak to

someoneyou face someone. What is that experience all about? Here, the

focus is precisely on the face-to-face relation, on what he calls the vocativesituation. It is not so much the talking about the interlocutor as another

subject mattertalking of or talking about the interlocutor, but the

focus is the talking to.What happens there in that vocative situation, in

that talking, in that speaking to? It is a speaking to which cannot be

reduced to a speaking about, although in our discourse we can talk

about the other spoken to as spoken about. I may be engaged in

another conversation, for example, with Dr. Ibana. I can talk about this

conversation with someone else, for example with Rannie and therefore I

can talk aboutRainier Ibana, but the Rainier Ibana I am talking about to

Rannie is not exactly the same as the Rainier Ibana I am talking to insofaras I am talking to him. In other words, that Rainier Ibana who is my

interlocutor is irreducible to the Rainier Ibana I can talk about to other

persons or even to Dr. Ibana himself.

Focusing now on that vocative situation, Levinas says we have or

can have the experience of the other as otherthe experience of the

radical alterity or the otherness of the other, where the other is not

reduced, not transformed into an object. The other is not an object of my

enjoyment, of my possession, of my work, even an object of my thought,

but precisely is allowed to be there as other. At any point, and we shall go

back to this, I can begin to talk about it, reduce him to an object. This is

where we shall have to reflect a little whilewhat this letting the other be

other precisely means. We shall see that it partakes of the nature of a

decision, an option. Its not something that is automatic.

To see the other as other, Levinas says, is to see him or her in his

or her face. Levinas uses the notion of the face as a sort of figure,something along the structure of metonymy. In other words, a part is

substituted for a whole. Its like when you say for example, thirty sails set

outinstead of saying thirty ships.The sail stands for the whole shipa

part stands for the whole. In a similar fashion when he speaks of the face

as a rhetorical figure, a metonymy (the part is substituted for a whole), he

speaks of the whole personthe person as person, the loob. The notion of

loob itself is also a metonymya part is substituted for the whole. The

loobwhat is most personal for a person is not just a part of a person but

stands for the whole. So, to meet the other as other is to meet him or her

in the face. Levinas calls this encounter of the face an epiphany.He usesthe term epiphany which simply means manifestation. The Greek verb

means to manifest, to show.Something is shown, something is seen,

but he uses the word epiphany precisely to emphasize a certain

suddenness to it. In other words, its not something that can be arrived at

as a conclusion of a certain method, of a certain procedure. It is seen in the

way one looks at or studies a poem, for example. Once can read the poem,

analyze its structure and rhetorical devices following a procedure but

there will always be that element which is extra-procedural which doesnt

mean that the procedures are not important with the analysis of the

paraphrasing, the metaphors and others, but there will always be a certaingap and that gap can only be bridged by a leap. You take for example an

abstract, nonrepresentational, nonfigurative painting. You cant make

heads or tails out of it, in fact, there is no head or tail, its just splashes of

color, a play of light and shadow but at a certain point, it makes sense. At a

certain point you can even begin to like it. Of course if you have to explain

it, if you were an aesthetics student and you have to write a paper about it

in class, youd have to bluff a lot. You have to use categories that you have

learned, but in that moment itself of the seeing, the moment itself of

epiphany there will always be something sudden, something unprepared,

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something even uncalled-for in that event. The experience of the Other in

his or her own face is similar to this epiphany. It is when one discovers the

unicity of someone, the uniqueness of someone, as someone really

particular. For example, you face a number of students as you lecture

before a class of fifty or sixty. You may know the students names but

when you see them, Levinas says, you see them obliquely, always

through something, always through a categorythat category of

student. You see them always through a certain representation or a

certain system. The system could be sociological, academic, economic, and

others. It could even be a physical representation, in other words, the

system of those bodies that occupy a particular space. You can even see

them as being fair-skinned or dark-skinned, stub noses or long nose, and

the like. We try to domesticate them by seeing them as through a category.

But when you begin to lecture and you begin to notice your students, lets

say, one of your students who accosts you after class, he strikes you as a

student. He is a student who wants to ask a question, to clarify or maybe

has a complaint but already you that category and you meet that person

through the prism of that representation, that category, that system. This

is the natural thing. In other words, we encounter that Other only in so far

as he or she would fit into a certain horizon of expectations, a certain

systematization of social relationships, certain categories that we have

already prepared ourselves for. You board a jeep and you experience the

same thing. You take a look at the person in front of youmy fellow

jeepney passenger. You just a bodyyou get to notice the pimples; you

get to notice the teeth; how big the nostrils are, that sort of thing. This we

can do to while away time because we are bored in traffic. But at a certainpoint it can happen that the person becomes for us someone.Sometimes

it can take place in a very embarrassing wayyoure in the jeep, staring at

the person in front of you, without any romantic or erotic intentions, you

simply look. You notice the way the hair is done or youre even amused

because his or her teeth are not straight. But notice, once you do that, one

can speak of treating the Other as object, treating the Other as fitting

within my system of representations, within a category. At a certain point,

however, it can happen that youre the one being looked at. The person

will notice that youre looking at him or her and then start to look at you

who are looking at him or her. When he or she looks at you, theres a

moment of embarrassment. What happens when you re embarrassed in

that way? When that person looks at you, that person is no longer simply a

collection of certain physical details, some of which are funny or

interesting but becomes a new center. In other words, theres a certain de-

centering. At first, youre the one looking. You have here the whole

analysis of Sartrethe gaze, the stare. The other person is somehow

pinned down under your stare and he or she is wriggling like an insect

pinned downscrutinized, played around with. Youre the center. Youre

the one in control of the situation. But if youre the one looked at, youre

no longer the center. Its the other whos now the center. Its the other

whos now in control because youve been embarrassed. So notice that,

once more, there is no procedure here: step one, step two, step three, and

then you have a sort of paradigm shift. The paradigm shift which occurs is

not the product of certain steps. It occurs, as most paradigm shifts occur,

with a certain element of unpreparedness, of uncalled-for-ness. The

experience of the epiphany of the face is of that nature and this is where

Levinass phenomenology becomes a moral discourse at this point.

Levinas says that this perception of the face, this experience of the

epiphany of the face is not simply a perceptual experience but a moral

one. In other words, its not just an object of perception. The Other is not

simply an object of perception, therefore, to perceive the face of the Other

is to have new perception as it were, but it is a qualitatively different

experience. It is a moral experience which he summarizes rather rapidly,

of course, but in the commandment You shall not kill!In other words he

says that to see the face of the Other is to hear the commandment, You

shall not kill! This commandment is a metonymy, a figure of speech, inother words, a part is substituted for a whole. In other words, when he

speaks of the You shall not kill what hes talking about is that whole

range of moral imperatives which command respect for the other, for the

life of the Other, which commands care for the Other. So too, the

perception of the face, the epiphany of the face, he says, is a moral

experience. The visual and the auditory metaphors are combined. To see

the face is to hear the commandment, You shall not kill! You shall respect!

You shall care! You shall be responsible for.But more than that, more

than just being a moral experience, Levinas says that it is the locus of

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origination. In other words, this is where the moral experience begins

the experience that there is an Other whom I cannot reduce to my

enjoyment, to my possession, to my work, or even my thinking. So not

only is it a moral experience but also the locus of origination, the place

where the moral experience originates, and therefore where the whole

panoply of moral categories, of imperative, duty, norm and the like would

ultimately take root. Notice once more, parenthetically, hes not making

norms here but what hes trying to show is where the norms take root.

I will now try to relate this to what youve already seen before,

though I wont do the whole survey that everybody has seen, such as

Thomasnotion of natural law or even for example, Kants notion of duty.

One can ask, but where does one experience that?What area in human

experience can we see, not just know, not just understand, but really see,

experience yung may kagat, what Kant means when he speaks of duty, of

the imperative, of that I must do this because I ought to do it and simply

because I ought to do it not because it will make me happy, not because itis useful, but because I simply ought to do it? Where does one experience

that? Even this notion of the natural law, the voice of reason, our

participation in eternal reason, the way Thomas puts it, where does one,

or can one experience that? Thomas doesnt speak of the experiential

locus. He takes it for granted, I suppose. Even Kant doesn t speak of the

specific loci, the different places, different situations where once can

really hear the categorical imperative. And I think this is one way of

understanding what Levinas is trying to point out here. He is not trying to

edict norms, but hes trying to show that whatever norms one follows,

what-ever moral principles one adheres to, it is in this experience wherethose norms are ultimately rooted because it is here where they are

heard, where they are experienced.

The Other who appears in his face appears ambiguously, Levinas

says, because he appears both in his height and his humility. There are

always two dimensions when the Other appears to me. There is an aspect

of, what I would translate as, katas-taasanmas mataas siya sa akin.

There is a certain asymmetry. Were not equal, mas mataas siya. Thats

why he can command respect, and when we say command respect,we

mean it in a literal fashion. When we say, he commands respect,it seems

to mean that hes worthy of respect, but that is not what Levinas means

when he speaks of commanding respect. For Levinas there s really a

commandment. Theres a certain height from which he commands but at

the same time, he says, a certain humility. There is a certain poverty.

Dukha siya. Yung pagiging dukha niya, sa pagiging kataas-taasan niya,

nagtatalaban. He commands precisely in his poverty, in his misery, in his

weakness and he is weak precisely in his height, in his dignity, in his

ability to command respect.

One example I often give to my students when we talk about this

experience is very culture-bound, but I think one s culture is a good place

precisely to begin. For example, when you have to refuse someone who

begs. For example, you are in a jeepney that reaches an intersection with

the red stoplight on. So the jeepney stops. At that moment someone

approaches the jeepney, for example, an old woman from the Cordilleras.

When she approaches you, for one reason or another, you refuse to give

her money. You dont want to give because you do not happen to haveloose change. What you have are peso bills. You do not want to give a big

amount, for instance, twenty pesos, and so you look in your pocket for

smaller amounts, say one-peso or fifty-centavo coins. Or in principle, you

dont give because you suspect there s a racket behind this. The first one

to profit from it would be the policeman in the corner. Or you don t give

because you fear that the one given will just buy anything with the money,

or worse, use the money to buy drugs. So in principle, you will not give.

But in our culture, what are we taught when we are to refuse? Patawarin

po, patawad po. When we reflect on that, why do we have to beg

forgiveness? Its not given an obligation, I mean, if ever you give, its out ofthe superabundance of your heart and your pocket. She does not have any

claim to my heart and pocket. And yet we say, Patawad po.It is as if you

this ambiguity that in the very misery, in the very poverty of that other,

THAT itself commands a certain response, and when the response is not

adequate, and it will always be inadequate, then there is that need to

express,patawad po, patawarin po. We say this because the response will

always be inadequate precisely to that call. So thats the second point. The

epiphany of the face which begins in the simple fact of conversation, the

banal fact of conversation, but wherein the face is experienced in an

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epiphany where this epiphany is not simply perceptual but moral,

meaning to say, not only is it a moral experience but also the experience of

an imperative, the experience of an interdiction, You shall not kill! You

shall respect!is also the locus of origination of all moral experience. It is

where the moral norms are heard.

Third point. We were already beginning to talk about this. Thisresponse ultimately, to the call of the Other, his face, is one of

responsibility. Once more, this responsibility is not defined in all its detail

in the works of Levinas. But he gives certain indications. He tries to

express this responsibility for the Other in two different ways that

correspond to this two kinds of writings. He has writings which are

philosophical and which he wants to be taken as strictly philosophical,

taken within the European philosophical tradition. Then he has another

set of texts which are always published elsewhere. He never mixes

publishers so that there would be a clear distinction. The other writings

are what he comments on scriptures and on the Jewish commentaries ofscripture, if you want, more religious writings. But he tries to keep them

separately even to the point of having two different publishers for his

(what he calls) philosophical writings and (what he calls) his more

explicitly religious writings.

He tries to express this responsibility for the Other using two

phrases which are very current in French. In his philosophical texts, he

speaks of the, Me voice! It means Narito Ako!the Here I am!

experience. But in some of his commentaries on the Old Testament, he

identifies this Narito Ako!with the experience of Isaiah 6. Here, Isaiah

sees the vision of the glory of the Lord in the temple and upon seeing this

vision, the seraphim sings Holy, holy, holy!Then Isaiah experiences, first

of all, his unworthinessI am a sinner.Then he is cleansed by a burning

coal, and once he is cleansed, the first thing he says is Here I am! Send

me. Its the Here I am, send me experience. In other words, the

experience of, Here I am to be sent. Here I am responsible.

Sometimes this responsibility will not be concretized effectively.

For example, your mother is on the brink of death and you re beside her.

You tell her, Im here, Mama.But theres nothing you can really do, shes

going to die anyway. You dont have the cure, nor the medicine. You

cannot offer any help. But you still say, Here I am.O kaya naman, meron

kang kapatidnagwawala, napa-drugs, nakabuntis ng dalawa, sabay-

sabay, at hindi niya alam kung paano pananagutan ang ginawa niya. And

then he comes to you since you re his older brother or sister. You do not

have any solution to his problems. Aren t there problems in life which do

not have any solution at all? You may not have any solution but the

response hes looking for is simply to hear you say, Here I am. Youre not

alone. I may not have the solution, but, hey, I am here.This responsibility

for the other could be as minimal as that, without focusing on any or

resulting in any specific solution but simply, the responsibility manifested

in that Narito ako.

The other phrase that Levinas uses besides that Narito ako! is

Aprs vous. Ikaw muna. Its a formula of politeness. For example when you

go out of the door and there s a lady beside you, you say, Ikaw muna,

Kayo muna.The whole point here is that the Other is always ahead. It is

this, he says, which renders sacrifice possible. Reciprocity is not theultimate in moral life. Sacrifice is possible. If reciprocity is ultimate then

there would be no more room for sacrifice. Sacrifice would then be absurd

or it would even be immoral, but it is this notion of the Other as ahead, the

Other as more important somehow, that renders the very notion and

experience of sacrifice possible.

This responsibility however, for the Other, is not just an attitude,

it is also something very concrete. Levinas stresses the economic

character of this responsibility. Its the opening not just of one s heart

(loob), he says, but its also the opening of ones palm and furthermore, of

ones pocket. You therefore work, but its not just for the opening of ones

palms, its also the opening of ones homethe whole experience of

hospitality, of making the Other dwell in one s own dwelling place.it is the

opening of ones pocket. In other words, there is an economic dimension

to this, and very often he would quote at this point no longer the Jewish

scriptures but even the Christian scriptures, Matthew 25, the scene of the

Last Judgment. In other words, if there are norms to be spoken of here,

these would be the norms of feeding the hungry, giving drink to the

thirsty, clothing the naked, and the like. These point to the economic

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dimension of responsibility. Thus, this responsibility for the other

Narito ako. Ikaw munais economic.

Finally, for Levinas, this responsibility for the other is also infinite.

In other words, responsibility is without end. This means that my

response will always be inadequate. An analogy to this perhaps, is our

own experience of theutang na loob.

An

utang na loob

can never be

repaid. Kapag tumanaw ka ng utang na loob, ito ay habambuhay. Once you

have acknowledged utang na loob, in a way, its for life. It can never be

repaid because no matter how much you repay, that payment would be

inadequate. So, in a similar fashion, he quotes Alyosha from Dostoevsky s

Brothers Karamasov, who says, Each one is responsible for all and before

all, and I more than any other.In other words, to speak of responsibility

is first of all to speak of my responsibility. It is not first of all, to gauge the

responsibility of the Other. It is not even, first of all, to compare

responsibilities. It is first of all, to acknowledge my responsibility for the

Other. In other words, there will always be something asymmetrical or toput it bluntly and crudely, laging lugi ako, because I always would at

least an iota more of responsibility for the Other.

The two images he uses to picture this infinite responsibility for

the Other are the image of Atlas, the Titan who is condemned to bear the

whole world on his shoulders and the image of the Suffering Servant of

Isaiah 53. The Suffering Servant is the one who takes the place of others,

the one who bears the suffering of others by the mystery of substitution.

In that long and difficult second text I gave you, the one on substitution, he

stresses that responsibility goes to the point of substitution. In other

words, being responsible for an Other goes to the point of taking uponmyself even the pain and the suffering that the Other deserves. Once more,

it is this that renders sacrifice possible: the sacrifice of a friend laying

down his life for a friend, the possibility of parents spending their whole

lives for their children. Notice that once more, responsibility is not

measured in this way by freedom but freedom is invested by

responsibility.

The last point. The point which he has least developed, the most

incomplete part, if you want, of the work of Levinas, is where he speaks of

the third part. So far, we have always been speaking of the face-to-face

relationako at ikaw. But the face-to-face situation is not the only

situation that we are in. in other words, in the world, its not just you and

me. There are others. Its not just a question of I and the Other but there

are also other Others. There other Others are related to one another in

very well defined relationships: relationships of power, relationships of

need. These are defined by the economy, by the political structures, by the

social structures, by cultural structures such as family, school,

neighborhood, state, company, etc. So what about the situation of other

Others? Since this is also part of our concrete human situation, he has

some reflections on this but once more, its the least developed aspect.

He develops his notion of the third party along two lines: first,

what I would call a horizontal line. He says that the Other is also the Other

of another, in other words, there is a third party and there is always a

third party. Hindi lang ako at ikaw, meron ding siya. Meron ding sila.

Moreover, we are together and we have to live together such that if tayo

lang dalawa, ako at ikaw, laging ikaw muna, laging lugi ako, laging masmataas ka, laging walang hanggang pananagutan para sa iyo. But because

we are not alone, there are also others, then I also have to take care of

myself because I have to take care of others. Thus we have to organize life

in society which means that we have to compare what is incomparable

the uniqueness of each person. Because we live in a society, we live in

structures of society, we have to weigh what cannot be weighed, we have

to compare what cannot be compared. Why? Because we are ultimately

weighing loob. We are weighing subjectivities, we are weighing persons,

we are comparing what is unique so paradoxically. But paradoxically,

thats what we have to do. We have to talk in objective terms, we have totalk in universal terms. Paradoxically, we have to talk in universal terms

of what is unique, singular, individual, face to face. This is where, he says,

the importance of the state, the economy lies. This is the place where you

have an ethics of procedures. This is the place where you have to talk

about certain universal norms, going beyond what it particular going

beyond the face to face. But he says that all of these procedures, all of

these institutional norms, would only be validated precisely if they are

rooted in that original locus, in that original place of origin, which is the

face to face, which is the discovery of the epiphany of the Other as Other.

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So it is this third, horizontal third party that sort of corrects the

asymmetry of the original face-to-face situation. Thats just one aspect.

The other aspect of the third party, which he doesnt develop at

length is what I would call the vertical aspect. Levinas says that in my

relationship with the Other as Other I am not just relating to the Other, I

am relating to the Infinite, to make a short-cut, God. Once more, as heremains very faithful to the millenary Jewish tradition, he says Gods face

is a trace. No one can see the face of God and live. In other words, unlike

the human other, whose face I can see, the face of God would always be a

tracebakas lang. Therefore, I cannot use that trace to turn into a

religious ideology or translate it into certain notions of responsibility,

certain norms, etc. In other words, the notion of God is the ultimate

horizon but it is a horizon which can never be objectified, which you can

either say Here and NowNarito. It will always be precisely that which is

beyond, that which escapes us, that which we can only speak of as a

tracea trace that, once identified in the context of our relationships, isalready gone. Laging yun na nga, hindi na yun.It is this which respects

ultimately the transcendence of God, otherwise we reduce God to certain

images, to certain representations, to certain categories and this is what

we call idolatry: We reduce God to an idol.

So, once more, just to summarize everything, the whole moral

experience for Levinas is rooted in that epiphany of the face, discovery of

the Other as Other, not as object of my enjoyment, work, possession or

even though but simply as Other. It is here where moral experience can

begin. It is here where the moral norms are first heard. It is here even, he

as far to say, where the moral principles can be problematized, precisely,in certain tragic situations where principle and the concrete human Other

seem to clash. But it is here therefore where ethical reflection can begin, in

that concrete meeting with the human Other. It is a primitive fact. It is like

the experience of duty for Kant. Its what he calls a fact of reason. Itsnot

arrived at as a conclusion of a syllogism or a demonstration. Either you

see it or you dont, but as Levinas says, it is this seeing or not seeing which

defines the seeing or not seeing of good or the seeing or not seeing of evil.

It is this which defines whether one is on the side of Cain, who asks at the

end, Am I my brothers keeper? Levinas says that if you reflect on it,

there is no answer to the question, Am I my brothers keeper?or Is my

brother my responsibility?To ask that question is already to refuse to

enter, precisely, the moral realm. It is precisely to refuse to be judged,

precisely by the Other as Other.