The Face

Emmanuel Levinas was a French philosopher, born in Lithuania, who wrote Totality and Infinity in 1961. He argued that ethics begins before theory, in meeting another person. The face of the other, he said, makes a claim on me: do not harm me, and respond to me.

He used the word face for more than the front of a head. It means the way another person appears as someone I cannot fully sum up in my categories. They always exceed what I can say about them, and that is why they cannot be reduced to a type.

For Levinas, responsibility comes first and is asymmetrical. I am called to answer, whether or not the other will answer me. You can accept or reject his view, but it asks a pointed question: what happens to a person when we reduce them to a label?

The stranger at the door

A woman knocks at Tomas’s door in the rain, asking to use the phone. His first thought is a list of what she might be: salesperson, scammer, lost traveler. Then he looks at her face, wet and tired.

He sets the list aside, lets her step into the hall, and hands her the phone. Later he cannot say what category she belonged to, only that she was a person standing in the rain.

Try this today Next time you meet a stranger’s eyes, take a moment to register a person with their own life before you do anything else.