Losing face

Review article of the book 'Totality and infinity: An essay on exteriority' by E. Lévinas

Abstract

The welcoming of the face and the work of justice — which conditions the birth of truth itself — are not interpretable in terms of disclosure. The relation between the same and the other is not always reducible to knowledge of the other by the same, nor even to the revelations of the other to the same, which is already fundamentally different from disclosure. (Lévinas, 1961/1969, p. 28)