The core of Levinas’s genealogy is the .
: The face issues a wordless command: "Thou shalt not kill" . This is an immediate, pre-theoretical summons that requires a response.
: While a "totalizing" mindset seeks to understand and control the Other, the encounter with the face reveals an "infinity" that can never be fully grasped or possessed. 3. Infinite and Asymmetrical Responsibility
Emmanuel Levinas (1905–1995) redefined ethics by positioning it not as a branch of philosophy, but as . His "genealogy of ethics" traces the origins of morality to a pre-conscious, immediate encounter with "the Other" that precedes knowledge, reason, and individual freedom. 1. Ethics as First Philosophy
: He criticized the historical focus on the "Same," where the unique "Other" is reduced to an object of knowledge.
Levinas argued that Western philosophy has traditionally prioritized —the study of being—which tends to "totalize" and absorb everything into the self's own categories of understanding.
Levinas’s genealogy describes responsibility as something rather than chosen. Emmanuel Levinas - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
: Levinas proposed that the fundamental human experience is not self-awareness, but the ethical obligation to another person. This obligation is "first" because it provides the very condition for language and social existence. 2. The Face and the Encounter