Relationship between the Self and the Other

EMMANUEL LEVINAS
Emmanuel Levinas points out as
the face’s resistance against
possession, manipulation and
power .As the face reveals the
personality of a person, it also
emanates strength that signals
resistance.
Totalization of the Other
The default perspective we adopt in our
everyday thinking is that the other would
think,feel,react,perceive things, the way
we do.
• Totalization is a denial of the other’s
difference, “the denial of the otherness
of the other”.
Two things revealed by this experience of
astonishments.

1. Reveals what you have taken for

granted as true, BUT turns out to be
false

2.Experience shows us that another

person will always escape your attempt to
fully grasp or understand them
HOME
 HOME

FAMILIARITY
NAMAMAHAY “Otherness”

the experience of discomfort we

feel due to the newness and the
strangeness of the place.

For Levinas “The stranger who

disturbs the being at home with oneself”
Levinas,1969;39
We feel comfortable with our
FRIENDS and FAMILY
because of the interactions
that have become routine
over time.
Levinas, “This feeling
of familiarity prevents
a genuine encounter
with the other”
“The other remains
infinitely transcendent,
infinitely
foreign”(Levinas,194)
“To claim that there is nothing
beyond what you see and what
you know of the other is to
force them into your self-made
prison of expectations.”
“The human person is not a fixed
and self-enclosed entity, but a
dynamic and moving individually
as it is constantly opened up by
possibilities.”
“We may be close enough to know
who the other is, but there will
always be a distance between you
and the other that can never be
crossed”
“It has the possibility for
change, which is always
there for as long as the
person lives.”