<![CDATA[Levinas’s ethics of responsibility is often placed and discussed in comparison with other ethical theories such as Immanuel Kant’s deontological ethics and John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism. Unlike Kant who emphasizes the fulfillment of moral duty and Mill who employs the greatest happiness principle, Levinas is said to focus on responsibility toward the Other. On this view, the difference between Levinas’s ethics and traditional ethical theories concerns merely a particular ethical principle. This comparison overlooks Levinas’s phenomenological background, which analyzes primordial experience and the concrete meaning of human relations. The present article seeks to demonstrate that Levinas’s ethics must be understood within the context of a phenomenological analysis of the fundamental and natural movement of human beings in relation to the world and its objects. It employs the phenomenological method that involves the textual analysis of his works, particularly Totality and Infinity, through the concepts of enjoyment, assimilation, and dwelling. The resistance of the face of the Other emphasized in Levinas’s ethics constitutes a response to this fundamental movement expressed in activities of mastery and domination. This study offers a new perspective on Levinas’s ethics by showing its phenomenological point of departure. ]]>
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