The first things to remember about the face-to-face encounter between the self and the other person are that it is concrete and particular. It is not an idea or concept, nor a type of action or event. It is a concrete reality, an event; it occurs. Furthermore, it occurs as utterly particular: the self is a particular person, and the face-of-the-other is a particular revelation of a particular person. What is occluded, hidden, or forgotten in our ordinary lives is not some idea or value; it is this presence of the other's face to me – and my responsibility to and for this person. Moreover, this reality or event or encounter, which in a sense is beyond our thinking, our concepts, and our rules, and prior to them, is determinative and unconditional. It is all plea and command, made again and again, in episode after episode. It is not like a single clash that occurred sometime in the past and that is heard only in its continuing echoes; it is more like echoes themselves always present without any such crash or origin.

What does the face reveal? Why is its content ethical? How does Levinas clarify and argue for this content? What does the face mean? Is its meaning absolute?

In order to answer these and other questions about the ethical content and the character of the face-to-face encounter that Levinas calls attention to, I want to look first at his writings from 1947 to 1961, from Time and the Other to Totality and Infinity.