Lithuanian-born and living in France, Emmanuel Levinas (1906–1995) came from the phenomenological tradition but directed a fundamental critique at it. He said that Western philosophy, since the Greeks, has tried to grasp everything within a single whole — to reduce every difference to a concept, a system, a "same." Levinas calls this "totality" and argues that it carries a hidden violence: it takes the other not as truly other but only as far as I understand it. Behind this thought lies the experience of a Jewish philosopher who lost most of his family in the Nazi camps.

His 1961 "Totality and Infinity" proposes a radical starting point against this. For Levinas philosophy must begin not with knowledge but with coming face to face with another human. The "face" (le visage) is not a physical face but the other addressing me directly, refusing to be grasped like an object. The face of the other awakens a demand in me: "Do not kill. Do not leave me alone." This call makes me responsible whether I wish it or not; it comes before me and limits my freedom.

From here arises a striking inversion. Western philosophy had placed the "I," the subject, consciousness at the centre; Levinas places at the centre the "other" and my responsibility toward it. Ethics is not merely one philosophical problem among many but philosophy itself — "first philosophy." Infinity appears in the irreducible otherness of the other, which I can never wholly grasp.

Levinas's "ethics of the Other" had a broad influence, from his pupil and friend Derrida to contemporary ethics and political philosophy; it reshaped thinking about otherness, hospitality, and responsibility. To Heidegger's question of "being," Levinas answered with the question of "goodness toward the other."