Childhood in the margins: Levinas and the mortality of the face

Childhood in the Margins:
Levinas and the Mortality of the Face
Christopher Ryan B. Maboloc

There is an unpleasant feeling in each time I am about to enter the gates of the institution where I teach. But I suppose not everybody sees what I see, and because of that not everybody feels what I feel. For instance, the main building of our school is a structure to behold, but it is not what catches my attention too often. What bothers me every time I step on its marble floor is the image in my mind of young innocent children, some as young as five, begging under the searing heat of daylight, the exact opposite of the church’s proclamation that they are God’s most loved beings. It saddens me the most when I realize that many of us, mortals who have been blessed, remain indifferent and blind of humanity’s greatest anomaly of all – our disregard of the children in the margins.

The child out there that I don’t care about has a face. The face of that child is my moral obligation. The face of that child presents itself as an ultimate demand - Do not kill. (Levinas 1969) The face of that child, however, our present human condition suggests, is a dying one. It is the face of a poor child neglected and is dying from starvation because society does not see the rationale in sharing a piece of bread to those who have nothing to eat, or more philosophically perhaps, because society finds indifference a better option than feeding the hungry.

More often than not, the face of that innocent child who has to suffer from society’s inadvertence is an expression of humanity’s extreme fragility. This paper, following the trails of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas, intends to uncover the meaning of that fragility, bringing us to a closer encounter of the mortality of the face.1 It does not, however, propose a concrete course of action. What it does, and in a manner that is radical, is elevate our awareness, and in the process elicit our sensitivity to the hapless plight of the other.

The meaning of otherness

Human thought’s ultimate quest for the truth, for whatever is just, should deal with the most essential aspect of human existence, and by this I mean the ethical – ethics exists for the sake of the suffering other, and nothing more. Ethics is first philosophy and the reason for this is the fact that we are moral subjects. What makes man truly different from animals is essentially his being a moral subject. As a moral subject, he possesses a sense of right and wrong – he is morally obliged to do the good. Primordially, however, he exists for the good of the other. But who is this person I call other? The other as other, according to Levinas, is the face that I see. In many instances, however, I do not see a face; I see an object. I don’t really see those urchins out there; I see dirty clothes. To many of us who are immersed in our daily routines, there seems to be a refusal to see the other in its most allergic form of otherness. The children in the margins of the streets, felt as a mere disturbance, suffer from this allergy.

It is the task of phenomenological reflection to re-examine the meaning of the other for me. What does the otherness of the face tell me then? If in all seriousness and sincerity I begin to see the face of a street child, I will soon realize that the other is not an object at my disposal. The other as human, as one who supercedes me the other being the basis of all my ethical judgments, cannot be used as a mere means to an end. But reality says otherwise. The suffering other, that anonymous being that I encounter in the margins, is oftentimes manipulated in order to satisfy the desires of my ego. I am not the only one guilty of this. It is also an atrocity perpetuated by individuals who are supposed to take good care of these abandoned children. These individuals have done nothing except build an image for themselves. Child advocacy, with no real philosophical content, has become mere propaganda. It has been the way things are, for politicians need to win again, and organizations need the funding. These people are the ultimate expression of that egoistic self, a self that only desires what is good for its survival. And in the process of preserving itself, the other is destroyed, its validity thwarted, and simply dismissed as somebody who is not a real concern.

Misery is the companion of these abandoned children. Not unless a philosopher encounters the stare of a starving child, he has not philosophized.

The desire of humankind for self-preservation makes the other a nemesis, a threat to my existence. Because of my concern for a self-image, there follows a failure to recognize the “otherness of the other”. Philosophical reflection, patterned from a primal form of egocentricity, is always guilty of such. Thus, in reflecting about the question of the self, I may find a profound understanding of my human nature, but such essentially neglects the question of the other. There is a forgetfulness of the other, not a forgetfulness of Being.

Moral philosophy, more than an examination of the intrinsic nature of human action or the human person’s desire to be, should be a way of seeing the other as a face, a way of caring2 for the other as a suffering face. Morality should be a morality that cares, period. Morality should act for the sake of those who are suffering from the abuses of the human will. The moral realm exists as a reminder of my responsibility for the other.

The margins and human attention

In order to realize my responsibility for the other, there is a need to recover the primordial meaning of human attention. What is human attention? First, let me examine the meaning of human attention on the level of objects. When the self attends to something, it opens itself to a field of human possibilities. Attention goes beyond merely knowing what a thing is in its practical state or its functional appearance. Attention is a kind of dealing that dwells and partakes in the essential nature of the thing. When the self attends to something, it brings life into it. The self puts meaning into the object. The thing becomes valuable; it acquires importance. The object becomes a human property.

But I also attend to persons. Attention also implies co-existence. When I attend a class, I co-exist with others. The room becomes the playing field. It is in this playing field where listening takes place. I experience a certain kind of presence, a presence that is not merely physical. For instance, if I am not listening to my teacher, I am not really attending a class. When there is lack of attention, the self ceases to be a participant in the playing field.

Attention therefore is a kind of being-with. The “I” becomes a part of the “other”. Attention implies a giving of oneself. Attention is, unarguably, involvement. It means being caught up in the experience of being-with. In this kind of sharing the ego begins to care. In caring for the other, the ego forgets itself, and begins to dwell in the other. In this dwelling the ego becomes, like its opposite pole, the other.

Life in the metropolis is the simplest example I can think of. Allow me to attend to the margins of metropolitan life, and again, the streets. If one is truly observant of his surroundings, one should not fail to see the heart shattering presence of very young street children begging in the streets. At one time I saw a child, probably aged three, running the streets to beg. A mother, with almost no sign of present society’s scheme of things, carries her one year old and approaches each vehicle that stops. Later, a little baby cries of hunger, his brother unable to find a way of helping him out of his miserable existence.

If I look at all the giant edifices all over the metropolis, the gadgets that I use and discard in order to be updated of what is trendy, and the way I spend the days of my life in cinemas, malls, and parties, the sight of these innocent children would be no more than a statement of my irresponsibility. It seems that I have not been reasonable enough. And so there they are, in the margins of the streets, existing but not known, living but not loved.

Their miserable condition is a result of that modern day plague the intellectuals call marginalization. They are the unlikely victims of egocentricity. They occupy the silence and emptiness of the streets, for I have refused to see them. There they are, existing merely as statistical data and wandering in the brutality of modern civilization, waiting for their ultimate test of torture, serving as specimens of present day Himmlers3. My encounter with them is no more than a fleeting moment for a little kindness, if not hypocrisy.

Society’s lack of attention, its disregard for those lives in the margins, has resulted to man’s greatest problem - the presence of unending violence in our modern day existence. This violence speaks of the absence of our sense of responsibility. On the personal level, the self that I am neglects the presence of the face. The self that I am moves as if everything else revolves around it. The self that I am acts as if the world belongs to it.

The world is blinded by its own ego; not unless it opens its eyes to love and caring, it shall remain imprisoned by its illusion of totality.

Totality and violence

Conflict is the inevitable fruit of this totality. In the process of totalization4, the “I” dwells in the center and becomes the master of the fate of the other. The “I” becomes the center of the world, the source of meaning of the world. It is the “I” that determines what the “other” should be. The other, and his very freedom, is subjugated, thwarted.

Violence governs the world, and peace is a lost soul. Is peace within the realm of human possibilities? Difficult, indeed, especially when I realize that my sense of joy cannot be total for a child somewhere out there sleeps without anything in his stomach. There is a need, I think, to re-examine what is wrong. The fine lines of our socio-cultural margins may lead us to its essence. Peace is a “letting be”. In the acceptance of diversity, there comes a “unity in difference” – a unity in diversity. Not unless society allows those in the margins to have their own way of life, to profess their own faith and to experience the radical authenticity of their culture, peace will remain no more than an empty concept. The streets belong to the “nobody”, and thus, the young children who live there have become a “nobody”, a nameless face. They have been forced out from their homes because of military conflict, but many of them are stripped of their humanity because of injustice, because their parents do not have a share of society’s wealth, and so in the streets they dwell, forlorn, forgotten, and dying.

Violence ends as soon as I recognize the other as my responsibility. Violence is a product of irresponsibility. The other demands that I become responsible. The face of the other speaks of my task. The other is my superior (Levinas 1967), not my co-equal. I exist for the other. It is in being responsible for the other that my being is determined. What I am if I have done nothing for my brothers? What is a father if he has not loved his children?

Violence ends when there is a cessation of the self’s effort to annihilate the other. The self as a dictator defines how the other must exist. By dictating on how the other is supposed to live, the self devalues the other. Society remains under the domination of the will of the powerful. Modern civilization leads us nowhere

Master and servant dialectic

The question above provides us with a perspective in examining one of Western society’s most important socio-political framework – the master-servant dialectic. (Hegel 1967)This framework presents the theoretical background for the emergence of power and its preservation. The master dominates the servant; the master defines the limits of the servant. The servant cannot will his master’s desires; the servant exists only in order to please the master. The servant then is the object of the “I”. All relations are to be grounded on such presupposition. All existence revolves around such egocentricity.

Human reason is justified only when it does not contradict such dialectic. Any dialectic, Plato taught us, designates what truth is. (Plato 1974)Here, truth becomes the product of egocentricity, and everything else becomes its opposite. Thus, truth comes from the power of the master. It is the will of the master that has a rightful claim to objectivity. The servant and his claim to truth are annihilated. It is the self that knows, and human reason is simply the principle of the will of this ego. The subject that defines the limits of what is true and what is just is a subject that does not know what is other than itself. A self that wills, a self that sets its own norms is blind as to the reality of what is other than itself.

This explains why most laws serve only a few and disregard the many, the masses in particular. The masses are in the margins – they are dispensable mortals. They are unimportant; as other, they do not possess reason – they are subservient to it. They are the object of the will of the intellectuals, the nameless faces in garbage dumpsites, factories, and mines.

The other then is a victim of the gods of the ego. The insignificant other is the child who dies from tuberculosis because his parents cannot afford its cure, the child who has to die in an ambush after being caught in the crossfire, the child who has to become a victim of bombings and salvaging, and all because of the reason that that child is an other, a face that has been abandoned.

Violence in the State

It seems then that the other is the most fragile of all existent beings. The other is a victim. The other is dying. The other is facing its impending death. There is no greater violence than seeing a young child suffer.

In a capitalist society, that child becomes the face of a helpless worker, who as victim of oppressive working conditions, suffers and is reduced to the level of things, reaching the point of almost starving to death. In a tyrannical regime, that child is the face of an unwilling victim of political oppression, sacrificed for the sake of justice. In the social sphere, that child is the face of an alien entity, whose voice is unheard, whose significance is equal to nil, for he is the illiterate, the uneducated, the dirty man in the street. In the cultural dimension, that child is the face of a dying voice in the wilderness, whose survival and very way of life is partnered with extinction.

And whom should we blame? It is the state, and the very condition for its existence, that causes the miseries of the suffering face. Politicians are making our society worst. The state, which exists in order to be the guardian of the interests of the majority, demands that the minority is non-significant, that any crime committed against the minority is justifiable. Only because they are the minority, and that what matters is that the majority is served well, as if the minority feels nothing, are nothing, means nothing. Such is also found in the world’s most powerful nation. Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in the American declaration of independence that all men are created equal, and who, as one of the founding fathers of that great nation, is supposed to be a pillar in the cause of human freedom, cannot but be labeled as inconsistent, for he owned slaves. The slaves cannot have their freedom, for if they did, it would undermine the very existence of the union, for much of its life depended on slavery.

The state, many thinkers agree, is the greatest and most powerful perpetrator of violence. This violence seems justified, for the state exists for the sake of its subjects, hence, the necessity of protecting them, even if that means going to war. But this violence is the same violence that causes death to the other. Violence is the ego hiding in the guise of reason. The state, in principle, is grounded on the premise that it exists to promote the welfare of its subjects. Sometimes, however, these subjects are the ones sacrificed for the sake of the state. The idea that some men must die so that others may live is the voice of a dictator who claims to uphold the principles of humanity but has put humanity secondary to his selfish interests. It is this: to stay in power, I must kill. The predator must have a prey for it to realize its very being, for it to actualize its nature. There is violence because of man’s concern for self-preservation. The state, in order to exist, kills.

The other as mortal

There is death because we care less. Death looms in the horizon of the face5. The face, as mortal, suffers. The face of the children in the margins is the most deplorable expression of mortality. The face of the other is a blatant manifestation of coercion, the ultimate embodiment of expendability. Thus, the other lives in alienation. The other as face subsists in misery. The other, as nobody, as face, is forgotten. The other, as nobody, is a nameless face. Death accompanies the other as face, as nobody, for society does not provide him a place of decent living, of dignified existence. The other, as mortal, is that dispensable face, whose existence, in the first place, to many of us, and irresponsibly, meant nothing.

In death, my existence ends. Death is thought of as an event where I am no longer possible, a point where all my potentialities shall have been completed6. Death is an own-most possibility, and it is the fulfillment of my being, the completion of my life. The other, however, experiences death differently. For the other, there is no fulfillment, no sense of completion, when death comes to it. There can only be completion when I realize the purpose of my being. There is fulfillment when I have become what I have always dreamt of being. But the death of a child out of hunger or murder, the sacrifice of individuals for the sake of freedom, and the loss of millions of lives because of tyranny are but left to the pages of civil registry as mere data.

But the dead face shouldn’t remain silent. As traces of history they are reminders of past mistakes, of human inattention, of the absence of equality, justice, love, and reasonableness. The dead are not resting in peace, just as we do not live in peace. Death presents itself as a challenge for me to change, that I must be steadfast in the quest for human responsibility. Death reminds us of an infinite responsibility7.

Infinite responsibility

The original encounter with the face is that of an infinite responsibility. There is an obligation, a demand to act. In my refusal to see, what is presupposed is that I have already recognized the other, but the initial effect is that of rejection, of allergy.

The other is thought of as unimportant, as someone not part of me, as someone I do not share a being-with. The only feeling that I have is that of antagonism, that of violence. This I can plainly see. Every time a young girl, poor and untidy, approaches a teenage student who is about to enter the halls of the school, the initial reaction is that of disgust and abomination. Such an act is a visible display of the violence against the other. Is it not that education exists to make us better humans?

The face, which appears instantly as antithetical, implies the radical demand to recognize the otherness of the other. The response is grounded on the ethical. It is a moral responsibility. The example above suggests that the initial reaction of abomination is due to the refusal to see the face of the other. What is seen is the dirty clothing, not the child who is wearing such. If only one makes the effort to see the eyes of that innocent young being, then one would certainly feel what is to be done. This is not a request. It is a call to action. The other demands our responsibility.

In seeing the face of the other, the shame in me is revealed. My ego is shattered. My freedom is felt as mere stupidity. I am questioned. I am the accused. (Levinas 1966) And in the end, the question that reverberates to the deepest part of me my selfish ego, is simply this – what have I done to you? There is no escape. I am responsible. I have to face that moment. And the self that I am remembers the injustice it does against the other, against the face of that child. This is not about what I am supposed to give (charity) or what I will retain in my self (egoism). It is all about answering a moral obligation. It is all about responding to what the other demands from me.

There are only two options. Either I reject the other, or make my very being present to the other. It can only be rejection or responsibility. It is either I refuse to see that face, or accept responsibility8 to whatever has happened to that face, to that dying face. Through the other then I realize who I am. I am mortal, just as the other is. I have a face, just as the other has a face. I am responsible for the other. I can never be responsible for the kind of being that I am if I neglect the otherness of the other. The self, when it goes back to itself, finds that the self is but empty. My moral existence, the person that I am, only finds its sense in its being for the other.

This responsibility can only be concrete because the other, the face, is a concrete existing reality. It is not about the fulfillment of the desires of the spirit. The face, that dying child, is hungry. The word of God is important, but the word of God might remain a meaningless sound if the child knows nothing except the pain in his stomach. Priests have made their churches their greatest accomplishments, but God does not live there. God is ashamed that a house has been built for him but a simple home can’t be built for the child in the margins.









1 The face, Levinas notes, is a concrete expression of mortality. See Emmanuel Levinas, “Beyond Intentionality,” in Philosophy in France Today, edited by Alan Montefiore (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 109.
2 For a perspective of an ethics of care, see Carol Gilligan, In A Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982).
3 Adolf Himmler was Hitler’s most trusted lieutenant. As head of the state’s secret police, he was in charge of the execution of Hitler’s order of annihilating the Jews. The Holocaust remains to be the most glaring example of human evil.
4 Totalization, Dr. Leovino Garcia writes, is not in itself bad. He adds that the problem occurs when this fundamental perspective is applied to people. Totalization, when applied to other people, becomes tyranny. See Leovino Garcia, “Infinite Responsibility for the Other: The ethical basis of a human society according to Emmanuel Levinas”, in Unitas, volume 65, no. 2 (Manila: University of Sto. Thomas Press, 1992).
5 For a background on the philosopher’s view on death, see Emmanuel Levinas, Time and the Other, trans. by Richard Cohen (Pittsburg: Duquesne University Press, 1987).
6 For a Heideggerian perspective on death, see Manuel Dy Jr., Philosophy of the Human Person (Quezon City: Goodwill Bookstore, 1986).
7 Infinity needs to be distinguished from totality. Dr. Garcia notes that for Levinas, totality is a kind of thinking that starts from The Same and returns to The Same. Infinity is a kind of thinking that starts from The Same and moves to The Other. See Leovino Garcia, “Infinite Responsibility for the Other: The ethical basis of a human society according to Emmanuel Levinas”, in Unitas, volume 65, no. 2 (Manila: University of Sto. Thomas Press, 1992).
8 Responsibility, according to Dr. Garcia, comes through the other. The other, in addressing me, makes me absolutely inalienably responsible. See Leovino Garcia, “Infinite Responsibility for the Other: The ethical basis of a human society according to Emmanuel Levinas”, in Unitas, volume 65, no. 2 (Manila: University of Sto. Thomas Press, 1992).