Will, The Look, The Face

The occasions that for Sartre and Levinas are encounters with alterity only betray the methodological priorities of each. For Sartre, the consciousness of the 'Look' of another is the basis of Being-for-Others, while for Levinas, the 'Face' of another constitutes an interpersonal demand on one. Sartre, therefore, implies that there is no being-for-others in the presence of a blind person, while Levinas implies that a cry in the dark is a merely impersonal phenomenon. In other words, both cases attest only to the fidelity of each thinker to the privilege of vision in experience, which, if a legacy of Berkeleian Phenomenalism, also entails the denial of the reality of depth in Experience. Furthermore, that an auditory experience can also be the occasion of an encounter with another confirms that the decisive dimension of such an encounter is Will, i. e. how one extends oneself towards an object of an encounter on the basis of what is given in the encounter.