Responsibility for another person › The idea of infinity

Levinas draws on Descartes's idea of infinity to describe a relation in which what is thought exceeds the thought that intends it. The important structure is a disproportion: the idea does not contain its content in the way a complete representation would. Levinas connects this structure with the other person's exteriority to the self's comprehension.

Infinity here is not a calculation of how much information a person contains. It does not mean that enough biographical detail would eventually allow us to complete the task. Nor does it mean that another person has limitless physical abilities. It describes a relation that cannot be completed by possessing an exhaustive account of its other term.

This qualification prevents a familiar misreading. We can learn facts about someone, correct mistakes about their history, and become better acquainted with their concerns. Levinas's argument does not make such knowledge worthless. It challenges the assumption that the person would become ethically exhausted by everything we could know about them.

Imagine someone saying that a friend's behavior was entirely predictable and therefore no longer required a response. Prediction, even if accurate, would not by itself settle what the friend is owed. Knowing what someone will ask and deciding how to answer the claim are different matters. The example illustrates a non-entailment, rather than proving Levinas's account of infinity in full.

The title therefore offers more than a choice between a small whole and a larger whole. Infinity is not a larger totality into which the other can finally be placed. It names the interruption of that ambition. Whether Levinas successfully describes such a relation is a question the book's argument must answer, not something established by the suggestiveness of the term.