Responsibility for another person › The other person and everyone else

A face-to-face account might seem to concern only two people. Levinas's discussion of the third party prevents that restriction. The other person is not the only other person. In receiving one person's claim, we are already implicated in a human plurality that cannot be ignored for the sake of a private encounter.

In Totality and Infinity, Levinas connects the third party with justice and humanity. It is important not to turn this into a simple story in which a third individual arrives after an otherwise complete two-person relationship. The point is that the ethical relation is not a secluded arrangement exempt from the claims of others.

This creates a need for comparison and judgment. If two people need the same limited resource, attending to one does not make the other disappear. A response must take account of their distinct claims while recognizing that deciding between them is more than a mechanical consequence of feeling addressed.

The resource example is an application, not a policy conclusion supplied by the book. Levinas's account does not tell us here which allocation rule is justified. It gives us a reason to ask whether a judgment remains answerable to the persons it affects. An administrative rule may be necessary, yet the rule does not exhaust the ethical significance of their claims.

This is also where the language of singularity and the need for institutions meet. Comparing cases can make people appear interchangeable. Refusing comparison can make it impossible to respond fairly to multiple demands. The tension cannot be removed by declaring either measurement or personal attention universally sufficient.