Levinas’ Metaphysics of the Face: Ontological Injunction Not to Kill

The prevalence of the practice of one man killing the other in different parts of the world, on a daily basis is alarming. In fact, the “culture of murder†is rapidly consuming our world and this can be attributed to the failure of a genuine encounter between human beings, as subjects; as persons with an inviolable right to life. We are actually witnessing the demise of the Thou in favour of It and this makes killing facile because man in this instance is looked upon as an object and not as a subject. This paper is borne out of this concern, which sets out to examine the philosophical intuition of Emmanuel Levinas and how it establishes an ontological injunction not to kill the Other. The central arguments in this work are articulated within the framework of the face of the Other possessing an inherent command; “thou shall not kill†and a call for a committed responsibility towards the Other; a responsibility which is bottomless, infinite, and requires that one avails himself or herself to the needs of the Other, even to the point of dying for the Other. This study proposes that for man to regain his ontological structure as a subject with the uninfringeable right to life, the clarion call of Levinas to listen and respond to the summon of the face in the words: ‘thou shall not kill’, must be imbibed as an injunction, valid for all people and in all circumstances.