It is not death, but life and others, that return us to ourselves.

Objects to

Emmanuel Levinas · Totality and Infinity · 1961

That the thought of the end can rouse a slumbering existence, granted. But it does not have this power alone: a love, a calling, the birth of a child draw us out of indifference just as much, and put us under summons to answer.
goes further: what truly calls me out of myself is the face of the other, its frailty that makes me responsible, and not my death, the most solitary and most silent of relations.
By making death alone the source of , one risks the opposite of the goal sought: a withdrawal onto one's own end, where it may be attention to the world that opens a life.

Therefore So nothing compels us to take death as our only master: life has other paths, perhaps surer ones, to return us to ourselves.

Deepenings

The face rather than death

For , the philosophy of being-toward-death remains centered on the self: even in anguish, it brings me back to my own existence.
The true departure from self comes from the other, whose call precedes and exceeds me: I find myself responsible even before having chosen to be.

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