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Ought is prior to is, the good to the true. How we understand the world around us is determined by what matters to us, and what matters to us first and foremost are other people. Levinas, I think, wants us to appreciate this about our lives in part because it is what characterizes all social life, but also in part because we ought to live this way. Indeed, living in such a way that we are indeed responsive to others is the ground of any hopes we might have that the next century will be able to alter the tendencies that we have inherited from our recent past. Our best hope of overcoming atrocity and suffering, poverty and need, is to be summoned by the face of the other person and to respond to that summons with care and concern.
Professor Michael L. Morgan
Indiana University