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If we generalize about what is required, such generalizations are rules of thumb or recommended policies. Deriving them and then acting with respect to them and the demands of the particular situation require deliberation and reflection and an appreciation of what is demanded of each of us. There is no recipe for how to act in a given type of situation, but there is much that one can and ought to do to determine what would be caring and just.
In the course of developing his argument and his view of Levinas, Shaw draws on a variety of interlocutors, some the continental figures who are considered members of his own philosophical tradition, others members of the analytic or Anglo-American tradition which he did not know. In this respect, Shaw’s book is indeed special. Only a few books and articles attempt to place Levinas in conversation with figures such as John Rawls, Bernard Williams, Charles Taylor, and Hilary Putnam. Shaw does this in a natural and effective way, for these figures are introduced not simply to draw a comparison or to make a contrast; rather they are called upon to address objections to Levinas or to offer alternative answers to questions raised of him. These philosophical voices, then, become participants in the drama of the argument, so to speak, and the reader is thereby shown how he or she too can—and might profitably—enter into a similar dialogue with Levinas and his work.
In the end, Shaw underlines a point about Levinas that is powerful and important. Much of Western philosophy is grounded in ontology or epistemology. Its starting point is an account of what there is or what we know. Shaw’s book argues that for Levinas, ethics is primary, but more importantly he shows what that means. He shows, that is, what it means to say that Goodness comes before Being and Truth. Levinas often points out that Plato in the Republic saw that this was so, but it is one thing for Plato to have said that the Good is beyond being and the ground of being, it is another for us to be able to understand this priority. As Shaw shows, for Levinas every relationship we have with every other person is grounded in the preciousness of that other person to us, and that preciousness requires our acknowledgment and support before it does or says anything else to us.