Reflection: Whose Face Do You See?

Prompts to consider

• Levinas says encountering the face of the Other is an obligation that precedes choice, it calls you before you decide to respond. Think of a moment when someone's vulnerability confronted you with a responsibility you hadn't asked for. Did you respond? What did turning away feel like?
• Levinas's critics point out that women, caregivers, and colonized peoples have historically been assigned the role of infinite responsibility for others while those with power have not. Does this mean Levinas's ethics needs to be corrected, or that it describes a structural injustice that should be evenly distributed rather than eliminated?
• Levinas limits the face primarily to human persons. Should non-human animals, visibly suffering, visibly vulnerable, also 'have a face' in Levinas's sense? What would change about his ethics if you answered yes?