Das Antlitz – von Rosenzweig zu Levinas

When thinking philosophically about the face, inevitably Levinas comes to our minds. His ethics are based on the human face, that forbids us to kill. His book Totality an Infinity (1961) relies on Franz Rosenzweig’s Star of Redemption (1921), which is “too present to be quoted” (Levinas). In The Star of Redemption, the face appears in the very end, it forms the climax and keystone of the work, but less in ethical terms than in an epistemological perspective. Rosenzweig first seeks the relationship to truth, to knowledge and its conditions in the divine face, in order to then read it from the human face – both are inseparably linked, like theology and philosophy. This article aims to examine the relationship between Levinas’ and Rosenzweig’s face and the function it plays in their respective works.