Mutual recognition
Sarah Bakewell tells a story about Levinas and his discovery of mutual recognition:
In his best-known work, Totality and Infinity, published in 1961, [Levinas] made the relationship of Self with Other the foundation of his entire philosophy – as central a concept for him as Being was for Heidegger. He once said that this shift in thinking had its origin in an experience he had in the camp. Like the other prisoners, he had got used to the guards treating them without respect as they worked, as if they were inhuman objects unworthy of fellow feeling. But each evening, as they were marched back behind the barbed-wire fence again, his work group would be greeted by a stray dog who had somehow found its way inside the camp. The dog would bark and fling itself around with delight at seeing them, as dogs do. Through the dog’s adoring eyes, the men were reminded each day of what it meant to be acknowledged by another being – to receive the basic recognition that one living creature grants to another.
At the Existentialist Cafe, page 196.
