CONCEPT
The Third Party (Le Tiers)
Levinas's name for the other Other—the face that stands beside the face I am already addressing—and the philosophical device that transforms pure ethics into the demand for justice when infinite demands compete.
The encounter with the face is an event of absolute singularity. One stands before this face, this vulnerability, this demand—and the demand is infinite. There is no limit to what the Other's face asks; no calculus determines that one has done enough. But the world does not consist of one Other. The world is populated by multiple Others—an indefinite plurality of faces, each making its own infinite demand. The arrival of le tiers—the third party, the other Other—introduces a complication that transforms ethics into justice and responsibility into judgment. The third party does not diminish the infinity of the demand. Each face remains infinite. What the third party introduces is the impossibility of responding to one infinite demand without neglecting another. Justice, for Levinas, is not application of universal rules but the painful weighing of infinite demands by a consciousness that cannot satisfy them all.
