[An introduction to the thought of Emmanuel Levinas. The care or irreducible worry of infinite responsibility.]

Despite a particularly difficult approach, Emmanuel Levinas remains a philosopher who « speaks » quite naturally to caregivers. The reason is simple ; he is interested in an issue that has long been hidden in philosophy, but that directly affects care : vulnerability.However, it seems that his thinking has too often been watered down. By presenting it as a form of benevolent altruism, the radical, even subversive, aspect of the approach that he proposes to us is erased. Indeed, Levinassian responsibility is experienced first of all as a rupture, a violence that makes me the « hostage of others. » According to Levinas, only the intrusion of the third imposes a limit on the relationship with the face of others. More precisely, the demand for justice vis-à-vis the third party places me in the difficult situation of having to « weigh, to think, to judge, in comparing the incomparable. »Levinas therefore proposes an ethics of the absolute, a hyperbolic morality that takes little account of circumstances. Would it then be betraying Levinas to seek to mitigate this responsibility, which may seem, in many respects, out of reach ?