On Ethics as Being-for-others

'thus conscience makes cowards of us all'

It is said that Ethics is beyond the essence of exsistence as such that it 'does not supplement a preceeding existential base' (Levinas, 1985). Ethics is beyond the 'what is' of being, and is instead presupposing the 'what ought to be' of the 'what is' (Cohen) as if reworded this way, the 'what ought to be' is a unilateral phenomenon of the progression of the 'what is'--of being beyond existing which is therefore beyong being in itself. How, then, is this unilateral transition of the 'what is', what as the being, is as the essence, towards 'what ought to be', ought as the Ethics of being (to be), possible?

'the very node of the subjective is knotted in ethics understood as responsibility' (Levinas, 1985) Ethics, as can be said, is responsibility. Levinas was adamant to say that this responsibility is the responsibility for the Other and not for the self or the being of oneself. In the 'I am' it is the I independent of the am that is responsible, the I which so continually escapes the am in order to be ethical par responsible; escape of being of the I in itself to say that the I is not the I of the am but the is of the Other. Given such grounds, how can the I be ethical, be responsible to the Other? By virtue of Ethics, the I ceases to exist. And in its escape from being, being as a solitary state of existence, the being becomes a being-for-others, responsible for the Other and is therefore ethical. But then again, it is the being I that is the being-for-others. And it is the similar I that in order to be-for-others escapes the being in itself. What then is this I that is no longer in a sense a being of existence as it so eagerly escapes existence to be ethical? In order to be ethical, if one can say that Ethics is the being that is the end of being and essence, the I must cease to exist; the I is replaced, as the end of being, as a being-for-others--being-for-others as a 'synthesis' of the I and the Other. Ergo, the I is no longer an I in itself, and no I is involved in Ethics because it does not deserve to be.

And if by such we have supposed the non-existence of I in Ethics, what then is the Other? the I no longer I but a being-for-others is responsible for the Other. And in a utopian sense of the phenomenon, it can be said that the Other is also a being-for-the other in itself. But the Other, in being ethical, ceases to exist in itself nonetheless, does not become an I but a being-for-others escaping its own being. What is the Other but a being-for-others that is not at all itself. And if the Other is also an I that ceases to exist, what exactly are we responsible for? One paradoxically becomes responsible to a being-for-others responsible to another being-for-others and so forth and so on. Simply put, one that ceases to exist in itself is responsible for another that ceases to exist in itself. Nothing is responsible for nothing. Without the I one is nothing; nothing in a sense that the I is transient and dependent on the others in its definition of being-for-others, nothing in a sense that it ceases to exist in itself. If there is no I in the being-for-others and the Other is also a being-for-others, then the being-for-others which is nothing in the first place is responsible for the Other which is also nothing.

there is no I. there is no Other. there is no Ethics. (?)