The Philosophy of the Face




Encountering Emmanuel Levinas and his Philosophy of the Face in class made three striking realizations come into mind:

First, a person’s face will always be a person’s face. Emotions may trigger certain contortions on it, but it will always be a person’s face. It will always serve as a frontline to his identity. The expressive eyes, the lopsided smile, the wrinkles, the scars, the blemishes—all of it him. Even though people are taught to look beyond the physical aspects of an individual, there will always be a sliver of realization that what you actually see is what you actually get. A person’s face will always be a person’s face. People aren’t just dolls with switchable heads—putting on a new one when you’ve already gotten bored of the old one. People have their own irreplaceable, unique, and individual faces—irreplaceable, unique, and individual identities.

Second, the eyes aren’t the windows to the soul, the face is. The eyes are very expressive, People can tell a lot about an individual just by looking at his eyes. People can even know what a specific person is feeling based on his eyes. Eyes give you a front row seat into a person’s soul. But despite the countless staring, pupil-dilating, and eyelash-batting, there is something much more expressive, something much more deserving to be called the window to a person’s soul: the face. 7 billion people in the world, 7 billion faces, 7 billion souls, 7 billion stories to tell. The soul is one of the most argued about topic in the philosophical and religious world, and let’s say that there is a soul. Can a face really be a window into someone else’s soul? Yes. Behind every skin-wrapped façade hides stories to tell, ideas to conceive, morals to believe, values to live by, perceptions to validate, beliefs to fight for, and a soul to strive for. If you want to know more about a person, take a look at his face. There are hidden answers embedded there if you look hard enough.

And lastly, the greatest thing you can be in this world is a face. Although Levinas viewed the face as applying to individuals, I’ve come to the realization that there is more to the term ‘face’ than meets the eye. The face can apply to the totality. And it is indeed true that the greatest thing you can be in this world is a face— a face not only in its individual aspect, but in its collective one as well. A face for something you care deeply about, a face for something you’d want to fight for. People dream of becoming lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, architects and the like. But has anyone ever dreamed of becoming a face? Of becoming the face? The face for world peace, the face for justice, the face for international unity, the face for freedom. The greatest thing you can be in this world is a face— a face that knows what it wants to fight for and what it wants to represent.

A face can be many things when looked at with the right pair of eyes.

Just know where to look.

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