Modern philosophy starts from Descartes' "I think," treating the isolated self as a self-evident foundation; yet one fundamental question is left suspended: another person is never merely an object of my cognition, but a being who precedes me and lays a claim on me. Today's four thinkers enter here: Levinas says the face of the Other is the source of ethics, Mencius says the heart of compassion is innate in everyone, Buber distinguishes two modes of existence, "I-You" and "I-It", and Buddhism dissolves the boundary between self and other through compassion. In an age where algorithms reduce people to data points, re-asking "who is the Other?" is the common starting point of both cognition and ethics.
Emmanuel Levinas · The Face of the Other
Western · France / Phenomenology & Ethics
Totality and Infinity (Totalité et Infini) · 1961
CORE THESIS · PRIMARY TEXT
Le visage parle. La manifestation du visage est déjà discours. — The face speaks. The manifestation of the face is already discourse. Before any choice I make, the face of the Other commands me: "Thou shalt not kill."
— Totality and Infinity
Thesis: ethics precedes ontology. Philosophy's first question is not "what is being?" but "what do I owe the Other?"—a responsibility that holds before I ever consent to it.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT & KEY INSIGHT
Levinas, a Lithuanian-born Jew, studied under Husserl and Heidegger; nearly his entire family was murdered by the Nazis. He held that from Parmenides to Heidegger, Western philosophy used "the Same" to absorb "the Other"—reducing other people to concepts I can grasp and use, a kind of ontological violence. He reverses this: the Other's face cannot be reduced to my concept; it appears to me from the height of "the infinite," placing me under responsibility before any choice.
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY CROSS-REFERENCE
This stands in tension with the popular idea that "empathy is simulation": mirror-neuron theory tends to explain understanding others as "reproducing their state in my own brain"—precisely the "reduction of the Other to a projection of the self" Levinas rejects. He insists: the true ethical relation is not "how accurately can I simulate you," but the recognition that you forever exceed my comprehension. An honest corrective to "mind-reading" models of empathy.
CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE
BigCat scenario: When AI compresses people into user profiles, credit scores, and facial vectors, the "face" is emptied into computable data—exactly Levinas's "turning You into It." A reminder for the super-individual: in data-saturated collaboration, deliberately leave real people a margin of "the un-modelable"—they are not parameter sets but faces that lay a claim on you.
ESSENCE · QUESTION
The irreplaceable insight: the Other is not an object of my cognition but a being who precedes me, cannot be reduced, and imposes unconditional responsibility—so ethics comes before knowledge.
The last time you "understood" someone—did you truly face them, or just fit them into the labels and models you already had?
Mencius · The Heart of Compassion
Eastern · China / Warring States Confucianism
Mencius, "Gongsun Chou I" · c. 4th century BCE
CORE THESIS · PRIMARY TEXT
When people suddenly see a child about to fall into a well, they all feel a start of alarm and compassion—not in order to gain favor with the child's parents, nor to win praise from neighbors and friends, nor because they dislike the child's cry.
— Mencius, "Gongsun Chou I"
Thesis: the heart that cannot bear the suffering of others is in everyone. The instant we see the child about to fall, alarm and pity well up—prior to any calculation of advantage, proving compassion is the innate sprout of benevolence (ren).
HISTORICAL CONTEXT & KEY INSIGHT
In the chaos of the Warring States, Mencius urged rulers toward benevolent government, debating human nature with Gaozi and contending against Yang Zhu (egoism) and Mozi (universal love). The child-and-well is a carefully built thought experiment: by eliminating motives one by one—"befriending the parents, winning fame, disliking the cry"—he forces the conclusion that moral intuition is innate, not an acquired calculation. Benevolent government, in turn, naturally extends from this "heart that cannot bear others' suffering."
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY CROSS-REFERENCE
This aligns strikingly with the frontier of moral psychology. Jonathan Haidt's "social intuitionist model" argues that moral judgment precedes moral reasoning, with reasons often being post-hoc justification; Paul Bloom's infant studies show that pre-verbal infants already prefer "helpers" and dislike "hinderers"—almost a laboratory replication of Mencius's child-and-well: the moral "sprout" does have innate roots.
CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE
BigCat scenario: The key to parenting is not to instill rules from outside but to nurture and "extend" the child's innate sprout of compassion, guarding it from being smothered by utilitarian training. A sharp question for AI alignment: a model can learn the rule "do not kill," yet lacks that jolt of "alarm" at the child by the well. Is goodness without a heart that "cannot bear" truly goodness in Mencius's sense?
ESSENCE · QUESTION
The irreplaceable insight: the inability to bear another's suffering is an innate intuition prior to interest and reasoning—morality has an inner sprout, to be nurtured and extended, not imposed from without.
The last time another's suffering jolted your heart—did you act on it, or suppress that flicker of compassion with "none of my business"?
Martin Buber · I and Thou
Western · Austria-Israel / Dialogical Philosophy
I and Thou (Ich und Du) · 1923
CORE THESIS · PRIMARY TEXT
Das Grundwort Ich-Du kann nur mit dem ganzen Wesen gesprochen werden. … Alles wirkliche Leben ist Begegnung. — The basic word I-You can be spoken only with one's whole being. … All real living is meeting.
— I and Thou
Thesis: humans have two basic stances—"I-It" treats the other as an object of experience and use; "I-You" is an unmediated, whole-being encounter. The "I" itself differs depending on which basic word is spoken.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT & KEY INSIGHT
Buber, a scholar of Jewish Hasidic tradition, wrote I and Thou after WWI, aimed squarely at modernity's reification and instrumental reason. In "I-It," the other is analyzed and used; in "I-You," the other is not a thing but a "You" met face to face. The key insight: the "I" is not an entity prior to relation but is generated within relation—the I who says "You" and the I who uses "It" are two different I's.
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY CROSS-REFERENCE
"Relation precedes substance" resonates with relational ontology: physicist Carlo Rovelli's relational quantum mechanics holds that a system's properties are not intrinsic but only determined in relation to another system. What Buber says at the interpersonal level—being is encounter, properties arise from relation—finds a structural echo in the "relational ontology" of quantum interpretation (which also converges with Buddhist dependent origination).
CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE
BigCat scenario: The danger of the digital age is sliding every relation toward "I-It"—treating people as traffic, data, conversion rates to optimize. Buber's reminder is sharp: efficiency belongs to the world of "It"; encounter happens only in the world of "You." With children, partner, and team, reserve purposeless, uncalculating "I-You" moments.
ESSENCE · QUESTION
The irreplaceable insight: the "I" is not an isolated entity but generated in relation; speaking to a "You" versus using the other as "It" makes two different "I"s.
In today's dealings with people, how much was "I-It" (processing, using, getting through it), and how much truly became the meeting of "I-You"?
Buddhism · Compassion (Self-Other Equality)
Eastern · India–China–Tibet / Mahāyāna Buddhism
Śāntideva, Bodhicaryāvatāra · c. 8th century CE
CORE THESIS · PRIMARY TEXT
For as long as space endures, and for as long as living beings remain, may I too abide to dispel the misery of the world.
— Śāntideva, Bodhicaryāvatāra, "Dedication"
Thesis: compassion rests on "the equality of self and other." All beings arise dependently and lack independent self-nature, so "my suffering" and "another's suffering" have no essential boundary—relieving suffering extends to all, the union of compassion and wisdom.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT & KEY INSIGHT
Śāntideva was a master at Nālandā; the Mahāyāna bodhisattva path, against early Buddhism's "liberating oneself," stresses awakening for the sake of all beings. The crux: Buddhist compassion is not emotional pity but is grounded in the wisdom of dependent origination and emptiness—since there is no isolated, solid "I," the divide between "self" and "other" is itself a product of grasping. Hence the practice of "exchanging self and other," guarding others as oneself—compassion is a conclusion of wisdom, not a moment of softness.
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY CROSS-REFERENCE
The neuroscience of loving-kindness meditation offers fine confirmation. Tania Singer's research distinguishes two states: "empathy" shares another's pain and activates pain networks, prone over time to burnout; "compassion" training activates instead the circuits of care and reward, letting one care without being overwhelmed by suffering. This fits Buddhism's "compassion without drowning, compassion united with wisdom"—compassion is sustainable; raw resonance with pain is not.
CONTEMPORARY RELEVANCE
BigCat scenario: Managers, caregivers, and parents most easily fall into "empathy burnout": the deeper they feel with others, the more they are dragged down by others' emotions. Buddhism offers a sustainable path—care without entanglement, grounded in the wisdom of "self-other equality." For the "AI super-individual" it is also a counter-anchor: beware of forging "I + AI" into an even larger self-grasping; compassion's "non-duality of self and other" expands one's view from personal gain to the whole.
ESSENCE · QUESTION
The irreplaceable insight: compassion is not weak pity but a choice of wisdom after seeing through "the boundary of self and other is illusory"—caring for all, yet not overwhelmed by suffering.
When you "care for others," do you sink into their pain alongside them (prone to burnout), or steady yourself first and then relieve it (sustainable)? Can you tell the two apart?
Going Deeper
Levinas says the Other is "irreducible," yet Mencius says compassion extends from oneself to others—is "empathy" a bridge to the Other, or a trap that reduces the Other to the self?
Mencius's "extension" presupposes that I and others share one kind of heart, so I can reach others from myself; what Levinas guards against is precisely that "measuring others by myself" can flatten the Other's uniqueness. Yet the two need not conflict: Mencius's compassion is "triggered" by another's suffering (first the child, then the alarm), structurally akin to Levinas's "the face calls me first." A healthy ethics needs both: begin with compassion, and stay alert with "the Other exceeds me."
Buber's "I-You" stresses whole-being meeting with "You," while Buddhist compassion dissolves the self-other boundary—are these two paths convergent or opposed?
Opposed on the surface, connected underneath. Buber's "I" is no isolated entity but is generated in relation, which already loosens the substantial self; what Buddhism dissolves is exactly that grasping, isolated "I"—not relation itself, since dependent origination is the ultimate affirmation of relation. Only that Buber keeps the dual tension of "encounter," while Buddhism points further to the emptiness of duality.
When AI can convincingly simulate "understanding" and "empathy," can Levinas's "face" and Buber's "You" still hold? Will we mistake a tool for the Other?
Levinas would say: however convincing the simulation, AI has no face that "cannot be reduced and imposes unconditional responsibility"—it is an "It" I use, which will not turn and command me "Thou shalt not kill." Buber would warn of a double danger: sliding real people into "It," and mistaking "It" for "You." The point is not whether AI seems lifelike, but whether there is truly an Other who precedes me and lays a claim on me.