 Levinas’ recourse to Descartes’ Meditations may well justify Batnitzky’s qualifying his thought as Modern. More important is that his argument that ethics is first philosophy (TI: 29, 47, 304) runs into the difficulty of universalizing our pre-intentional “experience” of spontaneous responsibility toward the other. Hence, in Totality and Infinity, the transition from the micro-sociality of the face-to-face encounter to social existence more broadly occurs through language as teaching and dialogue (TI: 194–197; 201–203). As indicated, Levinas will open still another path to universalization, through the family, in his final section “Beyond the face” (TI: 267–280). Despite this second path, the question remains how it is that, through the eyes of the other, the whole of humanity looks at me (TI: 213). Gillian Rose first criticized this limited universalization of responsibility as lacking important socio-political mediations (1992). Ernst Wolff has investigated this passage toward universality in light of Levinas’ evolving conception of liberal society, from a skeptical stance toward a more positive appraisal (2007).