Freedom and command

pp. 15-23

in: Emmanuel Levinas, Collected philosophical papers, Berlin, Springer, 1987

Abstract

To command is to act on a will. Among all the forms of doing, to act on a will is to truly act. It is to act on an independent reality, on what does not only offer great resistance, but absolute resistance, resistance of a different order from great resistance. It is not he who labors, that is, moves matter, that we call a man of action, not he who makes war, but he who orders others to labor and to war.