Abstract
The struggle to understand the significance of life has challenged existential philosophy from its inception. Overwhelmed by complexity, contemporary man turns from technology with its attendant institutions backed by formidable systems of information to seek the meaning of his existence. According to Emmanuel Levinas, in his mature work, these intricate structures are integrated into a totality, which imposes its own purposes upon individual life. The totality in its turn is a vastly ramified extension of self. Man has sown his dragon's teeth. How can he break the circuit of the self, or to put the question in Levinas' terms, how can he find the meaning of the other?