ABSTRACTEmmanuel Lévinas is unquestionably the philosopher of ethics par excellence. One of the major themes of his thought, or rather the key to understanding his work—work that spans over many fields—is one's responsibility toward the Other. This article attempts to reconsider this determining aspect of his writings from the perspective of contemporary individualism. We argue that Lévinas's ethics of responsibility in no way obliterates “the share of the Ego in the eminence of the Other.” On the contrary, in his approach (...) to otherness, he takes the Self entirely into account. In other words, our interpretation is that the commonly held view that Lévinas's philosophy consists of normative interpretation of the human condition leading to the sacrifice of the self is imputable to a misunderstanding caused by the polysemous and ambivalent character of the concept of individualism. (shrink)