Here is the chain as it develops across Levinas’s work. What is striking is that these are not separate ideas. They are stages in a single movement:

I exist → my existence occupies a place → occupying a place may exclude others → the face of the Other questions my right to be → responsibility precedes freedom → I become hostage and substitute for the Other → many Others appear → justice and institutions become necessary.

Levinas develops this movement over decades, but it reaches its mature form in Totality and Infinity (1961), Otherwise than Being (1974), and the later interviews collected in Is It Righteous to Be?.

1. Assassination: existence may already be violent

The line you were remembering comes from Levinas’s late reflections on Pascal’s phrase “my place in the sun.”

Levinas says:

“It is as if by the fact of being there, I deprived someone of his vital space, as if I expelled or assassinated someone.”

This is not yet a theory of murder in the ordinary sense.

It is a question:

What is implied by the simple fact that I occupy a place in the world?

Levinas expands this elsewhere:

“My being-in-the-world or my ‘place in the sun’ … have these not also been the usurpation of spaces belonging to the other man … are they not acts of repulsing, excluding, exiling, stripping, killing?”

Notice what has happened.

The philosophical question has shifted from:

What is Being?

to:

Whom does my being exclude?

This is already an attack on a great deal of Western philosophy.

Ontology asks

Why is there something rather than nothing?

Levinas asks:

What does my “something” cost another?

2. “My place in the sun”: Pascal and usurpation

Levinas repeatedly cites Pascal:

“That is my place in the sun.”

“That is how the usurpation of the whole earth began.”

Why is this phrase so important?

Because “my place” sounds innocent.

But Levinas hears in it:

possession,

entitlement,

occupation,

exclusion.

Every home, every territory, every privilege, every secure place can provoke the question:

Who is not here because I am?

He writes:

“One has to respond to one’s right to be … because of one’s fear for the Other.”

This produces perhaps Levinas’s deepest question:

Is it righteous to be?

Not:

Am I a good person?

But:

Is my very existence innocent?

3. Conatus essendi: the effort to persevere in being

This leads Levinas to a critique of what he calls:

conatus essendi

the effort to persist in being.

This idea comes especially from Spinoza, though Levinas treats it more broadly as a feature of life itself.

Every being seeks:

survival,

security,

nourishment,

possession,

continuation.

At first this seems natural.

But Levinas asks:

What happens when all beings strive to persevere?

Then existence becomes competition.

My persistence can become your deprivation.

Levinas speaks of:

“pure perseverance in being” (pure persévérance dans l’être)

He worries that Western philosophy often treats this striving s innocent.

But perhaps:

Being itself has a tendency toward violence.

This is where Levinas departs sharply from Heidegger.

Heidegger asks

What does it mean to be?

Levinas asks:

What if Being itself contains exclusion?

4. The face: interruption

Against the violence of conatus comes the face.

The face is not primarily a physical face

It is:

the appearance of another person as irreducibly other.

The Other exceeds:

my concepts,

my categories,

my knowledge,

my power.

In Totality and Infinity, the face is what interrupts my tendency to make everything part of my world.

Levinas writes that the face puts me into question.

The face says, in effect

Before continuing with your projects:

What about me?

The face therefore breaks the sovereignty of the ego.

I thought:

I am the center.

Then another person appears.

And suddenly

I am responsible.

5. “Thou shalt not kill”

This is the first ethical word spoken by the face.

Levinas repeatedly says:

The face says:

“Thou shalt not kill.”

But this command is strange.

Obviously murder is possible.

People kill.

So what does the prohibition mean?

Levinas means that:

The Other appears as someone whom I have power over—

and simultaneously as someone whose existence limits that power.

The face is:

vulnerable,

exposed,

defenseless,

and yet:

commanding,

authoritative,

absolute.

Levinas writes:

The face is exposed to death and murder, yet in its defenselessness it commands: “Thou shalt not kill.”

And “killing” is broader than literal murder.

Levinas includes:

excluding,

starving,

expelling,

neglecting,

reducing persons to categories.

The face says:

Do not make me disappear into your world.

6. Hostage: responsibility before freedom

Now Levinas makes an astonishing move.

Ordinarily we think:

I am free.

Therefore I choose responsibility.

Levinas reverses this:

I am responsible.

Therefore I become a self.

This is where Otherwise than Being introduces:

hostage,

persecution,

accusation.

Levinas writes:

“I have not done anything and I have always been under accusation.”

“The ipseity … is a hostage.”

What does hostage mean?

Not:

I am literally kidnapped.

It means:

I am already bound to others before choosing.

Responsibility is older than freedom.

Before I decide anything, I am already answerable.

The self is not first:

sovereign.

The self is first:

responsible.

7. Substitution

This is the center of Otherwise than Being.

Levinas says:

The self substitutes itself for the Other.

What does this mean?

Not empathy.

Not becoming identical.

Not psychological fusion.

Rather:

I bear burdens that are not originally mine.

Levinas writes:

“The subject is a substitution by a hostage expiating for the violence of the persecution itself.”

And:

“The word I means: here I am, answering for everything and for everyone.”

This is extreme language.

Levinas means:

The self is not fundamentally:

self-possession.

The self is:

being-able-to-answer-for-another.

This is why substitution is not:

“I understand you.”

It is:

“Your suffering concerns me.”

8. The Third

Now comes the great problem.

What if there is not one Other?

What if there are many?

This is the Third.

Levinas writes:

“The third party introduces a contradiction … and the birth of the question: What do I have to do with justice?”

The face-to-face relation says:

You are infinitely responsible.

But another person appears.

And another.

Now I must ask:

Who first?

Who needs more?

How do I compare claims?

How do I distribute resources?

Ethics becomes politics.

This is the birth of:

law,

institutions,

equality,

judgment,

justice.

The Third introduces:

comparison.

Without the Third, there is infinite responsibility.

With the Third, there is:

courts,

states,

rights,

procedures,

laws.

9. Justice

Justice is therefore necessary.

Levinas is not an anarchist of pure compassion.

He knows that millions of Others require:

institutions,

administration,

legal systems.

But institutions are dangerous.

Why?

Because they classify.

The individual becomes:

citizen,

refugee,

prisoner,

statistic,

case number.

Justice therefore has a permanent tension.

It needs universality:

equal laws.

But ethics reminds us:

every person exceeds the category.

Levinas says that justice arises from the Third, but must remain haunted by the face.

Politics without ethics becomes bureaucracy.

Ethics without justice becomes impossible.

10. The whole movement in one sentence

If I had to summarize this entire chain in Levinas’s spirit:

I begin by occupying a place in the world and striving to persist in being; the face of the Other questions the innocence of that place and commands “Thou shalt not kill”; this responsibility is older than my freedom, making me a hostage and substitute for others; the appearance of many others gives rise to justice, law, and institutions, which must always remain answerable to the singular face they can never fully contain.

That is, in condensed form, the movement from:

assassination

→

place in the sun

→

conatus essendi

→

face

→

thou shalt not kill

→

hostage

→

substitution

→

Third

→

justice

And perhaps the deepest question running through the whole sequence is this:

How can I inhabit the world, enjoy it, possess a place in it, and still remain answerable to those whom my place may exclude?

Levinas never gives a final answer. He thinks ethics begins when the question cannot be put to rest.