I think this is a very strong critique, and—more importantly—it identifies a genuine pressure point in Levinas rather than simply misunderstanding him. But I would push back on several parts of it.

The central disagreement is really about what Levinas means by “first” when he says that ethics is first philosophy.

The critic seems to read “first” as something like:

Ethics is epistemically/ontologically prior to ontology.

And then objects:

But ethics cannot literally precede Being, because there has to be a being who encounters another being before there can be an ethical relation.

I think Levinas would largely agree with the second statement while denying that it defeats his position. His “priority” is more radical and more specifically ethical than chronological, causal, or ontological.

Let me unpack this carefully.

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1. The strongest part of the critique: “we have to be in order to have ethical considerations”

This is a legitimate objection.

If we say:

Being → encounter with Other → ethics

then Levinas seems to have things backwards when he says:

ethics → ontology

After all, there must be a person before there can be responsibility.

There must be:

• a body,
• a world,
• language,
• perception,
• other people,
• social structures,
• consciousness,

before someone can experience an encounter with another person.

And this is exactly why the critic's appeal to equiprimordiality is interesting.

The Heideggerian vocabulary is doing important work here.

For Heidegger, Dasein isn't first a solitary Cartesian subject and then subsequently someone who discovers other people.

Being-with-others (Mitsein) is constitutive of Dasein.

So the critic is saying something like:

You cannot cleanly separate ontology from being-with-others because each is implicated in the conditions of possibility of the other.

That's a serious challenge to Levinas.

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2. But I think the critique slightly mischaracterizes Levinas

The phrase I would challenge is:

“Levinas seems to privilege our epistemological/being-alongside-others as the starting-point for ethical considerations.”

Levinas isn't really saying:

“First we have epistemology, then ethics should be the first thing we study.”

Nor is he saying:

“Human beings historically encounter the Other before they have Being.”

He's trying to make a transcendental/structural claim about responsibility, but then he deliberately pushes beyond the traditional transcendental framework.

His question is not:

What exists first?

It is closer to:

What is the condition under which my existence becomes ethically intelligible?

And his answer is:

my responsibility to the Other.

This is why “first” is such a slippery word.

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3. The distinction between chronological priority and ethical priority is crucial

Suppose I say:

“My mother came before me.”

That's chronological.

Suppose I say:

“The law takes priority over my desire.”

That's normative.

Suppose I say:

“The condition of possibility of X is prior to X.”

That's transcendental.

Levinas's “ethics is first philosophy” isn't really the first kind.

He is claiming something closer to the second and third—but then deliberately unsettling the third.

He isn't claiming:

There could literally be ethics in a universe with no beings.

That's obviously absurd.

He's saying:

When philosophy asks what ultimately grounds my existence as a subject, it shouldn't treat ethical responsibility as something that gets added after ontology has finished its work.

That's much more defensible.

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4. This is where Levinas's disagreement with Heidegger becomes fascinating

The critic is essentially giving you a Heideggerian response:

Being-with-others is equiprimordial with being-there.

Levinas's objection would be:

That's still too symmetrical.

For Heidegger, roughly speaking:

I am constituted through Being-with.

Levinas thinks this risks making the Other into a structural component of my own Being.

And that is precisely what he wants to resist.

The Other isn't merely:

one of the conditions required for my existence as Dasein.

The Other interrupts my ontology.

That's a very different relationship.

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5. The distinction is: “Other as constituent” versus “Other as interruption”

This is, I think, the deepest philosophical issue in the critique.

Heidegger can say:

Being-with-others is constitutive of Dasein.

Levinas worries:

But haven't you just incorporated the Other into a theory of my Being?

The Other has become:

a necessary structural feature of my ontology.

Levinas wants something much more asymmetrical:

The Other cannot be reduced to a condition of my Being.

Why?

Because then I still possess the conceptual framework within which the Other makes sense.

I say:

“The Other is necessary for my constitution as a subject.”

But Levinas wants the Other to be something that exceeds the system in which I understand them.

That's what he means by alterity.

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6. This explains Levinas's hostility to “totality”

This is why Totality and Infinity is so important.

Imagine a philosophical theory that says:

“Everything that exists can ultimately be understood as part of a coherent structure.”

Levinas calls this a totality.

And then suppose I say:

“The Other is one of the elements constituting this structure.”

Levinas's response is:

No.

Because I've just converted the Other into something for me.

I've understood them.

I've classified them.

I've given them a place.

I've made them part of my ontology.

But the ethical encounter, Levinas thinks, is precisely what cannot be completely incorporated into my conceptual system.

Hence the face.

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7. So the critic's “equiprimordiality” may be exactly what Levinas wants to resist

This is a subtle point.

The critic says:

ontology and being-with-others are equiprimordial.

Levinas might reply:

Precisely—but ethics is not merely “being-with-others.”

That's an important distinction.

For Heidegger:

Mitsein = being-with.

But Levinasian ethics isn't simply:

“Humans exist socially.”

It's much stronger.

It is:

I am responsible for the Other even when the Other hasn't entered into a reciprocal relationship with me.

That's why Levinas's ethics is asymmetrical.

You don't owe me because I owe you.

You don't have to reciprocate.

You don't even have to like me.

My responsibility doesn't originate in a contract between us.

That's very different from ordinary social ontology.

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8. And this is why Hobbes and Hegel are excellent counterexamples

I think the critic is particularly insightful here.

Consider Hobbes.

For Hobbes, the encounter between autonomous beings initially has the structure of:

I want to survive.

You want to survive.

You might threaten me.

Therefore I have reason to defend myself.

The relationship becomes one of:

self-preservation → conflict → negotiation/contract → political order.

That is almost the inverse of Levinas.

For Levinas:

I encounter you → I am responsible for you → only subsequently does the problem of reciprocal justice emerge.

Hobbes starts with:

self-preservation.

Levinas starts with:

responsibility.

That's an enormous philosophical disagreement.

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9. Hegel is even more interesting

Hegel's famous master-slave dialectic begins with recognition.

Two self-consciousnesses encounter one another.

Each wants recognition from the other.

But because each wants to establish itself as autonomous, the encounter becomes a struggle.

In its extreme form:

a struggle to the death.

That is profoundly relevant to Levinas's “assassination.”

Hegel effectively says:

The naked encounter of self-conscious beings is not naturally peaceful.

The self wants recognition.

The Other wants recognition.

Each threatens the other's independence.

The relationship therefore develops dialectically.

Levinas thinks this entire model is too centered on reciprocity.

For Hegel:

I become myself through recognition by you.

For Levinas:

I become ethically myself through responsibility to you.

That's a massive difference.

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10. And this brings us to the critic's “in the wild” objection

This is perhaps the most empirically interesting challenge.

The critic asks:

Would people really encounter each other “as face” in the Levinasian sense in the wild?

Or is this experience culturally and psychologically constructed?

This is an excellent question.

Because a newborn doesn't necessarily encounter another person as:

“an infinite Other whose alterity exceeds conceptualization.”

There is developmental psychology.

There is attachment.

There is facial recognition.

There is socialization.

There is language.

There is culture.

There are learned norms.

There is evolutionary psychology.

So perhaps what Levinas calls the “face” is actually the product of:

early infant-caregiver relations + neural development + social conditioning + language + culture.

If so, the apparently primordial ethical experience might actually have an elaborate empirical history.

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11. But here's where I think the psychological critique misses Levinas slightly

Levinas isn't necessarily making an empirical claim about what babies literally experience.

He isn't saying:

“At age six months, infants perceive infinite alterity.”

He's doing phenomenology and ethics.

He's asking:

What is disclosed in the experience of encountering another person?

Phenomenology isn't necessarily trying to provide a causal developmental account.

So asking:

“Could a feral child have Levinas's experience?”

is interesting, but it doesn't immediately refute Levinas.

You could discover that the capacity for facial recognition is neurologically programmed and Levinas could still ask:

What does the ethical significance of the face consist in?

The neuroscience doesn't automatically answer the philosophical question.

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12. Marion makes the challenge much more interesting

Your critic's reference to Jean-Luc Marion is actually quite sophisticated.

Marion's saturated phenomenon is something whose intuition overwhelms the conceptual structures we normally use to understand phenomena.

The face can be interpreted in this direction:

The Other gives more than I can conceptualize.

But then comes the question:

Is that “excess” actually phenomenologically irreducible, or does my psychology simply generate the experience of excess?

This is a real philosophical dispute.

Levinas would want to say:

The Other isn't merely psychologically overwhelming.

The Other's transcendence is ethical.

The critic can respond:

But perhaps what you describe as transcendence is a psychological phenomenon that has developmental, evolutionary and cultural causes.

And Levinas doesn't have an easy empirical answer to that.

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13. The “guilt” question is perhaps the strongest criticism

This part of the critique deserves serious attention.

Levinas says, in effect:

I occupy a place. Someone else might have occupied it. Therefore I am already potentially guilty.

But why?

Why should existence generate guilt?

Imagine a person living alone on an island.

They occupy land.

Nobody else is being displaced.

Where is the guilt?

Or imagine two people encountering one another in an uninhabited wilderness.

Does the mere fact that I occupy space create an ethical debt?

The critic is right to ask whether Levinas's intuition depends upon:

modern scarcity,

social hierarchy,

economic inequality,

alienation,

property relations,

historical displacement.

If so, the “guilt of existence” isn't an ontological truth.

It might be a historically situated experience.

That's a significant objection.

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14. And I think this is where Levinas needs to be read carefully

I wouldn't interpret him as saying:

Every molecule of existence is literally morally guilty.

His point is more subtle.

Once we live among Others, our:

• property,
• freedom,
• security,
• consumption,
• political membership,

can have consequences for other people.

So “my place in the sun” becomes an image of unexamined entitlement.

The strongest version of Levinas isn't:

“You should feel guilty for existing.”

It is:

“You should never assume that your right to exist comfortably is ethically self-justifying.”

That is much more defensible.

And it has extraordinary contemporary implications.

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15. This is also where Levinas and political philosophy collide

The critic's concern about social order is important because Levinas can sound as though:

the individual Other always comes before social structures.

But a society cannot operate purely on face-to-face responsibility.

Imagine a hospital with 500 patients and 50 doctors.

The doctor cannot simply say:

“I am infinitely responsible for this particular patient.”

They have to allocate resources.

Who receives the ICU bed?

Who gets surgery first?

Who gets the transplant?

Now you need:

justice.

And this is precisely why Levinas develops the idea of the Third.

The Third says:

There are others besides this Other.

And therefore:

You must compare.

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16. This is where I think the critic and Levinas actually converge

The critic wants:

ethics + ontology as equiprimordial.

Levinas's mature philosophy actually has something that could accommodate part of this.

Because once the Third enters, ethics becomes:

• politics,
• institutions,
• law,
• economics,
• social organization.

In other words:

Ethics cannot remain outside ontology.

It has to enter the world.

And once it enters the world, it becomes precisely the kind of thing the critic is talking about:

embodied,
social,
linguistic,
psychological,
institutional.

So perhaps the better question isn't:

Ethics or ontology—which comes first?

but:

How does an ethical interruption of ontology become embodied in ontological, social and political structures?

That is a much more interesting question.

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17. Your critic's proposed “evenness” is philosophically interesting—but I'd be careful with “equiprimordial”

The word equiprimordial is doing a lot of work.

It means roughly:

neither can be reduced to the other; both belong to the fundamental structure.

That's very Heideggerian.

But Levinas might say:

That symmetry is precisely the problem.

Because ethical responsibility is fundamentally asymmetrical.

You and I aren't equally responsible for each other.

I am responsible for you without requiring you to be responsible for me in the same way.

So if we say:

ethics and ontology are equiprimordial,

we risk turning ethics into another structural feature of Being.

And that's exactly what Levinas doesn't want.

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18. There's an even deeper problem: Levinas may not be trying to provide a theory of conditions of possibility at all

This is where the Kantian comparison becomes important.

The critic says:

epistemological conditions make ontology possible.

Fine.

But Levinas wants to undermine the assumption that the philosophical task is ultimately to establish conditions of possibility.

Why?

Because conditions of possibility belong to the architecture of knowledge.

Levinas thinks the ethical encounter is not something I first constitute as an object of knowledge.

It happens to me.

That's why his vocabulary becomes so strange:

obsession
persecution
hostage
substitution
exposure.

These aren't ordinary transcendental conditions.

They're meant to describe something that happens to the subject before the subject has theoretical mastery over it.

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19. So I would formulate the disagreement this way

The critic says:

You cannot get ethics without Being.

Levinas can answer:

Agreed. But that isn't my claim.

The critic says:

Being-with-others is constitutive of Being.

Levinas:

Agreed—but that still doesn't capture responsibility.

The critic:

Responsibility arises from embodied, psychological, cultural beings.

Levinas:

Of course—but its ethical meaning cannot be reduced to its causal history.

The critic:

The face might be psychologically constructed.

Levinas:

Perhaps—but that doesn't show that the ethical relation is merely psychological.

The critic:

Why privilege ethics over ontology?

Levinas:

Because ontology describes what is; ethics asks whether my way of being is justified before the Other.

And that is the strongest Levinasian response.

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20. The really interesting question: is Levinas doing ontology at all?

I think this is the point where the debate gets most interesting.

Levinas says:

ethics is first philosophy.

But he's simultaneously making enormously ambitious claims about:

• subjectivity,
• existence,
• temporality,
• language,
• consciousness,
• embodiment,
• sociality.

So one could reasonably accuse him of doing:

a kind of meta-ontology while declaring ontology secondary.

He is essentially giving us an account of:

what kind of being a responsible subject is.

And that looks suspiciously like ontology.

This is one of the perennial tensions in Levinas scholarship.

He wants to say:

The Other cannot be reduced to ontology.

But he needs philosophical concepts to tell us what happens when we encounter the Other.

So he is constantly using ontology to explain why ontology cannot be ultimate.

That is not necessarily a contradiction.

But it is a profound tension.

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21. I would therefore modify the original TL;DR considerably

My earlier formulation:

“Ethics comes before ontology.”

is too blunt.

I'd now formulate the Levinasian claim as:

Ethics is not temporally or causally prior to ontology; rather, ethical responsibility has a kind of normative and philosophical priority that prevents ontology from being treated as the ultimate justification of human existence.

And the critic's response would be:

But normative priority doesn't entail ontological priority, and the conditions that make ethical responsibility possible are themselves ontological, epistemological, psychological, linguistic and social.

That is a much stronger debate.

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22. And there is a fascinating third position available

I think you could synthesize the two positions without simply splitting the difference.

Something like:

Ontology and ethics are mutually conditioning, but not symmetrically so.

That would preserve something from both.

Ontology gives us:

bodies, beings, worlds, language, institutions, history.

Without those, there is no concrete ethical relation.

But ethics introduces something that ontology cannot generate merely by describing Being:

the question of justification.

Ontology says:

This is what is.

Ethics asks:

What gives me the right to do this to what is other than me?

So you could say:

Ontology makes ethical existence possible.

while:

Ethics makes the question of the legitimacy of ontology unavoidable.

That is a much more interesting relationship than simple priority.

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23. And it brings us back to “assassination”

This actually makes your original question more interesting than it initially appeared.

The deepest Levinasian claim isn't:

“We live by assassination.”

It's something closer to:

The very act of establishing myself as a being with a place, interests, possessions and a claim to existence can become violent toward other beings.

The critic's response is:

But you cannot criticize that condition without acknowledging the ontological, psychological, social and historical structures that make the self possible in the first place.

And Levinas can respond:

Exactly. That is why the ethical question must interrupt the self's tendency to regard those structures as innocent.

So the disagreement isn't really:

Ethics vs ontology.

It is:

Does ontology ultimately have the authority to explain and justify itself, or does the encounter with the Other place ontology under an ethical question it cannot answer by itself?

That's, in my view, the much deeper Levinas/Heidegger/Hegel/Hobbes debate lurking inside the critique.

And I think the critic is right to challenge Levinas, especially on the phenomenological and psychological assumptions about the face and the guilt of occupying space. But I don't think the equiprimordiality argument by itself defeats Levinas, because Levinas's “priority” is not the same kind of priority that Heidegger's equiprimordial structures are claiming.

The most productive question, then, may be neither “Does ethics precede ontology?” nor “Are they equiprimordial?”, but:

Can there be a form of philosophical thought in which Being and ethical responsibility are mutually implicating, while the Other nevertheless retains the power to put my ontology—and my right to occupy the world—into question?

That formulation gets remarkably close to the deepest tension in Levinas.