In the conclusion to his Viewing Power in Heidegger and LevinasMitchell Verter argues that Levinas’ project in Totality and Infinity is quite similar to Heidegger’s project of constructing a ontological phenomenology in Being and Time. He says that although the terminology often seems cryptic and the sentences often become dizzying, Levinas intends to describe the exact structures of our everyday empirical existence. Verter adds:

Levinas' philosophy attempts to radically reorient my conception of my life. Rather than letting me think of myself as an independent, autonomous entity, Levinas wrenches the center of my life outside of myself. Levinas teaches me just how radically I, at every moment of my life, am radically exposed to the wills of other people. The Other always maintains the capacity to shock me in both delightful and horrifying ways. My openness to the Other explains why I can not shut out another person’s suffering, even if I choose to ignore it. Conversely, this exposure also enables another person to invade my privacy in order to harm me.

Rather, he demonstrates how my interactions with others --- and even my relationship with myself as one who transubstantiates into an Other over time--- will always disrupt my self-assertive will. The Other confronts me as a person whose actions I can't fully predict and whose statements I can’t completely control, yet whose commitments and words directly affect me. Furthermore, the Other seizes my destiny away from myself because he always takes over my projects and my works at the very moment that I project and produce them. Therefore, Levinas demonstrates that, in this post modern age of The Rapture, control will always slip out of our grasp and our will will always be violated by others.