Levinas invokes this crucial episode as the root of Abraham’s ethi-cal subjectivity:
Here, in Abraham, the precondition of any possible triumph of life over death is formu-lated. Death is power-less over the finite life that receives a meaning from an infinite respo-nsibility for the other, from a diacony consti-tuting the subjectivity of the subject, which is totally a tension toward the other. It is here, in ethics, that there is an appeal to the unique-ness of the subject, and a bestowal of meaning to life, despite death.

• E. Levinas