The ethical reduction consists of going beyond the eidetic reduction of Husserl and beyond the ontological reduction of Heidegger. The early Husserl is a cognitive phenomenologist in that he does not accept that there could be anything outside of consciousness. For Husserl, primal impressionality is the beginning of consciousness, but for Levinas it precedes consciousness. Levinas does not agree with Husserl’s view that primal impressionality is already a consciousness. And he criticizes Heidegger’s ontological phenomenology for placing central Dasein and the being of beings. Heidegger’s ontology cannot deal with the question of what lies beyond being, or the meaning of what is other than being. There is (or should be) a difference in the way that we approach and apprehend the being of a person or thing (their whatness or mode of being) from the way we approach the singular otherness of a person or thing (their alterity).