This article deals with the place of the body in the philosophy of Levinas. His analysis is compared with the anthropology of existential phenomenology. This philosophical movement is also a kind of "incarnated thinking' (pensée incarnée), but there are important differences. In the philosophy of existence man is seen as an ambivalent unity of freedom and contingency, of projecting and thrownness. Levinas' point of departure is the phenomenon of living from ... (vivre de ...) or enjoyment. The human being, the self (le même) proves to be dependent on non-human factors, the other (l'autre), but this is a "joyous dependence'. It is not lived as subjection but as sovereignty. Accordingly Levinas rejects the concepts of finite freedom in which the situation is regarded as a limitation of freedom.On the other hand, to live from ... is not a free projecting of my existence with the whole of the world as the ultimate horizon. If he is happy, the human being is content with a small place to live in. The world is not a system of references with existence as a centre. It exists in the first place as elements to bathe in.This does not mean that man is always happy. His happiness is vulnerable and can suddenly be changed into suffering. The sovereignty of enjoyment is unstable and subject to indigence, illness and violence. It is characteristic for Levinas, the philosopher of intersubjectivity, that these threatening factors are interpreted in an interpersonal context. Indigence is a matter of oppression. Illness, as in Proust, is seen as a hostile intruder into my body. The human being is not primarily an object for objectifying science as in Merleau-Ponty, but for his fellow human beings with their manifold kinds of violence, from propaganda to direct murder. But for the same reason a friend is necessary to assist and protect me.Death is also interpreted in an interpersonal way by Levinas. Death is not primarily the immanent horizon of my existence but an enemy who tries to attack me unexpectedly. Death is analyzed as murder. My freedom is the freedom to evade or to counter the assault. Totality and Infinity is a merciless depiction of the struggle for existence, for reality, the core of which is war. But there is also "the miracle of ethics". Anxiety about man's own death can be converted to fear for the murder of the other.Egocentric existence changes into ec-centric care. In the late philosophy of Levinas, the body is an image of the passivity of substitution, of engagement without second thoughts, of responsibility before freedom.