Self psychologists and self-psychologically informed philosophers have shown a recent interest in Emmanuel Levinas’ work on ethics as a starting place for thinking about our responsibility for the other. I argue that, from a Kohutian perspective, the recognition of the other must emerge against the backdrop of a selfobject milieu in which narcissism is affirmed and not shunned. If we deny the subject’s narcissistic needs in the service of an ethic of responsibility for the other, then we risk inducing a condition of moral masochism, a failure, not a success, of ethics.