In this paper an ethical approach to educational methodology is discussed in relation to the philosophies of Emanuel Levinas and Robert Cox. Cox's anti-essentialist understanding of historical materialism and Levinas' metaphysical idealism are applied to an analysis of the (self)-reflective methods required today in Higher Education in the UK, such as Problem-Based Learning (PBL) and Personal Development Planning (PDP). The paper identifies a post-Kantian paradigm of the subject-object dichotomy as a cause of the ontological constraints which pervade critical pedagogy, and instead it proposes a pre-ontological ethics of the relationship with the other which questions self-centred strategies of reflection. (Contains 2 notes.)