Abstract

VILLIERS, J-H de. Thinking-of-the-Animal-Other with Emmanuel Levinas. PER [online]. 2020, vol.23, n.1, pp.1-18. ISSN 1727-3781.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/1727-3781/2020/v23i0a8974.

This article situates the texts in which Emmanuel Levinas directly addresses questions of animality against the backdrop of his larger oeuvre and argues that, despite an explicit attempt to arrange a privileged ethical (dis)position for humans, Levinas' ethical logic opens onto a deeper conception of ethics without boundaries or a priori content. Juxtaposing Levinas' ethical subjectivity with the relational structure underlying the prominent models of animal rights, it proceeds to examine the implications of Levinas' ethics for a theory of animal rights. The article concludes that Levinas' theory is not logically consistent with a thematisation of the ethical claims of animals in the language of rights and that it is best utilised as a framework within which to deconstruct the inherent anthropocentric character of current models of animal rights.

Keywords : Emmanuel Levinas; animal ethics; animal rights theory.

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