The rights of the other. A project for the refundamentation of human rights, from the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas

Abstract

To think the base of right, and specially of the rights of men, not from freedom, but from a infinite responsibility given by the unavoidable mandate of alterity; conceiving justice as asymmetry and rights that recognize as phenomenological rights of the other, before than own. This is the proposal of Emmanuel Levinas to approach the problem of fundamenting Human Rights. In this work it will be essayed a project of refundamenting this rights from a general review of the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas and, especially, in the light of his few works about the subject. The author approaches the fundamental lines of his philosophy of good or ethics, extracting from it the necessary aspects to support a kind of critique of right. For this, it will be necessary to expose the main points of his meditation about alterity, because only an approach to the other will sustain something like the absolute inviolability of man, the radical impossibility of his alignment and reification, besides of the absolute responsibility that it brings along and that makes justice possible.