Abstract

This article presents a transit from the establishment of the non-adequacy of theoretical knowledge in Levinas’ philosophy towards Derrida’s proposal, according to which the relation with alterity is animal and not human. It also analyses the way in which the theoretical attitude brings a primacy of the subject and a “reduction of the other to sameness”, and also how the deconstruction of subjectivity enables a non-theoretical relationship with alterity. From this, it considers that alterity, described by Levinas as “human”, appears to consciousness as fundamentally sensible. Finally, it discusses Derrida’s critique to Levinas, concerning a possible exclusion inherent to the concept of the “human”, and suggests considering animality as a common substrate to all alterity, proposal that goes beyond Levinas’ humanism