ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the signification of human rights through the image of human identity marked by the Levinasian ethical subject of alterity. It uses Levinas's understanding of ethical subjectivity and infinite responsibility to critique the characteristics of the contemporary human rights. Both Levinas and Lacan challenge the liberal image of human identity within contemporary human rights discourse the individual of autonomous conscious capacities directed towards independent self-assertion and presence of being. Where Lacan begins in intra-subjective desireand then finds an ethical consequential implication, Levinas begins in the saturation of the ethics of human otherness. From the pre-original ethical foundation of proximity and an infinite responsibility for-the-other, the disparities between Levinasian human rights of otherness and our contemporary human rights discourse are clear. Both begin with the same inspiration and aspirational goals a sociality of freedom, justice and peace, both begin in "a Kantian" transcendence of human identity.
