ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the social and political possibilities which emerge from Levinas's ethics of alterity and human rights of otherness. It examines Levinas's notion of the third party the collectivity of the multiplicity of the many which bridges the gap between ethics and politics. Levinas's ethics of alterity does not easily fit directly into politics; nor does it easily fit directly into the order of the law even though, for Levinas, both are invoked by and founded upon the ethics of alterity. More significantly, beyond law and politics, Levinas's work is a focus on ethical integrity and, from the starting point, has potential political effect. From Levinas's anterior, ulterior, otherwise-than-being, from the ethical creature of the subject's own ethical-I, Levinas grounds human identity. The totality of the beyondness of alterity the infinite responsibility and the ethics of justice are not able to be neatly prescribed and institutionalised within the limits of laws and politics.
