The self, ethics, and human rights : Lacan, Levinas & alterity /
J A Indaimo.
- London : Routledge, 2015.
- xi, 271 p. ; 24 cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction: Rights Claims & Counter-Claims: A Clash of Discourses, Chapter One: Tracing the Subject, Chapter Two: Modern Human Rights & Postmodern Agency, Part A: Lacan’s Subject-of-Lack, Chapter Three: The Subject Divided & the Subject of Loss, Chapter Four: Human Rights through the Lacanian Specular, Chapter Five: The Ethical Interrogations of Impossible Desire, Part B: Levinas’s Subject for-the-Other, Chapter Six: The Self, the Face, Alterity & Ethics, Chapter Seven: Alterity, Human Rights & Responsibility for the Other, Chapter Eight: Ethics & Beyond: Human Rights, Law & Justice of the Many, Conclusion: The Self, the Other & Human Rights, Bibliography, Index
This work explores how the concept of human identity shapes the ethical aim of justice in human rights. While identity has largely been overlooked in modern human rights discourse, it is underpinned by a particular liberal philosophy that views individuals as isolated, self-determining, and rational. Rights, therefore, are understood as entitlements held by autonomous selves. Critically engaging with this perspective, the book examines how recent changes in the concept of identity, particularly the critical humanist idea of 'the other,' offer a foundation for rethinking contemporary human rights. Drawing on the works of Jacques Lacan and Emmanuel Levinas, it argues that human identity is always marked by an intersubjective relationship with the other, inherently carrying ethical openness. The book suggests that human rights, through a shift away from the notion of the 'sovereign individual,' now reflect a self-identity rooted in an enduring concern for the other.