Mortality, Ethics, and Animality in the Philosophies of Emmanuel Lévinas and Jacques Derrida.

Despite the multitude of varying analyses of mortality developed during the twentieth century, Heidegger’s study of death retains its dominance in the contemporary scholarship, with alternative approaches, such as of Georg Simmel (Simmel 1910, 1994), Vladimir Jankélévitch (Jankélévitch 1977), Emmanuel Lévinas (Lévinas 1991, 1993b, 2014), and Jacques Derrida (Derrida 1987, 1996, 1999, 2008a, 2008b, 2012, 2019), remaining less prominent. Intended as part of the larger project led by Prof. Dr. Stefano Micali, the current investigation explores the concept of death as limit-phenomenon in the context of contemporary philosophy, more specifically, through the works of Emmanuel Lévinas and Jacques Derrida. Analysing the priority both thinkers attribute to otherness in relation to human death, this project further investigates the similarities and differences between Lévinas and Derrida’s ethics and understanding of mortality. The project, thus, is divided into two parts: (1) Mortality and otherness in Lévinas and (2) Mortality, the ethical subjectivity, and animality in Derrida.