Mira Reyes

This work is an attempt to apply central ethical Levinasian concepts of face and other toward animals, in view of widening the circle of love and friendship beyond human species. The essay will move in three parts: first, by clarifying within the literature of Levinasian scholarship of animal ethics if the animal is a face and an other, and thus, is a moral agent; second, by using the concrete example of the slaughter of elephants in Circus Maximus during the reign of Pompey the Great to demonstrate the content and power of the animal face in dissolving the boundaries of social prejudice; and, third, an interpretation of Levinas’ idea of ethics as religion to describe the features of a universal living ethical piety for the animal that would guide contemporary animal ethics. The significance of the research is to contribute to the new trend of Levinasian animal ethics and a metaphysical groundwork for the ethics of care for animals which turns away from the utilitarian perspective of seeing animals in lump sums instead of individuals and from the abstract normative formulations of lifeboat dilemmas.