Modernity, Postmodernity and Emancipation in the Perspective of the Ethics of Alterity

In the contemporary world there has been a weakening of modern utopias, with a relativization of certain values and even some moral flags of modernity. At the same time, there has been a drastic change in patterns of sociality, with the decline of traditional institutions and the strengthening of community-based gregarious relations. This opens space for a rethinking of the meaning and role of ethics. Ethics should be understood, then, from the relationship with the other. It proposes the idea of ethics of otherness, by providing that the other exists as a potentiality, as a force that can build itself. Herein lies the deeper meaning of the idea of emancipation. It also proposes as a special task of ethics the consideration by the subject of social injustice, in order to contribute to the conditions of possibility of self-emancipation of the oppressed.