Facing Animals Peter Atterton If l have a duty ... toward the other, wouldn't it then also be toward the animal, which is still more other than the other human, my brother or my neighbor? - Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am It is true to say that Levinas, like so many philosophers before him, attached no great ethical importance to animals other than humans (hereafter simply, "animals"). For over four decades, Levinas devel- oped a theory of ethics he called a "humanism o f the other man" 1 that viewed animals as little more than things or cases, the interests of which count for little in comparison with those of human beings. In this respect, Levinas's thinking is a classic example o f "speciesism," a term popularized by the animal liberation philosopher Peter Singer, who defines it as "a prejudice or attitude o f bias in favor o f the inter- ests o f members o f one's own species and against those o f members o f other species. " 2 I am convinced, however, that the logic of Levinas's own arguments concerning absolute otherness militates against inter- preting ethics exclusively in terms o f human interests and values, and, furthermore, that Levinas's phenomenological description of the face justifies extending moral considerability to animals that can suffer and are capable of expressing that suffering to me. My goal in this essay is to demonstrate this. In the process I hope to show that what Levinas said about the victims of anti-Semitism, racism, and totalitarianism, 25