This paper presents the thought of Emmanuel Lévinas about women and about sex differences to explore what Jacques Derrida calls the two possibilities of reading Lévinas. The first, androcentric, identifies the traditional hierarchical separation between male and female. The second possibility of reading Lévinas, according to Derrida, sees the expansion of the meaning of women into the feminine, amplifying Levinas's propositions of feminity as an opening to otherness. Lévinas turns the feminine into a privileged figure of ethics and otherness. Derrida will depart from this idea of Lévinas about the feminine to think of unconditional hospitality, radicalizing his view of openness to others.
Women; Otherness; Ethics