dc.description.abstract | This work is linked to the research line Society, New Rights and Transnationalization of the Graduate Program in Law, of the University of Vale do Rio dos Sinos - UNISINOS,featuring the theme of ensuring a healthy environment as a fundamental right, through the (re) construction of contemporary social ethical rationality, founded on the category of otherness. As specific objectives tried to characterize contemporary society as risk society and the promotion of fundamental rights in this context; and identify the possibility of ensuring a healthy environment as a fundamental right, through the (re) construction of rationality in the category of social ethics otherness, allowing a human society and ecologically viable. The research was structured by the method of hypothetical-deductive approach, developing from two distinct theoretical contributions that have served for different purposes: Theory of Social Systems, developed by Niklas Luhmann, to observe the contemporary society and illustrate it as producer risk, and healthy environment as a fundamental right in this contex; and Ethics of Alterity, created by Emmanuel Levinas, for the proposed (re) construction of rationality contemporary social ethics as the foundation of human society and ecologically viable and conciliatory to the hypothesis problem presented. The category of otherness to the environment was applied, since it may interpret it as weak (or fragile) in relation to man. This interpretation becomes appropriate as a result of human decisions, which represent an intersubjective space asymmetrical with the environment, due to the production and distribution of new kinds of risks, which, without historical precedent, allow for the destruction of all life on the planet. It was concluded that when considering the degraded environment as the Other, we are called to give an answer to the current environmental crisis by questioning inserted, enabling the society to open a relationship of responsibility, in other words, a relationship ethics and balanced with the surrounding environment. | en |