This paper aims to conduct to reflect on the violence perpetrated in the name of ethics from a critical perspective based on the thinking of Michel Foucault and Judith Butler. At first, it is pointed out the normative-social frameworks that define which lives matter and which lives are not even mournable. Then, recovering the ethical problematizations of the authors in reference, it is argued that the processes of subjectivation are a mean of opening to alterity. The Greek concept of ascesis - self-practices - investigated by Foucault is the key concept through which one tries to think of forms of resistance to subjectivating powers and a way of finding the other in the exercise of oneself, of recognizing it in its proximity and in their absolute strangeness. Butler s theory is fundamental at this point, since it explicitly proposes the question of you in the dialogue with several thinkers, among which, this paper highlights the issues of Emmanuel Lévinas philosophy. Finally, the proposal for an ethics of non-violence is based on Foucault s conception of the ethics of friendship and in Butler s point of view about responsibility. Both can work under the heading of an empty program, in the sense of not prescribing rules of conduct. Without giving up normativity completely, they indicate ethical possibilities that are not based on judgments.