The Animal Inside - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1783489014 ISBN 13: 9781783489015

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018

Synopsis

Much has been written about animals in applied ethics, environmental ethics, and animal rights. This book takes a new turn, offering an examination of the 'animal question' from a more fundamental, philosophical-anthropological perspective. The contributors in this important volume focus on how the animal has appeared and can be used in philosophical argumentation as a metaphor or reference point that helps us understand what is distinctively human and what is not. A recurring theme in the essays is the existence of a zone of ambiguity between animals and humans, which puts into question comfortable assumptions about the uniqueness and superiority of human nature.

While the chapters straddle the boundaries of historical-philosophical and systematic, continental and analytic approaches, their thematic unity knits them together, presenting a rich, broad, and yet cohesive perspective. The first part of the book offers general explorations of the relation between animal and human nature, and of the concomitant existential and ethical dimensions of this relationship. The chapters in the second part address the same theme, but, in so doing, focus on specific aspects of animal and human nature: imagination, politics, history, sense, finitude, and science.

About this title

About the Authors

Geoffrey Dierckxsens is a post-doctoral researcher in the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences (CAS).

Thomas Kiefer teaches Philosophy at Creighton University and Southeast Community College, Lincoln, USA

Edition details

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1783489014
• ISBN 13: 9781783489015
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Dierckxsens Geoffrey, Bijlsma Rudmer, Begun Michael, Kiefer Thomas