Animal Inside: Essays at the Intersection of Philosophical Anthropology and Animal Studies

This book examines the animal question from a philosophical-anthropological perspective, exploring how animals can be used as metaphors to understand what is distinctively human. It highlights the existence of a zone of ambiguity between animals and humans, challenging assumptions about human nature's uniqueness and superiority. The first part explores the relation between animal and human nature, while the second part focuses on specific aspects such as imagination, politics, history, shame, finitude, and joy.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 13 June 2018
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield International

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, the political, historicity, shame, finitude, and joy.

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, the political, historicity, shame, finitude, and joy.

Weight: 392g
Dimension: 152 x 228 x 16 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781783489015