Heidegger's Metaphysical Abyss

Between the Human and the Animal

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2714282
AutoresElizabeth Cykowski (independent scholar, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Fecha de publicación2021-02-04
Open AccessNo
TipoBOOK
RevistaHeidegger's Metaphysical Abyss (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780198865407.001.0001
OpenAlexW4256698529
Open LibraryOL34686813M
ISBN9780198865407
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas8

This book provides a critical study of Heidegger's reflections on animality, which are presented most extensively in his 1929-30 lecture course The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. In these lectures Heidegger poses two provocative metaphysical theses: the human, he claims, is 'world-forming', whereas the animal is 'poor in world'. Contemporary secondary literature has emphatically criticised these theses on account of the objection that they forge an 'abyss of essence' between human and non-human organisms. The theses undermine scientific developments by breaking apart the biological continuum in order to secure the human within in its own unique category, all the while leaving the world-poor animal on the other side of the abyss. Heidegger thus reinstates an outmoded dualism that he ought, on his own terms, to renounce: human versus animal. Via a close examination of The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, one that also draws on other places within Heidegger's corpus where the theme of animality features, the book aims to clarify the true meaning, scope, and significance of Heidegger's theses. It seeks to show that Heidegger's examination of animality points beyond the vestiges of received dualisms back to a more essential way of philosophising about life and the human's relationship to it. The book concludes that Heidegger's intention is to examine and illuminate, rather than simply to repeat the orthodox metaphysical hierarchies that we have inherited, and his exploration of animality raises deep questions about the status of the human within nature that remain vitally important to this day

Dualism · Epistemology · Human being · Humanity · Meaning (existential) · Metaphysics · Order (exchange) · Philosophical anthropology · Theme (computing) · Theology · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy · Philosophy · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism · Animals (Philosophy) · Animaux (Philosophie) · First philosophy · Métaphysique