Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of the standard interpretation of Heidegger’s account of animality in order to give the reader a sense of the disquiet that it inspires among commentators. The chapter examines the critics who argue that Heidegger’s comparative exanimation of animality amounts to his own version of a classical valorisation of life, an ordering of beings that places the human at the top. The chapter then proposes a new way of looking at the lectures, one based on the conviction that Heidegger has not simply fallen into the trap of straightforwardly ranking the human above the rest of nature. It concludes that there is a deeper significance to Heidegger’s reflections on animality, one that can be appreciated if we attend to the broader metaphysical context of Heidegger’s claims.