This essay attempts to provide a unified analysis of two working notes from The Visible and the Invisible. In these notes Merleau-Ponty questions not only the accuracy of the ontology he is elaborating, but also the incidence and place of this ontology within the Being it describes. He finds that his ontology transforms Being as it describes it, and therefore keeps chasing its tail endlessly. This view is suggested by Merleau-Ponty’s use of Nietzsche’s expression “circulus vitiosus Deus” as a formula that both he and Nietzsche use to describe the ontological place of their ontology. Merleau-Ponty, like Nietzsche, offers an ontology in which Being is highly sensitive to ontological accounts, thereby construing Being as a principle of commensurability between action and description, language and reality, philosophy and world.

The objective of this paper is to show that the specific meaning of “affectivity” in Merleau-Ponty’s works can be better understood by approaching its connection with the notion of “imagination”. This strategy can be contrasted with Sartre’s approach; his specific conception of consciousness locks off the relation between imagination and affectivity from the start. On the contrary, the free play of this axis, which can be analysed since the early Phenomenology of Perception, allows for the overflowing of the horizon of visibility of subjectivity toward a certain invisible. Th e concrete junction of imagination and affectivity then spreads out into the region of the notion of desire.

The paper attempts to propound a new understanding of the experience of the world and others on the basis of a radical phenomenology of the body, as it is revealed in the originary impressibility as affect and desire. This impressibility shapes every relation to beings and others due to the unity of an originary life that founds individuation before any temporal difference, having ethical consequences for a plural communality, which can no longer be characterized by means of mere abstract processes of objectivation.

Descriptive foundations and a concern with origins are integral to both Husserlian phenomenology and Darwinian evolutionary biology. These complementary aspects are rooted in the lifeworld as it is experienced. Detailed specifications of the complementary aspects testify to a mutual relevance of phenomenology to evolutionary biology and of evolutionary biology to phenomenology. Exemplifications of the mutual relevance are given in terms of both human and nonhuman agentive abilities. The experiential exemplifications show that agentive abilities are rooted in the kinetic sequence: I move, I do, I can. The kinetic sequence in turn testifies to an ability to think in movement, a thinking that engenders corporeal concepts. It also, however, attests to the need for a veritable phenomenology of learning on the one hand and for a veritable recognition of mindful bodies on the other, mindful bodies that are a driving force both in the evolution of animate forms of life and in the evolution of repertoires of I cans.

Martin Heidegger distinguishes the human—as a world-forming, historical being that is capable of language—from the animal, which, according to him, is poor in world, ahistorical and incapable of language. This clear-cut distinction, which is connected to Heidegger’s anti-biologism, has frequently been criticised. By discussing the criticism of Matthew Calcaro, Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida, the present paper aims to show that in Heidegger (1) the human-animal difference is not a biologically determined distinction, (2) human language is not (primarily) understood as an instrument of expression and communication, and (3) humans are not distinguished from animals on the basis of their supposed access to an “objective” reality. While all three points imply corrections to the reception of Heidegger in animal philosophy, (3) is particularly crucial since it refutes Derrida’s interpretation of the as-structure, which has had a large influence on readings of Heidegger, also far beyond the topic of animality. Taking into account these clarifications, a specific historical response-ability of the human becomes intelligible that is relevant in particular in regard to ethical aspirations in animal philosophy.

By setting up a dialogue with contemporary animal research the essay attempts, on the one hand, to expose the limits of Martin Heidegger’s concept of animality in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, and, on the other hand, to propose some new ways of thinking the being of those animals that most distinctly show themselves as being other than Heidegger’s claims. I suggest, with reference to Heidegger’s thesis of the animal as “poor in world,” that the being of the cognitively most complex animals is better understood in terms of otherworldly worlds within the world of human world forming. With this concept I aim to develop and continue, rather than criticize, Heidegger’s way of thinking the being of animals and deepen the productive relationship between science and philosophy that Heidegger proposed in this work.

The attempt to appropriate Heidegger’s thinking in order to found environmental ethics continues to pose challenges both for understanding the premise of an ethic, and, conversely, for unfolding the importance of his thought in the effort to displace the anthropocentric focus of modern philosophy. These challenges must be taken up on a methodological as well as a thematic level, in order to show how a claim of being can implicate a reciprocal guidance pertaining to our treatment of the earth, nature, and animals. An appeal to the ethos of situated dwelling is not sufficient to ground a transhuman ethic; rather, a precursory step must be taken to uncover a common space of embodiment, thereby marking a jointure whereby habitats fostering the potential for animals to “flourish” can be cultivated in concert with our own capacity to dwell. When viewed through this prism of our “incarnality,” the stewardship that we practice in dwelling on the earth can also “formally indicate” a sense of proportionality, e.g., a “measure,” counter balancing the interests of animals with humans. Conversely, the search for a trans-human ethic calls for a further transformation of phenomenology through its interface with hermeneutics.

Animality is a central issue in phenomenology. If the core of the phenomenological approach is the investigation into the correlation between subject and object, what are we talking about when we talk about animal subjectivity? Is it possible to include the notion of animal being in the category of subject? What kind of intentionality does it possess? Our article will analyse the pathic dimension in order to track down some indications about animal subjectivity. Particular emphasis shall be placed on Weizsacker and Merleau-Ponty’s perspectives. Both call into question the definition of subjectivity as an absolute and neutral gaze, exclusively attributed to human being. By contrast, by analysing sensitivity as the common background between animal and human beings, it will be possible to introduce the subject into biology, as explicitly stated by Weizsacker. Subjectivity lies at the intersection between passivity and activity, between perception and movement, between passion and revolution.

The phenomenological interpretation of the human being is not a naturalistic explanation. Likewise phenomenology does not interpret the human being as an example of a complex animal: from a phenomenological point of view man is not an animal, inasmuch as his definition and his essence imply a specifically human component, which cannot be attributed to the linear development of animal complexity. However, this does not mean that any animal component is excluded from the structure of humans. How can human animality be acknowledged without denying human specificity and upholding a reductionist view? The purpose of the paper is to analyse and compare two different ways in which the phenomenological tradition has answered this question.

In this article, I investigate how phenomenologists have analysed the relation between man and animal with respect to death. The common tendency of most phenomenologists is to grant man a specific mode of being and to attribute a parallel but deficient mode to the animal. In this way, phenomenology fails to accomplish a positive phenomenological description of the animal’s mode of being or of animality as such. I turn to Heidegger’s decisive analysis of human/animal death since Heidegger would constantly hold on to the idea that the animal, in contrast to man, has no explicit relation to death and is therefore not capable of death as death. This leads to his very provocative claim that only man “dies” whereas the animal just “perishes.” Hence, the problem of the man/animal-relation becomes a very distinct problem in relation to death since death concerns the very way in which a certain form of being relates to the world. I aim to shed light on the genesis of the problem in order to put the question of the animal’s death in a proper perspective. I argue that it is precisely death where phenomenology loses its firm grip on the differentiation between man and animal and hence it is this distinction that has to be put back into question.

Even a quick look at the history of religions leaves one impressed with how often the animal has been taken as a manifestation of the sacred. Another feature, frequently found, is the emphasis on the transcendence of the divine. Its radical alterity is such that we cannot directly encounter it. What is the alterity, the transcendence that conjoins these features? In this article, I argue that this alterity is that of the unconscious. Two types of impulses spring from it: impulses that we symbolically project as the Eros rooted in our animal, embodied existence and impulses that we project as springing from the divine. The only way that we can form a stable representation of ourselves is through the intertwining of both of them. Such an intertwining can be accounted for by means of Merleau-Ponty’s model of reversibility and mutual disclosure.

The question of whether animals have technologies is studied in this article in three genealogical steps according to the development of human technologies: tools, machines and digital technologies. In the age of tools, animals were regarded as lacking technologies. In the age of machines, observations in animals show tool usage. However, Marx attributes both machines and tools only to humans in order to avoid a break between premodern humanity that had only tools, to modern humanity that invented and used machines. In the age of digital technologies, animals have been observed using and inventing tools as well as complex technics like language and agriculture. These genealogical steps conform to Calarco’s mapping of animality into identity, difference and indifference, which allow us to think not only of the identity between humans’ and animals’ technologies but also of the differences.

By drawing on Jacques Derrida’s analysis of the animal question in his last seminars entitled The Beast and the Sovereign, I approach the possibilities of fraternity not only among beasts, between “the wolf and the lamb,” but also between them and humans, in terms of their differences. More precisely, while illustrating certain limits of his analysis, I look at his decisive inquiry concerning “the animal,” which goes hand in hand with political inquiry. Yet we take this path in the company of the wolf, the metaphorical wolf, and following the French expression “a pas de loup” (“stealthy as a wolf ”) as used by Derrida, in order to deconstruct the very concept of sovereignty (symbolized also by the wolf ) and thus to think of politics beyond politics or otherwise than politics. However, I also bring in Levinas, almost a “wolf ” waiting along the way, to demonstrate how, despite Derrida’s vast work on these questions, he remains imprisoned in what he wishes to deconstruct, as if he were not completely able to extract himself from it.

The goal of this article is to demonstrate that, following Derrida, in order to develop a theory of animality it is necessary to renounce to the implicit use of concepts related to subjectivity (such as “ego,” “ipse,” or “Dasein”). The deconstruction of subjectivity is thus the only way to establish an ethical requirement concerning animals, a requirement which is no longer conceived from the point of view of our “humanity.” In the first part of the paper, I attempt to locate Derridean ethics within phenomenology in a way which situates ethics in relation to the experience of aporia. In the second part, I focus on what Derrida calls the “carnivorous sacrifice” and try to outline a concretization of the ethics of hospitality and of responsibility that reconfigures our relationships with animals.

The aim of the present paper is to advance some considerations on the question of animism from a phenomenological perspective. Firstly, we deal with the problems of the access to the phenomenon, and of its interpretation on the part of contemporary anthropology. Both problems are connected with the gap which seems to exist between so-called primitive, animistic societies, and so-called civilized, scientific cultures. Secondly, since Husserl does not devote specific analyses to this issue, we address Dorion Cairns’ methodology and concrete investigations. Our major claim is that his reflections, largely inspired by Husserl’s notion of sense-transfer (Sinnesübertragung), may provide a better understanding of the gap mentioned above and perhaps a way to overcome it by disclosing a genetic common root not only of animistic and modern mentalities, but also of pantheism and theism. A final section is devoted to Husserl’s scattered considerations on the subject which might throw additional light on Cairns’ claims.