This paper studies the role of faces in animal life to gain insight into Merleau-Ponty's philosophy, especially his later ontology. The relation between animal faces and moving, animal bodies involves a peculiar, expressive logic. This logic echoes the physiognomic structure of perception that Merleau-Ponty detects in his earlier philosophy, and exemplifies and clarifies a logic elemental to his later ontology, especially to his concept of an invisible that is of (endogenous to) the visible. The question (...) why the logic of the face can manifest this analogy or homology with the logic of perception and ontology is treated through a study of embryology, which suggests that the logic of the face ramifies a deeper logic of being. Methodologically, the face is taken as something like a lens into the onto-logic of being. This lens suggests that what underlies Merleau-Ponty's later ontology is a logic of animality. (shrink)

In this article the treatment of animals by the early Christian and Arabic philosophy has been developed, focusing mainly on the work of Isidore of Seville and Al-Farabi. The contribution of this study is to highlight the insufficiently considered aspects of the ontology of animals and of their endorsement as moral "subjects" in both Latin and Arabic literature up to our days.

This paper studies the role of faces in animal life to gain insight into Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, especially his later ontology. The relation between animal faces and moving, animal bodies involves a peculiar, expressive logic. This logic echoes the physiognomic structure of perception that Merleau-Ponty detects in his earlier philosophy, and exemplifies and clarifies a logic elemental to his later ontology, especially to his concept of an invisible that is of the visible. The question why the (...) logic of the face can manifest this analogy or homology with the logic of perception and ontology is treated through a study of embryology, which suggests that the logic of the face ramifies a deeper logic of being. Methodologically, the face is taken as something like a lens into the onto-logic of being. This lens suggests that what underlies Merleau-Ponty’s later ontology is a logic of animality. (shrink)

Through a critical engagement with Merleau-Ponty’s discussion of the concepts of nature, life, and behavior, and with contemporary accounts of animal groups, this article argues that animal groups exhibit sociality and that sociality is a fundamental ontological condition. I situate my account in relation to the superorganism and selfish individual accounts of animal groups in recent biology and zoology. I argue that both accounts are inadequate. I propose an alternative account of animal groups and animal (...) sociality through a Merleau-Pontian inspired definition of behavior. I criticize Merleau-Ponty’s individualistic prejudice, but show that his philosophy contains the resources necessary to overcome this bias. I define behavior as a holistic, ongoing, meaningful and Umwelt-oriented intrinsically configured expression of living forms of existence. By looking at cases of animal groups drawn from contemporary studies in zoology and behavioral ecology, I show that animal groups, in the fact that they behave, manifest themselves to be a fundamental form of existence, namely, the social form of existence. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose the concept of the “animated persona,” a soundless voice that says, “I am here” and appears on the surface of someone or something. This concept can bring clarity to the experience of perceiving a kind of personhood on a corpse, a wooden mask, or even a tree. In the first half of this paper, I will examine some Japanese literature and a work of Viktor Frankl’s that discuss these phenomena. In the second half, I will (...) analyze the concept of animated persona from five perspectives: (1) a compelling power, (2) surface-ness, (3) religious experience, (4) universality, and (5) the meaning of “I.” Lastly, I will discuss the relationship among the three layers of biological object, animated persona, and self-conscious being. My aim is to shed new light on the meaning of the encounter between the living and the dead. (shrink)

In Scepticism and Animal Faith, Santayana pursues two projects: the development of a philosophy of animal faith and the presentation of an ontology. The two projects are not easily reconciled and Santayana appears not to have distinguished them or recognized that they pull in different directions. The hypothesis that he has two projects explains a variety of the anomalous features of Santayana's philosophy, including the account of matter concerning which Kerr-Lawson and I have long disagreed.

Explores questions concerning animals from a continental perspective.

_Explores questions concerning animals from a continental perspective._.

An overview and analysis of Salla Tuomivaara's comparison of the respective views of Emile Durkheim and Edward Westermarck on sociology, humans, and other animals.

Research that involves the creation of animals with human-derived parts opens the door to potentially valuable scientific and therapeutic advances, yet invokes unsettling moral questions. Critics and champions alike stand to gain from clear identification and careful consideration of the strongest ethical objections to this research. A prevailing objection argues that crossing the human/nonhuman species boundary introduces inexorable moral confusion (IMC) that warrants a restriction to this research on precautionary grounds. Though this objection may capture the intuitions of many who (...) find this research unsettling, it relies on mistaken views of both biology and moral standing, ultimately distorting the morally relevant facts. We critically examine IMC, identify mistaken essentialist assumptions, and reframe ethical concerns. The upshot is a stronger line of objection that encourages a more inclusive and productive ethical discourse. (shrink)

In this article, I consider the implications arising from the commonplace premise that the nature of being admits in ontological kinds. That is, there are actual, fundamentally different genera of being in the world, namely human and non-human beings. That for entities to be considered suitable for valuation under the same ethical rubric, it must be assumed that the general character of their mental states is commensurate. However, if we accent that it is indeterminable what kind of being an entity (...) is without access to the phenomenological character of its experiences, then it may be argued that the ethical standards for non-human animals which follow from our inductive descriptions will always remain a matter of opinion, expressed from a particular point of view delimited within the metaphysical commitments derived from a human ontology of being. (shrink)

Eric Olson criticizes Lynne Baker’s constitution account of persons on the grounds that personhood couldn’t be ontologically significant as nothing new comes into existence with the acquisition of thought. He claims that for something coming to function as a thinker is no more ontologically significant than something coming to function as a locomotor when a motor is added to it. He levels two related charges that there’s no principled answer about when and where constitution takes place rather than an already (...) existing object just acquiring new properties. I’ll argue that none of these objections are problems for understanding person to be a substantial kind. (shrink)

While Heidegger privileges the role of language ( logos ) as the condition for being-in-the-world, the fundamental ontology ignores how logos is informed by our bodily comportment to the world as animals. This capacity for logos ultimately depends upon the capacities we share with members of other animal species. Although Aristotle privileges logos as distinctive to the human being, logos also maintains an aporetic relationship to the other capacities of the soul. If we are to reexamine Heidegger’s debt (...) to Aristotle, we might begin by retrieving Heidegger’s interpretation of logos as an ontological problem for distinguishing Dasein from animal life. (shrink)

In this paper, I begin with the most basic tenet in Aristotelian metaphysics, namely that ousia or ‘substance’ is ontologically prior to the nine other categories of being, including the pros ti, the condition of being literally ‘toward something’ or what is sometimes called 'relation' or ‘relationality.’ Aristotle repeats this frequently throughout his works and it is, I take it, manifest. However, in the Politics, so I argue here, Aristotle’s dialectical study of common appearances leads him to describe ‘human being’ (...) in a way that runs contrary to this. That is, insofar as the human being is the zoon politikon or ‘political animal,’ it seems to be constituted as the being it is precisely by way of its relatedness to other human beings in the polis. I then try to determine the moment of ‘birth’ for this essentially relational being, and find that it may not be the emergence of the human from the womb, but rather, at least according to this interpretation of the Politics, the moment when we enter into the logos together with others in posing, discussing, debating, and re-posing the abidingly open question of the human Good. (shrink)

In this paper, I begin with the most basic tenet in Aristotelian metaphysics, namely that ousia or ‘substance’ is ontologically prior to the nine other categories of being, including the pros ti, the condition of being literally ‘toward something’ or what is sometimes called 'relation' or ‘relationality.’ Aristotle repeats this frequently throughout his works and it is, I take it, manifest. However, in the Politics, so I argue here, Aristotle’s dialectical study of common appearances leads him to describe ‘human being’ (...) in a way that runs contrary to this. That is, insofar as the human being is the zoon politikon or ‘political animal,’ it seems to be constituted as the being it is precisely by way of its relatedness to other human beings in the polis. I then try to determine the moment of ‘birth’ for this essentially relational being, and find that it may not be the emergence of the human from the womb, but rather, at least according to this interpretation of the Politics, the moment when we enter into the logos together with others in posing, discussing, debating, and re-posing the abidingly open question of the human Good. (shrink)

Paper presented at the Heidegger Circle 2011. Although Aristotle’s influence on young Heidegger’s thought has been studied at length, such studies have almost exclusively focused on his interpretation of Aristotle’s ethics, physics and metaphysics. I will rather address Heidegger’s appropriation of Aristotle’s ontology of life. Focusing on recently published or recently translated courses of the mid 20’s (mainly SS 1924, WS 1925-26 and SS 1926), I hope to uncover an important aspect of young Heidegger’s thought left unconsidered: namely, that (...) Dasein’s existential structures – Befindlichkeit, Understanding and being-with-one-another through language – arose from his close reading of Aristotle’s ontology of life, of animal life. (shrink)

Reportedly ever since Pythagoras, but possibly much earlier, humans have been concerned about the way non human animals (henceforward “animals” for convenience) should be treated. By late antiquity all main traditions with regard to this issue had already been established and consolidated, and were only slightly modified during the centuries that followed. Until the nineteenth century philosophers tended to focus primarily on the ontological status of animals, to wit on whether – and to what degree – animals are actually rational (...) beings; accordingly they allowed – or denied – them some kind of moral standing. This modus operandi was for the first time seriously questioned by Jeremy Bentham, who put the issue on a different track. If the question, as Bentham suggested, is not if animals can think or speak, but if they can suffer1, then it seems plausible that moral agents ought to abstain from inflicting unnecessary suffering on animals; in other words, humans might have at least one – even limited – moral duty towards animals. And if this, in turn, is true, then animals should arguably be allowed the commensurate moral right, namely the right not to be inflicted unnecessary pain. Then, if animals possess this right, they could probably possess others, as well. This is how grosso modo the issue of animal rights became a pivotal part of the discussion concerning animal ethics. Bentham himself, of course, wouldn’t have gone that far; to him even the idea of human rights sounded like “simple… rhetorical nonsense upon stilts”.2 It was mostly due to his views, however, that the debate was moved from the way things actually are to the way things should ideally be – thus merging into what, in my view, should always have been: one primarily concerning ethics. (shrink)

In the whole universe, from the lowest beings to the highest ones, love permeates through the entire world of existence. Love is one of the hallmarks and perfections of existence in animals. This survey was done to illuminate and explain Mullah Sadra’s ontological viewpoint on the entity of sentiments and the inborn and innate love in the existence of non-human animals. The analytic and descriptive method was used to conduct this study and research. An animal is one of the (...) creatures in the essence of the existence that possesses its own perfect attributes. Animals have souls, the effects of which are life, perception, free choice, and emotions. Animals have an order for their existence, and they are attributed with perfection to the extent of their intensity and weakness. That is to say, all animals are not at the same level. Their perfection is also the same as their existence is. There is life, perception, and love in animals, but it depends on their proportion of existence. All animals are in love, but every animal having the highest share of its rank enjoys more love. Mullah Sadra’s ontological principles in proving the existence and flow of love in animals are that the existence is ‘original,’ ‘non-composite,’ ‘equivocal,’ and ‘coextensive’ with life, conception and love, and ‘God, the Almighty, is the true Beloved of all beings including animals’ souls.’ Evolutionarily, animals can only move to the point where humanity of human beings begins. (shrink)

I discuss controversial claims about the status of non-human animals as moral beings in relation to philosophical claims to the contrary. I address questions about the ontology of animals rather than ethical approaches as to how humans need to treat other animals through notions of, for example, animal rights. I explore the evolutionary origins of behavior that can be considered vices or virtues and suggest that Thomas Aquinas is closer to Darwin's view on nonhuman animals than we might (...) suppose. An appreciation of the complexity of the emotional lives of social animals and their cooperative behaviors in light of the work of animal ethologists such as Frans de Waal and Marc Bekoff suggests that social animals can be considered moral in their own terms. I discuss the charge of anthropomorphism, drawing on the work of archaeologist Steven Mithen, and consider arguments for the evolution of conscience in the work of anthropologist Christopher Boehm. Only the biological basis for the development of conscience and religion has evolved in nonhuman animals, and this should not be confused with sophisticated moral systems of analysis or particular religious beliefs found in the human community. (shrink)

There is a thinking animal in your chair and you are the only thinking thing in your chair; therefore, you are an animal. So goes the main argument for animalism, the Thinking Animal Argument. But notice that there are many other things that might do our thinking: heads, brains, upper halves, left-hand complements, right-hand complements, and any other object that has our brain as a part. The abundance of candidates for the things that do our thinking is (...) known as the Thinking Parts Problem. Animalists who endorse the Thinking Animal Argument must solve this problem by giving reasons for privileging the animal over its rivals. In order to meet this challenge, some animalists have argued that the best solution is a biological minimalist one. In what follows, I argue that every extant biological minimalist solution to the Thinking Parts Problem fails. (shrink)

Taking a cue from Derrida, this paper offers a reading of Heidegger on the issue of animal time. Recent scholarship on Heidegger and animal life has shown how he describes animals as always lacking something (language, world, hands, death…) in comparison to human Dasein. Yet little attention has been paid to time itself. By reading the few references to animals in Being and Time , as well as contemporaneous works, one discovers that Heidegger never fully addresses the question (...) of the animal in terms of time. Despite his claim to offer a “comparative examination” between the ontologies of humans and animals, Heidegger continually raises the issue of animal time but only to leave it unsettled. Moving from Being and Time to his 1929-30 lecture course, Heidegger effectively brackets out the question of time, which this essay takes to be the reason why he himself remains unconvinced by his own analyses of animal ontology. (shrink)

Animalism is at once a bold metaphysical theory and a pedestrian biological observation. For according to animalists, human persons are organisms; we are members of a certain biological species. In this article, I introduce some heretofore unnoticed data concerning the interlocking interests of human persons and human organisms. I then show that the data support animalism. The result is a novel and powerful argument for animalism. Bold or pedestrian, animalism is true.

Contemporary ethical discourse on animals is influenced partly by a scientific and partly by an anthropomorphic understanding of them. Apparently, we have deprived ourselves of the possibility of a more profound acquaintance with them. In this contribution it is claimed that all ethical theories or statements regarding the moral significance of animals are grounded in an ontological assessment of the animal's way of being. In the course of history, several answers have been put forward to the question of what (...) animals really and basically are. Three of them are discussed. It is argued that the latter answer contains a valuable starting point for an ethical reflection on recent changes in the moral relationship between humans and animals. (shrink)

A high level of confidence in the identity of individuals is required to let them die as ordered by an advance directive. Thus, if we are animalists, then we should lack the confidence required to apply lethal advance directives to the cheerfully demented, or so I argue. In short, there is consensus among animalists that the best way to avoid serious objections to their account is to adopt an ontology that denies the existence of brains, hands, tables, chairs, iced-tea, (...) and lemonade. The adoption of such an ontology reduces the justificatory force of commonsense, which is key in arguing that we are animals and that we persist as long as we are biologically alive. With this loss of justification comes the loss of a high level of confidence that Quinn-pre-dementia’s lethal advanced directive applies to Quinn-post-dementia, via identity. If we do not have a high level of confidence that Quinn-pre-dementia’s advanced directive applies to Quinn-post- dementia, then it is not enough (on its own) to let Quinn-post-dementia die. (shrink)

Most theists accept an anthropomorphic view of the divine: a God whose cognition and incarnate embodiment closely resembles human cognition and human embodiment. Most theists also accept an Anselmian view of God on which God has the maximal set of ontological (including moral) perfections. This chapter defends the view that Anselmianism entails that the anthropomorphic view of God is false and that some nonhuman animal is divine. Two arguments are given for this position, which we can call zootheism. The (...) first argument, the Power Argument, claims that because nonhuman animals have moral interests, maximal fairness entails a share in power over those interests. This, in turn, entails a direct share of power within the Godhead, which entails that some nonhuman animal is divine. The second argument, the Incarnation Argument, hues closely to Christian arguments for an incarnation: because God loves us, God will share in our suffering and will pursue non-privileged kinds of incarnate embodiments. This naturally motivates incarnating as a nonhuman animal, particularly given the historically privileged status of humans. Moreover, maximal fairness and maximal love entail that God also pre-existed as a nonhuman animal. Thus, God is, and always was, a nonhuman animal. (shrink)

This article proposes a specific kind of ontological investigation in the field of science and religion. I argue that science and religion can create distinct practices that enact multiple realities, and thus they should be seen as more than different views of the same world. By analyzing the details of scientific experiments crucial for the invention of halal stunning, I demonstrate that religion and science are both permeable to the social, the biological, and to each other, and that seemingly incommensurable (...) realities can co‐occur in the body of an animal. Here, animals’ modes of existence are interdependent with the technologies being used, and with the web of interactions that they are drawn into. In the process of inventing halal stunning, it is not so much about the same animal body that is thought about differently as it is about animals spanning across multiple, physiological, realities as they are recruited into different webs of interactions to create a new slaughter method. (shrink)

Here, for the first time, the world's two leading authorities—Tom Regan, who argues for animal rights, and Carl Cohen, who argues against them—make their respective case before the public at large. The very terms of the debate will never be the same. This seminal moment in the history of the controversy over animal rights will influence the direction of this debate throughout the rest of the century.

There is congruence between Nietzsche’s philosophy of life and the biopolitical philosophy of Giorgio Agamben. For both philosophers the human animal possesses a divided relationship to its being alive. For both philosophers this division is of a political nature, such that membership in political community as we know it is conditional on the human animal’s alienation from its biological being. Both philosophers are also concerned with the possibility of transformation and, because of the connection they establish between politics (...) and animality, link this possibility to a change in the relationship between humans and their being alive. Yet both philosophers end up with an entirely different understanding of the nature of this change, and of its potential scope. This paper is an attempt at clarifying this disagreement between Nietzsche and Agamben, and with using it to come to a better understanding of the latter’s political ontology. It presents a reading of Kafka’s “The Burrow” in an attempt to show how Agamben’s concept of the anthropological machine challenges the Nietzschean program of the affirmation of life as will to power. (shrink)

In Graham Harman’s Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO), an apparent tension arises between his pursuit of a self-proclaimed “new theory of everything,” or general ontology, and his assertion that any ontology must be able to account for distinctions among various regions of being. This paper delves into this tension between universality and specificity, particularly concerning the question of animal ontology, and examines the potential for constructing an object-oriented animal ontology. By juxtaposing Harman’s perspectives with those (...) of Matthew Calarco and other scholars, I aim to demonstrate the feasibility of developing an animal ontology using the framework of OOO. (shrink)

Martin Heidegger rejects the traditional definition of the human being as the “rational animal” in part because he thinks it fits us into a genus that obscures our difference in kind. Thomas Aquinas shares with Heidegger the concern about the human difference, and yet he appropriates the definition, “rational animal” by conceiving animality in terms of the specifically human power of understanding being. Humans are not just distinct in their openness to being, but, thanks to that openness, they (...) are distinct in their animality, a distinction that changes the very significance of animality itself. Heidegger also thinks the traditional definition closes us to the experience of our essence, but again Aquinas has resources for bringing out the experiential character of rational animality. Aquinas’ inclusion of animation has significance for what Heidegger calls fundamental ontology; by virtue of the human animate body, particular beings can be pointed out and designated as such. (shrink)

For good or for ill, we have animal bodies. Through them, we move around, eat and drink, and do many other things besides. We owe much – perhaps our very lives – to these ever-present animals. But how exactly do we relate to our animals? Are we parts of them, or they of us? Do we and these living animals co-inhere or constitute or coincide? Or what? Animalism answers that we are identical to them. There are many objections to (...) animalism, and a dizzying array of rival views. In this article, we do not propose to evaluate those objections and rivals. We will instead present a new argument for that view. The argument begins with the fact that we have emotions. (shrink)

Hierarchical views of nature have for centuries been used to justify the enslaving of peoples perceived as inferior, the often violent and coercive “reeducation” of indigenous peoples, the patriarchal subjugation of women, the cruel use of nonhuman animals for often trivial purposes, and the wanton destruction of the natural world. I join those who condemned the oppressive nature of these forms of hierarchical thinking. Yet, I fear that, in their effort to right past wrongs, too many thinkers are in danger (...) of throwing the axiological baby out with the ontological bathwater. Though the aim at a great ontological leveling is certainly understandable, I fear that, in embracing the opposite extreme and rejecting all hierarchical thinking, some may be in danger of doing violence to the many real and even morally significant differences between individuals. My claim in this paper is that Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism provides a model for how to appreciate the many grades and types of beings in the world, while avoiding an invidious normative hierarchy that inevitably places everything at the whim of human beings. That is, I will argue that it is possible to defend hierarchy without anthroparchy. To provide context, I will begin with a brief analysis of Aristotle’s “Great Chain of Being” and will then contrast it with Whitehead’s process philosophy. Given this context, using the subtle and perceptive work of the ecofeminist Karen J. Warren, I will then present a model for how to recognize a “descriptive hierarchy” while rejecting a simplistic “prescriptive hierarchy.” . (shrink)

Ethical and theological concern for nonhuman animals has been a primary characteristic of the neo-Vaiṣṇava movement of Assam, India. This concern is reflected in its strict prohibition of blood sacrifice or any kind of cruelty toward animals. At the same time, theologically, this faith puts all living beings, human and nonhuman, on an equal ontological footing and urges its followers to see God in all creatures. The present article looks at some of these concerns/considerations of this faith for nonhuman animals (...) and, at the same time, also takes into account neo-Vaiṣṇavism's historical backdrop and a few of its inner contradictions. (shrink)

The seventeenth century was a period of extraordinary invention, discovery and revolutions in scientific, social and political orders. It was a time of expansive automation, biological discovery, rapid advances in medical knowledge, of animal trials and a questioning of the boundaries between species, human and non-human, between social classes, and of the assumed naturalness of political inequality. This book gives a tour through those objects, ordinary and extraordinary, which captivated the philosophical imagination of the single most important French philosopher (...) of this period, Rene Descartes. Deborah J. Brown and Calvin G. Normore document Descartes' attempt to make sense of the complex, composite objects of human and divine invention, consistent with the fundamental tenets of his metaphysical system. Their central argument is that, far from reducing all the categories of ordinary experience to the two basic categories of substance, mind and body, Descartes' philosophy recognises irreducible composites that resist reduction, and require their own distinctive modes of explanation. (shrink)

Biopolitics and necropolitics have used animals as a concept to illustrate a particular human biopolitical situation, much in the “tradition” of Aristotle’s provisional biopolitics. In the Western context, not only our understanding of politics but also tropology and the conceptual apparatus itself are haunted by this ancient legacy, which underlies a vertical ontology tied to processes of spatialization and containment, a vertical ontology that enables an intelligibility of figurative translation. The article considers tropological systems as systems embedded in (...) particular forms of governmentality, forms of the violent administration of life and death. To show how certain bodies are marked as animal or animal-like and used in the (metaphorical) processes of exclusion/inclusion, it focuses on Giorgio Agamben’s thoughts on Carolus Linnaeus and Zakiyyah Iman Jackson’s analysis of metaphorics in the most recent (r)evolutionary theory, symbiogenesis, developed by Lynn Margulis. Moreover, to radically disturb the graduated ontological premises of traditional stylistics and tropology, we move beyond existing conceptualizations of the body and the sovereign, all of which are based on de-borderization, intersections, movements, and transfigurations. (shrink)

A very clear and powerfully argued defence of a most important and surprisingly neglected view."--Derek Parfit, All Souls College, Oxford. "If Dr. Olson is right, we are living animals and what goes on in our minds is wholly irrelevant to questions about our persistence through time....[Should] transform philosophical thinking about personal identity."--Peter van Inwagen, University of Notre Dame.

Drawing inspiration from Aristotle's biological writings, I attempt to elucidate what it is for something to be alive by providing illuminating logically necessary and sufficient conditions for something'sbeing a living thing in the broadest sense. I then propose a related account of identity conditions for carbon‐based living organisms.

In this article I try to show that the most deep level ontology can have rich meaning for our understanding of such practical and everyday phenomena as education and interaction. With this deep level ontology I mean the problem of universals. Starting from famous traditional stances of realism and nominalism, which both are for the modern theories of growth and Bildung, I continue to the third and more recently developed ontological theory, trope theory according to which the properties (...) (qualities, relations etc.) are real (unlike in nominalism) but not universal (like in realisms). Then I will take a closer look at the trope theory of CB Martin. According to it every causal event is an interaction event between simple or complex beings in which their existing dispositions may produce manifesting properties. This point of view is radically anti dualistic because that basic level causal interaction has in the simplified forms all the elements of semiotic, meaningful of mental activity of such complex beings likes humans and animals. Ome of the main general conclusions of the article is that all causal affections contain a kind of “interpretation” from the side of affected object. (shrink)

The concept of natural, common life is distinguished from life as political existence in the opening lines of Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer – a schism within ‘life’ that has profound consequences for Agamben’s political theory and ontology. Agamben claims that bare life now “dwells in the biological body of every living being” . As such, it is necessary to ascertain what the ‘life’ of biopolitics is – the life capable of politicization. The notion of natural living being is central (...) to Agamben’s account, and yet it remains an ambiguous and indeterminate concept. This conceptual ambiguity is informed by Agamben’s account of anthropogenesis and the relation between the ‘human’ and the realm of animality, to which the concept of negativity is pivotal. Negativity is also central to Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy. However, for Merleau-Ponty the ontology of Nature and man constitute “the leaves of one sole Being” . Animality and human being are emergent; Merleau-Ponty adamantly maintains, “there is no rupture” . This paper analyzes the notion of negativity in Agamben and Merleau-Ponty’s accounts of Being and life, and contends that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy gives rise to an ontology that offers a more open and productive account of animality and nature. In Agamben’s account, negativity is constitutive of man, which gives rise to an irreducible disjuncture between Being and life. For Merleau-Ponty, negativity is ‘in’ Being. There is no tension between Being and ‘life’: Nature is “a leaf or layer of total Being,” and we must conceive of “the ontology of Nature as the way toward ontology”. (shrink)