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L' aperto: L'uomo e l'animale

The end of human history is an event, one predicted and announced by messianists from St. Paul to Benjamin, and by dialecticians from Hegel to Kojève. Who is the protagonist of this impending (or already-arrived) end of history? What is man? How did he enter the scene? And how did he then become master and maintain his primacy among the animals?
In Openness, Giorgio Agamben argues that man has been seen as a mysterious combination of a natural, living body and supernatural, social, or divine elements, and that we must in turn understand man as the result of a practical and political separation of humanity from animality.
Agamben traces this entire line of thought, from the ancient Greeks and messianic thinkers, through the origins of modern scientific taxonomy and anthropology in the 18th century, to the twilight of humanism in the 20th century. He discovers that humanity's privileged status is produced and reinforced by the "anthropological mechanism" of Western thought. In both its ancient and modern versions, this mechanism operates by creating an absolute difference between humans and animals: on the one hand, humans are elevated above animals and the environment; on the other, animality is fundamentally excluded from Heidegger's openness to the world of human nature. In his investigation, Agamben focuses on this threshold of distinction between humans and animals, a state that is neither animal life nor human life. This is the state of "bare life." If this anthropological mechanism ceases, it will pave the way for the philosophy and politics to come, something we must consider.

2019-02-01

南京大学出版社

Refraction Set

160

9787305209888