Heidegger’s bestiary: the animal without language or history

Abstract

In this article the trope of the bestiary is used in order to elucidate the political effects of Heidegger’s reflections on animals. It offers a general overview and analyses of three key texts by Heidegger, which cover the decade from the late 20s to the late 30s, a decade that marked temporally the famous Kehre (turn) in Heideggerian thinking.  This Kehre signals the turn from the analytics of Dasein towards the thinking of the Ereignis des Seyn, the event of the appropriation of Being. Three key points are argued: i) that Heidegger’s phenomenology of animality, which is a corollary of his phenomenology of Dasein, says more about humans than about animals; ii) that in Heidegger’s thinking the question of animals is intricately related to the question of “polemos,” nation, the state and Volk (people); iii) and that consecuently we have to learn to see Heidegger’s bestiary as a political, bellicose and martial bestiary.