Returning to the Animal: The Christian Discourses and the Refusal of the Future
Returning to the Animal: The Christian Discourses and the Refusal of the Future

Summary/Abstract: This essay offers a reading of Kierkegaard’s discourses on the lily and the birds (from Matthew’s gospel) in dialogue with Heidegger’s exploration of the animal in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. It argues that a critical link can be made between Kierkegaard’s threefold schema of animal, pagan and Christian, and Heidegger’s categorisation of stone, animal and world. No direct connection is posited between these, but they are mutually illuminating in the related but distinct ways they deal with issues of human uniqueness and what it means to relate freely and meaningfully to a world. Both thinkers remain committed to a version of anthropocentrism while trying to disrupt settled notions of what it means to be human; ultimately, however, it is argued that Kierkegaard redirects the attention of the reader in a more radically non-humanistic way.

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