The Great Detour: Heidegger and the Question of the Animal

An in-depth and unique take on Martin Heidegger’s understanding of animality, showing that the question of the animal was central to Heidegger’s philosophical project from beginning to end. The Great Detour offers an in-depth and unique take on Martin Heidegger’s understanding of animality, showing that the question the animal’s nature in comparison to the human was central to Heidegger’s philosophical project from beginning to end. More importantly, by engaging certain key texts from across his corpus, including some of the Black Notebooks, author S. Montgomery Ewegen shows that Heidegger’s understanding of animality is much more nuanced than has typically been presented. Whereas most scholars have argued that Heidegger held a somewhat dismissive and ill-informed view of animals (as “world-poor,” as lacking language, etc.), Ewegen argues that animals for Heidegger hold an inestimable value, serving as one of the primary ways through which the human is able to become aware of its own being and, indeed, Being itself. In short, the question of the animal was, for Heidegger, indissolubly connected with the question of the human being’s relation to Being, the latter of which serves as the focal point of Heidegger’s philosophy.