The end of human history is an event that has been foreseen or announced
by both messianics and dialecticians. But who is the protagonist of that
history that is coming--or has come--to a close? What is man? How did he
come on the scene? And how has he maintained his privileged place as the
master of, or first among, the animals?
In The Open, contemporary Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben
considers the ways in which the "human" has been thought of as either a
distinct and superior type of animal, or a kind of being that is
essentially different from animal altogether. In an argument that ranges
from ancient Greek, Christian, and Jewish texts to twentieth-century
thinkers such as Heidegger, Benjamin, and Kojève, Agamben examines the
ways in which the distinction between man and animal has been
manufactured by the logical presuppositions of Western thought, and he
investigates the profound implications that the man/animal distinction
has had for disciplines as seemingly disparate as philosophy, law,
anthropology, medicine, and politics.