In a scholarly yet accessible study, Pierre Pellegrin argues that Aristotle is the true founder of biology, contrary to what a distorted perception of his finalism has long led us to believe.
Hunters are more concerned about nature’s fragility than most people realize. They are the first to witness it, and their relationship with animals is not just one of blind predation.
Hundreds of species have adapted to modern conurbations. What drives animals to go and live in the city? Beyond the accelerated degradation of nature, we need to rethink the very notion of wildness, and invent an “ethics of asymmetrical relations”.
Antispeciesism, which can be traced back to nineteenth-century activism, today comprises a range of discourse and strategies, which it is important not to oversimplify.
Through a phenomenology of plant life, the philosopher Florence Burgat reminds us that plants are defined above all by what they do not have: Lacking an intentional consciousness or a lived world, how could they lead the secret life that certain popular books ascribe to them?
What are Covid-19 and the coronavirus? What are the parameters, causes and effects of this disease? What are the short and long-term prospects? Infectious disease specialist Philippe Sansonetti explains why the fate of the epidemic is in our hands.
Neither the social sciences nor the natural sciences are currently invested in studying the cultural relations between humans and animals. If we are to understand them, we must reconsider all our categories, and free ourselves once and for all from the nature-culture divide.
In the eighteenth century, vegetarianism was viewed as a philosophical question in its own right, at the intersection of debates about animal suffering and good health. It was also a controversial issue that saw anti-Christianism and social criticism produce similar positions.
How do the social sciences and humanities deal with human-animal relationships? Between epistemic and political aims, animals have progressed on either side of the Atlantic as legitimate subjects of study and even as political subjects in their own right.
At a time when animal suffering is being denounced with increasing force and meatless diets are becoming more common, how can we explain the continued existence of a carnivorous humanity that is neither natural nor rational?
Should our relationships with animals be more diplomatic? This is what Baptiste Morizot suggests as he uses the ‘return of the Wolf’ as an opportunity for a philosophical reflection. As if to better implicitly reaffirm man’s domineering position?
Paleontologists distinguish five periods of mass disappearance of animal species. Are we now entering the sixth period—that of human extinction? Either way, the question brings us back to the fragility of our life conditions. So just a word to the wise!
Do animals have a moral life in the same way as humans do? The philosopher Alice Crary argues that they are visible bearers of moral qualities, as literature suggests. But can values be the object of empirical observation?
