The non-human as such: on men, animals, and barbers

Abstract

The article investigates a dialectic that, through the work of negation, paradoxically brings the non-human as anything but human back to the human. It shows how and why, throughout the criticism of all forms of anthropocentrism, the human being still occupies a central place in the very discourse that negates him. His principal position only changed its value from а positive to а negative one. If there is something in com-mon among all possible non-human things in the world, it is their negative determi-nation with regards to the human. While being actively denied, human thus remains a main constitutive element of their identity, a kind of general equivalent, whose on-tological status is highly problematic and therefore particularly interesting.