The Non-Human as Such

On Men, Animals, and Barbers

What, if anything, is a non-human? A superficial reply seems to be on the surface: a non-human is anything other than human. It can be an elephant, a diamond, a wasp, a robot, a flower, a cloud, a cyborg, a stone, a computer program, a star, a work of art, a zombie — there is an endless list of worldly things that are different from the human being. They return from a long exile of ontological and epistemological subordination to the human, who, by historically expanding his habitat, appointed himself the hub of the universe. […]