Poverty, Life and Animality in Heidegger’s Thought

Abstract

Heidegger’s 1929lectures published under the title The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics:World, Finitude, Solitude inquire about the animality of the animal. Their intentionis to elucidate the aspect in which the peculiarity of life resides and that, eludingevery attempt of getting caught under mechanistic or biological interpretations,Heidegger finds in what he names “poverty”. In this context, this paper intendsto investigate the link between this poverty, the one that characterizes the animalin 1929, and the consideration of the peculiarity of man in the same terms since1945. Through this investigation, our goal will be to make explicit the ontologicalbond between humanity, animality and corporealness present in men.