In this small but rich work, the most interesting philosopher of our time, Giorgio Agamben (b. 1942), continues to develop the theme of “life”, his famous books “Homo sacer” and “What remains after Auschwitz,” although from a different perspective. In dialogue with Georges Bataille, Carl Linnaeus, Ernst Haeckel, Jakob von Uexküll, and above all Heidegger, Agamben locates the boundary between man and animal in man himself. As soon as he puts aside his animality, the world opens up to a person, but along with his animality he simultaneously drives life into a zone of exclusion. The relationship between man and animality, and humanity towards the animal, thus becomes in Agamben the decisive political conflict of our cultural situation.