The Death of the Animal: Ontological Vulnerability

Abstract

nonhuman animals are vulnerable to all manner of plights and plundering at the hands both of nature and of human institutions and practices, from predation, natural disaster, and disease to trapping, veal-calf crating, and electric shock. In this paper we explore a certain class of such plights and plundering and those features of animals that leave them peculiarly vulnerable to them. In the spirit of Heidegger's distinction between the ontic and ontological,l we will call these an animal's "ontological vulnerability." 183