Phenomenology, in its traditional encounters with ethics, has commonly aimed at a more descriptive rather than prescriptive goal. The direction of this project, however, is both phenomenological and prescriptive as I attempt to provide a phenomenological foundation for communitarian ethical theory. I argue, following Husserl, that the Ego and the Other arise together in sense and thus we are committed to community in a foundational way. I am always and fundamentally constituted as a member of a community - as a Self among Others - and, given this, there are certain ethical implications. Namely, there is a communal Good of which my good is but a perspective; indeed, it is a perspective on a Good which encompasses the whole of the living world and not just humanity. Consequently, we are foundationally imbedded in a deep community and a deep communitarian ethic.

Plato's Animals examines the crucial role played by animal images, metaphors, allusions, and analogies in Plato's Dialogues. These fourteen lively essays demonstrate that the gadflies, snakes, stingrays, swans, dogs, horses, and other animals that populate Plato's work are not just rhetorical embellishments. Animals are central to Plato's understanding of the hierarchy between animals, humans, and gods and are crucial to his ideas about education, sexuality, politics, aesthetics, the afterlife, the nature of the soul, and philosophy itself. The volume includes a comprehensive annotated index to Plato's bestiary in both Greek and English.

Plato's Animals examines the crucial role played by animal images, metaphors, allusions, and analogies in Plato's Dialogues. These fourteen lively essays demonstrate that the gadflies, snakes, stingrays, swans, dogs, horses, and other animals that populate Plato's work are not just rhetorical embellishments. Animals are central to Plato's understanding of the hierarchy between animals, humans, and gods and are crucial to his ideas about education, sexuality, politics, aesthetics, the afterlife, the nature of the soul, and philosophy itself. The volume includes a comprehensive annotated index to Plato's bestiary in both Greek and English.

Taking Edmund Husserl's dictum to heart yet finding in it a new direction,

"Animal Others brings together original contributions that explore the status of animals from the continental philosophy perspective. Examined are the moral status of animals, the question of animal minds, an understanding of what it is to be an animal and what it is to be with an animal, as well as the roles animals play in the work of philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Derrida."--BOOK JACKET.