Husserl's Hesitant Attempts to Extend Personhood to Animals

The question of the animal is one of the most intensely debated in the contemporary philosophical arena. The present article makes the case that Husserl’s phenomenological approach offers a stimulating and open-ended perspective on this discussion. The animal, indeed, is an instance of extreme otherness, which pushes phenomenology to its limits. The paper opens with an outline of the methodological issues raised by the question of the animal (Sect. 1). It then examines what the animal—at this point, taken as a whole—and the human being have in common and what Husserl sees as the main differences between them. A critical aspect here is the question of personhood (Sect. 2). Finally, Sect. 3 traces Husserl’s progression from a general concept of animality to detailed and nuanced phenomenological descriptions of different animals and their intra- and inter-specific relationships. Husserl understands that the threshold that joins and divides human beings and animals is difficult to pin down, because there is more than one threshold: it is plural.