Giorgio Agamben is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Venice. This is the fifth of his books published by Stanford; previous titles are Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1998), The Man Without Content (1999), The End of the Poem (1999), and Potentialities (1999).

• @fmct:Contents @toc4:Translator's Noteiii @toc2:1Theromorphous00 2Acephalous00 3Snob00 4Mysterium disiunctionis00 5Physiology of the Blessed00 6Cognitio experimentalis00 7Taxonomies00 8Without Rank00 9Anthropological Machine00 10Umwelt00 11Tick00 12Poverty in World00 13The Open00 14Profound Boredom00 15World and Earth00 16Animalization00 17Anthropogenesis00 18Between00 19Desuvrement000 20Outside of Being000 @toc4:Notes000 Index000 Library of Congress Subject Headings for this publication: Philosophical anthropology, Human beings Animal nature

"[The Open] turns to perhaps the most basic distinction of existence: that between human beings and animals. The thin volume provides an impressive historical survey of the problem, offering a dizzying scope of debate over the nature of animality, including expositions of figures as diverse as Thomas Aquinas, Georges Bataille, Heidegger, Alexander Kojève, Benjamin, and the German zoologist Jakob von Uexküll."—Radical Philosophy Review