question is by going to the middle. He will therefore choose “the intermediate thesis [der mittleren These]” (185, chapter 3 heading).
The difficulty derives from the fact that it is a matter of gaining access to the essence of animality—that is indeed what he calls the thing—which is determinable only to the extent that one has first made clear the living nature of the living thing: “the essence of the animality of the animal [das Wesen der Tierheit des Tieres]. . . . we can only determine the animality of the animal if we are clear about what constitutes the living character of a living being [die Lebendigkeit des Lebenden]” (179). Yet the “living character of a living being” is what the animal has in common with man. Therefore, one will not be able to speak of the essence of animality in general unless—and although as his discussion progresses Heidegger cites many examples of animals—the categorization of all animals within a “general essence of animality,” in spite of their differences (differences between lizard and chimpanzee, for example), remains beyond question. His question is that of “the essence of the animality of the animal [das Wesen der Tierheit des Tieres],” in contrast to that of “the essence of the humanity of man [das Wesen der Menschheit des Menschen].” Why? Because “the living character of a living being, as distinct from the non-living being” is “the possibility of dying” (ibid.). It is apparently because the animal can die that it is distinguished from the stone, which cannot die: “A stone cannot be dead because it is never alive” (ibid.). Hence one should—we don’t have the time to do so—put this passage into relation with what he says elsewhere, in the texts that I cited in this very place in Aporias, where Heidegger literally says “the animal doesn’t die,” it stops living, it croaks. Here he says that it dies:
Then again, we can only determine the animality of the animal if we are clear about what constitutes the living character of a living being, as distinct from the non-living being [im Unterschied zum Leblosen] which does not even have the possibility of dying [das nicht einmal die Möglichkeit hat zu sterben]. A stone cannot be dead because it is never alive [Ein Stein kann nicht tot sein, weil er nicht lebt]. (Ibid.)
In other words, what he implies here is that the “animal dies.” On the basis of that he poses the question of the essence of animality on the basis of the essence of the living. But how can one reconcile this sentence with what he says elsewhere, with so much insistence, namely, that what is proper to the animal is the fact that “it doesn’t die.” That it finishes living (verenden) without dying, without sterben, for it is the verb sterben, used here, that the animal lacks in the other texts that I cited on that earlier
154 ■ The Animal That Therefore I Am