In this dense essay, constructed from individual reflections, Giorgio Agamben continues his inquiry into the concept of life, as previously explored in Homo sacer and What Remains of Auschwitz: In dialogue with figures such as Georges Bataille, Carl von Linné, Ernst Haeckel, Jakob von Uexküll, and especially Martin Heidegger, Agamben locates the boundary between animal and human within the human itself. Only when humans suspend their animality does the world open up to them. Thus, the relationship of humanity to animality and of humanity to animals becomes the decisive political conflict in our cultural sphere.