The Animal Side is a manifesto on the importance of animals for human
thought. It attempts to characterize the importance, for human beings, of
the fact that animals exist. Adopting a philosophical and poetic approach,
the book seeks to show that animals' ways of inhabiting the earth are, for
human consciousness, an expansion and an exploration of what philosophers
and poets have tried to name by speaking of the Open. Beginning with the
story of an encounter with a deer on a road at night, the book proceeds by
showing that, beyond the diversity of animal life and the ways animals
differ from human beings, there is a layer of the perceptible on which we
all draw, humans and animals alike, in our own ways. At present, however,
this layer itself is at risk. Thus the book can also be read as a defense
and illustration of animals' modes of being, and as a plea for their
survival.