“The poet is truly a stealer of fire. Humanity is his responsibility, animals too.” This quote by Arthur Rimbaud opens Elisabeth de Fontenay’s highly anticipated new work of philosophy about animals and our duties to them. Once again, she brings to the topic of animal rights the critical skills that won her fame for Le silence des bêtes and other books, as she examines both the ethical and the judicial dimensions of human–animal relationships, the definition of animality, and animals rights.

Should we recognize animal rights? And if so, which ones? Are we guilty of a crime when we mistreat an animal? In this groundbreaking study, de Fontenay draws on a wealth of expertise and deconstructs the work of thinkers such as Engels, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Lacan, and Lévi-Strauss to expose our ethical and political responsibilities to animals.