by Sam Ben-Meir, PhD
What if nature is not a collection of separate beings, but a living web of relations? Ethical Interanimality argues that every creature—human and nonhuman alike—comes into being through its encounters with others.
Our vulnerabilities, needs, and capacities are not private possessions but shared forces that shape us together. Challenging the human-centered assumptions of modern ethics, this book contends that moral life begins not with the isolated will, but with our primordial exposure to others—the fact that we are responsive and interdependent from the start. Rejecting reductionistic accounts of life, Interanimality advances a holistic vision of nature as relational to its core, where complex forms of meaning and value emerge through living systems in interaction. In this light, ethics becomes inseparable from the dynamic world we inhabit, depend upon, and continually transform.
About the author
Sam Ben-Meir is a writer, scholar, and teacher whose work explores the intersections of ethics, nature, and the human condition. He teaches philosophy at the City University of New York, College of Technology, where he focuses on ethics, critical theory, and the practice of disciplined thinking. His essays, articles, and stories have appeared in a wide range of publications, and his research draws on philosophy, ecology, and the arts to illuminate how we share the world with other beings. Ethical Interanimality reflects his longstanding effort to rethink our place in nature and the vulnerabilities that bind all life together.
Westphalia Press 