Sun, lizard, rock: between the three flows life. And I can't help wondering who it is that is deprived in world - him or me?
For whilst it may be true that our reptilian friends are unable to encounter other beings as such, or understand themselves within the wide and sophisticated context of meaning that we as human beings have developed, it strikes me nevertheless as a form of anthropocentric conceit to talk about Dasein's richness of world in comparison to the animals' poverty and the inanimate objects' complete absence of such.
When challenged on his thinking in this area and the Nietzschean attempt to revalue our relationship to the non-human world, Heidegger sarcastically responded by asking 'are we then supposed to revert to being animals?'
The remark shows little understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy of becoming, which is non-linear and so neither progressive nor retrogressive. It also displays ignorance of the fact that the idea of reversibility in evolution is not as outlandish as was once believed. In fact, Dollo's Law, first proposed in 1893, is increasingly recognised as non-binding as more and more examples of atavism come to light and new genetic discoveries are made.
However, I don't wish to develop this line of argument. Rather, I simply wish to echo in closing something that Lawrence writes:
If men were as much lizards as lizards are lizards, they'd be worth looking at.
