Develop a deeper, more positive relationship with the animals in your life and become a better person using Animal Lessons. All around you, animals are acting as therapists, trainers, mentors, and gurus—if you pay attention. They want to guide you toward the next step in your personal evolution, and this first-of-its-kind book shows you how to understand and benefit from them. Having worked deeply and intuitively with animals for nearly twenty years, Danielle MacKinnon has a wealth of wisdom that she shares through helpful tools and techniques, client stories, and her step-by-step process for personal growth through animal guidance. With an open heart and mind, you'll develop a new awareness and stronger love of yourself as well as the wise creatures in your life. Praise: "MacKinnon, a psychic medium, blends personal stories with tips and tools aimed at helping readers discover a deeper relationship with their pets. Animals, she writes, often act as therapists, trainers, mentors, and gurus, and can offer lessons on love, patience, happiness, and gratitude."—Publishers Weekly

Philosophy reads humanity against animality, arguing that "man" is man because he is separate from beast. Deftly challenging this position, Kelly Oliver proves that, in fact, it is the animal that teaches us to be human. Through their sex, their habits, and our perception of their purpose, animals show us how not to be them. This kinship plays out in a number of ways. We sacrifice animals to establish human kinship, but without the animal, the bonds of "brotherhood" fall apart. Either kinship with animals is possible or kinship with humans is impossible. Philosophy holds that humans and animals are distinct, but in defending this position, the discipline depends on a discourse that relies on the animal for its very definition of the human. Through these and other examples, Oliver does more than just establish an animal ethics. She transforms ethics by showing how its very origin is dependent upon the animal. Examining for the first time the treatment of the animal in the work of Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Agamben, Freud, Lacan, and Kristeva, among others, Animal Lessons argues that the animal bites back, thereby reopening the question of the animal for philosophy.