“A lively, combative essay that dismantles, foot by foot, the arguments of the major figures in the thinking on living. […] A reflection of rare fertility.” —Le Monde des Livres

“It reads like a John Le Carré novel.” — France Inter

“What’s fascinating is that Francis Wolff gets to the heart of very simple things – music, love, life – by asking very simple questions: how and why? It’s a philosophical book with very important political implications.” — Gilles Finchelstein

“I would like to emphasize the absolutely jubilant character of this book, we move forward with you in our reflection, we progress little by little. I think it should be read by all high school and philosophy students.” — Natacha Polony

“Pacifying relations between living beings does not require convincing us that we are animals like the others, but presupposes a “good ontology of nature and a good anthropology ” . This is what we will find in this work and, more generally, in the work of Francis Wolff.” — En attendant Nadeau

“A powerful essay… Humanism, whose formula the great philosopher Francis Wolff refines from book to book, is not a speciesism like any other.” — La Croix

“In this book, Francis Wolff methodically deconstructs the foundations of this “ethics of the living”, which has become the dominant thinking in contemporary ecology. He contrasts it with an approach based on the political principles of humanist environmental justice. Rather than promoting a vertical unity between living beings, which would compromise their collective survival, he defends a horizontal unity of humanity, considering it to be its only real chance of survival.” — Acualitté

To the “we, the Wretched of the Earth” of workers’ mobilizations, the “we French” of nationalist exhortations, the “we humans” of the humanist tradition, we must now add the “we, the living” of ecological consciousness. In the various currents of ecological thought, it is no longer so much a question of protecting nature as of caring for “life” or “the living”.

Francis Wolff examines the infatuation with “the living” in recent years (in cultural, political and activist circles, as well as among ecologist intellectuals). He notes that the concept of the living has replaced that of nature. For him, however, only human lives have absolute value, and there is no such thing as a “living” moral community.

A true philosophical reflection on the meaning and value of life, which takes up the basics and leads us to a political conclusion. With a strong message : for the creation of a humanist environmental ethic (centered on the protection of human beings and not biocentric, i.e. centered on the protection and well-being of all living beings, without hierarchy) guided by a single principle : justice.