ABSTRACT
This chapter identifies several basic possibilities of existence pertaining to animals. As a science, biology already has decided on how animals are to be considered, namely, as an organism. To rely on biology means that a particular answer to the question what animals really are, is already taken for granted. Several techniques put to use by the breeding industry tend to injure the animal's way of being in a very fundamental way. At the same time, however, G. W. F. Hegel acknowledges that the opposite is true as well. Basic possibility of existence, a basic part of what animals really are, is threatened by the current breeding industry as well, namely the animal's individuality, his/her being a unique individual, a unique living being able to develop certain behavioral patterns. In his philosophy of nature, Hegel identities several possibilities of existence which emerge in animals and which distinguish them from other natural phenomena, for instance plants.
