Friderike Spang

Meijer, Eva (2025): Multispecies Dialogues: Doing Philosophy with Animals, Children, the Sea and Others (Book Review)

Author: Friderike Spang
Environmental Ethics, 2025

(Author Accepted Manuscript)

DOI:10.5281/zenodo.17909856

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This invited review of Eva Meijer’s Multispecies Dialogues: Doing Philosophy with Animals, Children, the Sea and Others (Amsterdam University Press, 2025) offers an in-depth engagement with Meijer’s exploration of communication across species. It traces how the book expands the idea of dialogue beyond language to include embodied and material forms of exchange—touch, movement, shared practice—and how these modes can transform everyday coexistence between humans and nonhumans. The review commends Meijer’s ability to weave lived experience and philosophical reflection while drawing attention to the book’s ethical and political implications for interspecies care and listening. At the same time, it raises critical questions about anthropomorphism, scale, and the challenges of extending such dialogical practices beyond intimate contexts. In doing so, the review both affirms Meijer’s contribution to animal ethics and multispecies philosophy and advances the discussion on what meaningful communication and coexistence with nonhuman beings might require.

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