Advancing his own conception of the ''figure,'' Andrew Benjamin innovatively studies philosophy, the history of painting, and art's representation of Jews and animals. As Benjamin makes clear, the ''other'' is never an abstract concept. The means by which the ethical imperative, arising from the way in which the history of philosophy and the history of art are constructed, conditions us to respond to an already identified, though unacknowledged, determinant other. This is the first book to combine reflections on animals and Jews, engaging with philosophers such as Derrida and Agamben and offering original readings of paintings and art by Goya, Dürer, Rubens Van Eyck, Velasquez, and Turner.