What happens to David Lurie in Disgrace? Having been dispossessed of his place and identity in the world of reason, he discovers, or rediscovers, a new way of knowing, as well as a new way of being, that exist, and have always existed, beyond the reach of traditional Western categories of mind and body. Coetzee, through Lurie, privileges the body and the senses as vehicles for knowing and being, and in so doing he reveals a profound connection between his protagonist and the animals whose bodies, passions, and senses traditional philosophy has devalued or ignored, and among whom Lurie, dispossessed, spends more and more of his life. I will argue further that Coetzee's rejection of Western rationalism and his emphasis on embodiment and on the human connection to animal bodies and feelings is anything but celebratory. It is, rather, tragic. Coetzee privileges the body without a glimmer of the hope that marks other contemporary approaches that see the rediscovery of the body as a cause for celebration.