Abstract

Scholars have remained fascinated by the relationship between philosophy and the novels, stories, and plays of Samuel Beckett. In particular, Cartesian interpretations have long been a hallmark of Beckett criticism. Indeed, Descartes was an important intellectual influence on Beckett and a central figure in his curriculum of philosophical self-education. However, the influence of Descartes vies with an acute awareness of animal ways of being and feeling that appear throughout Beckett’s work. If Descartes articulated a theory of human subjectivity grounded in reason, helping to inaugurate a modern philosophical discourse of anthropocentrism that measures moral standing based on the capacity for thought, Beckett affirms folly and feeling [bêtise] and imagines ways of relating to animals that transcend cognitive or epistemic criteria. His novel Molloy especially embodies an ethics of sensation, intuition, and feeling that includes regard for the physical suffering of animals. Without ignoring differences between humans and animals, Molloy depicts moments of transspecies communication and communion and human efforts to approach animals across ontological and epistemological divides. Reading Beckett through the prism of animals allows us to reconsider his relationship to Descartes and to the philosophical tradition more broadly.