Dostoyevsky explained how human being could be the builder who has the power to destroy everything-that-is. Thomas Mann unveiled the deep influence of the unconscious as well as the subconscious: both components of human psyche must be taken into account, when exploring the mystery of human being. Robert Musil’s literary works focused on commonalities between animals and human beings, that is, their similar instincts. Musil was promoting a new morals, as it is grounded on instinctive (...) life. Dostoyevsky, Mann and Musil agreed that human being is prone to consider himself/herself as an infinite being. Firstly, human being destroys Nature and justifies himself/herself through technocratic, anthropometric, and anthropocentric worldviews. Secondly, human beings forget the situation of nonhuman beings and put the emphasis on their privileged position in the Cosmos. Thirdly, human being looks at language as the supreme quality of living beings and makes human language the ultimate parameter for any other form of language. The way those three aspects of human being and existence are idolized strengthens a mindset focusing on the infinite character of humankind, when compared with the situation of nonhuman beings. (shrink)

For most people, animals are the most significant aspects of the nonhuman world. They symbolize nature in our imaginations, in popular media and culture, and in campaigns to preserve wilderness, yet scholars habitually treat animals and the environment as mutually exclusive objects of concern. Conducting the first examination of animals' place in popular and scholarly thinking about nature, Anna L. Peterson builds a nature ethic that conceives of nonhuman animals as active subjects who are simultaneously parts of (...) both nature and human society. Peterson explores the tensions between humans and animals, nature and culture, animals and nature, and domesticity and wildness. She uses our intimate connections with companion animals to examine nature more broadly. Companion animals are liminal creatures straddling the boundary between human society and wilderness, revealing much about the mutually constitutive relationships binding humans and nature together. Through her paradigm-shifting reflections, Peterson disrupts the artificial boundaries between two seemingly distinct categories, underscoring their fluid and continuous character. (shrink)

Peterson’s book offers an appraisal of current approaches to environmental and animal ethics and deftly critiques the traditional division between the two fields. Attempts to unite the two fields, Peterson claims, have made little progress. Most have concluded that the divide between the two is irreconcilable, but Peterson argues that the divide is counterintuitive, does not reflect our current practice, and does not represent nature, nonhuman-animals, or humanity, correctly.Throughout the book Peterson attempts to demonstrate why other theories have (...) failed, arguing that the mutual exclusivity of the two fields derives from each relying on an incorrect idea of how nature, nonhumans, and humans relate to—and depend upon—each other. Our actual behaviour shows that we do not think that we must be either an environmental or an animal ethicist, but that we act as if we are both. Peterson argues that by challenging this idea of mutual exclusivity a new theory can be put forward that represen .. (shrink)

“What is the nature of the beings that we are?” is perhaps the most difficult question. The difficulty lies in our being a natural animal in a normative environment. In harmony with John McDowell’s conception of a naturalism of second nature, this paper claims that we should not rest satisfied with the predominant scientific picture in which the seeming rift between our animality and our rationality is to be resolved by detailed studies of empirically knowable facts (...) about our animal modes of existence. Instead, appreciating the sui generis character of a distinctive mode of human engagement with the world is a necessary clearing of the ground and an essential first step toward addressing meticulously the above difficult question on human nature. The paper suggests that the human sciences in general and education studies in particular should start off not with disclosed first-natural facts but with a sensitivity to second-natural backgrounds that set the stage for the first-natural facts. (shrink)

In this paper I, firstly (section 1), distinguish between human rights, natural rights and institutional rights and argue that some so-called human rights, such as the right to life, are natural rights and others, such as the right to vote, are institutional rights. Secondly (section 2), I sketch my account of joint rights (developed in more detail elsewhere1) and apply it to two kinds of entities that are importantly different from one another and from individual human (...) class='Hi'>beings, namely, business corporations (section 3) and non-human animals (section 4). I do so to test the scope of joint rights in the context of the ascription of joint rights to human beings being uncontroversial (although the analysis of joint rights is far from being a settled matter). I argue that neither corporations nor animals have joint moral rights, since in neither case do they have moral rights, but that they do have, or at least they ought to have, legal rights, and some of these legal rights arguably ought to be joint legal rights. In doing so, I introduce a significant theoretical innovation to the literature on joint rights, namely, that of a layered structure of joint rights. (shrink)

Introduction: The role of animals in philosophies of man -- Part I: What's wrong with animal rights? -- The right to remain silent -- Part II: Animal pedagogy -- You are what you eat : Rousseau's cat -- Say the human responded : Herder's sheep -- Part III: Difference worthy of its name -- Hair of the dog : Derrida's and Rousseau's good taste -- Sexual difference, animal difference : Derrida's sexy silkworm -- Part IV: It's (...) our fault -- The beaver's struggle with species-being : De Beauvoir and the praying mantis -- Answering the call of nature : Lacan walking the dog -- Part V: Estranged kinship -- The abyss between humans and animals : Heidegger puts the bee in being -- Strange kinship : Merleau-Ponty's sensuous stickleback -- Stopping the anthropological machine : Agamben's tick-tocking tick -- Psychoanalysis and the science of kinship -- Psychoanalysis as animal by-product : Freud's zoophilia -- Animal abjects, maternal abjects : Kristeva's strays -- Conclusion: Sustainable ethics. (shrink)

Recently, Howard argued for the defensibility of research on nonhuman animals. Unfortunately, his essay is unnecessarily combative, lacking in detail, unbalanced, and poorly argued. Howard unfairly and mistakenly stereotypes as biologically naive anyone who rejects his position that nature's poor treatment of wild animals justifies animal research. Those interested in the morality of animal research deserve better guidance than what Howard provides. Here, we analyze Howard's claims and their implications, present relevant literature on ethics and animals, and (...) conclude that much work remains to be done to understand and properly appreciate the moral dimensions of animal research. The questions raised about uses of animals by humans in various activities, including research, are difficult and demand careful interdisciplinary analysis. Simple answers should not be expected. We explore some of the issues and make them accessible to a wide audience, including practicing scientists. (shrink)

How should a philosophical inquiry into the moral status of (nonhuman) animals proceed? Many philosophers maintain that by examining the “morally relevant” psychological or physiological capacities possessed by the members of different species, and comparing them with similar capacities possessed by human beings, the moral status of the animals in question can be established. Others contend that such an approach runs into serious moral and conceptual problems, a crucial one being that of how to give a coherent account (...) of the natural sense of concern for profoundly cognitively impaired human beings if moral status is assumed to depend on features that centrally include cognitive capacities. The present article discusses this debate with reference to Wittgenstein-influenced philosophers whose respective approaches, on the face of it, diverge dramatically. With a primary focus on Hans-Johann Glock and Cora Diamond, and a secondary focus on recent work by Alice Crary, I argue that, despite an overt disavowal of the kind of approach favoured by Diamond and Crary, Glock’s affirmation that we simply do “value human life” brings him closer to that approach than he acknowledges. (shrink)

Although the notion of natural behavior occurs in many policy-making and legal documents on animal welfare, no consensus has been reached concerning its definition. This paper argues that one reason why the notion resists unanimously accepted definition is that natural behavior is not properly a biological concept, although it aspires to be one, but rather a philosophical tendency to perceive animal behavior in accordance with certain dichotomies between nature and culture, animal and human, original orders (...) and invented artifacts. The paper scrutinizes the philosophy of natural behavior as it developed in the organic movement in response to a perceived contrast between industrialized and traditional agriculture. There are two reasons for focusing on the organic movement: (i) the emphasis on “the natural” is most accentuated there and has a long history, (ii) everyday life on organic farms presupposes human/animal interplay, which conflicts with the philosophical tendency to separate nature from culture. This mismatch between theory and practice helps us see why, and how, the philosophy of natural behavior needs to be reconsidered. The paper proposes that we understand farms as local human/animal cultures, and asks what we can mean my natural behavior in such contexts. Since domestic animals adapt to agricultural environments via interaction with caretakers, such interplay is analyzed as “hub” in these animals’ natural behavior. (shrink)

In general, our concepts take shape by way of contrast. Geoffrey Lloyd commented almost 60 years ago on “the remarkable prevalence of theories based on opposition in so many societies at different stages of technological development,” and he illustrated in detail the tendency of the ancient Greeks to think in binary pairs. One fundamental distinction, found in a wide variety of cultures, is that between human beings and other animals, or, more simply, between humans and animals, which serves (...) to identify, define, and privilege our own nature as a species. Classical Greek classifications do not invariably take the form of simple polarities, to be sure; thus, one might locate humanity within the ternary taxonomy of plants, animals, and human beings, or in the alternative triad of animals, human beings, and gods, where humanity occupies the middle tier. But whatever the larger paradigm, the essential differential between human beings and other animals was the presence or absence of reason. Plants, in Aristotle’s schema, possess a vegetative soul, which is to say, the capacity to grow and develop; animals have, in addition, the faculty of perception; but human beings are unique in possessing, in addition to these two parts of the psyche, reason or, in Greek, logos, a trait that we share with the gods (they differ from us in being immortal). (shrink)

The last two centuries have been the centuries of the discovery of the cell evolution: in the XIX century of the germinal cells and in the XX century of two groups of somatic cells, namely those of the brain-mind and of the immune systems. Since most cells do not behave in this way, the evolutionary character of the brain-mind and of the immune systems renders human beings formed by two different groups of somatic cells, one with a deterministic (...) and another with an indeterministic (say Darwinian) behavior. An inherent consequence is that of the generation, during ontogenesis, of a dual biological identity. The concept of the dual biological identity may be used to explain the Kantian concept of the two metaphysical worlds, namely of the causal necessity and of the free will (Azzone, 2001). Two concepts, namely those of complex adaptive systems (CAS) and of emergence (Holland, 2002), are useful tools for understanding the mechanisms of adaptation and of evolution. The concept of complex adaptive systems indicates that living organisms contain series of stratified components, denoted as building blocks, forming stratified layers of increasing complexity. The concept of emergence implies the use of repeating patterns and of building blocks for the generation of structures of increasing levels of complexity, structures capable of exchanging communications both in the top-down and in the bottom-up direction. Against the concept of emergence it has been argued that nothing can produce something which is really new and endowed of causal efficacy. The defence of the concept of emergence is based on two arguments. The first is the interpretation of the variation-selection mechanism as a process of generation of information and of optimization of free energy dissipation in accord with the second principle of thermodynamics. The second is the objective evidence of the cosmological evolution from the Big Bang to the human mind and its products. Darwin has defended the concept of the continuity of evolution. However evolution should be considered as continuous when there is no increase of information and as discontinuous when there is generation of new information. Examples of such generation of information are the acquisition of the innate structures for language and the transition from absence to presence of morality. There are several discontinuity thresholds during both phylogenesis and ontogenesis. Morality is a relational property dependent on the interactions of human beings with the environment. Piaget and Kohlberg have shown that the generation of morality during childhood occurs through several stages and is accompanied by reorganization of the child mental organization. The children respect the conventions in the first stage and gradually generate their autonomous morality. The transition from absence to presence of morality, a major adaptive process, then, not only has occurred during phylogenesis but it occurs again in every human being during ontogenesis. The religious faith does not provide a logical justification of the moral rules (Ayala, 1987) but rather a psychological and anthropological justification of two fundamental needs of human beings: that of rendering Nature an understandable entity, and that of increasing the cooperation among members of the human societies. The positive effects of the altruistic genes in the animal societies are in accord with the positive effects of morality for the survival and development of the human societies. (shrink)

Through the analysis of Conrad-Martius Metaphysical Dialogues, our aim is show the relevance of the concept of spirit (Geist) and soul (Seele) to clarify the constitution of the human being. In order to understand Conrad-Martius’ phenomenological description, it is necessary to explain Husserl’s and Stein’s approaches to the same argument. Briefly their position is described at the beginning of the essay and then the main points of Conrad-Martius’ book are pinpointed. Human being is understandable in the complex of (...) the degrees of nature, that is, with reference to the organic life—plants and animals. Mental-spirit life is the distinguishing element regarding the human being. (shrink)

Dependent Rational Animals consists of a revision of the three Paul Carus Lectures delivered by MacIntyre at the 1997 Pacific Division meeting of the APA. The book is rather different from MacIntyre's work since After Virtue in that it proceeds systematically rather than historically to develop a Thomistic-Aristotelian view of ethics that takes its departure from the continuities in human and nonhuman animal nature and the role of dependence in human life. These issues lead to a (...) consideration of the distinctive virtues required of us if we are to become independent practical reasoners able to acknowledge our dependence on others in arriving at that state of independence as well as continuing dependence on others with whom we participate in the relationships of giving and receiving through which we pursue the goods that constitute human flourishing. The argument proceeds in roughly three stages. (shrink)

I am concerned in this paper with McDowell's account of human uniqueness in nature in terms of a fundamental difference between humans and animals. I try to show that the concept of that difference is relevant for a Wittgensteinian understanding of the place of rationality in nature. I then develop an internal criticism of McDowell's transcendental way of approaching this topic by using Diamond's insights about the importance of the details for a realistic philosophical account of (...) class='Hi'>human mindedness. My aim is to show that the difference between humans and animals is constitutive of our understanding of what it means to be humans, but this is not something we can explain in advance of looking at the weave of our life with them. (shrink)

Much work in care ethics and disability studies is concerned with the flourishing of human animals as an independent species. As a result, it focuses on how the built environments and the social structures that produce them restrict and exclude us. This paper addresses this problem and provides tentative first steps towards sketching an account of ethics that is structured around the interdependent nature of human and more than human life. I argue that our embodied existence (...) places us in a shared condition of vulnerability with all forms of life on earth. This allows us to conceive of caring as an essential condition of the sustainability and well-being of social and ecological life systems. To this end, I discuss the notion of anthropocentrism – and the attendant notion of Anthropocene – and argue that the conception of human animality that underwrites it posits a disembodied and homogenous ‘anthropos’ that is equally responsible for and equally affected by unsustainable social systems. Further, I examine the debate that opposes realist and constructivist accounts of nature, and I argue that it is inadequate to look at nature through the lenses of the predatory social systems that are responsible for ecological injustices in the first place. (shrink)

The Bible recounts that in Eden, Adam gives names to all the animals. But those names are not only representations of the animals’ nature, rather they shape and constitute it. The naming by Adam contains in itself the divide between the human and non-human. Then, there is the Fall: Adam falls and forgets Being. Though he may still remember the names he gave to the animals in Eden, he is no longer sure about their meaning. Adam will (...) have to try to remember his own intentions. Through this effort he can also become aware of how he thinks, who he is, and what was the natural order he knew before the Fall. Medieval bestiaries tell us this story. Bestiaries are works of word play populated by animal figures. They depend on back-and-forth anthropomorphization, or circular metaphor. Animal figures are portrayed as both a mirror of human nature and a window on it. Bestiaries served as means for the moral education of human beings and, at the same time, a way to criticize the current state of humanity, including political and ethical habits. Within the moral irony of medieval bestiaries we can find the origin of the invented nature that modernity will try, subsequently, to insert into natural rights discourse through the teleological oxymoron of their naturalized and naturalizing counter-factuality. I will propose a historical-semiotic journey through the ironic representations of the human-beasts from the ancient world to contemporaneity. The proposal resulting from this cultural excursion is that the words included in the many national and international Rights declarations operate much like the names Adam gave to the animals and still more as they were re-read in medieval bestiaries, both textual and musical. So, can the words of Rights still serve as musical scores, open to an infinite play of re-signification? If we were able to overcome the modern culture/nature and human being/animal dualisms, we could cast, today as in the past, a zoological gaze on human rights by means of contemporary bestiaries and, in this way, perhaps find the gist of rights’ names and our ever regained and ever lost again humanity. (shrink)

L'anthropologie récente et le développement de la primatologie convergent pour abolir la frontière moderne entre nature et culture. Les réticences ne manquent pas cependant. L'histoire des sciences a montré les comparaisons abusives entre les primates d'une part et les primitifs, les enfants et les civilisations préhistoriques d'autre part. Il n'est pas facile d'accepter l'animalité de l'homme moderne sans s'approcher de la barbarie. Un demi-siècle après le Singe nu, cette animalité se résume souvent à la biologie. Cet Essai post-animal (...) s'intéresse au contraire à ce qu'il y a de plus éloigné du biologique : l'art et la spiritualité. C'est un livre dense, volontiers ironique et qui se débarrasse d'idées trop faciles à répéter : l'exception humaine et la double nature de l'humanité. S'inspirant de sources aussi variées qu'érudites, ce livre démontre au contraire que le goût du beau et de l'abstrait s'inscrit dans une continuité évolutionnaire, sans réductionnisme. (shrink)

Biological attention to evolution and animal life has primarily emphasized a filiative approach that, although important, overlooks crucial dimensions highlighted by an ecological approach to animal human societies. Increased attention to singular animals and critical scrutiny of the operating definitions of society and culture indicates that vast dimensions of this area have been overlooked and remain to be studied. It is particularly important to pursue the aspects of signification, meaning, individuation, and subjectivity. Attention to animal (...) class='Hi'>human societies, or to animal cultures that develop in the heart of human cultures, shows that humans and animals often form extimate relations based on particular aspects of animal subjectivity. With certain species we share a dense form of intertwining built on natural, cultural, and biographical histories. Beyond that, an argument on biosemiotic grounds maintains that culture is intrinsic to the living. (shrink)

Addressing the western understanding of the status and nature of animals and the relation of animals to the question of life, this book provides a discourse on animality through an interdisciplinary investigation into various areas of humanities. The nature of animals is explored by drawing on materials from literature, art, religion, philosophy, and political science, focusing on discussions of animality about the classical culture of ancient Greece, metaphysics and its application to debates on life, Martin Heidegger's philosophical theories, (...) and biopolitics. Although the distinctive difference between human beings from animals has long been emphasized, the author argues that they are inseparable from one another to achieve understanding. The interrogation of animality, therefore, provides a new perspective on the nature of human beings in this postmodern era. Academics in western literature, literary theory, literary criticism, and comparative literature will find this work an insightful addition to debates in their respective fields, while it will also help senior university students pursuing their studies. (shrink)

In this challenging book, Ted Benton takes recent debates about the moral status of animals as a basis for reviewing the discourse of “human rights.” Liberal-individualist views of human rights and advocates of animal rights tend to think of individuals, whether human or animals, in isolation from their social position. This makes them vulnerable to criticisms from the left which emphasize the importance of social relationships to individual well-being. Benton’s argument supports the important assumption, underpinning the (...) cause for human rights, that humans and other species of animal have much in common, both in the conditions for their well-being and their vulnerability to harm. Both liberal rights theory and its socialist critique fail adequately to theorize these aspects of human vulnerability. Nevertheless, it is argued that, enriched by feminist and ecological insights, a socialist view of rights has much to offer. Lucid and wide-ranging in its argument, Natural Relations enables the outline of an ecological socialist view of rights and justice to begin to take shape. (shrink)

The end of human history is an event that has been foreseen or announced by both messianics and dialecticians. But who is the protagonist of that history that is coming—or has come—to a close? What is man? How did he come on the scene? And how has he maintained his privileged place as the master of, or first among, the animals? In The Open, contemporary Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben considers the ways in which the “human” has been thought (...) of as either a distinct and superior type of animal, or a kind of being that is essentially different from animal altogether. In an argument that ranges from ancient Greek, Christian, and Jewish texts to twentieth-century thinkers such as Heidegger, Benjamin, and Kojève, Agamben examines the ways in which the distinction between man and animal has been manufactured by the logical presuppositions of Western thought, and he investigates the profound implications that the man/animal distinction has had for disciplines as seemingly disparate as philosophy, law, anthropology, medicine, and politics. (shrink)

David Bakhurst's 2011 book ‘The Formation of Reason’ explores the philosophy of John McDowell in general and the Aristotelian notion of second nature more specifically, topics to which philosophers of education have not yet given adequate attention. The book's widespread appeal led to the symposium ‘Second Nature, Bildung and McDowell: David Bakhurst's The Formation of Reason’, which appeared in the first issue of the 50th anniversary volume of the Journal of Philosophy of Education in 2016. Despite its obvious (...) educational relevance, whether and how Bakhurst's McDowellian line of philosophical argument shapes the domain of educational enquiry or discourse remains up for debate. The rich contributions of Sebastian Rödl, Paul Standish and Jan Derry help us confront this issue. Proceeding with an analysis that is partly explanatory and partly critical of the central aspects of their respective views, I try to show that the basic attraction of the McDowellian/Bakhurstian line of argument concerning educational thinking is that it enables us to address education in the proper context of the natural and the social. In other words, their depiction of a human being as a natural animal in a normative world allows us not to be perturbed either by the natural-scientific conception of the natural or by the social constructivist thinking of the social, both of which have occasionally distorted how education is addressed and therefore impoverished our understanding of education itself. I conclude with a brief word on the significance of continuing and advancing the conversation initiated by the symposium by noting two viable examples of future work. (shrink)

Animals, like humans, suffer and die from natural causes. This is particularly true of animals living in the wild, given their high exposure to, and low capacity to cope with, harmful natural processes. Most wild animals likely have short lives, full of suffering, usually ending in terrible deaths. This book argues that on the assumption that we have reasons to assist others in need, we should intervene in nature to prevent or reduce the harms wild animals suffer, provided that (...) it is feasible and that the expected result is positive overall. It is of the utmost importance that academics from different disciplines as well as animal advocates begin to confront this issue. The more people are concerned with wild animal suffering, the more probable it is that safe and effective solutions to the plight of wild animals will be implemented in the future. (shrink)

At a time when humanity experiences its greatest advances, major conflicts and abuses arise around the world due to a lack of humanism and reason within the meaning of the Enlightenment. Modernity and western comfort in our globalized society have not helped share and balance the wealth, nor preserve the natural resources; it has not prevented crimes against humanity nor the most insane dictatorial actions of the 20th and early 21st centuries. This went hand in hand with a massive degradation (...) of the environment. Could the animal be the solution to all the mistakes we have made during the last century, instead of being considered an inferior, a slave? Could he not be the one who has managed the best in the fields of intelligence, self-regulation and respect of his vital environment? Should we not rather turn toward the animal to find a new balanced model? Respecting the environment and his peers seems to be the most striking evidence of intelligence, does it not? The animal has achieved this. Man has not. Focusing on the way man has treated animals may therefore help us to understand why we have treated our peers so badly. (shrink)

Terminal discharge or discharging terminally ill patients from hospitals in Tanzania as any other end-of-life care decision does not go without moral dilemma. Although the resolutions of end-of-life care decisions in hospitals in Tanzania focus much on material order rather than moral order, this paper shows the moral imperative of terminal discharge. The paper picks one of the controversial bioethical moral issues that are always raised in end-of-life decisions; ‘the distinction between human beings and human-person’ and analyzes (...) it through linguistic categories of Kiswahili language. From the reflections on the semantic charge of human beings (binadamu in Kiswahili) and human-person (mtu in Kiswahili), it is possible to infer that their distinction holds to moral criterion that may influence terminal discharge in Tanzania. The former is a quality that is inborn in so far as anyone who is born as a human being has nature humanity (ubinadamu). The latter, however, introduces a nuance according to which the moral component enables to take humanity away from animality up to humanness (utu). The question is that of knowing, in terminally ill discharge, whether the end-of-life decision makers act out of humanity (ubinadamu) or humaneness (utu). (shrink)

Why do all animals possess sense perception while plants don’t? And should the difference in quality of life between human beings and wolves be explained by supposing that wolves have degenerated souls? This paper argues that for Aristotle differences in quality of life among living beings are based on differences in the quality of their soul-principle together with the body that receives the soul. The paper proposes a new interpretation of On the Soul 2.4.415b18: “For all the (...) natural bodies are instruments of the soul,” against all current interpretations. Aristotle there means that each of the four sublunary elements can be a part of the instrumental body of a soul. The paper continues with discussing the way in which Aristotle connects the several sublunar elements with different levels of life activity, and the troublesome passage in Generation of Animals 3.11.761b22, where Aristotle speaks about a fourth category of living creatures related to the fourth sublunary element, Fire, and the region of the Moon. (shrink)

Human beings are not only self-conscious minds but embodied and social beings, whose subjectivity is conditioned by their social surroundings. From this point of view, it is natural to suppose that the development and existence of a subject that is distinctively human requires contact with other people. The present contribution discusses medieval ideas concerning the intersubjective constitution of human being by looking at the medieval reception of two ideas, which Aristotle presents at the beginning of (...) his Politics: (1) human beings are political animals by nature, which means that those who live outside of political communities due to their nature are either deficient or above humanity – they are beasts or gods; and (2) human beings are parts of political communities, and as such, comparable to hands in a body. When medieval philosophers consider these ideas from metaphysical and normative perspectives, they distinguish different senses in which human beings are naturally political. In effect, they draw a nuanced picture of the relation between an individual human being and the political community, and in so doing they distance themselves from a literal reading of Aristotle. An analysis of the medieval discussions reveals how the social aspect of human subjectivity emerges in medieval political philosophy and how medieval philosophers conceptualise the Aristotelian distinction into three kinds of beings – the beast, the human, and the god. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS 341 if you started asking them questions about possible worlds. But Bradley's contribution is to have given us a painstaking and thorough reading of some extremely tightly wound and important aspects of the Tractatus, to have brought that text into direct contaot with con· temporary issues, and to have made progress toward showing that how· ever remarkable we thought the Tractatus was, it is still more remarkable (...) than that. JOHN CHURCHILL Hendrix College Conway, Arkansas The Human Person: Animal and Spirit. By DAVID BRAINE. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992. Pp. xxv + 555. $32.95 (cloth). Any study in philosophical anthropology that rejects both mate· rialism and dualism, and seeks to set forth a " holistic " alternative, may be met in many quarters with some skepticism today-especially if that alternative seeks to accommodate itself to religious teaching regarding the soul's continued existence after death. For, it will be asked, on the one hand, how can it deny that the esse of the human being ceases at death (538) without affirming some sort of dualism? On the other hand, unless it is some sort of soft-headed New Age philosophy (which this most certainly is not), how can it sustain its claim to "holism" while rejecting the monolithic materialism of those whom Walker Percy once described as our "brain engineers, neuropharmacologists, and chemists of the synapses "? The challenge is " how to produce an account which allows the human person to continue exist· ing after death, and even to have body restored to it, while remaining completely faithful to the insight that it belongs to human nature to be bodily," and, at the same time, to " avoid reerecting the soul into a complete substance" (xix). The peculiar obstacle faced by such a project is the pervasive proclivity towards reductionism in modern accounts of human nature stemming from the impress of both materialism and dualism. Both analyze the human person into an aggregate of parts in certain relations, the behavior of the whole being ·the result of the interactions of these parts. " In all this the materialist has exactly the same picture as the dualist. Indeed, unless the mental can first be represented as inner, logically independent of anything in the ' outer man ' and the ' world,' there is no way in which it can be identified with a brain-process or 342 BOOK REVIEWS state" (3). So whether one thinks of the mind as an independent en· tity (as in dualism), or not (as in materialism), the body is left to be accounted for by the brain engineers and their aggregates of physi· ological, anatomical, neurological, and chemical causes. And since materialism involves no complicating questions about causal interaction between the physical and the mental (as in dualism), it is usually preferred on grounds of its simplicity-all causation being subsumed under the physical. In this ambitious tome, David Braine, a philosopher at the University of Aberdeen, offers a thoroughgoing analysis and critique of such views, whereby he undertakes to overturn these ways of viewing human nature and to offer a holistic alternative. He sets forth a framework for understanding things like perceiving, doing, and speaking as irreducibly the acts of the psychosomatically integrated beings to which we normally attribute them-an understanding that conforms to the ordinary experience of such acts in ourselves and in others. He seeks to expose how materialist arguments repeat the mistakes of the dualists by reducing human beings (and other animals) to their aggregate parts, segmented sequences, and their interrelations. He takes issue with the arguments of recent analytical philosophers (such as Davidson and Dummett) in detail, and sets forth a holistic alternative-both with re· spect to the human person as " animal" and as " spirit." As to the human as "animal," Braine notes, accordingly, that "it is the bodily animal being as such, not just its mind, which is an ' I ', a ' he or she ', a focalized subject in relation to the world. The primary reason why human behaviour cannot be simulated by a computer does not lie in things special to human beings, but in the fact that this fo. calized psychophysical structure which they share with the... (shrink)

Humans routinely make many decisions collectively, whether they choose a restaurant with friends, elect political leaders or decide actions to tackle international problems, such as climate change, that affect the future of the whole planet. We might be less aware of it, but group decisions are just as important to social animals as they are for us. Animal groups have to collectively decide about communal movements, activities, nesting sites and enterprises, such as cooperative breeding or hunting, that crucially affect (...) their survival and reproduction. While human group decisions have been studied for millennia, the study of animal group decisions is relatively young, but is now expanding rapidly. It emerges that group decisions in animals pose many similar questions to those in humans. The purpose of the present issue is to integrate and combine approaches in the social and natural sciences in an area in which theoretical challenges and research questions are often similar, and to introduce each discipline to the other’s key ideas, findings and successful methods. In order to make such an introduction as effective as possible, here, we briefly review conceptual similarities and differences between the sciences, and provide a guide to the present issue. (shrink)

This book offers a powerful response to what Varner calls the "two dogmas of environmental ethics"--the assumptions that animal rights philosophies and anthropocentric views are each antithetical to sound environmental policy. Allowing that every living organism has interests which ought, other things being equal, to be protected, Varner contends that some interests take priority over others. He defends both a sentientist principle giving priority to the lives of organisms with conscious desires and an anthropocentric principle giving priority to certain (...) very inclusive interests which only humans have. He then shows that these principles not only comport with but provide significant support for environmental goals. (shrink)

The general concern of the paper is to ponder whether religious views inform ethical views? This is explored through the issue of animal rights within Judaism. There is not only a great divergence, even today worldwide, on the realm of freedom that non-humans may enjoy, but historically this group of individuals has been most restricted in their behaviour, and level of value, by the Western religious worldviews. Hence it would be instructive to see to what extent an ethical attitude (...) toward animals is present, or absent, and whether the religious prescriptions are justified by moral reasoning. And where we have found textual basis, as we have here, for taking the moral considerability of animals seriously, the next question is: has our moral sense been informed by a religious tradition? And has this led to changes in our secular understanding of ethical treatment toward animals? Or has there been a moral intuition there all along in humans, which has incidentally been expressed in a religious mode? (shrink)

This paper develops a Humean environmental meta-ethic to apply to the animal world and, given some further considerations, to the rest of nature. Our interpretation extends Hume’s account of sympathy, our natural ability to sympathize with the emotions of others, so that we may sympathize not only with human beings but also animals, plants and ecosystems as well. Further, we suggest that Hume has the resources for an account of environmental value that applies to non-human (...) animals, non-sentient elements of nature as well as nature as whole even without the appeal to sympathy. One consequence of this approach is that the reasons for promoting animal welfare need not be restricted to sentientist reasons. (shrink)

There is an ongoing debate in animalethics on the meaning and scope of animalwelfare. In certain broader views, leading anatural life through the development of naturalcapabilities is also headed under the conceptof animal welfare. I argue that a concern forthe development of natural capabilities of ananimal such as expressed when living freelyshould be distinguished from the preservationof the naturalness of its behavior andappearance. However, it is not always clearwhere a plea for natural living changes overinto a plea for the (...) preservation of theirnaturalness or wildness. In the first part ofthis article, I examine to what extent theconcerns for natural living meet ``theexperience requirement.'' I conclude that someof these concerns go beyond welfare. In thesecond part of the article. I ask whether wehave moral reasons to respect concernsfor the naturalness of an animal's living thattranscend its welfare. I argue that the moralrelevance of such considerations can be graspedwhen we see animals as entities bearingnon-moral intrinsic values. In my view the``natural'' appearance and behavior of an animalmay embody intrinsic values. Caring for ananimal's naturalness should then be understoodas caring for such intrinsic values. Intrinsicvalues provide moral reasons for action iffthey are seen as constitutive of the good lifefor humans. I conclude by reinterpreting,within the framework of a perfectionist ethicaltheory, the notion of indirect dutiesregarding animals, which go beyond andsupplement the direct duties towardsanimals. (shrink)

This essay argues that Herder’s conception of history as a form of natural growth is grounded in his claim that humans are a part of nature and develop historically situated forms of reason in communication with the features of their natural and social environments. By stressing this developmental aspect of human reason, Herder not only helps us to correct an overly universalistic conception of reason that ignores the importance of situational contexts in the shaping of cognitive structures; he (...) also allows us to comprehend that the very capacity that has traditionally been seen as distinguishing humans from all other animals—namely human reason—evolves out of a capacity we share with them, namely the capacity to adapt to specific environmental demands. (shrink)

Human beings have a moral duty to intervene to prevent or to mitigate the suffering of free-living animals. This article focuses on that duty, particularly as it exists when an animal asks for help and when animals who need help are within the zone of a person’s ability and willingness to help. As such, people should be free to help if they choose to do so, unencumbered by legal restrictions that outlaw such conduct. However, federal and state (...) laws in the United States remain an obstacle, because they designate some activities that are necessary to help free-living animals as unlawful. Laws should not interfere with human beings’ benign interactions with nature and, in particular, people should be legally permitted to help free-living animals. People should actually assist the individual animals who want or need help, rather than trading individual assistance in favor of ecosystem “management,” policy concerns that favor expediency and budget limitations, or any other tangential issues. (shrink)

This essay discusses how medieval authors from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries dealt with a philosophical problem that social institutions pose for the Aristotelian dichotomy between natural and artificial entities. It is argued that marriage, political community, and language provided a particular challenge for the conception that things which are designed by human beings are artefacts. Medieval philosophers based their arguments for the naturalness of social institutions on the anthropological view that human beings are political animals (...) by nature, but this strategy required rethinking the borderline between nature and art. The limits of nature were extended, as social institutions were considered to be natural even though they are in many ways similar to artificial products. (shrink)

John Dupré explores the ways in which we categorize animals, including humans, and comes to refreshingly radical conclusions. He opposes the idea that there is only one legitimate way of classifying things in the natural world, the 'scientific' way. The lesson we should learn from Darwin is to reject the idea that each organism has an essence that determines its necessary place in the unique hierarchy of things. Nature is not like that: it is not organized in a single (...) system. For instance, there is no universal principle by which organisms can be sorted into species. We are obliged to accept that different classificatory schemes are equally valid, and to take a pluralistic view of biology and the human sciences. These provocative and readable essays move on to discuss a set of contentious topics relating to human nature. To start with, Dupré argues that the concept of a universal human nature should be rejected. He questions the relevance of evolution to explanation of human behaviour, and casts doubt on the concept of normality in human behaviour. He shows that misunderstanding of biology and evolution has lead to widespread misconceptions about human sex and gender-in particular, about sexual behaviour and gender roles. The books concludes with a pair of essays about the differences between humans and animals, which may not be quite so clear-cut as we think. (shrink)

Kant on the Human Animal offers the first systematic analysis of this central but neglected dimension of Kant's philosophy.

The relationship between humans and animals is complex and influenced by multiple variables. Humans display a remarkably flexible and rich array of social competencies, demonstrating the ability to interpret, predict, and react appropriately to the behavior of others, as well as to engage others in a variety of complex social interactions. Developing computational systems that have similar social abilities is a critical step in designing robots, animated characters, and other computer agents that appear intelligent and capable in their interactions with (...) humans and each other. Further, it will improve their ability to cooperate with people as capable partners, learn from natural instruction, and provide intuitive and engaging interactions for human partners. Thus, human−animal team analogs can be one means through which to foster veridical mental models of robots that provide a more accurate representation of their near-future capabilities. Some digital twins of human−animal teams currently exist but are often incomplete. Therefore, this article focuses on issues within and surrounding the current models of human−animal teams, previous research surrounding this connection, and the challenges when using such an analogy for human−autonomy teams. (shrink)

Friedrich Nietzsche associated philosophical asceticism with “hatred of the human, and even more of the animal, and more still of the material”: with aversion to life. Given the prevalent view that philosophy is anthropocentric and idealizes the human, Nietzsche’s remark about philosophical hatred of the human is unexpected. In this paper, I investigate what Nietzsche’s remark implies for philosophical claims of human uniqueness. What is the meaning of the opposition between human and animal, (...) if the opposition somehow expresses hatred also of the human? The investigation leads to an inquiry into metaphysics as an intellectual kind of magic, and into the notion of “power over life” as it connects to intellectual asceticism. Finally, I relate Nietzsche’s remarks on ascetic ideals to Donna Haraway’s questioning of the Anthropocene as a story to think with. I propose that the dualism of the story, the idea of a conflict between Humanity and Nature, can be seen as a feature of the metaphysical attitude that _life_ is to be mastered through escaping from it into the purity of _thinking_. (shrink)

The main claim in this article is that the traditionally Western and currently dominant understandings of the figures of “Nature” and “Animal” underlie and structure different forms of oppression and should be critically confronted. The racial-sexual subjugation of the colonized African draws symbolically on the older Western symbolic subjugations of Animal and Woman. In the Great Chain of Being of Western metaphysics it is Woman’s sexual body that links humans to the domain of the animal, and (...) Man’s intellect that distinguishes and separates humans from that same domain. Situated in the border between human and Animal, Woman merges with the chaos and fleshiness of Animal and Nature. With the emergence of race as a category of classification and colonial justification, the African is placed at the furthest remove from Western Man, the epitome of reasonable humanity. African Woman, in particular, is seen as the Animal Other. The colonial-“civilizing” project thus institutes a certain flight from Nat... (shrink)

The devastating impacts of natural disasters not only directly affect humans and infrastructure, but also animals, which may be crucial to the livelihoods of many people. This book considers the needs of animals in the aftermath of disasters and explains the importance of looking to their welfare in extreme events. The authors explore how animals are affected by specific disaster types, what their emergency and subsequent welfare needs are and the appropriate interventions. They describe the key benefits of management of (...) animals to populations and discuss preventative measures that can be taken to reduce risk and build resilience. They also include a summary of recent debates and public policy advances on animals in disasters. The book covers livestock, companion and wild animals, with case studies to show how the concepts can be put into practice. It provides a standalone text for students of disaster studies and management as well as professionals and NGOs who require an entry-level introduction to the subject. (shrink)

Starting from an examination of foundational issues, the book covers a range of topics, including animals, agency, enjoyment, the good life, contemplation, ...

Judith Still offers a comprehensive discussion of Derrida's contribution to the long-standing philosophical and political debate which insists on defining 'man' against 'the animal'. She makes extensive reference to the two volumes recently published, in French and English, of Derrida's seminar series The Beast and the Sovereign, with particular attention to his source texts such as Defoe, Hobbes, La Fontaine, Rousseau, Agamben and Heidegger.

It is argued that the question of whether or not one is required to be or become a strict vegetarian depends, not upon a rule or ideal that endorses vegetarianism on moral grounds, but rather upon whether one's own physical, biological nature is adapted to maintaining health and well-being on a vegetarian diet. Even if we accept the view that animals have rights, we still have no duty to make ourselves substantially worse off for the sake of other rights-holders. (...) Moreover, duties to others, such as fetuses and infants, may require one to consume meat or animal products. Seven classes of individuals who are not required to be or become vegetarians are identified and their examption is related to nutritional facts; these classes comprise most of the earth's population. The rule of vegetarianism defines a special or provisional duty rather than any general or universal rule, since its observance it based upon the biological capacities of individual humans whose genetic constitution and environment makes them suitably herbivorous. It is also argued that generalizing the vegetarian ideal as a social goal for all would be wrongful because it fails to consider the individual nutritional needs of humans at various stages of life, according to biological differences between the sexes, and because it would have the eugenic effect of limiting the adaptability of the human species. The appeal to the natural interests of omnivores will not justify any claim that humans may eat amounts of meat or animal products in excess of a reasonable safety margin since animals have rights-claims against us. (shrink)

On a tous entendu parler de la théorie cartésienne de l'animal-machine. On sait moins que cette théorie a largement riposté à la bienveillance envers l'animal préconisée par certains penseurs de la Renaissance, Montaigne en particulier. L'intérêt de Montaigne pour l'animal est philosophique : il conteste l'arrogance de l'homme à s'estimer maître de la nature, et opère un renversement de perspectives. Il invente une pensée de l'animal regardant l'homme. A une vision verticale, Montaigne substitue une relation (...) horizontale entre les hommes et les bêtes, faite de solidarités réciproques. Les animaux ne rappellent-ils pas aux hommes le respect de la nature? La réflexion de Montaigne le conduit encore à réhabiliter le rôle de la sensibilité dans la compréhension du monde. Ne serait-ce que pour cette raison, les Essais méritaient bien un nouveau regard. (shrink)