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AA VV - Anthropocentrism. Humans, Animals, Environments (2011, Brill Academic Publishers)
AA VV - Anthropocentrism. Humans, Animals, Environments (2011, Brill Academic Publishers)
AA VV - Anthropocentrism. Humans, Animals, Environments (2011, Brill Academic Publishers)
Human-Animal Studies
Editor
Kenneth Shapiro
Animals & Society Institute
Editorial Board
Ralph Acampora
Hofstra University
Clifton Flynn
University of South Carolina
Hilda Kean
Ruskin College, Oxford
Randy Malamud
Georgia State University
Gail Melson
Purdue University
VOLUME 12
Edited by
Rob Boddice
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2011
Cover illustrations:
Top/bottom left: Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci, Galleria dell’ Accademia, Venice
(1485-90).
Bottom right: T.H. Huxley, ‘Evidence as to man’s place in nature’ (New York: D. Appleton, 1879)
ISSN 1573-4226
ISBN 978 90 04 18794 8
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV
provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center,
222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA.
Fees are subject to change.
preface v
For Stéphanie
contents vii
Contents
List of Illustrations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xi
Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
List of Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xvii
part one
part two
part three
part four
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
list of illustrations xi
list of illustrations
FOREWORD
acknowledgements
List of contributors
Boria Sax holds a doctorate from SUNY Buffalo, and currently works
as an independent scholar and educator. He has published several
books including Animals in the Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the
Holocaust (Continuum, 2000), The Mythical Zoo: An Encyclopedia of
Animals in Myth, Legend, and Literature (ABC-CLIO, 2002), Crow
(Reaktion Books 2003), and City of Ravens (Duckworth, 2011), and
his writing has been translated into several languages. He is also
founder of the non-profit organisation ‘Nature in Legend and Story’,
dedicated to ‘promote understanding of traditional bonds between
human beings and the natural world’. His memoir of growing up in
the shadow of atomic weapons entitled Stealing Fire is forthcoming
with Ad Infinitum Press. He teaches in the Mercy College programme
at Sing Sing Prison and online for the University of Illinois at
Springfield.
introduction
Rob Boddice
1
╇ I refer, in this introduction, to both ‘others’ and ‘Others’, thereby distinguishing
between rhetorical shades of difference and more emphatic separations and distinc-
tions. The animal, depending on the context, is here both ‘other’ and ‘Other’.
2 rob boddice
2
╇Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, History, the Human, and the World Between
(�Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2008), 184.
3
╇Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2003), 26–7.
4
╇ Agamben, The Open, 26–7.
introduction 3
5
╇Dominick LaCapra, History and its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2009), 223.
6
╇ LaCapra, History and its Limits, 189.
4 rob boddice
human, the animal, and nature in general. Such a shift would not only
mark a turn away from anthropocentrism but also point to the inad-
equacies of ‘rights’ discourse, both human and animal. Without simply
taking one back to traditional ideas of natural law, it would lead to a
notion of basic claims of beings in an interactive network of relations
that places sovereignty in question, including state (or divine) sover-
eignty, and requires complex, mutual negotiations among claims as
well as limits on various forms of assertiveness.7
It is with this in mind that this volume sets out, though its findings
are necessarily merely a beginning. While many of the authors in
this collection are pushing heftily at the paradigm LaCapra identifies,
the work begins by begging the question of the very thing that
LaCapra wishes to turn from. Anthropocentrism, he effectively dem-
onstrates, is not so easy to avoid, in the main because it is so difficult
to isolate. I have, in my previous writings, also pointed to the his-
torical cases where, at the moment the animal (or nature) seems to
loom largest, the human overshadows it.8 Binary, or centre/periphery
oppositions are reified precisely where they are questioned, setting a
framework for discussion that merely shifts the discursive register,
leaving the opposition intact. What anthropocentrism is, therefore,
begs the question of what the human is. In the spirit of LaCapra’s
observation that ‘Assumptions set limits to enquiry that may remain
unexamined, especially when they are embedded in a habitus or what
goes without saying’,9 the preliminary essays in this collection dem-
onstrate that once one starts to conceptualise ‘human’, a slipperiness
ensues. Anthropocentrism, whether evoked as an accusation, an
explanation, or an apology, typically rests on the givenness of the
meaning of ‘human’, which gives way to complexity, contradiction
and uncertainty only once that givenness is no longer assumed.
Explicating assumptions is a beginning. In doing this, the book takes
an initial, but necessarily uncertain, step towards LaCapra’s vision
of relationality.
The question remains as to whether an apolitical narrative is pos-
sible, or even desirable, and of course the temptation to anthropo-
morphise lurks in the background of any attempt to think this
7
╇ LaCapra, History and its Limits, 189.
8
╇Rob Boddice, A History of Attitudes and Behaviours toward Animals in Eight-
eenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain: Anthropocentrism and the Emergence of Ani-
mals (Lewiston, NY: Mellen Press, 2009).
9
╇ LaCapra, History and its Limits, 2.
introduction 5
10
╇ Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. Alan Bass (London: Routledge
Classics, 2001), 352–3.
11
╇ Agamben, The Open, 70.
6 rob boddice
12
╇ Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy,
trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 2.
13
╇ Latour, Politics of Nature, 2–3.
introduction 7
14
╇ Latour follows up (Politics of Nature, 20) with his list of what militant political
ecology thinks it does, and what it actually does. It is, in the main, applicable also to
animal studies scholars who are motivated principally by activism:
‘1. Political ecology claims to speak about nature, but it actually speaks of count-
less imbroglios that always presuppose human participation.
2. It claims to protect nature and shelter it from mankind, but in every case this
amounts to including humans increasingly, bringing them in more and more often,
in a finer, more intimate fashion and with a still more invasive scientific apparatus.
3. It claims to defend nature for nature’s sake—and not as a substitute for human
egotism—but in every instance, the mission it has assigned itself is carried out by
humans and is justified by the well-being, the pleasure, or the good conscience of a
small number of carefully selected humans—usually American, male, rich, educated,
and white’.
8 rob boddice
Amazon region into concrete. Nothing can line up beings any longer
by order of importance’.15
Doing away with hierarchy does not solve the ‘problem’ of anthro-
pocentrism; it merely brings the ontological problem of the anthro-
pocentric to the foreground. As Agamben eloquently puts it, ‘If
animal life and human life could be superimposed perfectly, then
neither man nor animal—and, perhaps, not even the divine—would
any longer be thinkable’.16
To exemplify this point, let us examine the essential paradox on
both sides of human-animal ethical debates, taking one strand of
arguments for and against vegetarianism. Within the claim that
humans should not eat other sentient life, since sentience is a basic
marker of the commonality of life on earth, is an implicit claim that
human beings have a distinctive quality that makes us uncommon.
Ethics itself allows humans to transcend the natural, at the very
moment that natural contiguity forms the basis of an ethical argu-
ment. On the other hand, those who advocate the eating of meat
since it is natural, and that humans are animals too, are also reluctant
to abandon the marks of distinction that seemingly allow us to make
choices outside of what we may have been naturally selected to do.
After all, the average meat-eating human in the West chooses to par-
take of this ‘natural’ function with all the trappings and procedures
of modern livestock farming, slaughter, markets, processing, cere-
mony and culinary skill (or lack thereof) that culture prescribes. The
vegetarian argues for commonality, but contravenes it by pointing
out the human capacity to transcend nature and make ethical choices.
The meat eater argues for commonality, but generally subscribes to
the moral, social and civil conditions that set humans apart from
nature, and would surrender them for a natural life with profound
horror. Both positions, in other words, share a complicated anthro-
pocentrism, hidden under an equally complicated conception of the
natural world. Neither follows Latour’s imperative to put nature and
culture into play at the same time, and in the abstraction the cases are
mutually lost.
17
╇ It was precisely the glimpse into the amorality of nature that horrified the likes
of Frances Power Cobbe, for example. She campaigned for animal welfare, princi-
pally against vivisection, on the basis of human eminence, and saw no contradiction
in her continued consumption of flesh.
18
╇Richard W. Bulliet, Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of
Human-Animal Relationships (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
10 rob boddice
╇Marc Fellenz, The Moral Menagerie: Philosophy and Animal Rights (Urbana
20
Contributions
social theory and the rise of humanism. Nimmo argues that human-
ity’s perceived separateness from, and elevation above, the non-
human world has crucially defined the modern human, to the extent
that human ‘subjects’ are essentialised or ‘purified’ through a denial
of their intrinsic relation to non-human ‘objects’. This denial has
constructed and re-constructed our categories of ‘knowledge’, to the
point that empirical enquiry into anthropocentrism in the social sci-
ences must take place within a closed loop. Nimmo thus calls for a
radical re-thinking in order to ‘grasp the world and ourselves’.
Gary Steiner concludes the section by telling us a way that this
might be accomplished. Coming full circle, Steiner reviews the legacy
of anthropocentrism as a central element in Stoic philosophy, chart-
ing its place in the Enlightenment construction of cosmopolitanism.
With one eye firmly on the future, Steiner rebuffs Stoicism with
Porphyry’s understanding of kinship. Porphyry’s ethics in relation to
animals were limited to those who sought a philosophical life, but
Steiner demands that the reader judge whether Porphyry’s limita-
tions can still be justified. Striving for ‘cosmic justice’, Steiner cri-
tiques the anthropocentrism of contemporary discussions of
cosmopolitanism.
The first three chapters of Part Two narrow the broad view of the
opening essays, dealing with aspects of anthropocentrism in social
and cultural context. Eric Silverman’s chapter is an important
reminder to those working in animal and environmental studies of
the novelty of their approach. For however much secular ethicists
now wish to extend the moral compass to the non-human, theolo-
gians have rejected anthropocentrism for a great deal longer on the
grounds of blasphemy. Silverman works through the theological
devices of Moses Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas as they sought
to avoid anthropocentrism in religious language. His otherworldly
focus concludes in a sharp reminder: just as the unknowable God lay
across an insurmountable barrier wrought by the limits of language,
so too do many animal qualities. Silverman suggests that his theo-
logical case study might serve as an example for those whose current
conceptual powers lack reflexivity.
Staying with the religious theme, Paula Young Lee escorts us on an
architectural historical journey in which she argues that the model
‘house of the soul’, namely the human body, crafted by God, has been
‘Â�surreptitiously substituted’ for another body, that of the ‘monstrous
introduction 15
The chapters in Part Three follow logically from Tonutti’s broad view,
sharpening the focus of criticism explicitly upon the theoretical ques-
tion of the animal in its relation to the human. Philip Tonner’s chap-
ter carefully unpacks elements of Heideggerian theory in its relation
to the moral status of animals, making transparency where theory is
often opaque. Tonner’s comprehensive approach to Heidegger’s
16 rob boddice
animal in the eye, Krebber wrestles with the concept of nature, sug-
gests that humans leave their pre-eminent throne, and posits a non-
anthropocentrist way forward. His terminal note, instructing us
through historical example to mediate with, rather than dominate,
the other, is a fitting appeal with which to conclude this volume.
part one
Boria Sax
1
╇Shakespeare, Hamlet, 2:2.
2
╇ L. Diogenes, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. C.D. Yonge (London: George
Bell & Sons, 1895), bk xv, 4.
3
╇ Harriet Ritvo, ‘Humans and Humanists (and Scientists)’, http://onthehuman
.org/2010/03/humans-and-humanists-and-scientists/comment-page-1/#comment-
1013. Accessed, March 22, 2010.
22 boria sax
the use of fire,4 the taboo against incest,5 �politics,6 the making of
tools,7 the understanding of death,8 and the use of language.9 It would
be a massive task to even inventory all the various definitions of
‘human’, let alone critique them.
If it creates such confusion, why not simply dispense with the
word ‘human’? For one thing, because it is so entirely integrated into
so many facets of our culture, including religion and law, that we
would hardly know what to do without it. Secondly, the meanings of
the word are actually, taken as a whole, far from incoherent. The
development of the concept over millennia follows patterns that can
be identified and analysed. Finally, the concept is confusing not
because it lacks meaning, but rather because it has a vast richness of
meaning. It continually invites us to probe more deeply in hope of
finding some core of wisdom. We continually search for a meaning
that underpins all of the partial and incomplete definitions.
Meanings of the word ‘human’ may have proliferated over the cen-
turies, particularly since the Renaissance. But if we trace the concept
to its roots in etymology and in myth, a surprisingly consistent
understanding does emerge. In the initial stage of this process
‘humanity’ is not so much what we now call a ‘species’ as a sort of
experience, primarily one of transience and vulnerability. Human
beings are seen not as existing in relation to ‘animals’ but, if any-
thing, to deities. In the second stage, starting in late antiquity, ani-
mals rather than deities emerge as the major template against which
human beings are defined. In the third stage, starting around the
Renaissance, the understanding of ‘human’ is expanded to embrace
new technologies and cultural products. Humanity, in consequence,
4
╇ Hesiod, Theogony/Works and Days, trans. M.L. West (750 bce; New York:
Oxford University Press, 1988); L. Winner, ‘Resistance is Futile: The Posthuman
Condition and its Advocates’, Is Human Nature Obsolete? Genetics, Bioengineer-
ing, and the Future of the Human Condition, eds. H.W. Baillie and T.K. Casey
(Â�Cambridge, MA: MIT Press): 385–411.
5
╇ Hesiod, Theogony/Works and Days; Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropol-
ogy, trans. C. Jacobson and B.G. Schoepf (New York: Basic Books).
6
╇ Aristotle, Politics, trans. C.D.C. Reeve (323 bce; Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998).
7
╇ Winner, ‘Resistance is Futile’.
8
╇ Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘Freedom of the Will’ [from The Social Contract and
Other Discourses], Animal Rights: A Historical Anthology, eds. A. Linzey and P.B.
Clarke (1754; New York, Columbia University Press, 2004): 32–4.
9
╇Noam Chomsky, Language and Mind (third edn., Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2006); René Descartes, Discourse on the Method and the Meditations,
trans. F.E. Sutcliffe (1641; New York: Penguin, 1968).
the concept of the ‘human’ 23
‘Adam’, the name of the first man according to the Bible, may come
from the Hebrew adamah, meaning ‘soil’, though that is uncertain.10
At any rate, the Biblical God forms Adam of soil and then animates
him with breath.11 Our English word ‘human’ also associates us
closely with soil. It enters the language via the French from the Latin
humanus, which in turn is derived from humus, meaning ‘earth’. We
now traditionally think of human status as exalted, at least in relation
to other animals, but the word ‘human’ is closely related to ‘humble’,
also derived from humus, which can also mean ‘close to the ground’.12
We are, in other words, creatures of the earth. Cognates of the word
‘human’ in other Latin languages such as the Italian uomo, the French
homme, and the Spanish hombre originate from the same root. They
all come ultimately from the Indo—European root ghdhem, meaning
‘of the earth’.13
In Lithuanian, which is closest to the original Indo-European of
any language spoken today, the cognate has a parallel origin. The
word for ‘human’, zmu, is derived from zemz, the word for ‘earth’.14
The etymological association with the earth is a bit less direct in the
Greek word for ‘human being’—anthropos. That comes in part from
the Indo-European root andh, meaning ‘bloom’, suggesting a figure
blossoming from the ground like a plant.15 The idea that humanity
10
╇D.L. Jeffrey, A Dictionary of Biblical Tradition in English Literature (Grand
Rapids, Mi.: William B. Eerdmans, 1992.
11
╇Genesis 2:7.
12
╇ J. Ayto, Dictionary of Word Origins: the Histories of more than 8,000 English-
Language Words (New York: Arcade, 1990).
13
╇ J.T. Shipley, The Origins of English Words: A Discursive Dictionary of Indo-
European Roots (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).
14
╇ B. Colonna, Uomo, Dizionario etimologico della lingua italiana: L’origine delle
nostre parole (5th edn., Rome: Newton & Compton, 2005).
15
╇Shipley, Origins of English Words.
24 boria sax
16
╇R. Willis, ‘Humanity, The Origins of’, Dictionary of World Myth: An A-Z
�
Reference Guide to Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, Heroines and Fabulous Beasts (London:
Duncan Baird, 2000).
the concept of the ‘human’ 25
17
╇ Hesiod, Theogony/Works and Days.
18
╇Genesis 1.
19
╇Genesis 2.
20
╇Mohammed, The Koran, with Parallel Arabic Text, trans. N.J. Dawood (New
York: Penguin), sura 15: 31–32.
21
╇P.M. Roget, L.V. Berrey and G. Carruth, eds., Roget’s International Thesaurus
(3rd edn., New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1962).
26 boria sax
22
╇ Jacques Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, trans. D. Willis (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2008), 34. Despite the reservations expressed in this
�passage, Derrida goes on to use the term animal constantly, almost obsessively in fact
(Sax, 2008).
the concept of the ‘human’ 27
23
╇ L. Boia, Entre l’ange et la bête: Le mythe de l’homme différent de l’Antiquité à
nos jours (Paris: Plon, 1995).
24
╇ Anon., The Epic of Gilgamesh, trans. N.K. Sandars (New York: Penguin, 1970),
62–3.
25
╇ Plato, Protagoras, in Protagoras and Meno (New York: Penguin, 2005): 1–80.
Hesiod speaks of animals collectively only once and only in passing. This comes in
Works and Days (lines 276–7), when he writes, ‘For this was the rule that Kronos’
son laid down: whereas fish and beasts and flying birds would eat one another,
because right is not among them, to me he gave Right…’.
26
╇R. Marchesini, Post-human: Verso nuovi modelli di esistenza (Turin: Bollati
Boringhieri, 2002).
28 boria sax
only deities, but the gods moulded human beings, along with the
animals, from earth and fire. Then the deities directed the brothers
Prometheus and Epimetheus to assign abilities to each. Epimetheus
took the task on himself, though the results were subject to the
approval of his fraternal partner:
To some creatures he attributed strength without swiftness, the weaker
ones he endowed with speed. To some he gave weaponry, while for the
ones he’d given a weaponless physique, he devised some other ability
for their survival: to those he’d wrapped in littleness, he gave the power
to escape on wings or live below the ground; while for those he’d
expanded to a great bulk, he made that bulkiness the very thing that
saved them. And he handed out everything else with the same sort of
checks and balances, the aim of these devices being, so far, to ensure
that no species should vanish from the earth…
But when he finally came to human beings, Epimetheus realised that
he had used up all of the gifts. Humans were naked and defenceless,
without fur to protect them from the elements or hooves to shield
their feet, in fact they did not even have a place to sleep. So that
people would be able to survive, Prometheus stole the fire from the
divine forge of the god Hephaestus and the arts of Athena for them,
and was then punished by Zeus.27
The same conception may be found in a passage by Pliny the Elder
in the first century ce, which echoes Plato’s Protagoras:
All other animals know their own natures: some use speed, others swift
flight, and yet others swimming. Man, however, knows nothing unless
by learning—neither how to speak nor how to walk nor how to eat; in
a word, the only thing he knows instinctively is how to weep. And so
there have been many people who judged that it would have been bet-
ter not to have been born, or to have died as soon as possible. Man
alone of living creatures has been given grief, on him alone has that
luxury been bestowed in countless forms and through every single
limb…28
The drive to dominance, to put it differently, is a product of human
frailty.29
╇Pliny, Natural History: A Selection, trans. J.F. Healy (New York: Penguin,
28
human experience is one of vulnerability, perhaps some animals may now seem
more ‘human’ than human beings. See Boria Sax, The Serpent and the Swan: Animal
Brides in Folklore and Literature (Knoxville, Tn.: McDonald & Woodward/Univer-
sity of Tennessee Press, 1998).
30
╇Marchesini, Post-human.
31
╇ This is pointed out by E. de Fontenay, Le silence des bêtes: La philosophie à
l’épreuve de l’animalité (Paris: Fayard, 1998), who rightly observes that both the
admirers and the critics of Descartes have failed to appreciate the significance of this
distinction between animals and machines.
32
╇Descartes, Discourse on the Method.
33
╇Descartes, Discourse on the Method; Marchesini, Post-human; Derrida, The
Animal that Therefore I Am.
34╇
Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, trans. M.K. Wilson (New York: Harcourt, Brace
& World, 1966); Marchesini, Post-human.
35
╇M. Dekkers, Dearest Pet: On Bestiality, trans. P. Vincent (New York: Verso,
2005); J. Marks, What it Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee: Apes, People and their Genes
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Boria Sax, Animals in the Third
Reich: Pets, Scapegoats and the Holocaust (New York: Continuum, 2000).
30 boria sax
In the later twentieth century, reaction against the racism that had
permeated Western culture, particularly in Nazi Germany, led to
demands for an understanding of humanity that could not be used to
rationalise colonialism, apartheid, or even genocide. For a brief his-
torical moment, the question of what is human even appeared to
have been settled,36 but massive cultural and technological develop-
ments now compel us to address it once again. This is a culturally
hazardous undertaking, since any exclusion from that category now
means denial of legal status and protection.37
Strictly speaking, homo sapiens is, like all species, scientifically
defined by reproductive patterns. A species is considered distinct if it
does not habitually reproduce with others outside its boundaries.38
Thus carrion crows [corvus corrone] and American crows [Corvus
brachyrhynchos] are usually considered distinct species even though
they are virtually identical, since they are separated by the Atlantic
Ocean. But this definition is so specific that it will only satisfy the
most narrowly focused scientists.
The most broadly meaningful attempt to distinguish human beings
from animals by a single, unique feature is in terms of language. This
idea comes to us through a long tradition that goes back at least to
Aristotle and was refined by Descartes.39 Noam Chomsky has written,
‘When we study human language, we are approaching what some
might call the “human essence”, the distinctive qualities of mind that
are, so far as we know, unique to man and that are inseparable from
any critical phase of human existence, personal or social’.40 This cri-
terion for human uniqueness may be less arbitrary than, say, the one
attributed to Plato in the anecdote about Diogenes and the chicken,
but it raises many of the same problems. It as well focuses on a single
attribute, inevitably severing that quality from any evolutionary or
philosophical context.
36
╇ F. Fukuyama, Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revo-
lution (New York: Picador, 2002); Marks, What it Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee;
Ritvo, ‘Humans and Humanists’.
37
╇R.N. Proctor, ‘Human Recency and Race: Molecular Anthropology, the ReÂ�Â�
figured Acheulean, and the UNESCO Response to Auschwitz’, Is Human Nature
Obsolete? Genetics, Bioengineering, and the Future of the Human Condition, eds.
H.W. Baillie and T.K. Casey (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press): 235–68.
38
╇Marks, What it Means to Be 98% Chimpanzee.
39
╇ Aristotle, Politics; Descartes, Discourse on the Method.
40
╇ Chomsky, Language and Mind, 88.
the concept of the ‘human’ 31
41
╇Neil Evernden, The Social Creation of Nature (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1992).
32 boria sax
Conclusions
╇Marchesini, Post-human.
42
╇ Boria Sax, ‘The Cosmic Spider and Her World-Wide Web: Sacred and Sym-
43
bolic Animals in the Age of Change’, A Cultural History of Animals in the Modern
Age, ed. R. Malamud (New York: Berg, 2007); S. Turkle, Life on the Screen: Identity
in the Age of the Internet (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995).
44
╇ B. McKibben, The End of Nature (New York: Random House, 1989).
the concept of the ‘human’ 33
45
╇ A.O.€Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea
(1936; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964).
46
╇R. Kurzweil, ‘The Coming Merging of Mind and Machine’, Scientific American
Reports, 18 (2008): 20–5.
47
╇M. Calacro, Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
48
╇Marchesini, Post-human; G.A. Mazis, Humans Animals Machines: Blurring
Boundaries (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2008); R. Marchesini, ‘Alterity and the Non-
Human’, Humanimalia, 2:1 (2010).
34 boria sax
49
╇ As Roger Smith has argued in Being Human: Historical Knowledge and the
Creation of Human Nature (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), being
human, like ethnicity and other forms of identity, is not fixed but, rather, continu-
ously created through reflection on historical experience.
the concept of the ‘human’ 35
Finally, despite the accretions that have grown around it over mil-
lennia, the concept of ‘humanity’ remains most fundamentally based
on an experience—one of closeness to the earth, combined with
awareness of transience and vulnerability. This contrasts paradoxi-
cally with our seeming dominance among forms of life on the planet,
yet the human drive for dominance has always had something pro-
foundly defensive about it. Modern culture is widely described as
‘anthropocentric’, but that label is a bit oversimplified. It overlooks
that along with human arrogance, and deeply bound up with that,
there have always been intense feelings of extreme human vulnerabil-
ity, even inferiority, with respect to other creatures.50 Failure to rec-
ognise this frequently leads to an undertone of misanthropy, which
often runs through writing about animals or the environment.51 If we
are to overcome human arrogance, we should first understand its
nature and its source.
It would be interesting to know how Plato and the people of
Athens responded to the chicken of Diogenes. The idea of humanity
as frail often seems counterintuitive today, and probably did in
Plato’s day as well. This is because we tend to personify ‘humankind’.
We forget that humanity is composed of individuals, and then imag-
ine our collective identity as a single man or woman, making our
species seem far more unified, and thus more powerful, than it actu-
ally is. It makes us appear to act with a single will. This sort of per-
sonification is apparent, for example, when we speak of democracy
or moon shots as ‘human accomplishments’, the persistence of pov-
erty as a ‘human failure’, or mass extinctions as a ‘human crime’. We
then further exaggerate human control by regarding the power of
technologies as entirely our own, when, in fact, we never foresee their
social and environmental implications in much detail. Each of
us may individually feel nearly helpless as we contemplate a vast
number of threats from personal bankruptcy to global warming,
from viruses in our meals to a collapse of the global economy, from
being replaced by a computer at work to€nuclear war. Nevertheless,
‘humanity’ itself seems nearly omnipotent. Since it is rather like the
50
╇References to anthropocentricism are now so widespread that to single out any
one mention seems almost arbitrary. The best discussion, however, of the rise of
anthropocentric philosophy in the early modern period, together with all its ambiva-
lences, may be Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in
England, 1500–1800 (London: Allen Lane, 1983).
51
╇ Fontenay, Le silence des bêtes.
36 boria sax
way that the Greeks personified lightning as Zeus and the sea as
Poseidon, the personification of humankind as a dominant figure is,
in very literal ways, a ‘myth’.52
But, far from being unified, we human beings barely keep our ten-
dency toward mass slaughter of one another under fragile and spo-
radic control. We are nowhere remotely close to being able
consciously to guide the course of history or even the evolution of
technology. ‘Anthropocentrism’ is this tendency to vastly exaggerate
human dominance, understanding, power, autonomy, unity, guilt,
virtue, wickedness, and morality.
On a day to day basis, our middle classes may appear to enjoy lives
of relative comfort and security, but the threats to humanity from
plague, war, and natural catastrophes are much the same as in Biblical
times. It is precisely this experience of ‘humanity’ that enables us to
indentify strongly with imperilled animals, from the plucked chicken
of Diogenes to the polar bear on a melting piece of ice. Our status
and survival are far from assured, but how could we be ‘human’ if
they were?
52
╇ Human beings in the twenty-first century have not ceased to conceive the
world in mythic terms. ‘In the words of enthusiasts just as in those of the prophets of
destruction, we find the iconic images and ideas, figures and metaphors taken from
premodern Christianity. Thus the cosmos of the technophiles abounds in images of
neotenic angels, theriomorphic demons, disembodied entities, and absolute good-
ness; at the same time, in the pantheon of the technophobes are enormous millennial
terrors, deference for the integrity of creation, strikes at the arrogance of human-
kind’. Marchesini, Post-human, 546 (author’s own translation).
the view from somewhere 37
Kevin DeLapp*
*
╇ I am grateful to Rob Boddice for many helpful comments on an earlier version
of this paper.
38 kevin delapp
1
╇ Aristotle: Selections, trans. Terence Irwin and Gail Fine (Indianapolis: Hackett
Publishing, 1995), 456–8 (Politics, 1254a20–1255a1).
2
╇ For example, it is not clear that the ancient Hellenes possessed any concept of
‘race’ upon which to be racist in the first place. Although the Greek word genos may
be translated as ‘race’, different Hellenic city-states were themselves denominated by
this term, so that the word fails to uniquely differentiate foreigners. Even the Greek
word xenos, commonly translated as ‘alien’, does not work well with modern concep-
tions of racism: the word is too deeply embedded in the Hellenic institution of hos-
pitality, according to which even fellow Greek-speakers could be xenoi.
3
╇One of the most influential expressions of early modern ‘scientific racism’
was offered by François Bernier, ‘New divisions of Earth by the different species or
races which inhabit it’, Journal des Sçavans (April 24, 1684), trans. T. Bendyphe in
‘Â�Memoirs Read before the Anthropological Society of London’, vol. 1 (1863–4): 360–
4. For a history of scientific racism in the modern era, see Stephen Jay Gould, The
Mismeasure of Man (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1981).
40 kevin delapp
4
╇ Cf. Aristotle, Politics, 1098a5-10, in Selections, 357. Aristotle takes himself to be
describing un-controversially the common opinions (doxa) of his culture. He goes
on to express his ethical anthropocentrism by denying non-human animals the end
of genuine happiness on the grounds that they lack reason and speech (logos) as well
as decision-making abilities (boulesis). See Aristotle, Politics, 1100a1–5 and
1111b12–14in Selections, 361, 380. This alleged metaphysical difference separating
humans and non-humans, and in turn reinforcing Aristotle’s ethical anthropocen-
trism, can also be found at Politics, 1332b5–6; Metaphysics, 980b26–28; On the Soul,
414a29–414b19; and History of Animals 588a1–588b4.
5
╇ The etymology of the word ‘barbarian’ seems to be derived from an onomato-
poetic representation of what the Persian language sounded like to Greek ears—‘bar-
bar’ being the Greek equivalent of the English ‘blah, blah, blah’. See also Milligan,
‘Speciesism as Anthropocentrism’, this volume.
the view from somewhere 41
6
╇ Aristotle, Politics, 1147b5, in Selections, 416.
7
╇ Herodotus, Histories, 2.158. Note, however, that even Herodotus only grants
moral inclusiveness on the basis of linguistic accessibility: specifically, the other cul-
ture in question must still be ‘same-tongued’ (homoglossous).
42 kevin delapp
Once they say that he [Pythagoras] was passing by when a puppy was
being whipped, and he took pity on it and said: ‘Stop, do not beat it;
for it is the soul [psyche] of a friend that I recognized when I heard it
giving tongue’.8
The ethical treatment of animals in Pythagoras is therefore quite
consistent with ethical anthropocentrism. For the ‘animals’ that are
being well-treated are simply not viewed as non-humans in the first
place. At any rate, early forms of ethical anthropocentrism such as
Aristotle’s bequeathed an array of insipid biases that persisted in the
cultural inheritance of subsequent traditions throughout the medi-
eval and Renaissance periods.
With the dawn of the early modern period, European societies wit-
nessed a remarkable degree of flux and destabilisation: theological
dogma fragmented in the wake of reformers like Martin Luther; and
the hegemonic assurance that the Earth (and in turn, Western
Europe) was at the centre of all things—geographically, cosmologi-
cally and ideologically—was overturned by new scientific and anthro-
pological discoveries. In Britain alone, the Glorious Revolution of
1688 demolished whatever assumptions there might have remained
in the supreme power of the monarchy. That same year, the newly
established parliamentary democracy passed the Act of Toleration
extending some religious freedoms to different Christian denomina-
tions and ending the unity and authority of the Church of England.
And the long-lived House of Stuart, having collapsed with the death
of Princess Anne, was replaced by a new lineage of foreign
Hanoverians.
Thus, the beginnings of modernity in Europe ushered in a pro-
nounced undermining of traditions that had historically offered spir-
itual guidance, political commitment and moral confidence.
Descartes’ manic search for reliable epistemological foundations was
quite representative of this Weltanschauung. The dizzying complex-
ity, disorienting elaboration and compensatory extravagance of the
Baroque was further recapitulated in the visual, musical and literary
arts of the era.
Adding to the growing nexus of cultural destabilisation was an
emerging view of ‘human nature’ as itself chaotic and pernicious. The
8
╇ Xenophanes fr.7, Diogenes Laertius VIII, 36 in The Presocratic Philosophers,
ed. G.S. Kirk, J.E. Raven and M. Schofield (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1983), 219.
the view from somewhere 43
9
╇ L.A. Selby-Bigge remarks in the ‘Introduction’ to his British Moralists (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1897) that these two authors might differ as to the seriousness of
their theses—e.g. Mandeville might have been more satirical than literal—but he
agrees that both theses nevertheless stimulated a ‘crisis’ that galvanised the next gen-
erations of moralists.
10
╇ Leslie Stephen, English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century (Hono-
lulu, Hawai’i: University of the Pacific, 2003).
11
╇David Wiggins, Needs, Values, Truth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 99.
12
╇ Cf. Krebber, ‘Anthropocentrism and Reason’, this volume.
44 kevin delapp
13
╇ Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. Knud Haakonssen (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 131.
14
╇David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (3.3.1), ed. P.H. Nidditch (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1978), 581–2.
the view from somewhere 45
15
╇See Krebber, ‘Anthropocentrism and Reason’, this volume.
16
╇ Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W.
Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), 35–6 (Ak. 428).
17
╇David Hume, ‘Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature’, in Essays: Moral, Polit-
ical and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), 82.
Emphasis mine.
46 kevin delapp
18
╇ John Balguy, ‘The Foundation of Moral Goodness’ (1728), British Moralists, ed.
Selby-Bigge, 79. Emphasis mine.
19
╇Rob Boddice has argued, for instance, that such ethical anthropocentrism was
even consistent with the anti-vivisectionist movements of the time. See Boddice,
A History of Attitudes and Behaviours Toward Animals in Eighteenth- and Nine-
teenth-century Britain: Anthropocentrism and the Emergence of Animals (Lampeter:
Edwin Mellen Press, 2009). Gary Steiner has also provided an overview of other atti-
tudes toward animals in the philosophical literature of the period. See Steiner,
Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents: The Moral Status of Animals in the History of
Western Philosophy (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005).
20
╇ John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1971).
the view from somewhere 47
21
╇ This is how Michael Sandel critiques Rawls’ theory of political personhood in
his ‘The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self’ in Contemporary Political
Philosophy, eds. Robert E. Goodin and Philip Pettit (Oxford: Blackwell University
Press, 1997), 247–55.
22
╇Rawls, Theory of Justice, 517
48 kevin delapp
╇G.E. Moore, Principia Ethica (New York: Amherst, 1988), especially chapter 1.
23
╇ For influential discussions of moral realism which use ‘realism’ interchangea-
24
bly with ‘objectivism’, see J.L. Mackie, Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (London:
Penguin, 1977); James Rachels, ‘The Challenge of Cultural Relativism’, Conduct and
Character, ed. Mark Timmons (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing, 1999), 69–75;
David B. Wong, Moral Relativity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984).
25
╇Mackie, Ethics, 16. Emphasis mine.
26
╇David Brink, Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics (Cambridge:
Â�Cambridge University Press, 1989), 14–36.
the view from somewhere 49
is quite different from saying that moral values themselves are (meta-
physically) impersonal. Values are intractably personal in the analytic
sense that they make reference to ‘being valued’, and ipso facto refer
to valuers. Indeed, Brink’s characterisation would not be able to
accommodate impersonal deliberation as a value itself.
Bernard Williams has added an additional sense of objectivity to
debates between realists and relativists by appealing to what he called
an ‘absolute conception of reality’.27 According to Williams, whether
or not something admits of an absolute conception constitutes a lit-
mus test for whether it is genuinely objective; and something admits
of an absolute conception if and only if it is ‘non-perspectival’.
Williams describes being non-perspectival as a purging of ‘our per-
spective and its peculiarities’.28 Using similar language, J.J.C. Smart
claimed that such objectivity cannot be in any way ‘anthropocentric’.29
Conflating this sense of objectivity with moral realism, however,
implies that, in order for values to be ‘real’, they must make abso-
lutely no reference to anything anthropocentric. Yet this generates a
contradiction—for how could a conception of reality be non-per-
spectival when the very act of conceiving of a non-perspectival con-
ception itself constitutes a perspective? How can we characterise
reality by absolute conception in the first place if we are prevented
from using our human concepts? Indeed, having a perspective at all
(or at least having a perspective that one is aware of as such) appears
to be a uniquely anthropocentric capacity. Peter Railton has made a
similar objection: ‘A standpoint without any subjectivity is a stand-
point with no point of view—which is to say, no standpoint at all’.30
Thomas Nagel’s consideration of the ‘view from nowhere’ further
helps illuminate some of the problems that face theories of moral
realism which reject anthropocentric elements tout court.31 Nagel
highlights what he considers to be an intractable tension in any
attempt to reconcile our ineliminable subjective perspective (i.e. the
27
╇ Bernard Williams, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge, MA:
Â�Harvard University Press, 1985), 132–55.
28
╇ Williams, Ethics, 138–9.
29
╇ J.J.C. Smart, Philosophy and Scientific Truth (London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul, 1963), 151.
30
╇Peter Railton, ‘Aesthetic Value, Moral Value, and the Ambitions of Natural-
ism’, Aesthetics and Ethics: Essays at the Intersection, ed. Jerrold Levinson (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 63.
31
╇ Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (New York: Oxford University Press,
1986).
50 kevin delapp
32
╇ Wiggins, Needs, Values, Truth, 100.
33
╇Nagel, View from Nowhere, 7.
34
╇Nagel, View from Nowhere, 5–6.
the view from somewhere 51
35
╇Of course, Daoism is not a monolithic tradition: this essay focuses specifi-
cally on philosophical Daoism, drawn largely from the classical text of the Zhuangzi.
Alternate Daoist texts, different interpretations of Daoism which are more religious
in orientation, or historical developments in Daoist thought after the classical era, all
go beyond the scope of the present analysis. These alternate sources might well yield
quite different positions with respect to metaethical or ethical anthropocentrism.
52 kevin delapp
36
╇ e.g. Burton Watson, Chuang-Tzu: The Basic Writings (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1996), 62–4.
37
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 59.
38
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 24.
39
╇Eric Schwitzgebel interprets Zhuangzi in a similar way, referring to his use of
language as ‘ironic’ and his aims as ‘therapeutic’. See Schwitzgebel, ‘Zhuangzi’s Atti-
tude Toward Language and His Skepticism’, Essays on Skepticism, Relativism, and
Ethics in the Zhuangzi, eds. Paul Kjellberg and Philip J. Ivanhoe (New York: SUNY
Press, 1996), 68–97. Mark Berkson makes an analogous point in his comparative
reading of Zhuangzi alongside Derrida, in which he describes the use of language by
both thinkers as ‘apophasic’. See Berkson, ‘Language: The Guest of Reality—
Zhuangzi and Derrida on Language, Reality, and Skillfulness’, Essays on Skepticism,
eds. Kjellberg and Ivanhoe, 97–126.
the view from somewhere 53
40
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 59.
41
╇Of course, Zhuangzi also seems to acknowledge that even non-humans can be
guilty of such anthropocentric imposition. In one example, a praying mantis is slain
by an on-coming carriage when the insect foolishly attempts to stop the carriage by
waving its arms: ‘such was the high opinion it had of its talents’, the text adds sar-
donically. See Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 59.
42
╇ This translation follows Wang-tsit Chan, A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963). Watson substitutes ‘heavenly’ for
‘nature’, cf. Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 104. The Chinese word in the text is dao, which
seems to permit both renderings.
43
╇ Looking to the animal and natural world for ethical inspiration is a theme
found in various Confucian passages as well. In a well-known example from Men-
cius, a king is described as discovering his own heart (xin) for his human subjects
through the sympathy he feels upon watching an ox about to be sacrificed. The king
is reminded that, ‘once having seen them [animals] alive, he cannot bear to see them
die, and once having heard their cry, he cannot bear to eat their flesh. That is why the
gentleman (junzi) keeps his distance from the kitchen’. See D.C. Lau, trans. Mencius
(London: Penguin Books, 1970), 55.
54 kevin delapp
embody a quiet nobility by the very fact that they lack the words that
too often generate strife: ‘When animals face death, they do not care
what cries they make; their breath comes in gasps and a wild fierce-
ness is born in their hearts’.44
Zhuangzi is quite right to castigate such blind and dangerous
forms of anthropocentrism, reminding us that we should celebrate
and learn from differences. We should be open to new experiences,
avoid self-assurance or arrogance, and respect the animal and natural
worlds in which we live. But the anthropocentrism that is being
rejected here is primarily of the first-order, ethical variety rather than
the metaethical sort of anthropocentrism discussed above.45 The
Daoist critique of certain perspectives should not be conflated with
an eschewal of anything perspectival. Although moral consideration
should be expanded beyond the exclusively human realm, humans
must nonetheless envision non-human interests from the perspective
of their own (human) interests and sensibility. For, our picture of the
moral status of non-human animals is just that: our picture.
Indeed, the Zhuangzi abounds with numerous passages which are
best interpreted as embracing perspectivalism and disdaining abso-
lute conceptions or ‘objective blindness’. For instance, throughout
the Zhuangzi, creatures are praised for staying true to the sorts of
entities that they ‘naturally’ are. Thus, the ‘perfect person’ follows the
‘mind (xin) given’ to him or her, and in so doing ‘rides the clouds
and mist, straddles the sun and moon, and wanders beyond the four
seas’.46 The ‘natural’ chirping of birds, however, is described as being
semantically ephemeral, ‘like wind’.47 And although creatures may
respond differentially to different expressions, ultimately ‘there is no
ently rejected should not be overblown. Lisa Kemmerer, who favours this interpreta-
tion of Daoism, nonetheless acknowledges that other passages in the text might be
equally supportive of ethical anthropocentrism. For example, the Laozi describes
Heaven and Earth as ‘ruthless’ and then enjoins the human Sage (shengren) to be
similarly ruthless. See D.C. Lau, trans. Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching (London: Penguin
Books, 1963), 9. However, Kemmerer notes that, ‘arguments [that find ethically
anthropocentric attitudes in Daoism] are easy to come by. Most people (whether in
China or the U.S.) grow up believing that human exploitation of other creatures is
religiously sanctioned’, and so even a small amount of text challenging such beliefs
is noteworthy. Lisa Kemmerer, ‘The Great Unity: Daoism, Nonhuman Animals, and
Human Ethics’, Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 7:2 (2009), 63.
46
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 41.
47
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 57.
the view from somewhere 55
change in the reality behind their words’.48 So, on the one hand,
Zhuangzi seems to be saying that our perspectives, bound as they are
by our language and concepts, are limited. And yet, it would be
unnatural and impossible to seek to transcend these limitations: birds
continue to chirp and humans (Zhuangzi himself included!) continue
to speak. Despite the partiality of their perspective, both nonetheless
‘have something to say’.49 Similarly, Zhuangzi points out that crea-
tures such as the morning mushroom or the summer cicada are
‘short-lived’, but no conclusion is drawn that this limitation is an
undesirable let alone an eliminable quality. After all, the mushroom
and the cicada live ‘naturally’, and the ‘length’ of a lifespan is a highly
relative concept. Indeed, when long lives are pursued by creatures for
whom longevity is unnatural, they are chastised as ‘pitiful’.50
Zhuangzi famously asserts that ‘name is only the guest of reality’.51
Like all relationships between guest and host, this arrangement must
be mutually respectful: objective reality must meet our subjective
naming-practices halfway. When the cocky logician Huizi ‘treats his
spirit like an outside’ by reifying his own logical distinctions, he tres-
passes on the objective reality which hosts his experience.52 The Sage
(shengren) by contrast is able to respect the mutuality of both guest
and host—i.e. the interconnectedness of subjective and objective
standpoints—and is therefore praised for ‘walking two roads’ and
‘resting in heaven the equalizer’. The Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi
conclude with a mythic allegory concerning this host-guest relation-
ship. The spirits of the North and South seas (Hu and Shu, respec-
tively) are described as inadvertently slaying their host Hun-tun (who
occupies the Centre of the world) when they ‘bore holes’ in him out
of the mistaken belief that this will return the kindness of his hospi-
tality.53 These names can be read as allegories for Nagel’s two funda-
mental differences in perspective which were discussed above: the
names hu and shu refer to the limited and ephemeral subjective
standpoint;54 Hun-tun refers to everything, i.e. the totality of objective
48
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 36.
49
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 34.
50
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 24.
51
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 26.
52
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 72.
53
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 95.
54
╇ Kjellberg translates these terms onomatopoetically as ‘Whish’ and ‘Whoosh’.
Watson translates them as ‘Sudden’ and ‘Brief’. See Kjellberg, ‘Zhuangzi’, Readings
56 kevin delapp
in Classical Chinese Philosophy, eds. Philip Ivanhoe and Bryan Van Norden (Indi-
anapolis: Hackett, 2001), 236; Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 95.
55
╇ Kjellberg translates this word as ‘All-Full’ whereas Watson has ‘Chaos’.
56
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 83.
57
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 76.
58
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 34.
the view from somewhere 57
This essay has argued not only that perspectival realism has its
own philosophical merits as a metaethical position, but also that it
has significant hermeneutic attractions when conjoined with Daoism.
On the one hand, Daoism provides a liveable worldview that
addresses worries about the ‘ecological validity’ of perspectival real-
ism. On the other hand, perspectival realism provides a useful inter-
pretative framework with which a difficult text like the Zhuangzi can
be understood. The perspectival moral realism of Daoism harnesses
the craving to locate moral values in a realm that is independent of
the vicissitudes and idiosyncrasies of subjective opinion. But it also
avoids the pernicious first-order anthropocentrism of both ancient
Hellenic as well as Enlightenment thought, in which linguistic biases
disabled the extension of moral consideration to non-human animals
or the natural world.59 The constitution of morality may be funda-
mentally anthropocentric, without the content of that morality being
anthropocentric. And such a morality is no less ‘real’ for that fact. As
Zhuangzi puts it more poetically, ‘If you were to hide the world in the
world, so that nothing could get away, this would be the final reality’.60
59
╇Eric Nelson has recently offered a similar interpretation of Daoism as rejecting
what I have called ethical anthropocentrism. Although he does not address the meta-
ethics of anthropocentrism per se, his interpretation of dao as a dynamic, emergent
property born of the relationship and interaction between things in the world—what
he calls an ‘ethics of encounter’—contains somewhat similar commitments to the
thesis I have defended in this paper. See his ‘Responding with Dao: Early Daoist Eth-
ics and the Environment’, Philosophy East and West, 59:3 (2009): 294–316.
60
╇ Watson, Chuang-Tzu, 77.
the making of the human 59
Richie Nimmo
╇ I should stress that I do not want to suggest that modernity and humanism are
2
while non-humans are objects, it tells us, and from this essential dif-
ference all else follows. In truth both parts of this dualism are mutu-
ally constitutive, such as to make a nonsense of their separation: A
‘subject’ can only exist as a subject in a world irreducible to its sub-
jectivity; while an ‘object’ can only exist as a distinct object, a thing-
in-itself rather than part of an indivisible flux, when perceived as
such by a subject. But humanist discourse suppresses this dialectical
interrelationship, rendering it an asymmetric dualism and inscribing
humans and non-humans as incommensurable, as though they
belong to different ontological domains or sectors of reality. This in
turn enables humanity to be elevated and centralised, while its neces-
sary other—its very conditions of existence—are suppressed and
marginalised, relegated to the status of a ‘context’, a mere ground
upon which the human subject stands.
In its Cartesian form this is mind/body or mind/matter dualism, a
philosophy much criticised but still strikingly persistent in many
subtle ways. Its central assertion is that all humans possess ‘minds’
and ‘consciousness’ whereas all non-humans do not. Thus non-
humans merely exist, as things-in-themselves, while humans do not
merely exist but also think; we are conscious and self-conscious
beings-in-ourselves. This is essentially religious, for by dislocating the
‘mind’ from its material embodiment and conceiving it as a kind of
immaterial substance, Cartesian dualism effectively retains the notion
of the human ‘soul’, albeit translated into secular form. For what else
is this intangible, metaphysical thing, irreducible to the thinking
body, the cognitive organism, and which is the basis of our self-sep-
aration from the world of matter and nature? Like the ‘soul’, the
‘mind’ of course does not exist as such. If we cut into our heads we
find only brains, which is to say, more body, more matter and more
nature. The ‘mind’ is a category of our language which we enact into
being in our lived practices. When rendered as a kind of immaterial
substance, an ontological other of matter, then it can only be a theo-
logical notion—the secular ‘soul’ of modern humanism.
3
╇ The environmental sociologists Riley Dunlap and William Catton Jr. gave per-
haps the clearest expression of an emerging eco-centric approach by contrasting
what they called the ‘Human Exemptionalist Paradigm’ or hep with a ‘New Ecologi-
cal Paradigm’ or nep. The former they argued is based upon the assumption that
humans are so unique in their possession of culture as to be exempt from environ-
mental forces and processes affecting other species, whereas the latter paradigm
stresses the complex interdependence of humans with other species and the material
embeddedness of human society within wider bio-physical processes and eco-system
dynamics. See Riley Dunlap and William Catton Jr., ‘Environmental Sociology’,
Annual Review of Sociology, 5 (1979): 243–73.
4
╇ I cannot possibly do justice here to what is a sizeable, diverse and growing
literature, but a few exemplary texts might include Adrian Franklin, Animals and
Modern Cultures: A Sociology of Human-Animal Relations in Modernity (London:
Sage, 1999); James Serpell, In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal
Relationships (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Arnold Arluke and
Clinton Sanders, Regarding Animals (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996);
Steve Baker and Carol J. Adams, Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Represen-
tation (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2001).
5
╇Synonymous with the work of Donna Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and
Women (London: Free Association Books, 1991); eadem, Primate Visions: Gender,
Race and Nature in the World of Modern Science (London: Verso, 1992); eadem, The
Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Chi-
cago University Press, 2003).
6
╇See in particular Sarah Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies: Natures, cultures,
spaces, (London: Sage, 2002); and Steve Hinchliffe, Geographies of Nature: Societies,
Environments, Ecologies (London: Sage, 2007).
7
╇See Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1988); idem, We Have Never Been Modern; idem, Reassembling the
Social: An introduction to Actor Network Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press
2005); Michel Callon, ‘Some Elements of a Sociology of Translation: Domestication
of the scallops and the fisherman of St. Brieuc Bay’, Power, Action and Belief: A New
Sociology of Knowledge, ed. John Law (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986);
John Law, ‘Introduction: Monsters, Machines and Sociotechnical Relations’, A Soci-
ology of Monsters? Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, ed. John Law (Lon-
don: Routledge, 1991), idem, After Method: Mess in Social Science Research (London:
Routledge, 2004); Mike Michael, Constructing Identities: The social, the Nonhuman,
and Change (London: Sage 1996); idem, Reconnecting Culture, Technology and
Nature: From Society to Heterogeneity (London: Routledge 2000).
64 richie nimmo
�sciences have merely been complicit in the much wider epochal prac-
tice of systematically separating the human from the non-human;
they have been the unwitting servants of humanist discourse. The
natural sciences are equally implicated however, because the social
sciences and humanities are to the natural sciences as culture is to
nature. Indeed the overarching demarcation of modern disciplines
with its bifurcation of domains of knowledge is fundamentally struc-
tured by the culture-nature dualism of humanist discourse. Let us
therefore look more closely at this dualism.
8
╇Peter Brooker, Cultural Theory (London: Arnold, 1999), 51.
9
╇See Tonutti, ‘Anthropocentrism and the Definition of “Culture”’, this volume.
the making of the human 65
othering process is at work: society and culture are other than nature,
they are the domain of humans, as distinct from that of non-humans.
This is simultaneously an ontological and an epistemological claim:
because the world itself is fundamentally divided into two incom-
mensurable domains, our forms of knowledge must be similarly
divided, into natural knowledge on the one hand and socio-cultural
knowledge on the other, each being conceived as essentially different.
In effect this performs what Bruno Latour has called a ‘work of
purification’;10 it ‘purifies’ the human domain by rendering it seem-
ingly autonomous, by stripping ‘culture’ or ‘the social’ of all the
diverse non-humans with which in practice it is always inextricably
bound up.
The social sciences have often seemed the awkward case in this
modern episteme, being located somewhat ambiguously between the
longer established natural sciences and humanities. This has been
expressed in the persistent debate as to what should be their proper
self-identification, with some seeing the idea of a ‘social science’ as a
contradiction in terms,11 others deeming it a necessity,12 and still oth-
ers as a desirable but only approximately achievable ideal. This debate
has been vigorous and sustained. What it has not done however, or
what has only relatively recently begun to be done, is to question the
very modernist division of knowledge in terms of which the entire
debate has been framed. Despite their pronounced tendency towards
epistemological reflexivity, the various shades of social scientific
thought have remained very much in thrall to the core ontological
assumptions of humanist discourse.
In the following sections I trace this discourse through certain key
moments in nineteenth-century social theory, showing how it has
deeply structured modern thinking on ‘the social’ and has contrib-
uted profoundly to shaping the social sciences more widely. The spe-
cific path I trace will necessarily be a partial and selective one, and
one which overemphasises my own discipline of sociology. I take it
for granted that others would have very different visions of what are
the key developments. I should also stress that I do not aspire to fur-
nish a complete or comprehensive analysis of humanist discourse in
10
╇ Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, 11.
11
╇ A highly influential statement of this position can be found in Peter Winch,
The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1990).
12
╇See for example Bhaskar, Possibility of Naturalism.
66 richie nimmo
13
╇Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, Modernity (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 2002), 30.
14
╇ Francis Wheen, Karl Marx (London: Fourth Estate, 2000), 364.
the making of the human 67
15
╇Terrell Carver, ‘Darwinism’, Marxist Thought, ed. Tom Bottomore (Oxford:
Blackwell, 1991), 131.
16
╇ Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy (London: Penguin, 1976),
I, 283.
68 richie nimmo
╇Raymond Williams, Culture (London: Collins, 1981); Terry Eagleton, The Idea
17
Man is a directly natural being… But man is not only a natural being,
he is a human natural being. This means that he is a species being that
exists for himself, thus a species being that must confirm and exercise
himself as such in his being and knowledge.20
So for Marx it is humanity’s capacity to create and recreate its own
‘internal’ nature through its action upon ‘external’ nature that dis-
tinguishes human society from the non-human world, as it is from
this process of human self-authorship in labour that the social char-
acter of humans derives. This ontology is coherent enough with ref-
erence to the relations between humans and the inert objects of
labour, but if humans alone are to be deemed social, then some dis-
tinction has to be made between humans and non-human animals.
As Marx recognises, the only properly materialist grounds for such
a distinction is labour itself, hence he posits the distinction as follows:
Men... begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they
begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is condi-
tioned by their physical organization. By producing their means of
subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.21
We are not dealing here with those first instinctive forms of labour
which remain on the animal level... We presuppose labour in a form
in which it is an exclusively human characteristic.22
But what is this form of labour? For as Marx recognises, non-human
animals also labour in order to reproduce their conditions of exis-
tence:
It is true that the animal, too, produces. It builds itself a nest, a dwell-
ing, like the bee, the beaver, the ant, etc.23
A spider conducts operations which resemble those of the weaver, and
a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction
of its honeycomb cells.24
Indeed there is nothing in the empirically observable character of
human labour that separates it decisively from comparable animal
20
╇ Karl Marx, ‘Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts’ (‘epm’), Karl Marx:
Selected Writings, ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 104–
5.
21
╇ Karl Marx, ‘The German Ideology’, Karl Marx: Selected Writings, ed. Â�McLellan,
160.
22
╇Marx, Capital, I, 283–4.
23
╇Marx, ‘epm’, 82.
24
╇Marx, Capital, 284.
70 richie nimmo
25
╇ For some parallel reflections see Tim Ingold, ‘The architect and the bee: reflec-
tions on the work of animals and men’, The Appropriation of Nature: Essays on
Human Ecology and Social Relations, ed. Tim Ingold (Manchester: Manchester Uni-
versity Press, 1986). See also Frans de Waal and Peter Tyack, eds., Animal Social
Complexity: Intelligence, Culture, and Individualised Societies (Cambridge, MA: Har-
vard University Press, 2003).
26
╇Marx, Capital, 284.
27
╇Marx, ‘epm’, 82.
the making of the human 71
28
╇ That this is Marx’s position is made very clear in Harry Braverman’s influen-
tial reading of the Marxist conception of labour in his Labour and Monopoly Capital
(New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974).
29
╇ This is not the place to go into an extensive account of how this logic works
itself out through all the various schools of Marxism which developed during the
twentieth century. It is perhaps worth saying, however, that it is just as evident in
structuralist Marxism as in the more explicitly ‘humanist’ Marxism. Both rely upon
a fundamental separation of humanity from the nonhuman world and thus implic-
itly posit human uniqueness and autonomy. The difference is that ‘humanist’ Marx-
ism locates this uniqueness in a kind of philosophical anthropology, a residual
human ‘nature’ or ‘species being’, which as I have shown is used to distinguish
humans from animals and nature; whereas structuralist Marxism eschews any such
72 richie nimmo
therefore knowable in the same way and according to the same meth-
od.31 In this way Durkheim’s social ontology is built upon a thor-
oughly Cartesian dualism of mind and matter, for it relies upon a
notion of the contemplative individual as a being of consciousness
over and against the world, a consciousness that confronts matter as
an alien externality and an obstacle to the will. This is a characteristi-
cally modernist sensibility, closely bound up with the dominance of
scientific ways of knowing. Thus Durkheim’s position conflates social
collectivity with the concept of ‘externality’ born of sceptical philoso-
phy’s mind/body problem. It treats whatever is over and above the
individual as ‘objective’, in the sense of it being like a physical object
that confronts the individual ‘mind’ or consciousness.
By beginning in this way from the point of view of a pre-social
abstract subjectivity, Durkheim solidifies sociality into externality
and process into object; in short he reifies the social. This underlying
ontological individualism leads to the mechanistic objectivism which
characterises his sociological method, making Durkheim the theorist
par excellence of society as a ‘thing’, as an objective unit, totality or
system. It is the objective reality of this macro-object ‘society’ that,
for him, justifies sociology and underpins its methodological auton-
omy and its scientific character. The unique purpose of sociology, for
Durkheim, is to study ‘social facts’; it is this that separates sociology
decisively from psychology and psychological explanations. That is
why Durkheim insists that sociology is a science sui generis, or as he
puts it:
A science can be established only when it has for its subject matter
facts sui generis, facts that are different from those of the other sciences.
If society did not produce phenomena which are different from those
observable in the other realms of nature, sociology would be without
a field of its own. Its existence can be justified only if there are realities
which deserve to be called social and which are not simply aspects of
another order of things.32
If sociology depends so fundamentally upon the coherence of the
idea of an ontological domain of ‘the social’, then one must ask what
role sociology has had in bringing its object into being. As the actor-
network theorist Mike Michael has remarked: ‘What counted as
31
╇ Anthony Giddens, Durkheim (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1978), 35.
32
╇Emile Durkheim, ‘Sociology and its Scientific Field’, Essay on Sociology and
Philosophy (New York: Harper Row, 1964), 363.
74 richie nimmo
33
╇Michael, Constructing Identities, 137–8.
34
╇Emile Durkheim, Socialism (New York: Collier Books, 1962), 241.
35
╇Durkheim, Socialism, 244.
the making of the human 75
36
╇Mike J. Hawkins, ‘A Re-Examination of Durkheim’s Theory of Human
Nature’, Emile Durkheim: Critical Assessments of Leading Sociologists, ed. S.F.
�Pickering (3rd ser., London: Routledge, 2001), I, 107.
37
╇Gerth and Wright Mills, ‘Intellectual Orientations’, 56.
76 richie nimmo
38
╇ Anthony Giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory: An Analysis of the
Writings of Marx, Durkheim and Weber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1971), 133.
39
╇Giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory, 134.
the making of the human 77
40
╇ William Tucker, ‘Max Weber’s Verstehen’, Sociological Quarterly, 2 (1965):
157–65, reprinted in Max Weber: Critical Assessments, ed. Peter Hamilton (London:
Routledge, 1991), 45.
78 richie nimmo
╇ Weber, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (New York: Free
41
╇ Hence what we might heuristically call the ‘external’ dimension of anthropo-
43
toward a non-anthropocentric
cosmopolitanism
Gary Steiner
The ideal of civil society that prevails today owes a direct debt to
Enlightenment thinkers such as Kant, who sought to articulate the
importance of notions such as autonomy, equality, reciprocity, and
mutual respect for any viable system of political decision-making.
But our contemporary ideal owes an equal if indirect debt to an
ancient cosmopolitan ideal according to which human beings are
morally superior to all other natural beings and hence enjoy a natu-
ral prerogative to use non-human beings to satisfy human needs and
desires. Kant does not invent the cosmopolitan ideal but simply
modifies it in accordance with the liberal humanist notion of the
individual that had developed through the reflections of the Christian
humanists in the Renaissance and those of Descartes and the social
contract thinkers in modernity. Thus to the extent that the ancient
cosmopolitan ideal is fundamentally anthropocentric, it should come
as no surprise that Enlightenment cosmopolitanism and our con-
temporary ideal of civil society are likewise anthropocentric. For the
Western philosophical tradition this posed no problem, since the
tradition conceived of society as being concerned exclusively with
human relationships and activities. And for many people today, this
still poses no problem whatsoever. But for anyone concerned with
the fortunes of non-human animals, it has become a matter of seri-
ous controversy whether the concept of society or community should
ultimately be restricted to human beings, particularly given the fact
that so many of our activities and cultural practices involve the sub-
jection and exploitation of animals.1 For if social relationships and
responsibilities are conceived in exclusively human terms, then, in
1
╇ As in all my writing on animals, when I refer to ‘humans’ or ‘human beings’
I mean human animals, and when I refer to ‘animals’ I mean non-human animals.
It is beyond question that human beings are animals.
82 gary steiner
2
╇See Hesiod, Works and Days, 105–201. On the recurrence of this golden age
myth in Western thought, see Gary Steiner, Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents:
The Moral Status of Animals in the History of Western Philosophy (Pittsburgh: Uni-
versity of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 39, 44f., 50f., 95, 106–13, 137. See also Sax, ‘What
is this Quintessence of Dust’, this volume.
3
╇ Hesiod, Works and Days, 213, 275.
4
╇Ovid, Metamorphoses, 1, 90–162.
a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism 83
and the fate of animals seriously, we will need a more exacting con-
ception of justice than the one we have inherited. As even Rawls
recognised, a robust conception of obligation toward animals would
presuppose ‘a theory of the natural order and our place in it’.5 And
yet Rawls claims that the concept of justice pertains exclusively to
relations among human beings. Like the Stoics before him, Rawls
maintains that, to the extent that animals lack the capacity to enter
into contracts and assume obligations, it is impossible in principle to
do an injustice to an animal; for Rawls it is utterly meaningless to
speak of justice or injustice with regard to animals. I take this tension
in Rawls’ thought to be an indication that even Rawls, if only against
his own intention, sees his theory of justice against the background
of a more fundamental theory of the natural order and our place in
it. For Rawls this appears to be a theory according to which human
beings have a superior place in the cosmos and animals an inferior
one. Rawls, in other words, simply gives modern expression to the
Stoic doctrine of cosmopolitanism. On the Stoic view, material goods
such as animals are mere adiaphora or ‘indifferents’, and animals
were created specifically for the sake of human beings.6 Of course
there is a basic difference between Rawls and the Stoics: Rawls con-
ceives of the world in secularised, presumably godless terms, whereas
the Stoics presume the cosmos to have been ordered by the gods. But
with regard to the moral status of animals, this difference is insignifi-
cant. Regardless of whether a traditional theory of the cosmos and
our place in it presupposes a creator-god or not, the implications
for animals are the same. Like the earlier view of human beings as
created in the image of a God or gods, the modern, secularised view
still conceives of humanity as in certain respects godlike.7 In both
cases the conviction that human beings are godlike serves as the
basis for a moral hierarchy of living beings in which rational beings
(humans) are superior and non-rational beings (animals) inferior.
5
╇ John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, (revised edn., Cambridge: Belknap/Harvard,
1999), 448.
6
╇See Cicero, De natura deorum, 2.37–9, The Hellenistic Philosophers, ed. and
trans. A.A.€Long and D.N.€Sedley (2 vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1990), I, 54H. See also Epictetus, Discourses, 1.6.18, 1.16.1-5, 2.8.6-8 and Steiner,
Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents, 85.
7
╇ In the twentieth century the most illuminating account of the concept of
human willing as a secularised version of the divine will is Carl Schmitt’s. See Carl
Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty (1922/1934),
trans. George Schwab (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1985).
84 gary steiner
8
╇ Aristotle, Politics, 1.8 at 1256b15-21, Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jona�than
Barnes (2 vols., revised Oxford translation, Princeton: Bollingen/Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 1995), II, 1993–4.
9
╇Martin Heidegger, ‘Letter on “Humanism”’, Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 269f.
10
╇ Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 10.8 at 1178b22-29.
11
╇ Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics, 1.7 at 1217a24-25, Complete Works of Aristotle, II,
1926.
a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism 85
12
╇Seneca, Ad lucilium epistulae morales, 124.8, 14, Latin with English trans.
Richard M. Gummere (3 vols., London: William Heinemann/New York:
G.P.€Putnam’s Sons, 1925), III, 441, 445.
13
╇Epictetus, Discourses, 1.6.14-17, The Discourses as Reported by Arrian, Books
I-II, Greek with English trans. by W.A. Oldfather (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2000), 43.
14
╇ Cicero, De finibus bonorum et malorum, 3.21, Latin with English trans. H.
Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 240f.
15
╇See Cicero, De natura deorum, 2.37-39; see also 2.133 and Diogenes Laertius
7. 138.
16
╇See Epictetus, Discourses, 1.16.1-5.
86 gary steiner
all animals are naturally subject to man... For the imperfect are for the
use of the perfect: plants make use of the earth for their nourishment,
animals make use of plants, and man makes use of both plants and
animals. Therefore it is in keeping with the order of nature that man
should be master over animals... Since man, being made in the image
of God, is above other animals, these are rightly subject to his govern-
ment.23
From this follows Aquinas’ well-known conviction that our duties
with regard to animals are in fact duties toward humanity; the only
reason to avoid cruelty to animals is that being cruel to animals
makes us more likely to be cruel to our fellow human beings.24 Apart
from this anthropocentric restriction, Aquinas recognises no limits
on what we may do to animals to satisfy our desires: ‘It is not wrong
for man to make use of [animals], either by killing or in any other
way whatsoever’.25 Thus Aquinas advances a cosmopolitan ideal
according to which animals have no direct moral status but are
merely resources and instruments for the practice of virtue.
In the Enlightenment, the cosmopolitan ideal develops in accor-
dance with Kant’s program for religion within the limits of reason
alone. Kant and other modern cosmopolitan thinkers adhere to the
Stoic-Christian prejudice that animals are ‘lower’ beings that are not
only practically but also morally inferior to humans. The replacement
of God with secularised human reason as the ultimate basis for moral
as well as metaphysical truth does nothing to change the moral status
of animals; the traditional assumption of human divinity and the
resulting sense of superiority over animals remain unshaken.
This assumption of human superiority is central to Kant’s cosmo-
politan ideal:
In the system of nature, a human being (homo phaenomenon, animal
rationale) is a being of slight importance and shares with the rest of
the animals, as offspring of the earth, an ordinary value (pretium vul-
gare)... But a human being regarded as a person, that is, as the subject
of a morally practical reason, is exalted above any price; for as a person
(homo noumenon) he is not to be valued merely as a means to the ends
23
╇Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, 1–2, q. 96, art. 1, resp., Basic Writ-
ings of St. Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis (2 vols., Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997),
I, 692.
24
╇Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3.92 and Summa Theologica,
1–2, q. 102, art. 6.
25
╇Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 3.92, Basic Writings of
St. Thomas Aquinas, II, 222.
88 gary steiner
of others or even to his own ends, but as an end in himself, that is, he
possesses a dignity (an absolute inner worth) by which he exacts respect
for himself from all other rational beings in the world.26
All natural beings, to the extent that they are natural beings, possess
‘ordinary’ [gemeinen], which is to say ‘slight’ [geringen], worth. Here
Kant presupposes a hierarchy of value according to which embodied
beings have an inferior status in the cosmos. Non-rational beings are
‘things’ with merely instrumental or relative value, whereas rational
beings are ‘persons’ and possess worth ‘above all price’.27 In the
Kantian cosmos, those beings possess the highest moral worth who
can recognise their own intrinsic worth and be recognised to possess
such worth. Beings that make value distinctions are fundamentally
superior to beings that do not make value distinctions; and given
that the making of value distinctions is a rational activity on Kant’s
view, human beings possess a worth that is incomparable to that of
all other beings in the world. The worth of rational beings is not
merely quantitatively but is in fact qualitatively superior to that of
all non-rational beings. Absent the discovery of non-human rational
beings in the universe, a possibility that Kant explicitly entertains,
this means that human beings are fundamentally the ‘lord[s] of
nature’.28 To the extent that animals cannot contemplate abstract
notions such as that of absolute worth, they are categorically excluded
from the sphere of moral beings. Human beings possess reason,
which makes possible mutual respect among moral agents and
�progress in our moral striving. The apex of such striving is the real-
isation of a cosmopolitan condition in which all rational beings live
‘in accordance with [an] integral, prearranged plan’ that ‘nature has
as its highest purpose’.29 In accordance with this plan and purpose,
26
╇ Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Mary Gregor (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1996), 186. For a more detailed discussion of Kant, see
Steiner, Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents, 166–71.
27
╇ Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 186. On the person-thing distinction, see
Immanuel Kant, Lectures on Ethics, ed. Peter Heath and J.B. Schneewind, trans. Peter
Heath (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 147, and Grounding for the
Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett,
1981), 35–7.
28
╇ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, trans. Werner S. Pluhar (Indianapolis:
Hackett, 1987), sec. 83, 318 (Ak. 431).
29
╇ Immanuel Kant, ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose’,
Political Writings, ed. H. S. Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001),
41, 51 (translation altered).
a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism 89
us’.34 Ethics is that part of morality that deals exclusively with the
good for human beings, whereas the subject matter of morality as a
whole is the good per se; morality as a whole encompasses relations
between humanity and God but excludes relations between human
beings and animals. For Kant our moral relation to God is literally
‘incomprehensible’ inasmuch as it is not reducible to conceptual
understanding but presumably requires recourse to something like
faith. This means that, in effect, animals are banished not simply
from the sphere of moral relationships and duties among human
beings, but from the sphere of morality altogether. For practical pur-
poses, indirect duties toward animals are as good as no duties.
Two things should be noted about Kant’s cosmopolitan ideal.
First, Kant sees ethics as an exclusively human affair that does not
take its bearings from God as a transcendent being. As a postulate of
pure practical reason, God serves as an immanent, purely conceptual
model ‘of practical perfection, as an indispensable rule of moral con-
duct, and as a standard for comparison’.35 In accordance with this
secularised conception of God and the idea of perfection that comes
with it, ethics takes no cognizance of the interests of animals whatso-
ever. Second, even though Kant’s concepts of God and the human
good are secularised and immanent, they are strongly influenced by
ancient conceptions of the good, divinity, and the relationship
between gods and human beings. Like his predecessors in antiquity,
Kant understands the good as a possibility that is accessible only to
rational beings. Only those beings capable of reflecting on the good,
which for Kant are moral agents, merit genuine moral status. For
Kant as for the Stoics, the moral status of a being is determined by
that being’s proximity to the divine. Animals are much further
removed from the divine essence than human beings are, hence ani-
mals have a putatively lower moral status than humans—provided
that animals can be said to have any moral status whatsoever.
Regardless of whether God is understood to be a transcendent being
or simply a postulate of pure practical reason, the implications for
the moral status of animals are the same: animals are mere things,
means for the satisfaction of the needs and desires of beings that are
capable of contemplative activity.
╇ Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Lewis White Beck (3rd
35
edn., Upper Saddle River, NJ: Library of Liberal Arts/Prentice Hall, 1993), 134n.
a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism 91
Cosmic Justice
╇ Karl Löwith, Welt und Menschenwelt: Beiträge zur Anthropologie, Sämtliche
37
42
╇ Heidegger, ‘Letter on “Humanism”’, 243, 252.
43
╇Martin Heidegger, ‘The Question Concerning Technology’, The Question Con-
cerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper and
Row, 1977), 35 (translation altered).
94 gary steiner
44
╇ Jacques Derrida, ‘“Eating Well”, or the Calculation of the Subject: An Inter-
view with Jacques Derrida’, Who Comes After the Subject? ed. Eduardo Cadava, Peter
Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy (New York: Routledge, 1991), 112f.
45
╇ Jacques Derrida, from the Cerisy Conference, 1993, cited in David Wood,
‘Comment ne pas manger—Deconstruction and Humanism’, Animal Others: On Eth-
ics, Ontology, and Animal Life, ed. H. Peter Steeves (Albany: SUNY Press, 1999), 20.
46
╇ Jacques Derrida, ‘Force of Law: The “Mystical Foundation of Authority”’, Car-
dozo Law Review, 11 (1989–90), 953; ‘Eating Well’, 112.
a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism 95
47
╇See Steiner, Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents, 217–22.
48
╇Martin Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt-Endlichkeit-Ein-
samkeit, Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1983), xxix/xxx, 368. On Ek-sis-
tenz, see Martin Heidegger, ‘Letter on “Humanism”’, Pathmarks, 246–51.
49
╇See Steiner, Anthropocentrism and Its Discontents, 182, 185, 189.
50
╇ Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 361; see also Martin Heidegger,
‘What are Poets For?’ Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New
York: Perennial/HarperCollins, 2001), 106.
51
╇ Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 361, 368.
52
╇ Heidegger, ‘Letter on “Humanism”’, 247f.; idem, On the Way to Language,
trans. Peter D. Hertz (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1971), 107. See also Tonner,
‘Are animals poor in the world?’, this volume, which fully unpacks Heidegger’s posi-
tion on animals.
96 gary steiner
spirit. The animal can never get out of the unity of its determinate
rank in nature… The animal is not capable of dealing with princi-
ples’.53
Heidegger maintains that ‘this comparison between animals and
humans in terms of world-poverty and world-formation does not
give license to estimations or evaluations of perfection and imperfec-
tion—quite apart from the fact that such estimations are hasty and
inappropriate’.54 Thus we must approach the question of the relative
worth of humans and animals with caution: ‘Is the essence of human
beings higher than the essence of animals? All this is questionable in
the very posing of the question’.55 In other words, the essential differ-
ences between human beings and animals have no moral significance
but simply amount to the fact that human beings can experience exis-
tence and death as such, because only human beings, in virtue of
their reflective awareness, stand in the light of being, can grasp prin-
ciples, and are therefore capable of making choices in a manner that
is impossible for animals. Both in the human social sphere and in the
cosmic sphere, reflective awareness or ek-sistence is the condition for
the possibility of taking on duties. From the cosmic standpoint, a lack
of ek-sistence is not a basis for the denial of rights, provided that the
prospective beneficiary of rights in question is a conscious being.
And yet Heidegger’s thinking remains anthropocentric to the
extent that he retains much of the old prejudice concerning the prox-
imity of human beings to the gods. Although in the ‘Letter on
“Humanism”’ he seeks to call this proximity into question, he ulti-
mately proclaims a special relationship between mortals, which he
conceives as human, and gods; moreover, he conceives of the ‘abode
of mortals on the earth’ in terms of the capacity for ‘dwelling’, which
he considers to be unique to human beings.56 ‘But “on the earth”
already means “under the sky”. Both of these also mean “remaining
before the divinities” and include a “belonging to human beings with
one another”. By a primordial oneness the four—earth and sky,
divinities and mortals—belong together in one’.57 This does not mean
53
╇Martin Heidegger, Schellings Abhandlung über das Wesen der menschlichen
Freiheit (1809), ed. Hildegard Feick (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1971), 173f.
54
╇ Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 286.
55
╇ Heidegger, Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 286f.
56
╇ Heidegger, ‘Letter on “Humanism”’, 248; ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’,
Poetry, Language, Thought, 147.
57
╇ Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’, Poetry, Language, Thought, 147
(translation altered).
a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism 97
simply that human beings stand in closer proximity to the gods than
do animals, but rather that animals do not stand in proximity to the
gods at all. Thus Heidegger repeats the mistake of the tradition to the
extent that he confuses proximity to the gods with the ability to think
this proximity. In this connection it is noteworthy that he does not
say one single word on behalf of the moral status of animals, but
instead treats animality as a sort of abstract counter-concept to the
human.
One thinker who does not view animals in these terms is the Neo-
Platonist Porphyry, who rejects the Stoic commitment to the cosmic
superiority of human beings over animals.58 In place of the ideal of
an anthropocentric cosmopolitanism, he develops an ideal of cosmic
justice that is well suited to the establishment of a non-anthropocen-
tric cosmopolitanism. According to Porphyry, justice consists in
‘restraint and harmlessness toward everything that does not do
harm’.59 This includes all animals, at least those endowed with voice
(phone), inasmuch as they participate in the logos of nature; but it
excludes plants inasmuch as they are incapable of perception and
hence have no share in the logos.60 Given their capacities for memory
and perception, animals are rational beings and in this sense partici-
pate in the logos.61 Porphyry anticipates an objection that Gassendi
will later make against Descartes, when he argues that participation
in the logos need not involve the full-blown linguistic ability pos-
sessed by human beings.62 Such a non-linguistic conception of the
logos is the key to developing a cosmic sense of justice and cosmo-
politanism, in that it opens us to the prospect of an essential kinship
not simply between human beings and gods, but between conscious
beings generally and the divine. Where Aristotle and Kant reject the
possibility of friendship between human beings and animals,
Porphyry sees such friendship as a corollary to the essential cosmic
kinship that unites humans and animals.63 Porphyry reminds us of
58
╇Porphyry, On Abstinence from Killing Animals, trans. Gillian Clark (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 2000), 1.31.3.
59
╇Porphyry, On Abstinence from Killing Animals, 3.26.9.
60
╇Porphyry, On Abstinence from Killing Animals, 3.2.4, 3.3.3, 3.19.2.
61
╇Porphyry, On Abstinence from Killing Animals, 3.1.4.
62
╇Porphyry, On Abstinence from Killing Animals, 3.2.4; Pierre Gassendi, ‘Fifth
Set of Objections to the Meditations’, The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans.
John Cottingham, et. al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), II, 189.
63
╇ Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, 8.11 at 1161b1-3; Kant, The Metaphysics of
Morals, 215.
98 gary steiner
70
╇ Cicero, De finibus, 3.16, 232f.
71
╇ Cicero, De finibus, 3.62, 280f.
72
╇See Cicero, De finibus, 3.63, 282f.
100 gary steiner
[of oikeiosis], which encompasses all the rest, is that of the whole
human race… It is the task of a well-tempered man, in his proper
treatment of each group, to draw the circles together somehow
towards the center’.73 Unique to human beings is a universal sense
of belonging that obligates each of us to treat strangers far removed
from our inner circle as if they were closely related to us. Cicero
describes the characteristics of this third level of oikeiosis in the fol-
lowing way:
Nature has endowed us with two roles [personae], as it were. One of
these is universal, from the fact that we share in reason and that status
which raises us above the beasts; this is the source of all rectitude and
propriety [decorum], and the basis of the rational discovery of our
proper functions. The second role is the one which has been specifically
assigned to individuals.74
On the Stoic view, both of these personae are unique to human beings
and are requisite for the true good of which only human beings are
capable. Porphyry shows us how we might dispossess ourselves of
the anthropocentric core of Stoic thinking by conceiving of the uni-
versal persona of human beings as the source of an essential kinship
between human beings and animals, where the Stoics presuppose an
essential enmity between humans and animals. The affirmation of
our inner kinship with animals will enable us to develop an ideal of
justice that is both necessary and sufficient for a non-anthropocentric
cosmopolitanism, a cosmopolitanism in which we actively acknowl-
edge the cosmic equality of humans and animals and eschew our
regrettable history of animal exploitation.
73
╇ Hierocles (Stobaeus, 4.671, 7-4.673.11), The Hellenistic Philosophers, 57G.
74
╇ Cicero, On Duties, 1.107, The Hellenistic Philosophers, I, 66E.
a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism 101
�
principles in the endeavour to respect and/or empower disenfran-
chised segments of humanity. A key focal point of these disputes is
whether cosmopolitanism ought to concern itself first of all with the
fortunes of individual agents or instead with the fortunes of groups,
be the identities of those groups racial, ethnic, religious, geographic,
or economic—or some combination of these.
Like Kant before them, contemporary thinkers in the liberal tradi-
tion take as their point of departure the notion of universality as a
regulative ideal for coordinating the actions of diverse agents on a
worldwide scale. Martha Nussbaum argues that this ideal demands
looking past local and national allegiances and affirming common
aims that underlie difference.75 Nussbaum understands cosmopoli-
tanism as ‘allegiance... to the worldwide community of human beings’
and sees in the affirmation of universally shared human qualities and
values the best prospects for overcoming the factionalism that was a
concern of the Stoics.76 The primary operative value for Nussbaum,
as for Kant, is respect for others; for example, in order for an
American to ‘love or attend to’ an Indian, it is necessary to attain ‘a
human identity that transcends these divisions... The world citizen
must develop sympathetic understanding of distant cultures and of
ethnic, racial, and religious minorities within her own. She must also
develop an understanding of the history and variety of human ideas
of gender and sexuality’.77 In doing so, the cosmopolitan becomes
uprooted from her familiar surroundings and accustomed way of
doing and valuing things, and thereby enters into ‘a kind of exile—
from the comfort of assured truths, from the warm nestling feeling
of being surrounded by people who share one’s convictions and pas-
sions’.78
But does Nussbaum’s cosmopolitan manifest concern for animals?
The fact that Nussbaum follows and develops Rawls’ model of justice
makes it unsurprising that she equivocates on this question and ulti-
mately gives a fundamental priority to the interests and fortunes of
75
╇Martha C. Nussbaum, ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’, For Love of Coun-
try: Defining the Limits of Patriotism, ed. Joshua Cohen (Boston: Beacon Press,
1996), 9.
76
╇Nussbaum, ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’, 4, 15, 8.
77
╇Martha C. Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity: A Classical Defense of Reform in
Liberal Education (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1997),
67, 69.
78
╇Nussbaum, Cultivating Humanity, 83.
102 gary steiner
human beings over those of animals. Not only does her characterisa-
tion of the concerns of the cosmopolitan focus more or less exclu-
sively on our relationship to other human beings, but she frames her
discussion of the capabilities approach to justice in pointedly anthro-
pocentric terms. Nussbaum considers it ‘clear that there is no respect-
able way to deny the equal dignity of creatures of species across
species’, inasmuch as many animals possess capacities that qualify
them as agents rather than as mere instrumentalities for the satisfac-
tion of human needs.79 Animals, on Nussbaum’s view, are ‘direct sub-
jects of the theory of justice’; but because ‘the members of the
consensus’ that we seek to reach in ethical and political matters ‘are...
all human’, this ‘consensus is an anthropocentric idea’.80 The crux of
this anthropocentric idea is the proposition that whereas justice
requires us to secure certain capabilities for all human beings equally,
it requires us to secure certain capabilities for animals only to a
degree of adequacy to be determined, presumably, through the pro-
cess of consensus-making.81 We ought to secure the vital capabilities
of animals according to ‘a high threshold of adequacy’.82
This does not prevent us from subordinating the interests of ani-
mals to those of humans in situations in which we consider the sac-
rifice to be urgent, or at least reasonable, precisely because we need
only secure the ‘adequate’ realisation of animal capabilities, not the
realisation of capabilities equal to that enjoyed by human beings.
Why not? For several reasons. First, beings that are mentally more
sophisticated are more capable of suffering harm than those that are
mentally less sophisticated; thus the harm posed by death ‘seems less
grave’ to the latter beings than to the former.83 Because we are held
to a standard of adequacy with regard to animals but to one of equal-
ity with regard to humans, this means that we can justify ‘the painless
death of [a free range] animal’ but not that of, say, a mentally
impaired but still sentient human being.84 Second, on Nussbaum’s
79
╇Martha C. Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Mem�
bership (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap/Harvard University Press, 2006),
383.
80
╇Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 389.
81
╇Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 381f.
82
╇Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 383.
83
╇Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 387.
84
╇Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 386; cf. 187f., where Nussbaum draws the line
at anencephalic children and humans in persistent vegetative states, arguing that
‘only sentiment leads us to call [such persons] human’; in order to count as human,
a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism 103
view, ‘where humans are concerned, the idea of equal dignity is not
a metaphysical idea’, whereas where animals are concerned it is; and
given that ‘the question of equal dignity [for animals is] a metaphys-
ical question on which citizens may hold different positions while
accepting the basic substantive claims about animal entitlements...
the idea of cross-species dignity is not a political idea that can readily
be accepted by citizens who otherwise differ in metaphysical
conception’.85 The Rawlsian form of political liberalism endorsed by
Nussbaum seeks to remain neutral as regards substantive claims
about the good, focusing instead on providing the procedural condi-
tions necessary for different human political agents to pursue their
interests. Thus members of a liberal polity may disagree about the
moral status of animals and their basic entitlements.86
Nussbaum argues that animals should be recognised to have basic
entitlements, such as the entitlement not to be killed gratuitously for
sport, but she never explains how she can argue for some entitle-
ments on liberal grounds but not for others.87 What she does tell us
is that she is keenly interested in avoiding conflicts with major reli-
gions regarding animals, which reminds us of the fundamentally
anthropocentric orientation and hence the limits of political liberal-
ism as regards the moral status of animals and the prospects for
achieving a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism. ‘A truly global
justice... requires looking... at the other sentient beings’, but ulti-
mately ‘the pursuit of global justice requires the inclusion of many
people and groups who were not previously included as fully equal
subjects of justice: the poor; the lower classes; members of religious,
ethnic, and racial minorities; more recently, women’.88 ‘Looking at
the other sentient beings’ does not prohibit us from using them in
various forms of entertainment such as horse racing; it does not pro-
hibit us from killing them (painlessly, of course) to provide food for
humans; it does not prohibit us from experimenting on animals (as
people must possess ‘the ability to love and relate to others, perception, delight in
movement and play’, i.e., the capacity to live one’s life ‘bound up in a network of
human relations’.
85
╇Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 383f.
86
╇See Gary Steiner, Animals and the Moral Community: Mental Life, Moral Sta-
tus, and Kinship (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008), 149.
87
╇Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 393. But cf. 377, where Nussbaum justifies
training horses to race and engage in dressage, dismissing criticisms of such prac-
tices as flights of ‘romantic fantasy’.
88
╇Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 405f.
104 gary steiner
89
╇Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, 402f.
90
╇ Kwame Anthony Appiah, Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers
(New York and London: Norton, 2006), 63.
91
╇ Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 71.
92
╇ Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 84f.
93
╇ Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 97.
94
╇ Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 113.
95
╇ Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 153, 165.
a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism 105
�
concern, and presumably from the sphere of justice, because they are
aloga and hence incapable of the conversation and persuasion that
Appiah places at the centre of his cosmopolitan ideal. Thus there is
no reason to suppose that there should be any necessary agreement
on the question of whether it is ‘cruel to kill cattle in slaughterhouses
where live cattle can smell the blood of the dead... because applying
value terms to new cases requires judgement and discretion’. Such
questions, like moral questions generally, are ‘essentially contestable’.96
The anthropocentric terms of Appiah’s cosmopolitanism make such
a conclusion unsurprising but nonetheless troubling. Even though
he maintains that reason cannot produce substantive moral uni�
versals that would be clear and compelling to everyone, he none�
theless assumes that human beings can converse with and persuade
one another ‘about what to do in most cases’ and thereby ‘live in
harmony’. Appiah tacitly assumes the same thing as Rawls and NussÂ�
baum: a vision of humanity that includes conceptions of agency,
equality, mutual respect, and something like reasonableness. Even
though Appiah stresses that there is no one thing that it means to be
reasonable, he implicitly presupposes a shared conception of reason-
ableness as the basis for living in harmony and respecting difference.
We are entitled to disagree about the acceptability of industrial
slaughterhouses, and our disagreement is implicitly reasonable. It is
difficult to imagine Appiah countenancing comparable disagreement
about, say, the acceptability of trafficking in human slaves.
Notwithstanding this anthropocentric limitation, Appiah’s apÂ�Â�
proach has the advantage of recognising that while universality plays
an important role in securing cosmopolitan harmony, this universal-
ity is formal and empty until it is given concrete content through
discursive practices. Seyla Benhabib takes this conception of univer-
sality as the point of departure for her reflections on what she calls
‘another cosmopolitanism’, one in which ‘the universalist stand-
point... views the moral conversation as potentially including all of
humanity... every person, and every moral agent, who has interests
and whom my actions and the consequences of my actions can
impact and affect in some manner or another is potentially a moral
conversation partner with me’. But where Appiah casts suspicion on
the power of reason to ground conversation, Benhabib argues that
each of us ‘has a moral obligation to justify [our] actions with Â�reasons’
96
╇ Appiah, Cosmopolitanism, 59f.
106 gary steiner
101
╇Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 179, 209; see also Another Cosmopolitan-
ism, 48, 67, 70.
102
╇ Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism, 162.
103
╇See Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community, and Postmodern-
ism in Contemporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992).
104
╇ Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism, 19f.; The Rights of Others, 13.
105
╇ Benhabib, The Rights of Others, 13f.
108 gary steiner
106
╇ Benhabib, Another Cosmopolitanism, 43n36.
a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism 109
110
╇Paul Rabinow, ‘Representations are Social Facts: Modernity and Post-Moder-
nity in Anthropology’, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, ed.
James Clifford and George E. Marcus (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1986), 258.
111
╇Pheng Cheah, ‘Introduction’, Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the
Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis and London: University
of Minnesota Press, 1998), 36.
112
╇Simon Critchley, ‘Preface’ to Jacques Derrida, On Cosmopolitanism and
�Forgiveness, trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes (London and New York:
Routledge, 2001), xi.
113
╇ Judith Butler, ‘For a Careful Reading’, Feminist Contentions: A Philosophical
Exchange, Seyla Benhabib, et. al., (New York and London: Routledge, 1995), 130. Cf.
p. 133: The aim here is ‘recasting agency within matrices of power’.
a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism 111
114
╇ Amanda Anderson, ‘Cosmopolitanism, Universalism, and the Divided Lega-
cies of Modernity’, Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, 274. Situ-
ated cosmopolitanism also has its humanist proponents. See, for example, Lorenzo
C. Simpson, The Unfinished Project: Toward a Postmetaphysical Humanism (New
York and London: Routledge, 2001).
115
╇David Harvey, Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2009), 37, 39f.
116
╇ Harvey, Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom, 50 (following an
idea proposed by Chandra Mohanty), cf. 162: What is needed is a conception of
space and time as ‘dialectical and alive’ rather than ‘dead and fixed’, as ‘relational’
112 gary steiner
rather than as ‘absolute’. Cf. also 180 and 185, where Harvey criticises Heidegger’s
conception of place as ‘essentialist’ and as ‘notoriously abstract and vague’.
117
╇ Boaventura de Sousa Santos and César A. Rodríguez-Garavito, ‘Law, Politics,
and the Subaltern in Counter-Hegemonic Globalization’, Law and Globalization
from Below: Towards a Cosmopolitan Legality (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2005), 15.
118
╇De Sousa Santos and Rodríguez-Garavito, ‘Law, Politics, and the Subaltern in
Counter-Hegemonic Globalization’, 13.
119
╇ Harvey, Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom, 283.
120
╇ Butler, ‘For a Careful Reading’, 130.
121
╇ Benedict Anderson, ‘Nationalism, Identity, and the World-in-Motion: On the
Logics of Seriality’, Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, 121, 130.
a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism 113
122
╇ Anderson, ‘Cosmopolitanism, Universalism, and the Divided Legacies of
Modernity’, 275.
123
╇See for example Harvey, Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom,
259f.
124
╇ Cheah, ‘Introduction’, Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation,
33; Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1990), 14.
114 gary steiner
�
correctly observes that such premises are ‘usually derived, explicitly
or implicitly, from the actual social context in which the theorizing
takes place’.125 The question remains what sort of substantive prem-
ises are needed to ground a theory of justice that is not simply about
social life but that encompasses all of sentient life. As things stand
today, I do not believe that postmodern conceptions of cosmopoli-
tanism are in any better situation than liberal ones to provide an
answer to this question, precisely because both approaches take as
their point of departure ‘the actual social context in which the theo-
rizing takes place’—a context that by its very nature does not make
room for non-human animals as primary ‘participants’. NotwithÂ�
standing the assurances of liberals and postmoderns alike that ani-
mals are or can be genuine beneficiaries of justice, both approaches
are beset with a certain anthropocentric prejudice that can be over-
come only by situating our conception of social justice within the
larger context of what I refer to as ‘cosmic justice’, a conception of
justice whose substantive basis I have sought to develop in terms of
‘cosmic holism’.126 The human, all-too-human wars and struggles for
recognition are urgent and entirely real. The ideal of cosmic justice
seeks not to devalue these struggles but rather to place them in a
larger world context that we have tended to repress from the begin-
nings of civilisation up to the present.
The imperative of cosmic justice is one that requires a Herculean
effort of us: to look past ourselves and see ourselves as part of a larger
cosmic whole that has, in recent generations, and incorrectly in my
judgement, been dismissed as merely an immanent product of human
discourses (and hence as just another effect of power and discursiv-
ity) rather than being seen as the living measure of our own self-
understanding and the ultimate source of any authentic conception
of justice. Such an act of selflessness is the absolute precondition for
the possibility of a non-anthropocentric cosmopolitanism.
125
╇Young, Justice and the Politics of Difference, 4.
126
╇See Steiner, Animals and the Moral Community, ch. 5 and ch. 6.
part two
Eric J. Silverman*
*
╇ I am indebted to Jennifer Hart Weed, Fr. Kevin L. Flannery, and Lori J. Under-
wood for providing many helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this chapter.
1
╇ John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (Minneapolis: Filiquarian Publishing, 2007),
21.
2
╇Peter Singer, ‘All Animals Are Equal’, Animal Rights and Human Obligations,
eds. Tom Regan & Peter Singer (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1989), 148–
62.
118 eric j. silverman
3
╇ Thomas Nagel, ‘What is it Like to Be a Bat?’, Philosophical Review (1974): 435–
50.
4
╇See Nagel, ‘What is it Like to Be a Bat?’, 439.
120 eric j. silverman
forms totally unimaginable to us… But no matter how the form may
vary, the fact that an organism has conscious experience at all means,
basically, that there is something it is like to be that organism.5
A central problem in understanding animals stems from the difficulty
in accessing their subjective experience of the world. While almost
everyone acknowledges that animals have a conscious experience and
we might develop a partial objective description of that experience
using familiar concepts that tie into our necessarily human experi-
ences, we can never understand what it is to experience life as that
type of organism. Therefore, any attempt to describe that experience
exhibits some degree of anthropocentrism. Nagel effectively illus-
trates this problem:
Our own experience provides the basic material for our imagination, whose
range is therefore limited. It will not help to try to imagine that one has
webbing on one’s arms, which enables one to fly around at dusk and dawn
catching insects in one’s mouth; that one has very poor vision, and per-
ceives the surrounding world by a system of reflected high-frequency
sound signals; and that one spends the day hanging upside down by one’s
feet in an attic. In so far as I can imagine this (which is not very far), it
tells me only what it would be like for me to behave as a bat behaves. But
that is not the question. I want to know what it is like for a bat to be a bat.
Yet if I try to imagine this, I am restricted to the resources of my own
mind, and those resources are inadequate to the task. I cannot perform it
either by imagining additions to my present experience, or by imagining
segments gradually subtracted from it, or by imagining some combination
of additions, subtractions, and modifications.6
Since our own human experience shapes what we can imagine, any
attempt to imagine the subjective experience of a non-human animal
is necessarily anthropocentric. Unfortunately, there is a potentially
devastating implication of this problem. Since consequentialism
grounds moral status in a being’s subjective experience of pain and
pleasure, this conceptual problem threatens our ability to understand
the very attribute consequentialism uses to give animalsâ•‚ moral
standing. Therefore, any insight that we can gain from the medieval
investigation into the limitations of human concepts and how to
proceed when standard uses of concepts are no longer appropriate
will aid our efforts at overcoming anthropocentrism.
5
╇Nagel, ‘What is it Like to Be a Bat?’, 436.
6
╇Nagel, ‘What is it Like to Be a Bat?’, 439.
anthropocentrism and religious language 121
7
╇Moses Maimonides, Commentary on the Mishnah, trans. Fred Rosner (1168;
New York: Feldheim, 1975).
122 eric j. silverman
8
╇Moses Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago, IL:
University of Chicago Press, 1969), I:LIX.
anthropocentrism and religious language 123
icated in spite of the fact that the latter has it in common with other
things and is not particularized through it.9
The reasoning here is straightforward. Attributes are meant to com-
municate by comparing the unfamiliar object described to some sec-
ond object with which the listener is more familiar. But if an attribute
refers to something entirely unique such as God, then there should
be nothing to compare it to and nothing can be accurately commu-
nicated.
Therefore, Maimonides views this practice as a serious error that
reveals utter ignorance about God. Accordingly, he views the practice
of positive attribution of traits to God as a serious category error that
demonstrates deep ignorance. He argues:
I shall not say that he who affirms that God, may He be exalted, has
positive attributes either falls short of apprehending Him… but I shall
say that he has abolished his belief in the existence of the deity without
being aware of it… one who has an apprehension of a thing that is
different from what that thing really is, must yet necessarily apprehend
something of it as it really is. However, I shall not say of him who
represents to himself that taste is a quantity, that his representation of
the thing is different from what the latter really is; rather I shall say
that he is ignorant of the being of taste and does not know to what the
term applies.10
For Maimonides, using words that affirm traits of God entails a rad-
ical category error. He refers to the traditional Aristotelian categories
of quantity and quality, and argues that using affirmative predicates
of God is like attempting to use taste as a measurement of length.
Anyone who makes such a mistake is not merely confused about
some trait an object possesses, but holds a radically incorrect view
of the object since she places it in the wrong category altogether.
These emphases within Judaism on reverence towards God and on
caution with words associated with God have deep roots in the
Torah, the Jewish scriptures. It is well known that misuse of the name
of God, yhwh, is forbidden by the Ten Commandments.11 What is
less well-known is that traditional Judaism interpreted this prohibi-
tion in a far more sweeping way than did Christianity. The traditional
Jewish application of this commandment went far beyond the mere
9
╇ Guide of the Perplexed, I:LVIII.
10
╇ Guide of the Perplexed, I:LX.
11
╇Exodus 20.
124 eric j. silverman
avoidance of swearing. Nearly all use of the divine name was avoided
as a precaution against any conceivable violation of the command-
ment. Maimonides illustrates the seriousness associated with the
divine name and the rarity of its use:
There can be no doubt about the fact that this great name, which as
you know is not pronounced except in the Sanctuary by the sanctified
Priests of the Lord and only in the benediction of the Priests and by
the High Priest upon the day of fasting, is indicative of a notion with
reference to which there is no association between God, may He be
exalted, and what is other than He… the greatness of this name and
the prohibition against pronouncing it are due to its being indicative
of the essence of Him, may He be exalted, in such a way that none of
the created things is associated with Him in this indication.12
The name ‘yhwh’ has a special significance in the Jewish tradition
that other referents to God do not have. Thinkers like Maimonides
believe that it refers to that which is completely other and completely
beyond human experience. Note that this word does not entail
anthropocentrism, since the name never refers to anything other
than God, thereby avoiding any implicit comparisons. While using
this name avoids the anthropocentric problems of positive attribu-
tion and is associated with deep religious experiences, claiming that
‘God is yhwh’ does not seem to communicate much at all about
God. It does not explain what God is like, how he can be expected
to act, or what one should think of him.
What then can be said about God? If affirming traits of God in a
univocal way leads to idolatry, polytheism, and category error, one
might try to use words in a completely equivocal way that we
acknowledge is radically different from the ordinary use of these
words. While this strategy might avoid the anthropocentrism that is
entailed in univocally attributing predicates to God in an affirmative
way, this strategy leads to another serious problem. If one claims that
‘God is good’ but then insists that the goodness of God has no simi-
larities to the goodness of any created thing, it seems that nothing
about God has been communicated at all. In fact, if words are being
used in a completely equivocal way it is hard to see the difference
between claiming that ‘God is good’ and ‘God is evil’.
Maimonides offers the way of negative predication, the via nega-
tiva, as a solution to the mystery of religious language. It is meant to
12
╇ Guide of the Perplexed, I:LXI.
anthropocentrism and religious language 125
13
╇ Guide of the Perplexed, I:LVIII.
14
╇ Guide of the Perplexed, I:LVIII.
15
╇ This claim has an interesting similarity to one of the central premises of St.
Anselm’s famous ontological argument for the existence of God.
126 eric j. silverman
they refer to the same traits that exist in humans, but they avoid
anthropocentrism and idolatry by emphasising God’s complete supe-
riority to and lack of association with these corruptible, finite, infe-
rior human traits with which we are all familiar. Yet they also avoid
the problem of the radical equivocal use of language. These words
make meaningful claims about the nature of God.
While using negative attribution is Maimonides’ most important
use of religious language, because he believes that it allows meaning-
ful communication about God without anthropocentrism, he allows
for a second use of religious language. Another legitimate use of reli-
gious language is to describe God’s actions in the world. Maimonides
explains, ‘All the names of God, may He be exalted, that are found in
any of the books [Scriptures] derive from actions’.16 Since Jewish the-
ism holds that God acts in the world, these actions can provide
another basis for explaining religious language. While God may be
infinite, beyond human categories, and beyond description due to
His radical otherness from the world, divine actions in the material
world have a finite and describable scope. God’s actions can be
described as just, loving, strong, or wise. So, the claim that ‘God is
just’ could be understood as neither a positive nor negative attribu-
tion concerning the divine essence, but merely a claim that God’s
actions in the material world are similar to the actions of a just per-
son.
Therefore, for Maimonides all appropriate uses of religious lan-
guage are either negative claims about the divine essence or qualita-
tive descriptions of divine actions in the world. Neither reveals the
true essence of God, but meditation upon these truths can bring the
devout closer in understanding than they were before. He ultimately
concludes that the best way to praise God is through silent medita-
tion upon His essence, radical difference from, and superiority to
everything in creation.17
16
╇ Guide of the Perplexed, I:LXI.
17
╇ Guide of the Perplexed, I:LIX.
anthropocentrism and religious language 127
said of God they can only signify a definition through names that are
primarily said of creatures.18
Obviously, God is nothing like a literal lion in that He has paws, fur,
a body, or is finite regarding strength, intelligence, or lifespan. Yet
Aquinas argues that God is metaphorically similar to a lion in that
He, like a lion, has great power in all He does despite the numerous
literal dissimilarities between them. While this sort of metaphorical
language is very limited in what it communicates about God, it still
goes beyond what Maimonides allows because it identifies a vague
similarity between God and creation and allows for a comparison
between them.
For Aquinas, the more important use of religious language is ana-
logical language. Analogical language uses words that refer to traits
of things in the material world to point towards divine attributes that
exist on a higher level of perfection in the divine essence. Furthermore,
these attributes exist differently in the divine essence from the way
they exist in creatures, since all of His traits exist essentially in Him
rather than accidentally. When Aquinas claims these attributes exist
essentially in God he means that unlike many attributes of creatures
none of God’s attributes could have been otherwise. It is not possible
that God could have been evil, weak, or ignorant.
Aquinas believes analogical language is possible because he posits
a metaphysical similarity between creation and creator that enables
language to communicate certain truths about God, albeit in a lim-
ited and imperfect way. Aquinas argues that:
God has in Himself every perfection of creatures, since He is simply
and universally perfect. Hence every creature represents Him, and is
similar to Him to the degree that it has perfection. Yet a creature does
not represent Him as something in the same species or genus, but
instead it represents Him as an excelling source, from whose form
inferior effects are brought about, yet whose likeness they represent…
Therefore, the previously mentioned names of God signify the divine
substance, but imperfectly, just as creatures imperfectly represent it.
Thus, when it is said that ‘God is good,’ it does not mean… ‘God is not
18
╇ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologicae (st), author’s own translation, I.13. 6.
I consulted the translation of the Fathers of the Dominican Province and found it to
be helpful. Here and elsewhere making the text accessible to non-specialists was a
priority.
anthropocentrism and religious language 129
21
╇ st I.13.6.
anthropocentrism and religious language 131
creation. We may first learn these words and apply them to things
in creation, but Aquinas claims that unlike words that are used to
describe God metaphorically, these words refer primarily to God
rather than to humans. Our use of words like good, powerful, or
knowledgeable to describe humans is more common but less precise.
For Aquinas, God is not merely the cause of these attributes in cre-
ation, but the most perfect forms of these traits are found in the
divine essence. Therefore, no anthropocentrism is committed by
positively attributing these perfections to God, since creation
expresses truths about the Creator from whom goods in creation
ultimately proceed.
How does Aquinas distinguish metaphorical from analogical reli-
gious language? The critical difference is that metaphorical religious
language uses words that refer to modes of existence that are specific
to creatures and therefore is not properly associated with God at all.
For example, the claim that ‘God has a strong arm’22 is clearly meta-
phorical. Obviously, there is no literal sense in which a material body
or anything requiring a material body can be associated with an
immaterial God. Unlike wisdom, there is no sense in which a right
arm exists more perfectly within God in either a qualitative or quan-
titative sense: material existence is strictly associated with creation.
Yet, the fact that God is powerful in what He does, in some way that
is similar to a warrior’s strength and power on the battlefield, com-
municates a truth about God. Metaphorical language is less clear and
precise than analogical language, but draws upon images that a lay-
man may be better able to understand.
Aquinas offers a clearer distinction between analogical and meta-
phorical language in the Summa Contra Gentiles (scg). He explains:
Indeed, every perfection of the creature is discoverable in God in
another more excellent way. Whatever names designate absolute per-
fection without defect are predicated both of God and of other things:
such as goodness, wisdom, being and other such words. However,
whatever words express names like these perfections but require a
mode of existence proper to creatures cannot be said of God except as
similitude and metaphor. By this method the attributes of one thing
are adapted to another type of thing as when a man is named ‘block’
due to his dense intellect.23
22
╇Psalm 89:13 (North American Standard Bible).
23
╇ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, author’s own translation, I.30.
I consulted the translation by Joseph Rickaby and found it to be helpful.
132 eric j. silverman
24
╇ st I.13.2.
25
╇ st I.13.2.
anthropocentrism and religious language 133
these words simply mean that God is radically other and beyond our
account of goodness? Whether or not we ultimately judge this argu-
ment to be successful, this objection is a serious challenge to
Maimonides since it suggests that negative predication completely
undermines communication about God.
‘Second, these positions imply that all names said of God would be
said of Him secondarily, just as “healthy” is said of medicine second-
arily, for the word signifies only the cause of health in the animal,
and it is the animal which is primarily called healthy’.26 Aquinas’ sec-
ond objection is less persuasive. He correctly argues that these alter-
native interpretations of religious language have the undesirable
implication that religious words communicate far less about God
than is often thought. Furthermore, he is correct that these compet-
ing views imply that words communicate about God in a less direct
way than is often thought. Yet his argument seems to assume that
religious words can be used of God primarily and not just second-
arily. While he may be correct, someone who doubts this point will
not ultimately find this argument convincing. In particular,
Maimonides has no problem accepting this implication of rejecting
the analogical use of religious language.
‘Third, this interpretation conflicts with the intention of those who
speak of God. For when they say “God lives” they intend to commu-
nicate more than these views allow; they mean more than God is the
cause of our life or that He is different from inanimate bodies’.27
Aquinas’ third reason for rejecting Maimonides’ position is that most
people who use religious language intend to communicate far more
than negative attribution allows. When religious people claim that
God is good, virtually all of them believe they are saying something
more than that God is in no way bad. When people say that God lives
they certainly think they are communicating more than ‘God is not
dead’ or ‘God is not inanimate’. They at least believe they are com-
municating more about God’s nature than Maimonides’ approach
allows.
One might uncharitably think that this third argument commits
the ad populum fallacy, by claiming something must be true simply
because most people deem it to be so. Yet there is more to Aquinas’
argument than an appeal to public opinion, since with language the
26
╇ st I.13.2.
27
╇ st I.13.2.
134 eric j. silverman
One might mistakenly think that we can learn nothing from the
medieval era concerning anthropocentrism. After all, wasn’t it their
account of the Great Chain of Being that entrenched anthropocentric
28
╇ st I.4.2-3.
anthropocentrism and religious language 135
29
╇See DeLapp, ‘The View from Somewhere’; Steiner, ‘Toward a Non-Anthropo-
centric Cosmopolitanism’; and Attfield, ‘Social History, Religion and Technology’,
this volume.
30
╇Gilbert Keith Chesterton, St Thomas Aquinas and St. Francis of Assisi (San
Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 2002), 28.
31
╇ Buddhism is a more complex tradition than we can do justice to in a few sen-
tences. I am uncomfortable with simply describing Buddhism as a monist view of the
world without adding numerous qualifications (and perhaps, even after adding qual-
ifications). Yet, for our purposes it suffices to note that Chesterton is reacting against
monism and equating it with Buddhism just as he is reacting against dualism and
equating it with Platonism.
136 eric j. silverman
1
╇ Alphonse-Nicolas Didron, ‘Review of L.-A. Boileau, Nouvelle forme architec-
turale’, Annales Archéologique, 13 (1853), 329: ‘C’est de l’architecture antédiluvienne,
plus monstrueuse est plus bossue que les mastodontes les plus rébarbatifs’.
2
╇ Louis-Auguste Boileau, Nouvelle forme architecturale composée par M. Boi-
leau, architecte, exposé, notes, et appreciations (Paris: Gide et Baudry, 1853), 19, quo-
ted in Bruno Foucart, ‘La “Cathédrale Synthétique” de Louis-Auguste Boileau’,
Revue de l’art, no. 3 (1969), 58.
3
╇ Louis-Auguste Boileau, Les préludes de l’architecture du XX siècle (Paris:
Librairie Fischbacher, 1893), xxiii. Emphasis in original.
4
╇ Louis-Auguste Boileau, ‘Mémoire sur diverses améliorations apportées dans
l’emploi des bois pour la menuiserie’, Société d’émulation du département des Vosges,
Epinal. Annales, 6 (1847): 142–3.
140 paula young lee
5
╇Georges Cuvier, ‘Sur le grand Mastodonte, animal très-voisin de l’éléphant…’,
Annales du Muséum d’histoire naturelle, 8 (1806): 270–312, 7 plates.
6
╇ ‘Histoire’, in Emile Littré, Dictionnaire de la langue française, 1863.
7
╇Didron, ‘Review of L.-A. Boileau, Nouvelle forme architecturale’, 329.
8
╇See Joseph Rykwert, On Adam’s House in Paradise (New York: Museum of
Modern Art; Chicago: Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts,
1972).
vitruvian man is a pterosaur 141
�
epitomised a gendered Christian cosmology where man occupied the
privileged position on earth, and was thus understood as the ideal
generative principle informing human attempts to build.
In De Architectura, written during the time of Augustus, the
Roman writer Vitruvius had invoked an established analogy between
the proportions of the Greek temple type and ‘a finely shaped human
body’. In his now-canonical description, the ‘strength and grace’ of
the Doric column recalls a robust man, the Ionic column a matronly
woman, and the Corinthian a young maiden (Vitruvius, Book III. 1).
The caryatid column—a sculptural column explicitly shaped like a
young female—remains the most literal expression of this anthropo-
morphic tradition. Following Vitruvius’ lead, various Renaissance
theorists developed powerfully anthropomorphising principles that
were incorporated into the plan, while fusing the practice of architec-
ture with an explicitly Christian worldview. The ‘building is truly a
living body’,9 wrote Italian architectural theorist Filarete. ‘Some
[buildings] never fall sick and yet suddenly die; others are killed by
man for one reason or another’.10 It was understood that the body in
question was a human male, of which the most perfect example was
Christ (Fig. 1). The most familiar of these representational efforts
remains Leonardo da Vinci’s version of the Vitruvian man, a male
nude inscribed in circle (in motion) and in square (at rest), incarnat-
ing the generative principles of the ideal architectural plan.
When Boileau completed work on the neo-Gothic church of St.
Eugène in 1855, centuries of debate had contributed to the secularisa-
tion of the cathedral, persuasively recast by architectural theorist
Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc as the product of pure reason
divorced from spiritual values. As Robin Middleton has pointed out,
the furore over Boileau’s cathedral makes no sense unless attached to
this controversy over the cultural implications of the Gothic revival.
Purely on aesthetic grounds, for example, Boileau’s combination of
an industrial material with the Gothic style was shocking to contem-
9
╇ Antonio Averlino Filarete, Architecture Civile e militare, I, fol. 6, quoted in Fran-
çoise Choay, ‘La ville et le domaine bâti comme corps dans les textes des architectes-
théoriciens de la première Renaissance italienne’, Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse, 9
(Spring 1974), 247.
10
╇ Antonio Averlino Filarete, Architettura Ingegneria, I, fol. 6, 12–3, quoted in
Choay, ‘La ville et le domaine’, 245.
142 paula young lee
Fig. 1.╇ The Sanctuary of the Temple in Jerusalem, from Hieronymous Pradus and
Ioannes Baptista Villalpandus, in Ezechielem explanationes et apparatus Urbis ac
Templi Hierosolymitani, Rome, â•‚.
11
╇Robin Middleton, ‘Viollet-le-Duc and the Rational Gothic Tradition’ (Ph.D
thesis, Cambridge University, 1958). Middleton observed that the church of St.
Eugène offended both sides of the archaeology v. engineering debate, for if one side
saw its rejection of the flying buttress as an affront to archaeological standards, the
other perceived it as stylistically retrograde in its adaptation of historical forms.
vitruvian man is a pterosaur 143
‘Confused sounds penetrate the warm moist air. They are the croak-
ings of batrachians, the hissing of reptiles, the lowings and bleatings
of ruminants, the hoarse roar of mammoths, and the cries of large
birds’.12 This was how Viollet-le-Duc imagined the dawn of civilisa-
tion, where he searches for the origins of architecture. A far cry from
the perfect bliss offered by the biblical account, his version of the
origination myth was a potent combination of popular science with
pure fiction, and his ‘original man’ was a pathetic, naked creature
shuddering in the hostile land. Seated high on a mountain, two
angelic aliens named Epergos and Doxius watch as a group of hom-
inid ‘creatures’ seek shelter, fight with each other, and cry over their
wounded. ‘Are they men?’ a sceptical Viollet-le-Duc asks his reader.
For ‘all animals engage in attack and defence’; their erratic actions
prove nothing except that they have the power of motion.13 The
clumping and seeking movements of these man-like ‘creatures’ are
simply propelled by ‘instinct’, akin to simple organisms and even
plants. He refuses to specify what these hominids are, if indeed they
are not men. We are meant to understand that they are animals.
Taking pity on their helplessness, Epergos and Doxius descend to
earth, and show the ‘Naïrriti’ how to build a shelter by binding the
tops of trees together. It is now up to the Naïrriti to demonstrate the
capacity to reason for themselves; as Viollet-le-Duc had stated earlier
in his influential Lectures, ‘building a hut with branches of trees is not
Art; it is merely the supplying of a material want.14 The proof of
humanity is in the building: only ‘if the huts we see then [in a hun-
dred thousand days] are better made than these... in that case these
creatures are not mere animals’.15 There is a causal relationship
between one state of being and its material expression, but to build a
shelter is no proof of innate intelligence. There must be improve-
12
╇Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Histoire de l’habitation humaine (Paris: J.
Hetzel, 1875). It is translated into English as The Habitations of Man in All Ages,
trans. Benjamin Bucknall (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington,
1876), 1. All translations will be taken from this edition.
13
╇Viollet-le-Duc, Habitations, 2. Descartes had said the same of the lamb fleeing
the wolf; it was just an ‘involuntary action’, just as the cries of animals are no indica-
tion of pain but are akin to the screeching of gears.
14
╇Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, Lectures on Architecture, (New York:
Dover, 1987), I, 13.
15
╇Viollet-le-Duc, Habitations, 7.
144 paula young lee
ment. ‘While we observe that in the depth of the sea the humble
molluscs build themselves substantial dwellings adorned with bright
colours’, he noted, ‘we have not been able to understand how the
most intelligent among animated beings should not have been able
to make themselves shelters, or have possessed only mean abodes’.16
This was the essential question: if molluscs could build their own
housing, how could men be truly men, and not be able do better?
The intervention of reason as the true denominator separating
‘man’ from ‘animal’ is enough to suggest Descartes’ influence, but
Viollet-le-Duc’s homage was intentional. His history of habitations
revived a critical dialogue begun in Descartes’ Recherche de la vérité
par la lumière naturelle (Search for the Truth by Natural Light), an
early work from about 1628 that was part of Viollet-le-Duc’s personal
library. The Recherche featured a fictional conversation between
‘Epistemon’ and ‘Eudoxe’, names that Viollet-le-Duc surely intended
to echo with his own main characters, ‘Epergos’ (‘he who does’) and
‘Doxius’ (‘he who judges’).17 The narrative opens with Epistemon and
Eudoxe seeking out ‘Polyandre’ (‘Everyman’), an untutored man of
average intelligence (‘mediocre esprit’), at his isolated house in the
country. Polyandre is self-conscious about his lack of formal educa-
tion, but he is assured by his tutors that all he needs is a ‘reasoning
soul’ from whence begins ‘all knowledge’. From the study of objects,
to the close observation of nature that will demonstrate ‘how the
souls of plants and animals differ from ours’, Polyandre learns that
without rigorous method, his education is like ‘a badly built house’
just as he, as a man, will also be badly built.18
Only through architecture, art, and written history could the moral
and intellectual perfection of a race be correctly gauged.19 Charles-
Ernest Beulé (1826–74), a classicist who followed Quatremère and
16
╇Viollet-le-Duc, Habitations, 33.
17
╇Per Laurent Baridon’s explanation of the names’ meaning in the Greek. Viol-
let-le-Duc owned a collected edition of Descartes, Discours de la méthode; Médita-
tions philosophiques; Les passions de l’âme; Règles pour la direction de l’esprit; De la
[recherche de la] verité par les lumières naturelles, ed. L. Aimé Martin (Paris: Lefèvre,
1844). The dialogue was continued by Malebranche, De la recherche de la vérité, où
l’on traite de la nature de l’esprit de l’homme et de l’usage qu’il en doit faire pour éviter
l’erreur dans les sciences (2 vols., Paris: Pralard, 1674–5). See Baridon, L’imaginaire
scientifique de Viollet-le-Duc (Paris: Editions l’Harmattan, 1996), 249, n. 8.
18
╇Descartes, Recherche de la Vérité, 509.
19
╇ Louis Agassiz, De la succession et du développement des êtres organisés à la
surface du globe terrestre (Neuchâtel: Henri Wolfrath, 1841), 13.
vitruvian man is a pterosaur 145
20
╇ Charles-Ernest Beulé, Histoire de l’art grec avant Périclès (Paris: Didier et cie,
1870), 33.
21
╇Viollet-le-Duc, Habitations, 394. This is his closing line.
22
╇Viollet-le-Duc, Lectures on Architecture, I, 447.
23
╇Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, L’histoire d’une maison, trans. by Benjamin
Bucknall as How to Build a House (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Riv-
ington, 1874), 117.
146 paula young lee
built will always allow us to see its organs, and how these organs
perform their functions’.
One sees the problem then, with Boileau, who embraced the oppo-
site stance by offering an architectural accumulation of various cul-
tures and histories. Instead of privileging the ahistorical bones,
Boileau had proposed that architecture emerged from the ‘small
number of cells’ that controlled the three major faculties of the
human body: sentiment, reason, and realisation. This ‘eurhythm
taken from inorganic matter’ was in turn taken from physician
Philippe Buchez, who argued that the key link between human bodies
vitruvian man is a pterosaur 147
and the social organism was ‘nevrosité’.24 The literal product of these
exchanges between individual anatomy and the social body was the
architectural object. Boileau’s idea to design a synthetic cathedral
based on Buchez’s ‘nervous’ cells was meant seriously; the thin white
lines painted on the colonnettes of St. Eugène were like nerves run-
ning up and down the ‘skeletal system [ossature]’ of the church’s
interior. In short, Boileau proposed a medicalised human anatomy as
the generative principle for a new progressive architecture.
This was not how his work was received. Didron sarcastically submit-
ted that if Boileau had ‘truly invented anything’, it was a sort of ‘camel-
construction’ (‘l’architecture-chameau’).25 As an ugly, imported beast of
burden, Boileau’s iron-based construction was a hunchback, an architec-
tural Quasimodo whose presence perverted true cathedrals such as
Notre Dame, ‘Our Lady,’ a building then being restored by Viollet-le
Duc as an expression of architectural rationalism. His hunchback-cathe-
dral was all the more horrible for occupying the central overlap between
the circular leaves of the trefoil, as it appears in Léopold Flameng’s illus-
tration to Victor Hugo’s famous novel of 1831, Notre Dame de Paris
(translated into English as The Hunchback of Notre Dame, a work that
helped spark the Gothic revival in France). In place of the perfect resolu-
tion of the Three-in-One, out pops the misshapen and lumpy sphere that
is Quasimodo’s head. Like Boileau’s synthetic cathedral, he is bossu and
rébarbatif, and his misshapen body refuses to be restrained by the arcing
intersections of the ideal, religious frame. As if by force of Quasimodo’s
warped gaze, the stone stringcourse begins to crack. Didron’s language
is telling in this regard, for he describes Boileau’s architecture as mon-
strueuse but also bossue, meaning humped (for camels), or hunchbacked
(for persons). But the related word bosser means ‘to work hard’, ‘to
slave’, and also ‘to strike’ (thereby raising a lump, bosse); its stem root,
bossuer, means to ‘swell up’, ‘bulge out of shape’ or otherwise become
distorted by inflation. In other words, a hunched back was a deformity
that connoted hard labour and physical stress, the silhouette of the over-
burdened and overflowing bodies of the labouring classes.
24
╇Philippe-Joseph-Benjamin Buchez, ‘Essai de coordination positive des phéno-
mènes qui ont pour siège le système nerveux’, Journal des progrès des sciences et ins-
titutions médicales, 9 (1828): 175–206; and idem, ‘Etablir par l’histoire et par les
monuments les principales formes, que l’architecture religieuse a revêtues depuis les
temps plus reculés, jusqu’à nos jours’, Congrès historiques européens, 1 (1835): 261–4.
25
╇Didron, ‘Review of L.-A. Boileau, Nouvelle forme architecturale’, 329.
148 paula young lee
26
╇ Albert Lenoir, in Boileau, Nouvelle forme architectural, 24: ‘cette foule de
piliers qui, ver le centre, deviennent d’une proportion considerable’.
27
╇ ‘Salon de 1865. Architecture. Edifices construits ou en construction’, 1865, col.
129. Quoted and translated in Frances Steiner, French Iron Architecture (Ann Arbor,
MI: UMI, 1984), 102.
28
╇ Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise, 1765: ‘un terrain où il y a beaucoup de
petites inégalités; & dans ce sens on dit proverbialement, que les cimitières sont bos-
sus, pour dire, que Le terrein en est inégal, à cause de la quantité de gens qu’on y
enterre continuellement’. Emphasis in original.
29
╇Georges Cuvier, ‘Discours sur les révolutions de la surface du globe’, appendix
to idem, Leçons d’anatomie comparée, (Paris: Dumeril, 1805) V; and idem,
vitruvian man is a pterosaur 149
Recherches sur les ossemens fossiles, (Paris: Déterville, 1812), I, 1. ‘On ‘monuments’ in
reference to fossil remains, see Rhoda Rappaport, ‘Borrowed Words: Problems
of Vocabulary in Eighteenth-Century Geology’, British Journal for the History of
Â�Science, 15 (1982): 27–44.
30
╇ Archibald MacMechan points out that ‘the Chaldaic name for the book of
Genesis is “b’Cadmin,” in the beginning, or “Cadmon,” beginning, from the opening
words of the first chapter of Genesis. Adam-Cadmon is the primitive and ideal man
of the Cabalists’. See ‘Notes’ to Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, ed. Archibald Mac-
Mechan, (Boston and London: Ginn & Company, Athenaeum Press,1896), 296.
MacMechan quotes Albert Stöckl on the Cabalic Adam: ‘Der Urmensch ist das Pro-
totyp der ganzen Schöpfung, der Inbegriff aller Wesen, der Makrokosmus, die Ewige
Weisheit; er ist dasjenige, was von Andern Logos oder Wort genannt wird’.
Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters II (Mainz, 1865), 235.
150 paula young lee
backward so that its enormous head would not lose all equilibrium’;
it was an awkward flier at best—but the logical pattern that could be
discerned from its bones, a logic that defied all expectations and still
maintained its own coherence even when the conclusions were wrong
(as was the case with Cuvier and the fixity of species.)34 Like the
organism that Littré defined as an ensemble of functions, ‘the leaf of
a shrub, a flower, an insect’, all ‘maintain their existence according to
34
╇ Cuvier, Recherches (4th edn.), quoted and translated in Kevin Padian, ‘The
Case of the Bat-Winged Pterosaur: Typological Taxonomy and the Influence of Pic-
torial Representation on Scientific Perception’, Dinosaurs Past and Present, ed. Sylvia
J. Czerkas and Everett C. Olson, (Seattle and London: University of Washington
Press and Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, 1987), II, unpaginated. I am
grateful to Prof. Padian for his help with Viollet-le-Duc’s drawing.
152 paula young lee
35
╇Sullivan’s Wainwright (1890–1), Bayard (1897–8), Carson, Pirie, Scott (1899–
1904), and Gage (1898–90) buildings, each establish one of four principal classifica-
tory headings. See William Jordy, American Buildings and their Architects:
Progressive and Academic Ideals at the Turn of the Century (New York: Doubleday,
1972).
36
╇ In the 1800’s, architect J.-N.-L. Durand had created similar ‘comparative anat-
omies’, which he based upon functional types rather than upon formal variation
within a ‘species’. See Jean-Nicolas-Louis Durand, Précis des leçons d’architecture
donné à l’Ecole Polytechnique (2 vols., Paris: 1802; 1805); and idem, Recueil et paral-
lèle des édifices de tout genre, anciens et moderns ( Paris: 1801; rev. edn., Paris: 1809).
37
╇Martin Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’, in Poetry, Language,
Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1971).
vitruvian man is a pterosaur 153
emphasis. If that model body is indeed now purely body, i.e. animal,
what are the fuller implications for the realities of human dwelling?
The historical arcs of these changes are overly simplified here; and
they beg the question of why and how these changes occur in the first
place. For the time being, suffice it to say that each change has
increasingly stressed material worth over spiritual values, and pro-
voked great anxiety over human-animal boundaries. The institutional
repression of wildness, marked by the creation of zoos and the pro-
liferation of household pets, is one obvious marker of cultural
attempts to control the animal difference. Correspondingly, these
displaced activities illustrate that the question of how humans ‘dwell’
on the earth has never been more acute, even as extinctions of mod-
ern animals accelerate for reasons that capitalism denies and politics
dictate.
It may be that the anthropomorphic body-paradigm is no longer
valid, as the sudden proliferation of explicitly zoomorphic architec-
ture may suggest. A recent work by George Legendre suggests that
new architectural ontologies may disregard the flesh entirely. As vir-
tual realities and avatars work to redefine socio-cultural relations, the
new century is seemingly poised to inhabit a new set of conditions
defined by technology, raising Donna Haraway’s cyborg to the level
of deity.38 It goes without saying that the human disenfranchisement
from nature would thus be made complete, as matter without con-
sciousness—i.e. the unmediated organic world—cannot navigate
simulated environments driven by scopophilic fantasies. It is here
that philosophy replaces history.
38
╇George Legendre, Bodyline: The End of our Meta-Mechanical Body (London:
AA Files, 2006).
modernity as anthropolarity 155
Modernity as anthropolarity:
The Human economy of Frankenstein
Ben Dawson
1
╇Mellor asserted that ‘Mary Shelley saw the creature as potentially dangerous,
but she never suggested that he was other than fully human’. Quoted in M. McLane,
‘Literate Species: Populations, “Humanities,” and Frankenstein’, ELH, 63:4 (1996)’,
962, who disagrees. The issue, however, is frequent in discussions of the monstrosity
of the monster in Frankenstein scholarship. There seems some critical agreement
that, by falling neither fully inside nor fully outside the category of humanity as it
operates in the novel, the creature functions as an abject or monstrous humanity that
destabilises the category.
156 ben dawson
2
╇ Cf. Osamu Nishitani’s powerful analysis of the secretly guiding distinction,
from the early modern period, between anthropos and humanitas. It is an ‘organized
non-coincidence’ (as Schütz glosses), which may be seen to function as a key appa-
ratus in the occidentalisation of the world. Osamu Nishitani, ‘Anthropos and
Humanitas: Two Western Concepts of “Human Being”’, Translation, Biopolitics,
Colonial Difference (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2007).
modernity as anthropolarity 157
3
╇See, esp., Michel Foucault, ‘What is Critique?’, The Politics of Truth, ed. Syl-
vère Lotinger, trans. Lysa Hichroth and Catherine Porter (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e),
2007), for the argument concerning the inextricability of governmentalisation and
critique (power and resistance).
modernity as anthropolarity 159
4
╇Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, ed. Marilyn Butler
(1818; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 111.
160 ben dawson
5
╇ Franco Moretti, Signs Taken for Wonders: On the Sociology of Literary Forms
(London: Verso, 2005). See the essay ‘Dialectic of Fear’, 85. It helps to recall, with
Marx, that the term ‘wretch’, which is one of the most frequent names given the
monster, was ‘the technical expression used in English political economy for the
agricultural labourer’. Karl Marx, Capital, trans. Ben Fowkes (1867; London: Pen-
guin, 1976), I, 517.
6
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 36.
7
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 37.
8
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 37.
9
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 38.
modernity as anthropolarity 161
10
╇Marx, Capital, I, 343.
11
╇ This was directly apparent in the ‘forced labour until death’ of African slaves.
After the transition to commodity production (the export of cotton rather than pro-
duction for immediate local requirements), ‘the consumption of [the Negro’s] life in
seven years of labour, became a factor in a calculated and calculating system’. Marx,
Capital, I, 345.
12
╇Marx, Capital, I, 341.
13
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 34–7.
162 ben dawson
14
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 38–43.
15
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 35.
modernity as anthropolarity 163
Victor and the monster, which we are proposing as, so to speak, the
cipher for an intra-human separation and relation in our ‘secular
age’.
The relation of Frankenstein and his creature is a polarity—a
dynamic, rather than a simple, opposition—or, in different terms, an
internal separation. Neither can ever distinguish the other as a stably
independent object. One is always literally chasing the other, and the
tension of pursuit/evasion, as it were, comes to precede them, to
supersede their individual identities. This tension between these two
poles (Frankenstein/monster) is emphasised by the structure of the
novel: by the fact that the tale of the monster’s terrorising pursuit of
Victor is narrated by Victor while he recovers sufficiently to continue
his avenging pursuit of the monster.19 The essence of their bipolarity
seems most exposed in this attraction and repulsion, which, dialecti-
cally phrased, is the identity and difference of soliciting and solicited
force.
However, unlike both traditional Trinitarian ‘economies’ as well as
the consummating movement of the Hegelian dialectic (traditionally
understood), there is the material tension of a disjunctive synthesis
between creator and creature in Frankenstein, without a third (lov-
ing) moment of reconciliation in which unity is recovered and
realised. Such reconciliation would ultimately mean the identity of
difference and identity—externalisation reappropriated or paradise
regained—whereas what is presented is rather their ‘difference’.
When, ‘by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light’, Victor sees
‘the dull yellow eye of the creature open’, the work of thought is (as
far as Victor is concerned) accomplished, finished, or ought to be.
But the monster opens his eyes, ‘if eyes they may be called’, and fixes
them on him, stretching out a hand, ‘seemingly to detain [him]’.20 It
even mumbles something, or may have, but Victor has already fled.
Instead of reconciliation (mutual recognition or love), there is a neg-
ative dialectic of victim/victor, cursing/accursed, terminating in
reciprocal ‘suicide’—a suicide which is, in a sense, the novel’s most
utopian moment since, in actuality, such structures are perpetually
self-reproducing rather than teleologically self-destroying. The curse
19
╇ Cf. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning
and the New International. Trans. Peggy Kamuf (1993; London: Routledge, 2006),
126. The spectre (of communism) is that which the traumatised (Europe) ‘chases
(excludes, banishes, and at the same time pursues)’.
20
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 39–40.
modernity as anthropolarity 165
that unites Frankenstein and his monster is, as it were, the parodic or
inverted echo of the sanctification of the Holy Spirit: ‘Cursed, cursed
creator! why did I live?’21 ‘I was doomed to live’.22 Or Victor: ‘I was
cursed by some devil, and carried about with me my eternal hell’.23
The curse that endlessly repels them, that refuses their reconciliation,
may be identified with the spark of human life, of material-nervous
force, that inhabits both and thus also unites them. Together they
figure the negative dialectic of the human; their point of intersection
is the locus of their separation.
During the labour process of each act of creation he undertakes
(both the original monster’s and the abandoned bride’s), Victor
becomes a nervous wreck, i.e. physically evacuated of his health. In
both cases, he becomes increasingly alienated from nature and its
serene beauty the closer he approaches the moment of ‘bestowing
animation on lifeless matter’ (an alienation described using the fig-
ures of romantic aesthetics). This process of material self-emptying is
crucial to the reciprocally bound destruction, the shared ‘curse’, of
Victor and the monster. They are substantially and vitalistically con-
nected, forming a singularity whose two aspects are at war. Two anti-
thetical poles of a single being: call them, labour and capital.
In ‘The Working Day’ chapter of Capital, Marx lets the voices
capitalist society is producing be heard over ‘the sound and fury of
the production process’. It is an extraordinary withdrawal of philo-
sophical authority:
I… demand a working day of normal length, and I demand it without
appeal to your heart, for in money matters sentiment is out of place. You
may be a model citizen, perhaps a member of the R.S.P.C.A., and you may
be in the odour of sanctity as well; but the thing [Ding] you represent when
you come face to face with me has no heart in its breast. What seems to
throb there is my own heartbeat.24
21
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 110.
22
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 149.
23
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 173.
24
╇Marx, Capital, I, 343.
166 ben dawson
25
╇Marx, Capital, I, 342.
26
╇ Bloom, ‘Introduction’, 2.
27
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 40, 39.
28
╇Giorgio Agamben, Le règne et la gloire: Pour une généalogie théologique de
l’économie et du gouvernement. Trans. Joël Gayraud and Martin Rueff (Paris: Seuil,
2008), has offered an archaeology of modern governmentality in terms of the trans-
mission of the paradigm of the Trinitarian oikonomia.
modernity as anthropolarity 167
29
╇ Cf. the final chapter of Derrida, Specters of Marx, and Andrew Zimmerman,
‘The Ideology of the Machine and the Spirit of the Factory: Remarx on Babbage and
Ure’, Cultural Critique, 37 (1997): 5–29.
30
╇ Quoted in Charles T. Wolfe and Motoiki Terada, ‘The Animal Economy as
Object and Program in Montpellier Vitalism’, Science in Context, 21 (2008): 537–79,
at 546. Emphasis in original.
168 ben dawson
31
╇ We are focussing on the connections between ‘biology’ and ‘political econ-
omy’, but the third discursive formation in Foucault’s triune modernity, ‘historical
philology’, is also, but in a different way, fundamental here. Comparative linguistics,
as Raymond Schwab and Edward Said explained, became ‘a science of all humanity,
a science premised on the unity of the human species and the worth of every human
detail’ (Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Pen-
guin, 1995), 133; see also Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s
Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680–1880, trans. Gene Patterson-King and Victor
Reinking (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). Schwab and Said both show
how philology was central to the process of integrating and distinguishing European
and ‘non-European’ humanity.
32
╇ For a suggestive connection between Quesnay’s medical and physiological
research and his own later publications as an economist as well as those by other
Physiocrats, see Michael Sonenscher, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality, and
the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2009), 203ff.
33
╇ Quoted in Simon Schaffer, ‘Enlightened Automata’, The Sciences in Enlight-
ened Europe, eds. William Clark, Jan Golinski, and Simon Schaffer (Chicago: Univer-
sity of Chicago Press, 1999), 143.
modernity as anthropolarity 169
34
╇Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de
France, 1977–8, trans. Graham Burchel, ed. Michel Senellart (Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2007), 75.
170 ben dawson
35
╇See Benjamin Brodie, Physiological Researches [collected and republished from
Physiological Transactions, 1811–2] (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Long-
mans, 1851), 3; A.P. Wilson Philip, ‘Experiments Made with a View to Ascertain the
Principle on Which the Action of the Heart Depends, and the Relation Which Sub-
sists between That Organ and the Nervous System’, Philosophical Transactions of the
Royal Society of London, 105 (1815): 65–90, at 68–9, for a description of his own such
experiments and a list of others performing similar ones. And for the history of the
idea of artificial respiration, see A.B. Baker, ‘Artificial Respiration: the History of an
Idea’, Medical History, 15 (1971): 336–51.
36
╇ Wilson Philip, ‘Experiments’, 69.
modernity as anthropolarity 171
╇ Albrecht Haller, A Dissertation on the Sensible and Irritable Parts of Animals
38
39
╇G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1977), §266. Hegel may be thinking of Kielmeyer’s division
of the system of nature into three classes: Reproductivtieren, Irritabilitätstieren, and
Sensibilitätstieren. See Timothy Lenoir, The Strategy of Life: Technology and Mechan-
ics in Nineteenth-Century German Biology (revised edn., Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press, 1989), 51.
40
╇ For a discussion, see Neil Vickers, Coleridge and the Doctors (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2004).
modernity as anthropolarity 173
(in front of the Prince of Wales) through electric rods to the corpse
of a hanged criminal, ‘the limbs were violently agitated; the eyes
opened and shut; the mouth and jaws worked about, and the whole
face thrown into frightful convulsions’.41 This is reported by a certain
Dr. Andrew Ure, himself a British public ‘administer’ of electrophys-
iological experimentations at this time. He is the very same Dr. Ure
whose Philosophy of Manufacture (1835) is quoted so extensively in
Capital because of the purity with which it expresses the ideology of
factory-based capitalism. Marx calls Ure the ‘Pindar of the automatic
factory’.
In 1819, a few months after the publication of Frankenstein, Ure
conducted and published reports of a series of his own electrical
experiments on the hanged body of a ‘murderer’ named Clydesdale.42
In Experiment 3, for instance, the ‘supra-orbital nerve… in the eye-
brow’ was connected to a large voltaic pile with one conducting rod,
‘and the other to the heel’: ‘every muscle in his countenance was
simultaneously thrown into fearful action; rage, horror, despair,
anguish, and ghastly smiles, united their hideous expression in the
murderer’s face, surpassing the wildest representations of a Fuseli or
a Kean’.43 More than simply a real-life postscript to Frankenstein,
Ure’s active empirical interest in animal electricity offers us a fresh
understanding of his own (Pindaric) definition of the factory as ‘a
vast automaton composed of various mechanical and intellectual
organs, acting in uninterrupted concert for the production of a com-
mon object, all of them being subordinate to a self-regulated moving
force’.44
Behind Ure’s Philosophy of Manufacture, which has been consid-
ered the ‘origin of a mechanical, factory-centred tradition in the
understanding of capitalism’,45 we can observe, coming together for
the first time, three forms of power: the ‘vital force’ circulating in the
bodies of organisms; ‘living labour power’ as the universal substance
of value; and the motive ‘power of steam’ derived, recursively through
41
╇ Andrew Ure, ‘An Account of Some Experiments made on the Body of a Crim-
inal immediately after Execution, with Physiological and Practical Observations’,
Journal of Science and the Arts, 6 (1819): 283–94, at 284.
42
╇See Ure, ‘An Account’.
43
╇Ure, ‘An Account’, 290. Cf. Byron: ‘And Galvanism has set some corpses grin-
ning, / But has not answered like the apparatus / Of the Humane Society’s beginning,
/ By which men are unsuffocated gratis’ (Don Juan, Canto 2. St. 130).
44
╇ Andrew Ure, Philosophy of Manufacture, quoted in Marx, Capital, I, 544.
45
╇See Zimmerman, ‘Ideology of the Machine’, 27n3.
174 ben dawson
the technology it enables, from coal mined from the earth. In all three
forms of ‘energy’—labour power, health/life itself, and nature as the
energy resource in modern technology—the reflexive paradigm of
self-regulation, self-organisation, and self-motion materially devel-
ops.
At this point, we arrive, then, at the second ‘factory’ in the novel.
For, we may begin to recognise Frankenstein’s monster, recomposed
out of the dismembered parts of the feudal ‘poor’, as himself a ‘fac-
tory’, in contrast, as it were, to the manufacturing ‘workshop’ from
which he emerges. Capitalist production dissects the body of the
worker into components or organs, which it recombines into a new,
functionally reconditioned whole. The evolution from the manufac-
turing workshop to the industrial factory is, for Marx and Ure, a
qualitative transformation brought about by what we would call dis-
ciplinary power:
The historical moment of the disciplines was the moment when an art
of the human body was born, which was directed not only at the
growth of its skills, nor at the intensification of its subjection, but at
the formation of a relation that in the mechanism itself makes it more
obedient as it becomes more useful, and conversely.46
Although our concepts do not directly square with Foucault’s, the cor-
relation between docility and utility is intimately connected to volition
and vitality; the factory-subject (i.e. the vast automaton as an organised
whole) becomes reciprocally more ‘vital’ and less ‘voluntary’. With the
sole aim of intensifying the self-valorisation of capital, the disciplinary
power Ure theorises continuously decomposes and recomposes the col-
lective worker, transforming ‘the living mechanism of manufacture…
made up solely of… one-sidedly specialized workers’ into ‘a really sci-
entific division of the production process into its component parts’.47
The ‘crippling’ effect of functional specialisation on the individual
worker during the period of manufacture not only deforms the worker
(into a figure resembling Frankenstein’s monster) but moreover pre-
pares the ‘new conditions for the domination of capital over labour’.48
46
╇Or, again: ‘These methods, which made possible the meticulous control of the
operations of the body, which assured the constant subjection of its forces and
imposed upon them a relation of docility-utility, might be called “disciplines”’.
(Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, trans. Alan Sheridan
(London: Penguin, 1977), 138; emphasis added).
47
╇Marx, Capital, I, 458.
48
╇Marx, Capital, I, 486.
modernity as anthropolarity 175
49
╇ Cf. Marx’s quotations from the factor inspectors on the ‘flesh agents’ or ‘deal-
ers in human flesh’ who manage the ‘the disposable population’. Marx, Capital, I,
379 and note 78.
50
╇Marx, Capital, I, 490. It was over the chorus of this complaint that Ure sang
the praises of the factory.
176 ben dawson
51
╇Marx, Capital, I, 490.
52
╇Marx, Capital, I, 499.
modernity as anthropolarity 177
53
╇ ‘The work of directing, superintending and adjusting becomes one of the
functions of capital, from the moment that the labour under the control of capital,
becomes cooperative. Once a function of capital, it requires special characteristics’.
Marx, Capital, quoted in Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 175.
54
╇Marx, Capital, I, 503.
55
╇Marx, Capital, I, 520.
178 ben dawson
12.
modernity as anthropolarity 179
Precarious Humanity
58
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 121.
59
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 121.
180 ben dawson
60
╇ Contextualising the political writings of Ockham with reference to the ‘stand-
ard view of theologians before John XXII’ (whose bull rescinded the legal basis of
Franciscan poverty, of usus facti), Kilcullen explains: ‘Permission sometimes confers
a legal right, but not always; it may be what the civil law calls a precarium, and this
is the kind of permission the Franciscans have. They do not claim or exercise any
legal rights, either individually or as an order. They have a moral right to use things
because the owners give them precarious permission, but if permission is withdrawn
(for any reason, or none), the Franciscans have no right they can enforce in court.
This is “simple use of fact.” In this case, the phrase does not mean the act of using, it
means a right; but it is a moral right, not a legal right. Simple use of fact is “a licit
power of using…to which there is not necessarily”—in the Franciscans case, not
actually—“annexed any right to which one might claim use in court”’ (John Kilcul-
len, ‘The Political Writings’, The Cambridge Companion to Ockham, ed. P.V. Spade
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 308.
61
╇Shelley, Frankenstein, 119.
62
╇ Hannah Arendt, ‘The Perplexities of the Rights of Man’, The Portable Hannah
Arendt, ed. Peter Baehr (London: Penguin, 2000), 36. For a recent critical response
to Arendt that focuses on this famous statement, see Jacques Rancière, ‘Who is the
Subject of the Rights of Man?’, South Atlantic Quarterly, 103:2/3 (2004): 297–310.
modernity as anthropolarity 181
63
╇Marx, ‘Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’, quoted
from Giorgio Agamben, The Time that Remains: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to
the Romans, trans. Patricia Dailey (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005),
30.
anthropocentrism and ‘culture’ 183
Sabrina Tonutti
Dichotomies
1
╇Roberto Marchesini and Sabrina Tonutti, Manuale di zooantropologia (Rome:
Meltemi, 2007); Sabrina Tonutti, ‘L’opposizione natura/cultura: quando le categorie
sono usate come ontologie’, ‘Umano, troppo umano’, Riflessioni sull’opposizione naÂ�Â�
tura/cultura in antropologia, eds. Alessandro Lutri, Alberto Acerbi, and Sabrina
Tonutti, (Florence: SEID, 2009), 33–53.
2
╇ However, the concept of ‘species’ complicates the matter, instead of simplify-
ing it. In fact, as it is shown by taxonomic studies, there is no clear-cut definition of
‘species’. While we learn form Mayr that ‘species are groups of interbreeding natural
populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups’, and from Lan-
caster that ‘species’ is ‘the basic taxon among sexually reproducing animals’, we
should also note, with Dupré, that species ‘are not evolutionary units, but merely
classificatory units’. See Ernst Mayr, ‘Species Concepts and Their Application’, The
Units of Evolution: Essays on the Nature of Species, ed. Marc Ereshevsky (Cambridge,
MA and London: MIT Press, 1992), 17; Jane B. Lancaster, Primate Behavior and the
Emergence of Human Culture (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1975), 90;
John Dupré, Humans and Other Animals (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2002), 5–6.
The following admonition from Darwin’s The Origin of Species warns us against
the risk of ‘naturalising’ categories and essentialism: ‘we shall have to treat species in
the same manner as those naturalists treat genera, who admit that genera are merely
artificial combinations made for convenience. This may not be a cheering prospect;
but we shall at least be free from the vain search for the undiscovered and undis�
coverable essence of the term species’ (quoted in David L. Hull, ‘The Effect of Essen-
tialism on Taxonomy—Two Thousand Years of Stasis’, The British Journal for the
Philosophy of Science, 15:60 (1965), 320).
anthropocentrism and ‘culture’ 185
–â•fi views human cultural traits under a magnifying lens, while reducing
all animal traits into a single category, without taking into consid-
eration inherent phylogenic differences;
–â•fi ignores/denies elements of continuity between human and other
animal species, labelling signs of culture in other animals as ‘proto-
culture’, ‘pre-culture’, and so on, with the aim of underlining the
uniqueness and superiority of human species, while ignoring that
every species is in its own way unique and differentiated;
–â•fi ignores phylogenic links between our species and other animals
(mostly primates), which the evolution of human behavioural pat-
terns must refer to.
3
╇ The ‘Rubicon’ metaphor has been mentioned by the anthropologist Francesco
Remotti (‘Introduction’, Antropologia dei modelli culturali, Alfred L. Kroeber (Bolo-
gna: Il Mulino, 1974), 12) in describing Kroeber’s claim of a complete independence
of culture (and humans) from biology (and the realm of animals). It was also used by
M. Critchley in the sixties: Critchley, a researcher in neurology, poses the following
186 sabrina tonutti
question, regarding the difference between human language and animal communica-
tion: ‘Can it be, therefore, that a veritable Rubicon does exist between animals and
man after all?… Can it be that Darwin was in error when he regarded the differences
between man and animals as differences merely in degree?’ (quoted in Donald R.
Griffin, The Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Expe-
rience (Los Altos, CA: William Kaufmann, 1981), 74).
4
╇ Luisella Battaglia, Lo specchio oscuro. Gli animali nell’immaginario degli
uomini (Turin: Satyagraha, 1978).
5
╇Gino Ditadi, ed., I filosofi e gli animali (Este: Isonomia, 1994), 438–9, author’s
own translation.
anthropocentrism and ‘culture’ 187
always there, as a threat to humans, who risk falling back into a pri�
mordial ‘beastly’ condition.6
According to Petrarch, an absolute qualitative difference seems to
emerge between humans and animals, of essence, not of degree. For
humanists, humans are naturally predisposed to knowledge, while
animals belong to the instinctual condition. Humans seem to be for-
ever suspended between the two opposing poles and conditions of
humanitas and feritas.
In this brief summary of humanistic tenets, it emerges how in such
a cosmological and anthropological framework the process driving
men towards humanitas runs parallel to the eradication of all those
traits which link human beings to the animal dominion (corporeal
constraints, instincts, animal kinship, etc.). Humanists reject human
immanence. It is considered negatively, as a limit derived from nature
and comparable to the ‘inability’ of animals to transcend their feral
state. Man is therefore engaged in a struggle to build his proper iden-
tity by elevating himself from animality. This process of perficere
(‘perfecting’) is played in contrast to animals, who represent a nega-
tive model, a dense and material repertoire of symbols for humans to
appropriate as a negative reflection of themselves.
I believe that the legacy of this perspective, although expressed in
different terms, currently exerts great influence on the way we address
the definition of contents such as ‘humanity’, ‘culture’, and ‘non-
humans’, and also on the relationship between different kinds of
knowledge. What I refer to is the humanist divide between humani-
ties (social sciences in general) and natural sciences, mirrored by the
Geisteswissenshaften (sciences of the ‘spirit’, human sciences) and
Naturwissenschaften (natural sciences) binomial.
One of the elements commonly used to discuss the study of Man
in humanistic dissertations was the bitter dispute against natural sci-
ences. In a way, we can say that humanism turned its back on nature;
it assumed humanitas as a subject of speculation and totally dis-
missed humanity’s natural dimension. At the same time, it was con-
sidered improper for natural sciences to deal with any traits of
humanity. This contrast reached its acme in the dispute Petrarch
engaged against natural knowledge, stating that only culture owns a
6
╇Gioacchino Paparelli, Feritas, Humanistas, Divinitas. Le componenti dell’umaÂ�
nesimo (Messina-Florence: D’Anna, 1960), 32.
188 sabrina tonutti
Herder
Philosopher and anthropologist Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–
1803) adopted this acceptation in his work Ideen zur Philosophie der
Geschichte der Menschheit. With Herder, the concept of culture
enables us to identify a process and a field of expression of something
which is essentially human,10 and completely lacking in animality.
He considers culture as a second genesis for mankind.
7
╇ Quoted in Eugenio Garin, L’Umanesimo italiano. Filosofia e vita civile nel
Rinascimento (Bari: Laterza, 1952), 34, author’s own translation.
8
╇ Quoted in Eugenio Garin, L’Umanesimo italiano, 34, author’s own translation.
9
╇Pietro Rossi, Cultura e antropologia (Turin: Einaudi, 1983), 105, author’s own
translation.
10
╇ ‘As the human intellect… seeks unity in every kind of variety, and the divine
mind, its prototype, has stamped the most innumerable multiplicity upon the Earth
with unity, we may venture from the vast realm of change to revert to the simplest
position: all mankind are only one and the same species’. A characteristic trait of this
species is the ability to think, while animals rely on their instincts to survive. There-
fore, no kinship between them exists. Herder warns: ‘thou, man, honour thyself: nei-
ther the pongo nor the gibbon is thy brother: the American and the Negro are: these
therefore thou shouldst not oppress, or murder, or steal; for they are men, like thee:
with ape thou canst nor enter into fraternity’. See Johann Gottfried von Herder,
anthropocentrism and ‘culture’ 189
Tylor
Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) formulated the scientific defini-
tion of ‘culture’, stressing that ‘culture’ is ‘acquired’, and thus shifting
from the humanistic meaning to the anthropological one. Tylor
emphasised the learned characteristic of culture, as signifying the
complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law,
custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a
member of society.11
In emphasising these aspects, Tylor adapted anthropological defin-
ing tools (the culture concept) in order to include the ‘primitives’
within the field of culture, and therefore of anthropological inquiry.
Tylor’s inclusive perspective became a point of reference in the
following decades for such anthropologists as Franz Boas, Carl
Wissler, Robert Lowie, and Alfred L. Kroeber, who used this concept
in opposition to ‘innate’ (nature), leading to the creation of a dra-
matic hiatus between learned/innate, cultural/biological with corre-
lated disciplinary separations. Boas and his followers stressed the
opposition between humans and animals with regard to culture: thus
the former acquire it by living in society, while animals, which lack
culture, rely on their innate biological apparatus.
Morgan
Pronouncements that went against this claim did not effect anthro-
pology under its surface. The discipline was taking its first steps in
academia when the Morgan-Boas controversy took place.
The American anthropologist Lewis Henry Morgan (1818–81) not
only never used the culture concept, but also strongly opposed the
concept of ‘instinct’, which was supposed to be able to explain ‘the
intelligent acts of animals’.15 ‘This term’, I quote from The American
Beaver, ‘was an invention of the metaphysicians to assert and main-
tain a fundamental distinction between the mental principle of the
human species and that of the inferior animals’.16 For Morgan the
term was ‘wholly incapable of explaining the phenomena of animal
13
╇ Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer, ‘Culture’, Encyclopedia of Social and
Cultural Anthropology, ed. Alan Barnard and Jonathan Spencer (London and New
York: Routledge, 1996), 138.
14
╇ Ruth Benedict, Race and Racism (London, Melbourne and Henley: Routledge
& Kegan Paul, 1983), 9–10.
15
╇ Lewis Henry Morgan, The American Beaver and His Works (Philadelphia:
J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1868), 275.
16
╇ Morgan, American Beaver, 275–6.
anthropocentrism and ‘culture’ 191
Kroeber
One of Boas’ followers, Alfred Kroeber (1876–1960), theorised that
‘culture’ is ‘superorganic’. He completely separated humans from the
animal realm,22 believing in the ontological independence of culture
from the biological, psychological, and social dimensions. So, Kroeber
hypothesised a leap in nature from the organic level to the cultural,
and a gap between humans and animals. Again it was a difference in
kind, not in degree.
Explaining the basic principles of his theory, in The Superorganic
Kroeber referred to the Aristotelian formulation of complementary
antithesis, based on mutually exclusive binary oppositions such as
body/soul, physical/mental, organic/cultural, as a way of thinking
characteristic of Western society.23
17
╇ Morgan, American Beaver, 276.
18
╇ Morgan, American Beaver, 277.
19
╇Namely: ‘manifestation of perception, appetite and passion, memory, reason
and will’ (Morgan, American Beaver, 276).
20
╇Morgan, American Beaver, 277. Morgan strongly objected that ‘long-standing
religio-philosophical’ body of knowledge, principles, assumptions on which the cul-
ture concept supported by Boas was founded. ‘Culture’ ended up replacing ‘soul’ in
marking the separation between humans and animals. See John H. Moore, ‘The Cul-
ture Concept as Ideology’, American Ethnologist, 1:3 (1974): 537–49, at 546.
21
╇Moore, ‘Culture Concept’, passim.
22
╇See Alfred Kroeber, ‘The Superorganic’, American Anthropologist, 19:2 (1917):
163–213; idem, Anthropology (London: G. Harrap, 1923).
23
╇ Kroeber links conceptual dualism to Aristotle. More generally, it is in the
ancient Greek opposition between nómos and phúsis that we can trace the origin of
the nature/culture, and human/animal dichotomies. This opposition then became
central in classical rationalism and in the philosophy of the Enlightenment, till it was
absorbed and adapted by the Cartesian doctrine of the machine-animal (Annamaria
Rivera, ‘La construction de la nature et de la culture par la relation home-animal’, La
fabrication de l’human dans les cultures et en anthropologie, eds. Claude Calame and
Mondher Kilani (Lausanne: Payot Lausanne, 1999), 51). Western culture shaped by
192 sabrina tonutti
Geertz
Clifford Geertz (1928–2006) launched the paradigm of man as an
incomplete creature, in line with the tenets described above. Following
some of Kroeber’s assumptions, Geertz described culture as some-
thing external to the human organism,24 independent from the bio-
logical apparatus.
Geertz defined ‘culture’ as ‘a set of control mechanisms—plans,
recipes, rules, instructions (what computer engineers call “pro-
grams”)—for the governing of behavior’.25 He then stated that:
the behavior patterns of lower animals are, at least to a much greater
extent, given to them with their physical structure; genetic sources of infor-
mation order their actions within much narrower ranges of variation, the
narrower and more thoroughgoing the lower the animal. For man, what
are innately given are extremely general response capacities, which,
although they make possible for greater plasticity, complexity, and on the
scattered occasions when everything works as it should, effectiveness of
behavior, leave it much less precisely regulated.26
Christian tradition has stressed the importance of human life, in contrast with other
forms of life, and this perspective has its origin in the Genesis. During Medieval
times, Aristotle’s philosophy and Christian thought came to a synthesis thanks to
Aquinas: since everything in nature has an end, less rational beings as animals are
considered means to humans’ ends. Even if Aquinas’ philosophy was criticised later
on, man’s superiority was not contested. On the contrary, this paradigm gave rise to
Cartesian dichotomy (res extensa/res cogitans), and then reached a sophisticated for-
mulation with Kant (See Peter Singer, Rethinking Life and Death (Melbourne: Text
Publishing Co., 1994)).
24
╇ Clifford Geertz, ‘The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of
Man’, Man in Adaptation: The Cultural Present, ed. Yehudi A. Cohen (Chicago:
Aldine Publishing Company, 1968): 19–32; idem, The Interpretation of Cultures
(New York: Basic Books, 1973).
25
╇Geertz, ‘Impact of the Concept of Culture’, 26.
26
╇Geertz, ‘Impact of the Concept of Culture’, 27.
27
╇Geertz, ‘Impact of the Concept of Culture’, 27.
28
╇Geertz, ‘Impact of the Concept of Culture’, 27; idem, Interpretation of Cul-
tures, 96.
anthropocentrism and ‘culture’ 193
29
╇Roberto Marchesini, Post human. Verso nuovi modelli di esistenza (Turin:
�Bollati Boringhieri, 2002).
30
╇Marchesini, Post-human, 30.
194 sabrina tonutti
animal oppositions from the first edition (1949) and offering a com-
pletely new perspective.31
What he stated was that the nature/culture opposition was not
an objective trait of reality, but the output of a defensive cultural
operation aimed at dismissing and rejecting similarities and links
with other animal species that are so close to us as to be perceived as
a threat to human identity. As a consequence, the boundary line
between humans and animals becomes unstable and gives way to
similarities, analogies, homologies and overlappings between the
two—previously conceptually separated—domains. In Race et
Histoire, Race et Culture, Lévi-Strauss stated that elements of what we
call culture, do spring up here and there in various animal families
(2002).32
To come to other recent contributions, even the transcultural
characteristic attributed to the nature/culture opposition has been
critiqued. Philippe Descola demonstrated that this opposition is not
a universal cultural trait, rather an historical product of certain cul-
tural contexts, as well as an analytical tool belonging to symbolic and
structuralist anthropology.33
Ethnographic research on cosmological and taxonomic systems in
some ‘non-Western’ societies has investigated the use of modelling
processes which are based on analogical codes and cultural categories
different from binary oppositions. These cultural systems also show
representations of human/animal and humans/environment rela-
tionships different from those we are accustomed to and commonly
use. For example, the Jivaro Achuar population from the Amazon
considers the majority of animals and plants as ‘persons’ who live in
their own societies and make contact with humans according to spe-
cific social and behavioural rules. The Chewongs from Malaysia do
not believe a categorical or ontological separation between humans
and other beings exists, since plants, animals and spirits are all char-
acterised by consciousness, have a language, rationality, intellect, and
moral codes.
At the end of this summary, what emerges is that the shaping of
the concept of culture in social sciences has been deterministic and
31
╇ Claude Lévi-Strauss, Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (1949; Paris:
Mouton, 1967).
32
╇ Claude Lévi-Strauss, Race et Histoire, Race et Culture (Paris: Albin Michel,
2001).
33
╇Philippe Descola and Gísli Pállson, eds., Nature and Society: Anthropological
Perspectives (London: Routledge, 1996).
anthropocentrism and ‘culture’ 195
Essentialism
Animal Culture
Ethology—the phylogenic study of behaviour—has produced some
profound literature on animal cultures. Among the most salient stud-
ies it is necessary to mention the research carried out by the prima-
tologist Jane Goodall on chimpanzees in Gombe, and the related
‘outrage’ provoked by her ethologic reports which proved the use of
tools by these animals (see Lawick-Goodall 1971).37 Other famous
34
╇Michael Carrithers, ‘Nature and Culture’, Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural
Anthropology, eds. Barnard and Spencer, 394.
35
╇ Lévi-Strauss, Les structures élémentaires.
36
╇ Cognitive ethology is not alone in bridging the supposed gap between humans
and animals, by analysing cultural behaviours in other animals. Other disciplines,
such as anthrozoology, paleoanthropology, genetics, human ethology draw new
interpretive horizons and foster the revision of some important epistemological
assumptions.
37
╇See Jane van Lawick-Goodall, In the Shadow of Man (Boston: Houghton Miff-
lin Harcourt, 1971). Referring to tool use as a marker of humans uniqueness in
nature, Barnard and Spencer quote the words L.S.B. Leakey is supposed to have said
when Jane Goodall reported to him the use of tools by the Gombe chimpanzees:
‘“Ah, now we must redefine tool, redefine man—or accept chimpanzees as humans!”’
(Barnard and Spencer, ‘Culture’, 140).
196 sabrina tonutti
38
╇Dian Fossey, Gorillas in the Mist (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1983);
Biruté M.F. Galdikas, Reflections of Eden: My Life with the Orangutans of Borneo
(London: Victor Gollancz, 1995).
39
╇ Among chimpanzees a remarkable variability exists as far as their diverse
capacities and traditions in the use of tools, patterns of grooming, use of food
resources, and capacity for attention are concerned. Diversity in personality and
temperament has also been demonstrated.
40
╇ Apart from primates, forms of ‘culture’ have been documented in songbirds,
cetaceans, elephants, and other mammal species.
41
╇See Frans B.M. de Waal and Peter L. Tyack, eds., Animal Social Complexity:
Intelligence, Culture, and Individualized Societies (Cambridge, MA and London:
Harvard University Press, 2003); Frans B.M. de Waal, The Ape and the Sushi Master:
Cultural Reflections by a Primatologist (New York: Basic Books, 2001).
42
╇ ‘When wheat was given to monkeys, it was simply thrown out in piles on the
beach. Very quickly it would become mixed with sand and the monkeys would have
to sit for hours painstakingly picking out the wheat grain by grain. In 1960 the young
female began to pick up handfuls and armloads of wheat and sand, dash on two hind
legs to the water, and drop them in. The wheat would then float while the sand sank
so that she could easily sweep up handfuls of wheat and eat them’ (Lancaster, Pri-
mate Behavior, 46).
43
╇Tetsuro Matsuzawa, ‘Koshima Monkeys and Bossou Chimpanzees: Long-Term
Research on Culture in Nonhuman Primates’, Animal Social Complexity, eds. de
Waal and Tyack, 374–87.
anthropocentrism and ‘culture’ 197
44
╇See Sabrina Tonutti, ‘Imo e Ogotemmeli: eccesso di personalità. Una rifles-
sione attorno a soggettività, informatori, cultura, persone’, La Ricerca Folklorica, 54
(2007): 115–22.
45
╇ What I believe is that only by adopting a particularistic approach would it be
possible to get to a deep understanding of animal culture and subjectivity; by ‘par-
ticularistic’ I mean the observational perspective proposed by ethnography in study-
ing local communities, life histories, and the like. In this respect I believe that
sociocultural anthropology could suggest a different approach to animal behavioural
sciences regarding the study of animal cultures, which could be extremely innovative
and useful in keeping reductionism and determinism at bay. It focuses on ontogeny
rather than phylogeny, and on the individual rather than species.
46
╇ Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and
Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), xii.
198 sabrina tonutti
Ontological Problems
The human/animal divide can be/is used as an easy and quick rhe-
torical device to refer superficially to two domains that we have pro-
jected onto reality in order to better our specific investigation into
certain human cultural traits. Thus far the heuristic use of the oppo-
sition is acceptable.
The problem arises when this contingent interpretive grid is not
considered as a heuristic device, but transformed into ‘essences’, into
‘natural kinds’, or, quoting Descola, into an ‘ontological paradigm’.47
In doing so, categories are treated as though they were ‘things’, phe-
nomena emerging from nature. As a consequence of this process,
categories are made to appear as real things, and not as what they
really are, namely culturally and historically determined contingent
epistemological devices.48 Seen thus, the human/animal separation
constitutes an axiom that apparently does not require any further
explication, analysis or scrutiny.
Given this tendency, some scholars prefer to inquire into cultural
phenomena using other concepts and expressions instead of that of
‘culture’. Arjun Appadurai addresses ‘culture’ as a ‘dimension’, stat-
ing that in underlining ‘dimensionality’ instead of ‘substantiality’ we
can think of culture as an heuristic device useful to talk about differ-
ence, and not as a trait characteristic of some people or some groups.49
Conclusion
Philip Tonner
Being
*╇ An earlier version of this paper was delivered at Durham University at the 31st
Annual Meeting of the Theoretical Archaeology Group, 18th December 2009, in the
session, ‘Oneness and Otherness: Self and Identity in relation to material and animal
worlds’. I would like to thank the session organisers, Marcus Brittain, Andy Need-
ham, Nick Overton and Penny Spikins, for all their hard work in convening the ses-
sion and for their helpful and suggestive comments. I would also like to thank
Cheralynne Hyde of Glasgow Museums for comments on an earlier draft.
1
╇Peter Singer, ‘Preface’, Animal Philosophy: Essential Readings in Continental
Thought, ed. M. Calarco and P. Atterton (London and New York: Continuum, 2004),
xi. A number of the chapters in this volume are pertinent to these observations,
notably those by Nimmo, Steiner, Silverman and Krebber.
204 philip tonner
2
╇ As Zimmerman has put it ‘The phenomenology developed by Husserl and
transformed by Heidegger provided the basic conceptual distinctions for much of
twentieth century continental philosophy’ (M.E. Zimmerman, ‘Heidegger’s Phenom-
enology and Contemporary Environmentalism’, Eco-Phenomenology: Back to the
Earth Itself, ed. T. Toadvine (New York: SUNY Press, 2002), 1). Heidegger is a cen-
tral point of reference for existentialism, hermeneutics and post-structuralism as well
as for phenomenology: his early masterpiece Being and Time (trans. J. Macquarrie
and E. Robinson (1927; Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962)) had a formative influence on
Jean-Paul Sartre; his other works, particularly on art and language, have been crucial
to the development of hermeneutics and deconstruction in the hands of thinkers
such as Gadamer and Derrida. In fact, there is not a branch of philosophy in Europe
that has not been influenced—positively or negatively—by Heidegger at some stage
over the course of the last 80 or so years. This influence shows no sign of letting up.
His influence is also not confined only to philosophy. Most recently Heidegger’s
thought has begun to influence archaeologists and anthropologists who have started
referring to what they call the ‘dwelling perspective’ in their work. This perspective
is a direct out-growth of Heidegger’s account of human Dasein who ‘poetically
dwells on this earth’. Some excellent works on Heidegger and animals have appeared
in recent years. For example, Calarco and Atterton, eds. Animal Philosophy; M.
Calarco, Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2008); D.F. Krell, Daimon Life: Heidegger and Life-
philosophy (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1992); S. Glendinning, On
Being with Others: Heidegger—Derrida—Wittgenstein (London and New York:
Routledge, 1998); S. Elden, ‘Heidegger’s Animals’, Continental Philosophy Review, 39
(2006): 273–91.
are animals poor in the world? 205
3
╇D. Frede, ‘The question of being: Heidegger’s project’, The Cambridge ComÂ�
panion to Heidegger, ed. C.B. Guignon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),
65.
4
╇ The reader would be repaid by consulting Arthur O. Lovejoy’s classic work
The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (1936; Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1990) for a discussion of the notion of a scale of nature
and hierarchical conception of reality in Western thought.
206 philip tonner
Phenomenology
5
╇Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking?, trans. J. Glen Gray (New York:
Harper and Row, 1968), 16.
6
╇T. Sheehan, ‘Reading a Life: Heidegger and Hard Times’, Cambridge Compan-
ion to Heidegger, ed. Guignon; idem, ‘Kehre and Ereignis: A Prolegomenon to Intro-
duction to Metaphysics’, A Companion to Heidegger’s Introduction to Metaphysics,
ed. R. Polt and G. Fried (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); J. Taminiaux,
‘Philosophy of Existence I: Heidegger’, Continental Philosophy in the 20th Century,
vol. VIII, ed. R. Kearney (London and New York: Routledge); Philip Tonner,
Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being (London and New York: Contin-
uum, 2010).
are animals poor in the world? 207
7
╇ H.L. Dreyfus and M.A. Wrathall, A Companion to Phenomenology and Exis-
tentialism (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 2; David Woodruff Smith, ‘Phenom-
enology’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ed. Edward N. Zalta (Summer
2009 edn.), 1: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2009/entries/phenomenology/.
8
╇ Woodruff Smith, ‘Phenomenology’; J.N. Mohanty, ‘Husserl’, The World’s Great
Philosophers, ed. R.L. Arrington (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003): 138–47.
9
╇ Woodruff Smith, ‘Phenomenology’; J. Smith, ‘Phenomenology’, The Inter-
net Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://www.iep.utm.edu/phenom/. Last accessed
Sept. 9, 2009.
208 philip tonner
10
╇Smith, ‘Phenomenology’; Woodruff Smith, ‘Phenomenology’, 11.
11
╇ C. Cazeaux, ed., The Continental Aesthetics Reader (London and New York:
Routledge, 2000), 68.
12
╇ There are some excellent resources available on Heidegger and phenome�
nology. See, for example, H.L. Dreyfus and M.A. Wrathall, ‘Martin Heidegger:
An Introduction to His Thought, Work and Life’, A Companion to Heidegger, ed.
H.L. Dreyfus and M.A. Wrathall (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005): 1–15; Dreyfus and
Wrathall, Companion to Phenomenology; Woodruff Smith, ‘Phenomenology’; Smith,
‘Phenomenology’.
are animals poor in the world? 209
13
╇Dreyfus and Wrathall, ‘Martin Heidegger’, 3; T. Sheehan, ‘Heidegger’, World’s
Great Philosophers, ed. Arrington, 105–6.
14
╇Dreyfus and Wrathall, ‘Martin Heidegger’, 3; Sheehan, ‘Heidegger’, 107.
210 philip tonner
15
╇Dreyfus and Wrathall, ‘Martin Heidegger’, 3.
are animals poor in the world? 211
�
memory stick breaks, perhaps because I’ve dropped and then stood
on it. In this situation my normally simple and fluid practical engage-
ment with my useful tool that I use to accomplish my tasks is inter-
rupted and I encounter a difficulty and an unanticipated situation.
The transition from ready-to-hand equipment to present-at-hand
object transpires when the sheer occurrentness of the object obtrudes
and the object presents itself as a discrete property bearing entity that
needs to be fixed.
Turning to Dasein: when Heidegger conducts his ontological
enquiry into human being he does not proceed by listing our objec-
tive properties, such as, for example, our Encephalisation Quotient
(observed brain volume) or our bipedal gait. Rather, he inquires after
those conditions or structures that make it possible to be human in
the first place. One such structure that Heidegger identifies is what
he calls being-in-the-world: human beings—or Dasein, literally
being-there—always already exist in a world and are practically
engaged with that world. Heidegger will argue that the tradition of
Western philosophy has passed over both Dasein and world in the
senses that he understands them. Despite Heidegger’s broadly tran-
scendental analysis in Being and Time (the inquiry into the structures
making possible our interaction with available objects and into the
structures making possible our existence qua Dasein) Dasein is not a
subject in the traditional sense. That is, Dasein is not a subject that
‘has’ mental states and experiences, where such states and experi-
ences are taken as quasi thing-like and self-identical in and of them-
selves and that are somehow added to (as in, had by) a subject ‘in
their mind’ that is itself considered independently of the configura-
tion of that subject’s environing world. Such a perspective has devel-
oped out of intellectualist accounts of the nature of our engagement
with the world, a perspective that for Heidegger passes over our pri-
mary manner of being practically engaged and existentially immersed
in our world.
Co-ordinately, the tradition of philosophy has passed over the
world in Heidegger’s sense of the term. The reason for this is that the
tradition has concentrated on entities within the world in their pres-
ent-at-hand state as objects with properties that are not intrinsically
meaningful, being essentially related to our understanding and inter-
est. In this context, the world itself has been seen as just the totality
of such entities. However, phenomenological insight and ontological
analysis show us that objects, as they are encountered by us as useful
212 philip tonner
16
╇Dreyfus and Wrathall, ‘Martin Heidegger’, 1–15. This is the positive account of
objects that Heidegger offers from the point of view of fundamental ontology.
Objects considered with reference to Dasein’s understanding and interest are avail-
able qua ready-to-hand; objects considered independently of that understanding and
interest are present-to-hand. Later, when objects are understood as ‘worldless’
Heidegger does not mean that they are to be considered independently from our
understanding and interest and so as present-to-hand. What he means is that objects
are without world in the sense that they cannot form worlds; that is, they have no
intentional relatedness (and are not capable of intentional relatedness) to anything
whatsoever.
are animals poor in the world? 213
17
╇Dreyfus and Wrathall, ‘Martin Heidegger’, 5.
18
╇Dreyfus and Wrathall, ‘Martin Heidegger’, 6.
214 philip tonner
22
╇ Wartenberg, ‘Heidegger’.
23
╇Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ (1936), Poetry, Language,
Thought, Martin Heidegger, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row,
1971)
24
╇ Cited in Wartenberg, ‘Heidegger’, 151.
25
╇ Wartenberg, ‘Heidegger’, 152.
216 philip tonner
character that the beings that the peasant woman meets in her expe-
rience have for her—their equipmentality—in her world.
Van Gogh’s painting reveals the world of the peasant woman to an
audience. But, it also reveals that world in terms of its emergence
from the earth. In this context we can think of the earth as that out
of which the world is fashioned, but not in terms that would relegate
the earth to passive matter. Rather, earth relates to concealment in
Heidegger’s terms and so, a little loosely, refers to the pre-cultural
ground that tends to resist our attempts to establish coherent worlds
upon it. For this reason, there is strife between world and earth,
unconcealment and concealment. In his later writings from the 1930s
on, Heidegger takes the view that there have been successive worlds
that have unfolded over the epochs of what he calls the ‘history of
being’. Each epoch is constituted by a different world in Heidegger’s
sense and the succession of different worlds is accounted for by the
fact that the earth continues to resist our collective attempts to sub-
due it and to incorporate it wholesale into a particular historical
world.26 In general, however, works of art illuminate the style of a
particular cultural-historical world.27
26
╇ Wartenberg, ‘Heidegger’, 154.
27
╇ H.L. Dreyfus, ‘Heidegger’s Ontology of Art’, A Companion to Heidegger, eds.
Dreyfus and Wrathall, 414. Interpretation and criticism of what I have intimated
here under the heading ‘Art and Truth’ tend to occur in discussions of Heidegger’s
so called ‘later philosophy’. As well as discussing these themes various authors also
critically address points of interpretation such as the ontico-ontological difference,
the question of language, poetry, technology, humanism and ethics, representational
thinking and the thorny issue of Heidegger’s politics. An excellent first port of call
on Heidegger generally, including on some of these issues, is Richard Polt’s
Heidegger: An Introduction, (London: UCL Press, 1999). For a discussion of
Heidegger’s ‘metaphysical anthropocentrism’ that picks up on some of these themes
the reader should consult M. Calarco, Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from
Heidegger to Derrida (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
are animals poor in the world? 217
aspect that allows animals and objects to bear the meaning that they
do within a specific historico-cultural context:
Standing there, the building holds its ground against the storm raging
above it and so first makes the storm itself manifest in its violence… Tree
and grass, eagle and bull, snake and cricket first enter into their distinctive
shapes and thus come to appear as what they are… The temple-work,
standing there, opens up a world… The temple, in its standing there, first
gives to things their look and to men their outlook on themselves.28
28
╇ Heidegger, ‘Origin of the Work of Art’, 42–43.
29
╇ In my Heidegger, Metaphysics and the Univocity of Being I suggest that ‘great’
art is political for Heidegger because it puts up for decision the ultimate values con-
stitutive of a community. Naturally, a concern with so called ‘great’ art is something
that we are not entitled to remain silent on. Recently, LaCapra has suggested that
oppositions between ‘fine or high and popular culture’ has no place in Heidegger’s
‘Origin’ essay (Dominick LaCapra, History and Its Limits: Human, Animal, Violence
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009), 136). LaCapra also notes that animals are on
the side of ‘earth’ in Heidegger’s account of the ‘strife’ between world and earth,
unconcealment and concealment, in that work (135). In contrast to the animal that
is ‘open’ only by a small degree, Dasein is essentially open to being, to the ‘as’ struc-
ture of things (to their meaningful presence ‘as’ this or that to Dasein’s understand-
ing and interest). As LaCapra notes, the other thinker who must be mentioned in
connection to ‘the open’ is Giorgio Agamben, author of a work bearing the title, The
Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford: Stanford University Press,
2002). See LaCapra, History and Its Limits, 128. For a discussion of Agamben see
Calarco, Zoographies.
30
╇ H.L. Dreyfus, ‘Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, art, technology,
and politics’, Cambridge Companion to Heidegger, ed. Guignon, 289–316.
218 philip tonner
objects. The focal function of art—in that it stands at the centre of the
network of relations and possible understandings that Dasein has of
itself and of the objects, animals and events that it encounters in its
world—is analogous to the focal function that a particular being
takes on in the philosophy of analogy. A central aspect of Heidegger’s
approach to the history of philosophy was bound up with what he
called ‘destruction’. His destructive readings of thinkers in the his-
tory of philosophy is a positive method, intended to loosen up the
concepts that the tradition has produced in order to get to the ‘fun-
damental experiences’ from which these concepts arose. Destruction
enabled Heidegger to engage in discreet reappropriations of concepts
drawn from the history of philosophy mutatis mutandis in terms of
his own project. One such concept that Heidegger appropriated was
the scholastic concept of analogia entis (analogy of being). Heidegger
constructs his account of animals and objects on the basis of a reap-
propriation of the concept of analogy. This is the metaphysical
dimension of his anthropocentrism.
There are three broad kinds of analogical reasoning in Western
philosophy: analogy of proportionality, analogy of attribution and
analogy of participation.31 Analogy of proportionality operates in
terms of a similarity of relations. Thus, by analogy, ‘A is to B’ as ‘C is
to D’: so, the term ‘intelligence’ is used analogically in this sense
when we say that ‘the dog’s intelligence is to the dog as the man’s
intelligence is to the man’. Analogy of attribution involves a relation
between two things where one is primary and the other secondary.
The classic example of this kind of analogy is to do with health: that
is, the term ‘healthy’ is analogical when applied to an individual and
that individual’s medication: the individual has health in the primary
sense and the medication secondarily in that it contributes causally
to the health of the individual. In these terms the term ‘health’ has
just the kind of focal function that we saw above: it is the focal centre
of all instances of ‘health’; the man is healthy in the primary/focal
sense; his diet is healthy in that it promotes health; his activity is
healthy in that it promotes health and so on. Analogy of participation
operates in terms of the similarity of God and His creatures: so, God’s
31
╇E. Jennifer Ashworth, ‘Medieval Theories of Analogy’, Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Fall 2009 edn.), 1–2: http://plato.stanford.edu/
archives/fall2009/entries/analogy-medieval/.
are animals poor in the world? 219
32
╇ Ashworth, ‘Medieval Theories of Analogy’, 1–2.
33
╇Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Fini-
tude, Solitude, trans. W. McNeill and N. Walker (Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 1995), 196.
34
╇ Heidegger, Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, 194.
35
╇ Heidegger, Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, 196.
220 philip tonner
36
╇ Heidegger, Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, 193.
37
╇ Heidegger, Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, 197.
are animals poor in the world? 221
Tony Milligan
3
╇Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (2nd edn., London: Pimlico, 1995), 6.
4
╇Singer, Animal Liberation, 9.
5
╇ At its most controversial the parallel between species prejudice and anti-
Semitism extends into a comparison between industrialised animal slaughter and the
Holocaust. See, for example chapters 3 and 4 of J.M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello
(London: Vintage, 2004), especially 94, for this troubling comparison.
speciesism as anthropocentrism 225
standing of the narrower prejudice that is (or at least can be) involved
in humans favouring humans over other creatures, may be informed
by our appreciation of what makes any sort of prejudice a form of
anthropocentrism. Following Richard Sylvan and David Bennett, I
will, provisionally, formulate this as a matter of endorsing a Sole
Value Assumption (that humans are the only bearers of intrinsic
value) or endorsing a Greater Value Assumption (that humans are of
more value than anything else).9 The former entails the latter, but it
is so strong that an idiosyncratically dismissive opinion of the non-
human is required for its endorsement. Be that as it may, I will take
it that the identification of these assumptions is a good starting point
for a theory of anthropocentrism, but it may be useful to revise the
formulation so that it covers actions or beliefs that are normatively
equivalent to endorsing either assumption. That is to say, anthropo-
centrism involves acting and reasoning as if at least one of these
assumptions held. We need not require that those who are anthropo-
centric must hold specific and unambiguous views on the philosoph-
ically vexed question of intrinsic value. In line with this, we might
provisionally regard speciesism as the endorsement of (or action in
line with) any belief whatsoever that is normatively equivalent to
regarding humans as the only creaturely bearers of value or as crea-
tures whose value as humans systematically trumps the value of all
other creatures.
╇Richard Sylvan and David Bennett, The Greening of Ethics (Cambridge: White
9
10
╇Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights (2nd ed., Berkeley and Los Angeles:
California University Press, 2004), 151–6.
228 tony milligan
11
╇ For a contrast between ‘abolitionist’ and ‘welfarist’ positions see Gary
�
Francione’s Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation (New
York: Columbia University Press, 2008).
12
╇ Joan Dunayer Speciesism (Derwood, MD: Ryce Publishing, 2004).
13
╇Peter Singer and Jim Mason, Eating: What We Eat and Why It Matters
(Â�London: Arrow Books, 2006), 130–1.
speciesism as anthropocentrism 229
the non-humans would clearly not be any less valuable than you and
I are now. And, in the light of this consideration, systematically
favouring all humans over all non-humans, by appeal to the special
standing of the former, may genuinely begin to look like a form of
prejudice.14
Considerations of this sort may make our humanity seem like the
wrong kind of consideration to focus upon. But while Singer and
Regan have been sympathetic to the marginalisation or dismissal of
appeals to humanity as morally-irrelevant, ethicists from other tradi-
tions have exercised caution. Favouring humans because they are
humans can be a matter of prejudice but there may still be room to
accept this and allow that, in some contexts, appeals to a shared
humanity may appropriately be made and need not amount to a
prejudice of any sort. This is a quite different position from Colin
Blakemore’s view cited above. It is not equivalent to the suggestion
that speciesism is not a matter of prejudice. It might instead be taken
to subvert the whole idea of speciesism (a view sympathetic to the
approach of Catherine Osborne) or else (the option I favour) to
require that it be constrained in ways that continue to allow familiar
appeals to humanity to play a legitimate role in at least some moral
deliberations.
In line with either of these alternatives, the relational property of
being human is itself to be regarded as a morally relevant property,
one that all humans have and that all other creatures lack. A familiar
point in support of this view, and one geared to appeal to those who
favour a radical (even emancipatory) change in our treatment of ani-
mals, is that some of the most appalling instances of mistreatment are
regularly condemned not simply as cruel but, more specifically, as
cruel and inhuman (or, in a modified form, inhumane). Condemnation
of this sort is premised not only upon the assumption that humanity
matters, but also upon the idea that it is in some respects vulnerable.
It may not be lost (after all, even moral monsters remain human) but
it can be compromised or betrayed, most notably by cruelty and a
hardening of our hearts towards extreme suffering. It would be easy
to dismiss this view as a beefed-up way for speciesists to show that
14
╇ This is a variation upon the scenario in C.S. Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet
(London: Harper Collins, 2005). However, it should be noted that Lewis held that
our shared humanity was important in a special way and that certain kinds of action
involved its betrayal. For the latter, see his final volume in the same trilogy, That
Hideous Strength (London: Harper Collins, 2005).
230 tony milligan
they too can worry about animal welfare. And historically, it has been
associated with the unattractive view that what we are vulnerable to
is a reversion to the bestial. But such a prejudicial imagery (with its
inbuilt sense of animal inferiority) may miss the mundane and often
banal nature of cruelty, particularly in our own times, when dreadful
harms rarely require us to unleash ourselves like blonde beasts.
Virtue ethicists and Wittgensteinians such as Cora Diamond and
Raimond Gaita are among those who have situated a continuing con-
cern for humanity within the broader context of a metaethical con-
cern about the danger of a loss of concepts, or at least the danger that
concepts may be reduced to coded versions of claims about rights
and consequences.15 They have favoured a difficult-to-articulate view
that our humanity matters, that it is morally relevant and to be cher-
ished. And they have done so while adopting significantly different
attitudes towards non-humans. Diamond is sympathetic to the idea
that speciesism is a serious ethical problem, one that may require a
personal response. Gaita’s attitude is more ambivalent.16 What they
share is unease with the argument from marginal cases and its rejec-
tion of our intuitions that being human and responding to humanity
matter. While we might be tempted to say that such intuitions are
only intuitions, this is a view that many ethicists who work on ani-
mals and/or the environment will be poorly placed to endorse. It is a
bad idea to reject the importance of intuitions if our concern is to
curtail anthropocentrism, given that much of the philosophical work
carried out within environmental and animal ethics over the past
forty years has relied heavily upon thought experiments of one sort
or another, and upon the related assumption that intuitions drawn
out and articulated by such thought experiments can play an impor-
tant role in moral deliberation.17
Be that as it may, sharing unease about the argument from mar-
ginal cases is not the same as having a deep and effective objection to
15
╇ Cora Diamond ‘Losing your Concepts’, Ethics, 98 (1988), 255–77.
16
╇ Cora Diamond, ‘Eating Meat and Eating People’, The Realistic Spirit:
�Witt��gen�stein, Philosophy and the Mind (Cambridge, MA.: MIT Press, 1991);
�Raimond Gaita, Good and Evil: An Absolute Conception (London: Routledge, 2004),
ch. 8, and also his more popular work, A Common Humanity (London: Routledge,
2002), 259ff.
17
╇ The classic example of an environmental ethicist appealing to thought expe�
riment and intuition is Richard Routley’s Last Man Argument in his paper ‘Is There
a Need for a New, an Environmental Ethic?’, Environmental Ethics: An Anthology,
eds. A. Light and H. Rolston (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003).
speciesism as anthropocentrism 231
it. Here, I speak of what is deep and suggest that this is the territory
that needs to be explored. What jars about the argument from mar-
ginal cases is not just the way that it cuts across familiar intuitions,
but rather, what jars is the way that it cuts across intuitions that are
of a particularly deep sort. They are intuitions of a kind that we could
only give up if we were prepared to accept a major upheaval in our
understanding of who we are. While we may be long-overdue such
an upheaval, it would nonetheless involve rethinking the whole of
our being.18 And to say this is to accept that while Singer, Regan and
other defenders of unreconstructed versions of the argument from
marginal cases have in recent years, been charged with mere ‘wel-
farism’ by ‘abolitionist’ critics, their alleged moderation is superficial.
Their challenge to the significance of being human runs deep.
In line with this view that what is at stake goes beyond the appro-
priateness of this or that politicised analogy, we can distinguish
between a class of standard responses to the argument from marginal
cases and a challenge of a deeper sort. The standard responses usually
involve one of two critical strategies. The first is stipulative and holds
that decisions in marginal cases ought to ignore the particularities of
the case in hand. Instead they should be based upon our assessment
of the general, regular or normal competences of humans by contrast
with those of non-humans.19 This position may have some justifica-
tion of a precautionary sort. Inter-species comparisons are notori-
ously difficult to make and there may often be something that we can
miss about particular cognitively impaired humans when compared
to cognitively normal non-humans. But at least in some cases there
are no grounds for suspecting that the humans have any latent or
hidden properties. In some cases things are just as they seem to be
and the discovery of this need not be epistemically demanding.
Under such conditions (and they may be the norm) there will be no
need for a precautionary principle.
Against this, let us imagine that we have found what appears to be
a good reason for allowing that decisions should always be based
upon an assessment of the usual human competences by comparison
with the usual competences of various non-human creatures. Strange
consequences would then result, at least under hypothetical circum-
18
╇See De Jonge, ‘An Alternative to Anthropocentrism’, this volume, for one
approach to just such a rethinking.
19
╇Tibor Machan, Putting Humans First: Why We Are Nature’s Favourite,
(�Lan�ham: Rowman &Littlefield, 2004).
232 tony milligan
20
╇My example here draws upon Kafka’s character Red Peter from the short story
‘A Report to an Academy’.
21
╇ For the question of whether or not species are natural kinds see Maureen
Kearney, ‘Philosophy and Phylogenetics’, The Cambridge Companion to The Philoso-
phy of Biology, eds. D. Hall and M. Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press),
speciesism as anthropocentrism 233
22
╇ The Comical History of the Merchant of Venice, 3:1.
23
╇Singer, Animal Liberation, 8.
24
╇Regan The Case for Animal Rights, 243.
speciesism as anthropocentrism 235
25
╇Robin Attfield, ‘The Good of Trees’, Journal of Value Inquiry, 15 (1981): 35–54.
236 tony milligan
26
╇ Blakemore ‘Animal Experimentation’, 130, 131.
27
╇Stephen R.L. Clark, ‘The Rights of Wild Things’ Animals and their Moral
Standing, (London, Routledge, 1997), 24–7. For a recent, but rather more strident,
restatement that species altruism is a cultural product rather than a natural given see
speciesism as anthropocentrism 237
Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (30th Anniversary edn., Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2006).
28
╇Mary Midgley, ‘The Significance of Species’, Animals and Why they Matter,
(Athens: Georgia University Press, 1983), 104.
29
╇Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: an archaeology of the human sciences,
(Vintage, New York: 1970), 387.
238 tony milligan
knowledge that has no greater claim upon the truth than any other
discourse. However, quite apart from general philosophical objec-
tions that we may have to such an approach, there is the concern that
it yields a relativism that is not conducive to upholding robust value
claims about non-humans. It may remove special human standing
but do so at too high a price to all that is non-human but important.
Alternatively, we may claim that our best way of thinking about
our shared humanity may be analogous to our best ways of thinking
about the communities to which we belong. And here, we may need
to insist that real communities do exist, albeit only where there is
some history of connection, interests and norms. A mere biological
relation is not enough to bring about anything analogous to real
community in the relevant sense. A species may have its own his�-
tory but a community requires a history of a quite different sort.
Specifically, it requires a history out of which prescriptions and pro-
scriptions of various kinds of action emerge. No community that we
know of is without its shared normative boundaries.30 And, however
much these historically-formed boundaries may be disputed, some
actions are always placed beyond the pale. This again gives force to
the idea that a betrayal of humanity is possible through cruelty or
through failure to recognise the standing of the other. But now such
betrayal may be regarded as a betrayal of the human ‘community’.
Consider once more the example of Shylock and his appeal to the
humanity that he shares with his persecutors. This appeal is not an
embryonic and scientifically naïve call upon species solidarity or
upon the possession of shared and biologically programmed reactive
pro�pensities (to laugh and to bleed). His appeal is to a value-laden,
i.e. normative, conception of humanity and to what it demands of us.
By treating his people in the way that his oppressors did, the latter
were not discriminating between different types of human; they were
failing to accept that his people really were human in the fullest sense
when it was obvious to all, and beyond reasonable doubt, that this
was the case.31 Similarly, the concept that is in play when we speak
(as we often do, albeit in various indirect ways) about humanity as a
30
╇To help avoid setting up a weak analogy, I use ‘community’ in a sense that is
stronger than that associated with ecological conceptions of ‘biotic community’. For
the latter, see Paul Taylor’s Respect for Nature (Princeton University Press, Prince-
ton, 1986).
31
╇See Dawson, ‘Modernity as Anthropolarity’, this volume, for a discussion of
what it might mean to be not ‘fully human’.
speciesism as anthropocentrism 239
32
╇ Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am (New York: Fordham Uni-
versity Press, 2008).
speciesism as anthropocentrism 241
cat could still enjoy what is a good life for a cat, while the human life
is irreparably damaged. But in making this move, humanity could
still be accepted as an important consideration in its own right. That
is to say, it could still be accepted as a morally important relational
property. And even if the appeal to humanity favoured the human it
need not do so in a way that generalises out into an endorsement of
prioritising humans across the board. Appeals to humanity that oper-
ate in this constrained and restricted way, even when they favour the
humans in question, do not look like instances of anthropocentrism.
Moreover, as consideration is given to the special standing of any
kind of creature who is already the victim of extreme misfortune,
there is no basis for claiming that some other (non-anthropocentric)
prejudice is at work.
As well as cases of this sort where consideration of humanity may
lead us, without prejudice, to favour a human, there are also cases
where matters will turn out differently; cases where an appeal to our
shared humanity may lead us to forgo or to sacrifice human interests
or to sacrifice some shared human advantage. To see how this can
happen, let us take the community analogy a step further. Insofar as
we are part of something akin to a shared human community the
usual standards for shared community membership will apply. There
must be a shared history of some sort; shared interests (up to a point);
at least some rudimentary mutual awareness of a connection on the
part of some community members; a degree of exclusiveness (there is
an outside to the community as well as an inside); and there must be
norms that are shaped by the shared history of community members
and which, to some extent, govern community life. (Certain things
are ruled in and other things are ruled out.) Insofar as the advocate
of the importance of a shared humanity accepts that these require-
ments are not just necessary but sufficient for the existence of a sig-
nificant human bond, they may also have to accept that each of us
has a significant connection to other human agents who have perpe-
trated (and in some cases continue to perpetrate) great harm.
Such a connection can be a source of reasons for acting in the
interests of outside groups who are or have been damaged by mem-
bers of our human community and to do so even at the expense of
the latter. Justifications of action along environmentally favoured
lines regularly take this same form. They involve an appeal to our
responsibility to make amends, to undo our harm and to make good
that which we humans have damaged. In the light of this, we can say
242 tony milligan
33
╇Tony Milligan, Beyond Animal Rights (London: Continuum, 2010), ch. 7.
speciesism as anthropocentrism 243
Peter Soppelsa*
*
╇ I wish to thank Clapperton Mavhunga, Ken Garner and Peggy McCracken for
stimulating conversations about this paper in 2009. Josh First and Rob Boddice gen-
erously read drafts of the essay and gave me notes which sharpened the prose and
argument.
1
╇Nicolas Jean-Baptiste G. Guibourt, Histoire naturelle des drogues simples: ou
Cours d’histoire naturelle professé à l’École supérieure de pharmacie de Paris, volume
4, edition 4 (J.B.€Baillière, 1851), 48–9.
2
╇ J. Minot, Appréciation du cheval, des qualités intrinsèques de cet animal pour
le travail et la reproduction: guide-pratique (Paris: Leneveu, 1853), 1.
3
╇ Antoine Laurent Apollinaire Fée. Les misères des animaux (Paris: Humbert,
1863), 100.
4
╇Nicholas Papayanis, Horse-Drawn Cabs and Omnibuses in Paris: The Idea of
Circulation and the Business of Public Transit (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univer-
sity Press, 1996); Ghislaine Bouchet, Le cheval à Paris de 1850 à 1914 (Paris and
Geneva: Droz, 1993); F.M.L.€Thompson, ‘Nineteenth-Century Horse Sense’, The Eco-
nomic History Review, n.s. 29:1 (1976): 60–81.
246 peter soppelsa
training that re-inscribed their tool status, and led into the street to
be used as tools.9
Although useful for understanding the mechanics of instrumen-
talisation, Feenberg’s theory (especially the term ‘decontextualisa-
tion’) reifies a binary distinction between the natural or ‘native’ (the
object) and the socially constructed (the object as tool). But work-
horses are ‘envirotech’10 embodied. The line between nature and soci-
ety is irrelevant for horses born in captivity and bred for work.
Further, horses and humans have co-evolved for millennia; even the
line between wild and domestic horses is weak.11
Thus, this essay historicises the instrumentalisation process and
adds empirical substance to instrumentalisation theory. I locate horse
use in nineteenth-century Paris streets to watch it work ‘on the
ground’ in a concrete historical context, showing how horses’ status
as instrumental and/or natural changed over time. Parisian debates
about instrumentalisation concerned much more than horses and
their treatment, negotiating broader distinctions like urban/rural,
human/animal, ends/means and artificial/natural.12 As I narrate the
shift from horses as an indispensable technology to horses as a ‘natu-
ral’ (and therefore foreign) presence in the artificial and mechanical
city, I ‘green’ urban history and the history of technology by histori-
cising the relationships between humans, technology and nature.13
Over the course of the nineteenth century, Parisians gradually traded
the anthropocentric instrumentalisation of horses for an anthropo-
centric instrumentalisation of mechanical and electrical technologies
that better fit with changing conceptions of urban modernity.
9
╇ Andrew Feenberg, ‘Critical Theory of Technology: an Overview’, Tailoring Bio-
technologies, 1:1 (2005): 47–64; A.P. Bos, ‘Instrumentalization Theory and Reflexive
Design in Animal Husbandry’, Social Epistemology, 22:1 (2008): 29–50.
10
╇Philip Scranton and Susan R. Schrepfer, eds., Industrializing Organisms: Intro-
ducing Evolutionary History (New York and London: Routledge, 2004).
11
╇ J. Edward Chamberlain, Horse: How the Horse Has Shaped Civilizations (New
York: Blue Bridge, 2006); Pita Kelenka, The Horse in Human History (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2009).
12
╇ Horses have also proven useful for scholars interested in questioning other
category distinctions. Natalie Corinne Hansen, ‘Humans, Horses and Hormones:
(Trans) Gendering Cross-Species Relationships’, Women’s Studies Quarterly, 36:3–4
(2008): 87–105; Sandra Swart, ‘“But Where’s the Bloody Horse?” Textuality and
Â�Corporeality in the “Animal Turn”’, Journal of Literary Studies, 23:3 (2007): 271–92.
13
╇ William Cronin, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West (New York:
W.W. Norton, 1991), xvi: ‘We carefully partition our national landscape into urban
places, rural places, and wilderness… [but] we rarely reflect on how tightly bound
together they really are’.
instrumentalisation of horses 249
14
╇Départment de la Seine, Commission sur l’enlevement et emploi des chevaux
morts. Recherches et considérations sur l’enlèvement et l’emploi des chevaux morts
(Paris: Bachelier, 1827).
15
╇ Jules Janin, ‘Les Égouts’, La Revue de Paris, 33 (1836): 225–54, esp. 242–9; see
also Guibourt (1851), 50: ‘But with reason, in major cities, one uses the meat of
horses worn out by old age, work or sickness, to transform it into fertiliser, their
bones for the fabrication of boot black (noir animal), and their skin to make strong
hides, good for boot and shoe uppers. Horsehair is also of a good enough quality for
the fabrication of mattresses, furniture, rugs and the various cloths used in the arts.
There is nothing, down to the horse’s manure, which is not a precious fertiliser,
which one uses principally for the cultivation of gardens and composition of soil’.
250 peter soppelsa
16
╇Ulysse Tencé, Annuaire historique universel pour 1835 (Paris: Thoisnier-
Desplaces, 1836), 174–5.
17
╇ Louis Huart, ‘Les voitures publiques’, Nouveau tableau de Paris, au XIXme
siècle, ed. Henri Martin (Paris: Charles-Béchet, 1834), IV, 161–81.
18
╇ Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris During the
First Half of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Howard Fertig, 1973); David
�Harvey, Paris, Capital of Modernity (New York: Routledge, 2003); Nicholas
�Papayanis, Planning Paris Before Haussmann (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins
Â�University Press, 2004); Karen Bowie, ed., La Modernité avant Haussmann: Formes
de l’espace urbaine à Paris 1801–53 (Paris: Editions Recherches, 2001); Bernard
Marchand, Paris, Histoire d’une ville (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1993).
19
╇ Huré, Le zoophile, ou Le défenseur des animaux: recueil d’histoires et faits anec-
dotiques. Précédé d’une notice sur les séances de la Société protectrice des animaux
(Paris: Huré, 1855). The book details over 20 incidents involving horses.
instrumentalisation of horses 251
20
╇ J. Minot, Appréciation du cheval, des qualités intrinsèques de cet animal pour le
travail et la reproduction: guide-pratique (Paris: Leneveu, 1853), 6–7.
21
╇ Antoine Laurent Apollinaire Fée, Les misères des animaux (Paris: Humbert,
1863), 107.
22
╇Nicholas Papayanis, Horse-drawn Cabs and Omnibuses in Paris: The Idea of
Circulation and the Business of Public Transit (Baton Rouge, MD: Louisiana State
University Press, 1996).
23
╇Papayanis, Horse-drawn Cabs and Omnibuses, 119–20; Harvey, Paris: Capital
of Modernity, 12, 109, 113, 135; Patrice Higonnet, Paris: Capital of the World, trans.
Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), 186.
252 peter soppelsa
24
╇Reliable horse counts are difficult for Paris before 1880, year of the first horse
census. Thereafter, the Annuaire statistique de la ville de Paris provides an official, if
not reliable, count (Annuaire statistique 1880, published 1881, 544). This 1849 figure
from Ghislaine Bouchet, Le cheval à Paris de 1850 à 1914, 45–53. See also Sabine
Barles, La ville délétère: Médecins et ingénieurs dans l’espace urbain, XVIIIe-XIXe
siècle (Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 1999), 244. The Revue indépendent (vol. 11, p. 340)
counted 148,000 horses in 1847. Barles counts 16,400 in 1821, 21,000 in 1830 and
18,000 in 1849. Papayanis estimated about 34,000 horses in the 1820s: Horse-Drawn
Cabs and Omnibuses, 49.
25
╇Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988); Vanessa Schwartz, Spectacular Realities: Early
Mass Culture in Fin-de-siècle Paris (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Califor-
nia, 1998); Sharon Marcus, Apartment Stories: City and Home in Nineteenth-Century
Paris and London (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California, 1999). Walter
Benjamin, The Arcades Project, trans. Howard Elland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cam-
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Victoria Thompson, ‘Review Essay:
Boulevard Dreams: Paris and the Myths of Modernity’, Journal of Urban History, 33
(2007): 664–9; Masha Belenky, ‘From Transit to Transitoire: The Omnibus and
Modernity’, Nineteenth-Century French Studies, 35:2 (2007): 408–20. French artists
from Géricault and Delacroix to Meissonier, Renoir, Manet, Degas and Gaugin made
horses an important theme in nineteenth-century painting from Romanticism to
Post-Impressionism. Kari Weil, ‘Purebreds and Amazons’, and John Baskett, The
Horse in Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 124–68.
26
╇Maxime du Camp, Paris, ses organes, ses fonctions et sa vie dans la second
moitié du XIXe siècle: vol. 1, ed. 1 (Paris: Hachette, 1869), vol. 2, ed. 1 (Hachette,
1870), vol. 3, ed. 1 (Hachette, 1872), vol. 4, ed. 1 (Hachette, 1873), vol. 5, ed. 1
(Hachette, 1874), vol. 6, ed. 1 (Hachette, 1875).
27
╇Du Camp, Paris, vol. 1, 207–23.
instrumentalisation of horses 253
28
╇Du Camp, Paris, vol. 1, 266–7.
29
╇Greene, Horses at Work, 23, 26.
30
╇ Fée, Les misères des animaux (Paris: Humbert, 1863), 97.
31
╇ Fée, Les misères des animaux, 109–11.
254 peter soppelsa
32
╇Du Camp, Paris, vol. 1, 236.
33
╇ Journal des connaissances usuelles et pratiques, year 10 (Paris: Bureau du jour-
nal, Jan. 1834), 177.
34
╇See Tarr and McShane, The Horse in the City, and Greene, Horses at Work.
35
╇ Hubert Demory, ‘Le premier tramway de Paris’, Le Village, no. 578 (2006),
online: http://mapage.noos.fr/hubert.demory/loubat.htm; Norma Evenson, Paris:
A Century of Change 1878–1978 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 80; John
P. McKay, Tramways and Trolleys: the Rise of Urban Mass Transport in Europe
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976), 14; Milner Gibson, Observations
on Street Railways (London: Sampson Low, Son and Co., 1860), 1: ‘The age of Omni-
buses in crowded cities has passed. The age of Horse Railways has commenced’.
36
╇ Liste alphabétique des rues de Paris contenant les avenues, les barrières, les
boulevards, [etc.]: compris dans l’enceinte des fortifications et la concordance des noms
nouveaux avec les noms anciens et indiquant leur situation avec renvoi au plan (Paris:
Hachette et Cie, 1867), xii.
instrumentalisation of horses 255
37
╇ ‘Communications et avis divers’ Le Temps, Sept. 6, 1872.
38
╇Prefect’s Commission on Mechanical Motors, 1876: Locomotive Avec Foyer
(Harding), Archives Nationales F/14/9189. Hector de Backer, Tramways: la traction
par chevaux et la traction par machines sur les tramways: aperçu comparatif (Paris:
Auguste Ghio, 1877); Léon Francq, Chemin de fer métropolitain: recueil des articles
publiés dans le journal le Métropolitain à propos de la traction du métropolitain pari-
sien (Paris: E. Bernard er Cie., 1892); Émile Gauthier, L’Année scientifique et indus-
trielle yr. 39, 1895 (Paris: Hachette, 1896), 310; John P. McKay, Tramways and
Trolleys; Alain Beltran and Patrice A. Carré, La fée et la servante: la société francaise
face à l’électricité XIXe-XXe siècle (Paris: Belin, 1991), 77.
39
╇See 1894 Tramway Statistics, Archives Nationales, F/14/8588. Pierre Lanthier,
‘The Relationship between State and Private Electric Industry, France 1880–1920’ in
Norbert Horn and Jürgen Kocka, eds. Law and the Formation of the Big Enterprises
in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries. (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1979),
590–603, esp. 593.
40
╇Préfecture de la Seine, Secrétariat générale, Service de la statistique municipale,
Annuaire statistique de la ville de Paris, 1880 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1881),
544; Annuaire statistique 1900 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1901), 789.
41
╇Greene, Horses at Work, 186–9.
42
╇Ghislaine Bouchet, Le Cheval à Paris, 45–6.
256 peter soppelsa
43
╇ Étienne-Jules Marey, La machine animale; locomotion terrestre et aérienne
(Paris: Librarie Germer Bailliere, 1873), vii-viii.
44
╇E.J. Marey, ‘Moteurs animés. Expériences de physiologie graphique’, La
Nature, no. 278 (Sept. 28, 1878), 273–8 (for quote see 273) and ‘Moteurs animés.
Expériences de physiologie graphique’, La Nature, no. 279 (Oct. 5, 1878), 289–95.
45
╇Marey, La machine animale, 129; Anson Rabinbach, The Human Motor:
Energy, Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, 1992), 97–108.
46
╇ A. Edouard Roche, Les martyrs du travail: Manuel du propriétaire et du con-
ducteur d’animaux de trait: Le cheval (4th edn., Paris: Librarie Delagrave, 1880), xv.
instrumentalisation of horses 257
wasteful. For him, animals were friends and family, not ‘slaves’. He
even used the phrase ‘inferior brothers’, recalling contemporary
French terms for colonial subjects.47 Indeed, there was a rich political
subtext to Roche’s work, which recommended human-horse rela-
tions as a school of morality where citizens could improve human
relations, cultivating the brotherly solidarity that cemented France’s
Third Republic. These politics won his book endorsements from the
Archbishop of Bordeaux and the High Commission for Public
Instruction, who recommended it for all public schools and libraries.
For Roche, good handling began with ‘compassion’, because emo-
tional attachment bred more obedient horses. He provided detailed
instructions for ‘paying close attention’ to animals, 48 arguing that
good drivers knew when to detach harnesses and reins under prob-
lem conditions, constantly monitoring equipment and horses’ reac-
tions to it. He recommended preventing blinders from blocking
horses’ vision or rubbing their eyes, and keeping mechanical parts of
vehicles well oiled. Drivers should always brake on slopes, avoid
bumps, stones and ruts in the road, yield to oncoming traffic and
drive after dark with a lantern or other source of light.49 Similar con-
cerns shaped standard practice; Du Camp reported thirty-one places
in Paris where slopes were so steep that extra horses were temporar-
ily hitched to omnibuses.50
Paris transit companies conducted frequent studies of horse effi-
ciency. cgo president Lavalard reported results for 1878 to 1883: cgo
horses travelled an average of seventeen kilometres per day, at nine
to twelve kilometres per hour, pulling 1,600–1,900 kilograms. Round-
trip tramway and omnibus routes averaged 90 minutes, and horses
normally worked two routes, about three to four hours, per day. By
measuring kilograms moved per second, the cgo determined that
horses could produce one fifth to one seventh as much work daily as
steam engines, which could run continuously for 24 hours.
Commenting on Lavalard’s report, popular science magazine La
Nature concluded ‘...we are just about at the maximum of what one
can demand from horses’.51
47
╇Roche, Les martyrs du travail, xi-xv.
48
╇ Compare to Miele, ‘Horse-Sense’.
49
╇Roche, Les Martyrs du Travail, 6–7.
50
╇Du Camp, Paris, vol. 1, 266.
51
╇ ‘La Traction par Chevaux pour les Omnibus et Tramways’ La Nature, no. 601
(Dec. 6, 1884), 10.
258 peter soppelsa
52
╇Service de la Navigation: Rapport de l’ingénieur ordinaire, M. Pigeaud (‘Etat
d’infection de la Seine en aval de Paris’, Sept. 21, 1900), Archives de Paris, D1 S8 6.
53
╇ Charles Edward Shelly, Transactions of the Seventh International Congress
of Hygiene and Demography (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1892), 88; ‘Revue des
journaux’, Revue d’hygiène et de police sanitaire, 18 (1896), 556.
54
╇ Archives de Paris V.ONC 1350: Letter from M. Michelin to Municipal Coun-
cil (Sept. 4, 1895); Archives Nationales F/14/14999: Gauthier, Rapport de l’ingenieur
ordinaire (Paris, Nov. 18, 1896).
55
╇ A. Muntz and A.-Ch. Girard, Les Engrais (Paris: Librarie Firmin-Didot, 1891),
I, 353–66.
56
╇New York’s 131,000 horses in 1900 produced 1,300–3,300 tons of manure
daily. Greene, Horses at Work, 174.
instrumentalisation of horses 259
57
╇ H. Blerzy, ‘Etudes sur les travaux publics: routes, chemins et tramways’, Revue
des deux mondes, 27 (1878), 657; Joseph Barberet, Le travail en France: monographies
professionnelles (1877; Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1887), 249.
58
╇ Petit journal supplément illustré: 4: 25, 7: 11 and 10: 10, 1891; 8: 6 and 12: 30,
1894; 6: 2, 8: 18 and 9: 29, 1895; 8: 15, 1897; 6: 26 and 7: 3, 1898.
59
╇ Jules Claretie, La vie à Paris (1898; Paris: Charpentier, 1899), 237–43, 308–9,
385–7.
60
╇Georges Avenel, Le mécanisme de la vie moderne, vol. 3, ed. 3 (Paris: A. Colin,
1906), 237–43.
61
╇Pierre Giffard and Albert Robida, La fin du cheval (Paris: Armand Colin,
1899).
260 peter soppelsa
62
╇ ‘Les tramways meurtrières’ Le Petit Parisien, Oct. 5, 1900, 1.
63
╇ Councillor Duval-Arnould, Dec. 15, 1900. See Bulletin municipal officiel, Dec.
16, 1900, 4081.
64
╇ ‘Mésaventures électriques’ Le Temps, Oct. 19, 1900, 2; Bulletin municipal offi-
ciel, Dec. 16, 1900, 4081–96; Rapport de l’ingénieur ordinaire (Paris le 25 Décembre
1900), Archives Nationales F/14/14999.
65
╇N.N. Petitjean, Les grandes travaux de Paris (Paris: L. Thouvenin, 1895), 19;
Paul Vibert, La concurrence étrangère, les transports par terre et par mer (Paris:
Berger-Levrault, 1896–7), II, 107; Georges d’Avenel, Le mécanisme de la vie moderne
(Paris: Librarie Armand Colin, 1905), V, 182.
instrumentalisation of horses 261
66
╇ ‘Au jour le jour: Le cheval et l’automobilisme à Paris’, Le Temps, July 28, 1904;
‘Fewer Horses in Paris’, The New York Times, July 28, 1904; ‘Paris Using Fewer
Horses’, The New York Times, May 23, 1909; ‘Horse Versus Automobile: a French
View’ The American Review of Reviews (Sept., 1910), 368.
67
╇One American visitor in 1900 did, too. Edmund James, ‘The Inadequate Street
Car System of Paris’, Chicago Daily (Apr. 22, 1900), 51.
68
╇ Jules Armegnaud, Nettoyons Paris (Paris: Librarie Moderne, 1907), 68.
69
╇Ghislaine Bouchet, Le Cheval à Paris de 1850 à 1914, 161–189; SPA website:
http://www.spa.asso.fr/.
262 peter soppelsa
70
╇ Archives de Paris V.ONC 132.
71
╇ L’Assiette au Beurre (‘Misère du cheval’), June 1905.
instrumentalisation of horses 263
72
╇Greene, Horses at Work, 169.
264 peter soppelsa
Nik Taylor
1
╇ Xenophanes, Fragments, trans. J.H. Lesher (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1992), fr. 7, 18–9. See Sax, ‘What is this Quintessence of Dust?’ and Silverman,
‘Anthropocentrism and the Medieval Problem of Religious Language’ this volume,
for a more detailed overview.
2
╇See respectively, A. Horowitz, ‘Anthropomorphism’, Encyclopedia of Human-
Animal Relationships, ed. M. Bekoff (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group,
2007), 60–6; J.S. Kennedy, The New Anthropomorphism (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992); E. Crist, Images of Animals: Anthropomorphism and Animal
Mind (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1999), for a more detailed argu-
ment.
anthropomorphism and the animal subject 267
3
╇See respectively, C. Sanders, ‘Understanding Dogs: Caretakers’ Attributions of
Mindedness in Canine-Human Relationships’, Journal of Contemporary Ethnogra-
phy, 22:2 (1993): 205–26; N. Taylor, ‘“Never an It”: Intersubjectivity and the Crea-
tion of Animal Personhood in Animal Shelters’, Qualitative Sociology Review, 3:1
(2007): 59–73; D.L. Weider, ‘Behaviouralistic Operationalism and the Life-World:
Chimpanzees and Chimpanzee Researchers in Face to Face Interaction’, Sociological
Inquiry, 50:3/4 (1980): 75–103; M. Bekoff and J. Pierce, Wild Justice: The Moral Lives
of Animals (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
4
╇ Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005).
268 nik taylor
5
╇ Weider, ‘Behaviouralistic Operationalism’.
anthropomorphism and the animal subject 269
6
╇ J. Law, ‘After ant: Complexity, Naming and Typology’, Actor Network Theory
and After, eds. J. Law and J. Hassard (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 2.
7
╇ Law, ‘After ant’, 4.
270 nik taylor
Actor-Network Theory
8
╇Taylor, ‘Never an It’.
9
╇Respectively, S. Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies: Natures, Cultures, Spaces
(London: Sage, 2002); M. Woods, ‘Researching Rural Conflicts: Hunting, Local Poli-
tics and Actor-Networks’, Journal of Rural Studies, 14:3 (1998): 321–40; A. Mol and
M. Berg, ‘Principles and Practices of Medicine: the Coexistence of Various Anae-
mias’, Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 18 (1994): 247–65; Bruno Latour and S.
Woolgar, Laboratory Life: the Social Construction of Scientific Facts (Beverley Hills,
CA. and London: Sage, 1979).
10
╇ John Law, After Method: Mess in Social Science Research (Abingdon: Rout�
ledge, 2004), 157.
anthropomorphism and the animal subject 271
Binarisms
Traditionally social thought has been based on the dualist post
Cartesian legacy which denies corporeality and posits a distinction
between objective and subjective worlds. This has ultimately led to a
post-Enlightenment tradition which sees ‘itself in terms of man’s
ascent from animality’.12 This tradition has led to the entrenchment
of the belief that animals are not a part of the social world and are
therefore not a legitimate topic of inquiry for social scientists.13 For
example, Mead argued that symbolic interaction could only take
place when the interactants possessed a sense of self and moreover
that only (adult) humans could possess this necessary sense of self.14
Hence he drew a sharp, and thus far enduring, distinction between
humans and other animals. By extension, this was both predicated
upon and served to maintain, the classical distinction between the
natural and the social.
This distinction remains to be fully challenged as yet, even within
literature that addresses the human-animal bond, seemingly one of
the natural places to do so. For instance, previous theories addressing
the ways in which humans apply personhood to animals (and thus
grant their entry into social life) simply maintain such dualist
11
╇N. Castree, ‘False Antitheses: Marxism, Nature and Actor-Networks’, Anti-
pode, 34:1 (2002): 111–46.
12
╇R. Murphy, ‘Sociology as if Nature did not Matter: an Ecological Critique’,
British Journal of Sociology, 46:4 (1995): 688–707.
13
╇See Nimmo, ‘The Making of the Human’, this volume.
14
╇R. Collins, ‘Toward a Neo-Meadian Sociology of Mind’, Symbolic Interaction,
12:1 (1989): 1–32.
272 nik taylor
�
conceptions while moving the boundary slightly (i.e. from human/
social v. animal/natural to human and (some) animals/social v. natu-
ral). That is, such arguments operate firmly within traditional episte-
mologies and do little to challenge the ‘pure’ categories these are built
upon. Such pure categories are fictional narratives designed to main-
tain human superiority. As Haraway points out, ‘beings do not pre-
exist their relating… Biological and cultural determinism are both
instances of misplaced concreteness—i.e. the mistake of, first, taking
provisional and local category abstractions like “nature” and “cul-
ture” for the world and, second, mistaking potent consequences to be
pre-existing foundations’.15 The trick, then, is to learn how to study—
think about, and narrate—the relating done between actors in any
given network.16
The inclusion of animals into social studies forces us to do this by
demanding that we consider the eradication of the distinction
between the social and the natural and instead adopt the idea of het-
erogeneous networks and fluidity when approaching social life.17 This
is a theory that starts from the point of view that ‘entities take their
form and acquire their attributes as a result of their relations with
other entities’.18 Therefore the ‘order of things’ does not exist: there
is no tangible objective reality, rather society is emergent and perfor-
matively constructed by the relational interactions of its members,
which in turn constitute networks. In other words, approaching the
world as a set of relations in networks assumes a lack of pure catego-
ries—of binarisms—while at the same time allowing a detailed analy-
sis of the power games inherent in purification processes.
Asymmetry
As Castree points out, accepting a binarist approach to the analysis
of social life involves choosing to prioritise one particular ontologi-
cal/epistemological point of view: in this case, the human or the ani-
mal. This is precisely what discourses surrounding anthropomorphism
15
╇Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People and Signifi-
cant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003), 6.
16
╇See Law, After Method, for a detailed analysis of the methodological ramifica-
tions of ANT.
17
╇ Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1993).
18
╇ J. Law, ‘After ant: Topology, Naming and Complexity’, Actor Network Theory
and After, eds. J. Law and J. Hassard (Oxford and Keele: Blackwell, 1999), 3.
anthropomorphism and the animal subject 273
19
╇ Castree, ‘False Antitheses’, 120.
20
╇Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (1976; London: Penguin, 1998),
vol. 1.
21
╇D. Lyon, Postmodernity (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999), 54.
22
╇ Lyotard quoted in Lyon, Postmodernity, 96; Haraway, Companion Species
Manifesto, 27.
274 nik taylor
26
╇ Woods, ‘Researching Rural Conflicts’, 322.
27
╇ Castree, ‘False Antitheses’, 122.
28
╇ Latour, Reassembling the Social, 64.
276 nik taylor
A Word of Caution
While ant does offer one way forward for those of us who want to
see animals included in social thought (and life) and who want to
analyse the functions of anthropomorphism as a cultural practice, it
is not without its problems. ant insists on a completely level playing
field for all actants enrolled in interaction—humans, animals, tech-
nologies, objects and so on. In particular ant and its successors, such
as feminist technoscience studies, have embraced the conceptual idea
of the hybrid. That is, a machine-human hybrid whose very presence
threatens to disrupt carefully maintained boundaries between human
and other.29 While to be celebrated precisely for these disruptions,
the human-machine/human-technological hybrid often over-writes
any sense of ‘animals’ as living beings. According to Molloy, ‘arguing
for the recognition of the revolutionary and often utopian aspects of
the cyborg, critical assessment of the cybernetic paradigm has not
reproduced traditional distinctions between human and non-human
animal, but erased the animal other altogether’.30
That said, ant and such alternate epistemologies as feminist tech-
noscience may also offer a way to think about animals that offers
them some form of ‘protection’ (through equality not paternalism)
that isn’t rights based and again, allows sidestepping of rights-based
practices, which are themselves an outcome of masculinist, rational-
ist principles.31
29
╇See, for example, Donna Haraway’s seminal work on cyborgs, ‘A Cyborg
�Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth
Century’, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York:
Routledge, 1991), 149–81.
30
╇ C. Molloy, ‘Marking Territories’, Limen: Journal for Theory and Practice of
Liminal Phenomena, 1 (2001), np.
31
╇ For further discussion see Whatmore, Hybrid Geographies, ch. 7; Haraway,
Companion Species Manifesto; eadem, When Species Meet (Minneapolis and London:
University of Minnesota Press, 2008); C. Wolfe, ed., Zoontologies: The Question of the
Animal (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003); idem, Ani-
mal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Bruno Latour, The Politics of Nature: How
anthropomorphism and the animal subject 277
Conclusion
to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
2004).
278 nik taylor
32
╇ Haraway, Species Manifesto, 4.
anthropomorphism and the animal subject 279
end. This standpoint has real-world implications, not only about the
way we think as outlined above, but also about the way we do. ant,
then, is a method rather than a theory, a starting point, a paradigm,
a philosophical position, a spatial-temporal-material quagmire of
un�doing which allows us to acknowledge the ways in which anthro�
pomorphism is used to recognise animals as ‘subjects’.
part four
Robin Attfield
1
╇ Lynn White, Jr., ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis’, first published in
Science, 155:37 (1967): 1203–7. This essay had been reprinted in many places, for
example in John Barr, ed., The Environmental Handbook (London: Ballantine, 1971):
3–16. White himself reprinted it in Lynn White Jr., Dynamo and Virgin Reconsid-
ered: Essays in the Dynamism of Western Culture (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT
Press, 1968): 75–94; page references here will refer to the page numbers of this
republication.
2
╇Elspeth Whitney, ‘Lynn White, Ecotheology, and History’, Environmental Eth-
ics, 15:2 (1993): 151–69, at 157f.
3
╇Peter Singer, Animal Liberation: A New Ethics for Our Treatment of Animals
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1976).
284 robin attfield
An Overview of ‘Roots’
4
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 83f.
286 robin attfield
5
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 84.
6
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 87.
7
╇Peter Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth: Genesis 1, Early Modern Science, and the
Exploitation of Nature’, Journal of Religion, 79 (1999): 86–109, at 86.
8
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 87f.
social history, religion and technology 287
9
╇ Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 86.
10
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 90.
11
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 91.
12
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 91–4.
13
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 93.
14
╇ Lynn White, Medieval Technology and Social Change (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1962), 41–57.
288 robin attfield
15
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 56.
16
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 42; R.H. Hilton goes further, and claims that the
heavy plough was in use among the Belgae in the first century bce. See R.H. Hilton
and P.H. Sawyer, ‘Technical Determinism: The Stirrup and the Plough’, Past and
Present, 24 (1963): 90–100, at 97.
17
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 41.
social history, religion and technology 289
18
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 47.
19
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 55; Hilton supplies convincing evidence of the
existence of open fields in England in the seventh century, before the arrival of the
Danes; see Hilton and Sawyer, ‘Technical Determinism’, 98.
20
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 49–50.
21
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 51.
22
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 54; Hilton suggests that rather than increased
food causing population growth, the reverse may have been the case: see Hilton and
Sawyer, ‘Technical Determinism’, 99–100.
290 robin attfield
23
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 54.
24
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 84.
25
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 43.
social history, religion and technology 291
26
╇ Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 94–5.
27
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 56; ‘Roots’, 84 (these two passages are all but
identical).
28
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 56; ‘Roots’, 84.
29
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 154, where she cites White, Dynamo, 33–55.
292 robin attfield
that this particular trope has much greater effect if employed spar-
ingly, unexpectedly and suddenly.30
However, White used another such double-barrelled aphorism on
the next page of mtsc and at the end of the next paragraph of ‘Roots’,
after describing the new style of illustrations of the calendars of
Charlemagne’s reign. Instead of passive personifications of the
months, the new illustrations relate to human activities, and were
said by H. Stern (whom White here quotes) to show a ‘coercive atti-
tude towards natural resources’. (The new activities include plough-
ing, harvesting, wood-chopping and pig-slaughtering). At this point,
White inserts his further aphorism: ‘Man and nature are now two
things, and man is master’, replicated in ‘Roots’ with the omission of
‘now’.31 The omission of ‘now’ marginally assists his case, since he is
here writing of the ninth century, rather than of the seventh, as in the
previous paragraph. But similar reservations are again in place. Was
man really part of nature at any time since the year was reflectively
divided into a calendar of months by the Greeks and the Romans, or
by their predecessors, the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians? On the
other hand, can any creature dependent on nature’s seasons (and
thus the calendar) be altogether nature’s master, or even see them-
selves as such?
In both the case of ploughing and that of calendar illustrations,
White magnifies a phenomenon of the early middle ages so as to
confer on it something approaching cosmic significance. Whitney
cites a later passage of White which throws light on this tendency: ‘It
is better for a historian to be wrong than to be timid’.32 White’s spar-
ing employment of sonorous aphorisms, intermingled with an amaz-
ing array of well-honed scholarship, seems to have persuaded many
readers to treat them as gospel.
Harrison’s eventual interpretation of technological innovations
such as heavy ploughing (which is also applicable to Carolingian cal-
endar illustrations) is far more appropriate. ‘Yet in none of this’, he
affirms (in a passage about early medieval practices), ‘do we encoun-
ter the explicit articulation of an attitude of indifference to, or hostil-
ity toward, nature. Indeed, there seems to be no compelling reason
to view these developments as anything more than particular expres-
30
╇ As at White, Medieval Technology, 56.
31
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 57; White, ‘Roots’, 84.
32
╇ White, Medieval Technology, xx, cited by Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 168.
social history, religion and technology 293
33
╇ Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 95.
34
╇ Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 95.
35
╇ Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 89.
36
╇ Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 89.
37
╇ Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 88.
38
╇ Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 89.
294 robin attfield
39
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 162; Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 90n13.
40
╇ Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 89.
41
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 87f.
42
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 88.
43
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 86.
social history, religion and technology 295
44
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 93.
45
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 86.
46
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 85.
47
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 85.
48
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 86.
49
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 86.
296 robin attfield
50
╇ John Passmore, Man’s Responsibility for Nature: Ecological Problems and
Western Traditions (London: Duckworth, 1974), 9.
51
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 86.
52
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 166f.
53
╇ Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 86.
social history, religion and technology 297
This text sounds likely, if any text was going to be used in support
of exploitative practices, to be the one that would be selected. But this
is not the interpretation that Cohen finds. Instead, he relates that ‘the
primary meaning of Gen. 1:28 during the period we have studied
[ancient and medieval times, that is] [consists in] an assurance of
divine commitment and election, and a corresponding challenge to
overcome the ostensive contradiction between the terrestrial and the
heavenly inherent in every human being’.66 For the Middle Ages, he
adds, this text ‘touched only secondarily on conquering the natural
order’.67 Instead, this text was given psychological and spiritual inter-
pretations. Thus in a period when attempts to tame or domesticate
nature were much in evidence (for White is in general right about the
progress of medieval technology),68 such practices were not stan-
dardly justified by reference to the most obvious Biblical passage.69
Cohen, indeed, concludes, insofar as the medieval period is at issue,
that ‘with regard to Gen. 1:28 itself, the ecologically oriented thesis of
Lynn White and others can now be laid to rest’.70 So we should enter-
tain doubts about whether Christianity was used as a central justifica-
tion for such practices in that period. Not even its reception in the
middle ages suggests otherwise, any more than the message that it
embodied from earliest times.
As Harrison proceeds to show, things were somewhat different in
the seventeenth century, including the uses to which Christianity was
newly put, although in that century the texts were not interpreted
anthropocentrically, even if they had sometimes been so interpreted
previously.71 But that period is not discussed by White, and is not
relevant here, while I have commented elsewhere on Harrison’s
account and verdicts about the Early Modern period,72 and there is
no current need to repeat those comments. So we can now turn, as
promised, to links between theology and technology, and to issues of
historical causation.
66
╇ This is Harrison’s quotation, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 95f., from Cohen, ‘Be
Â�Fertile’, 313.
67
╇ Cohen, ‘Be Fertile’, 313.
68
╇See, for example, Lynn White, Medieval Religion and Technology: Collected
Essays (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978).
69
╇ Here I am paraphrasing Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 96.
70
╇ Cohen, ‘Be Fertile’, 5, quoted in Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 165.
71
╇ Harrison, ‘Subduing the Earth’, 96–107.
72
╇Robin Attfield, Environmental Ethics: An Overview for the Twenty-First
Â�Century (Oxford: Polity Press , 2003), 34–6.
300 robin attfield
Ever since soon after the publication of mtsc, historians have raised
sceptical problems about White’s methodology. In the joint introduc-
tion to their separate reviews of mtsc, R.H. Hilton and P.H. Sawyer
wrote:
Technical determinism in historical studies has often been combined
with adventurous speculations particularly attractive to those who like
to have complex developments explained by simple causes. The techni-
cal determinism of Professor Lynn White Jr., however, is peculiar in
that… he gives a misleadingly adventurist cast to old-fashioned plati-
tudes by supporting them with a chain of obscure and dubious deduc-
tions from scanty evidence about the progress of technology.73
While these strictures were written about mtsc (at a time when
‘Roots’ was unwritten), it is worth considering what these writers
had in mind when using the phrase ‘technical determinism’. This is
most clearly elucidated by Sawyer, in his reply to White’s view that
the introduction of the stirrup explains a change in methods of war-
fare (towards the superiority of cavalry) in the early medieval period.
To this theory, Sawyer replies: ‘The most serious weakness in this
argument is that the introduction of the stirrup is not in itself an
adequate explanation for any changes that may have occurred. The
stirrup made new methods possible, not inevitable’.74
Yet, as Sawyer shows through a quotation from mtsc,75 White had
used, of such changes, the term ‘inevitably’, even though in other
passages he had accepted that societies do not respond automatically
to technological change.76 Thus the criticisms of Hilton and Sawyer
seem to be on target in this particular regard. But should it be held
that White proceeded to allege too deterministic a relation not only
between technology and social change, but also between theology and
technology? Hilton and Sawyer evince no interest in this aspect of
mtsc, but the issue has recently been investigated in the context of
‘Roots’ by Elspeth Whitney.
Whitney, besides supplying numerous valuable historical qua�
lifications and correctives to White’s account of medieval culture
(too many for most to be cited here), raises a number of important
73
╇ Hilton and Sawyer, ‘Technical Determinism’, 90.
74
╇Sawyer, in Hilton and Sawyer, ‘Technical Determinism’, 91.
75
╇ White, Medieval Technology, 38.
76
╇ As at White, Medieval Technology, 28.
social history, religion and technology 301
77
╇ White, ‘Roots’, 93.
78
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 155f.
79
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 156.
80
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 157.
81
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 167.
82
╇ White, ‘The Future of Compassion’, The Ecumenical Review, 30 (1978), 101;
quoted Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 157.
83
╇ Jacques Le Goff, Time, Work and Culture in the Middle Ages, trans. Arthur
Goldhammer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 109; cited
Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 167f.
302 robin attfield
84
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 166; Le Goff, Time, Work and Culture, 114–21.
85
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 168.
86
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 169.
87
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 161.
88
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 162.
social history, religion and technology 303
detailed medieval studies show that Francis, ‘far from standing alone,
is only one figure among a fully developed tradition of Christian
appreciation of nature as God’s Creation… human use of nature and
animals was almost always conceived of as being governed by human
spiritual and moral obligations’.89 Further, Bratton’s and others’
research suggests that the large differences of attitude between Greek
and Latin values were less absolute than White claims.90 Thus not
only does White misrepresent the problem as concerning distinc-
tively Western values, but his solution of adopting the supposedly
heretical values of St. Francis turns out to consist, it could fairly be
commented, in advocacy of little more than the adoption of a differ-
ent tradition of still recognisably Christian values.
However, Whitney’s main criticism of the ecotheologians con-
cerns ‘how much they had in common with him’ [White]. ‘White and
his ecotheological critics all accepted religion as the common denom-
inator or human action, and all therefore found the solution to the
environmental crisis in personal and religious values’.91 Such assump-
tions incline those holding them to ignore economic and institutional
factors. Indeed, while the ecotheologians rejected White’s particular
causal thesis, they ‘showed little interest in’ where else the explana-
tion really was to be found.92 Since the current writer is included
among the ecotheologians, it might be reasonable here to cite the
opening chapter of The Ethics of Environmental Concern as an excep-
tion to this generalisation, a chapter which considers to what extent
capitalism, among other possible explanations, underlies the prob-
lems.93 But Whitney’s point must be acknowledged to be largely on
target, and prepares the way for her eventual methodological claims.
For Whitney concludes that White’s thesis is both attractive,
beguiling and dangerous, however illusory. Through ascribing the
problems to our deep-seated values and the unfolding of our ideo-
logical destiny, it supplies a solution that does not require significant
changes either of behaviour or of structure. At the same time, it
leaves large corporations and international agencies untouched. Its
89
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 163, citing Susan Power Bratton, ‘The Original Desert
Solitaire: Early Christian Monasticism and Wilderness’, Environmental Ethics, 10
(1988): 31–53.
90
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 163f.
91
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 161. Whitney identifies the relevant ecotheologians
and their works in notes 36 to 38 (160) and note 41 (162).
92
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 161.
93
╇ Attfield, Ethics of Environmental Concern, 1–19.
304 robin attfield
Afterword
94
╇ Whitney, ‘Lynn White’, 169.
social history, religion and technology 305
╇ For criticisms, see Attfield, The Ethics of the Global Environment, (Edinburgh:
95
an alternative to anthropocentrism:
deep ecology and the metaphysical turn
Eccy de Jonge
1
╇ Frederic L. Bender, The Culture of Extinction: Toward a Philosophy of Deep
Ecology (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2003), 71.
308 eccy de jonge
2
╇Eccy de Jonge, Spinoza and Deep Ecology: Challenging Traditional Approaches
to Environmentalism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004), 10.
3
╇ Lynn White, ‘The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis’, Science, 155: 3767
(1967): 1203–7; See Attfield, ‘Social History, Religion and Technology’, this volume.
4
╇ Bill Devall and George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered
(Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith Books, 1985), 66.
deep ecology and the metaphysical turn 309
5
╇ de Jonge, Spinoza and Deep Ecology, 12.
310 eccy de jonge
legitimate their position on the grounds that they are, for example,
men, capitalists, white, or Western per se, but rather on the grounds
that they have most exemplified whatever it is that has been taken to
constitute the essence of humanness (e.g. being favoured by God or
possessing rationality). The current state of affairs in Afghanistan
provides a classic example.
6
╇ Christa Meindersma, ‘Afghanistan’, Encyclopedia of Human Rights, ed. David
P. Forsythe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), I, 2; Patrick Cockburn, ‘Deaths
bring whole Afghan Strategy into question’, Independent, Nov. 5, 2009.
7
╇United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), Annual Report
on Protection of Civilians in Armed Combat, January 2009.
8
╇UNAMA, Annual Report; United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP),
Afghanistan’s Environmental Recovery: a post-conflict plan for people and their
�natural resources, Kabul, January, 2006 (as of November 2009, United Nations
�Environmental Programme); World Health Organisation (WHO), Report on country
by country mortality rates for Afghanistan, 2009: http://www.who.int/quantifying
_ehimpacts/national/countryprofile/afghanistan.pdf.
312 eccy de jonge
15
╇Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward
�Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 235.
deep ecology and the metaphysical turn 315
An Ingrained Metaphysics
Conclusion
16
╇ Benedict de Spinoza, Ethics, trans. R.H.M. Elwes (New York: Dover, 1955),
part V, proposition 41, proof.
17
╇Spinoza, Ethics, part V, proposition 6, proof.
18
╇ Benedict de Spinoza, Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being, trans.
and ed., A. Wolf (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1910), 79
deep ecology and the metaphysical turn 319
for the plight of human and non human beings is not anthropocen-
tric if it does not seek to place any particular being at the centre or
make any cause prevalent over any other. Recognising that the essen-
tial quality of our humanity is love or care does not require a moral
imposition but rather an internal subjugation of all our own pre�
judices, that we, as humans, share. Though deep ecologists are not
unanimous in how best to approach the subject of ‘care,’ all agree
that the prevailing attitude of anthropocentrism lies at the root of
ecological devastation, the main reason being that anthropocentrism
encompasses not merely one particular critique, e.g. blaming capital-
ists or Muslims or the Judaeo-Christian tradition, but the entire out-
look of domination. Since an attitude is responsible for harm, rather
than some essential quality, it is thus possible to change our per�
ception of the way things are, rather than developing a bigger and
better normative ethics. A philosophy concerned with criticising
anthropocentrism in general is not interested in any particular envi-
ronmental issue but with offering an alternative to the prevalent view
that regards humans as superior to nature, recognising, as I have
shown, that interhuman concerns must not be ignored.
That we can arrive at a philosophy of care through a greater under-
standing of self, without requiring moral theories, lies in the fact that
self-knowledge leads us to seek satisfaction within ourselves and not
through dominating others, including the non-human world. Though
such an analysis should, in theory, appeal to both anthropocentrists
and non-anthropocentrists alike, this is only the case when anthro-
pocentrism is taken in its literal sense as human centredness, which,
as I have shown, is rarely, if ever, the case, since ‘centredness’ is taken
to mean superiority and separateness.
anthropocentrism and reason 321
André Krebber*
*
╇ I thank Rob Boddice, Philip Armstrong and Thom Page for their substantive
comments, which have considerably contributed to the development of this chapter.
It is dedicated to Liane Schulz and Jochen Hanisch, for their support.
1
╇ ‘Failure in Copenhagen is not an option’, Business Today, 611, Dec. 9, 2009,
available at http://www.businesstoday.com.mt/2009/12/09/t11.html, accessed Dec.
24, 2009.
2
╇See, for example, the Live Earth company and its Concerts for a Climate Crisis:
‘A for-profit company, Live Earth seeks to leverage the power of entertainment
through integrated events, media, and the live experience to ignite a global move-
ment aimed at solving the most critical environmental issues of our time’. http://
liveearth.org/en/liveearth, accessed Dec. 13, 2009
322 andré krebber
3
╇ Bruno Latour, Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy,
trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 20.
anthropocentrism and reason 323
4
╇ In the following, the term Critical Theory will be used exclusively in relation
to the classical Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School. This will be emphasised by its
capitalisation.
5
╇ A third scholar of special interest is Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979). However,
since I focus in this chapter on Dialectic of Enlightenment he will not be taken into
account.
6
╇Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philo-
sophical Fragments, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2002), xviii.
7
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, xi.
324 andré krebber
Unendlichkeit erweichen: Beiträge zu einer kritischen Theorie für die Befreiung der
Tiere, ed. Susann Witt-Stahl (Aschaffenburg: Alibri Verlag, 2007).
anthropocentrism and reason 327
in American exile during the Nazi regime in Germany, and was self-
confessedly ‘shaped by the social conditions in which it was written’.16
The first half of the twentieth century, with its two World Wars,
totalitarian dictatorships, the industrialised killing in the Third Reich
and the atomic bomb, revealed the full destructive and self-destruc-
tive potentials of post-Enlightenment civilisation. The reduction of
the human individual to a specimen disclosed the interconnection
between progress and exploitation, and ultimately destruction. The
mass killing of Jews presented the most extreme and horrific breach
of civilisation in terms of progressive thought, as it could not be
explained in terms of reason. Auschwitz became the universal meta-
phor for what happened. How was it possible that in modern times,
in the centre of the enlightened world, something like Auschwitz
could happen? This became the crucial question for Adorno and
Horkheimer. In more general terms they wondered why ‘humanity,
instead of entering a truly human state, [was] sinking into a new kind
of barbarism’17 and why ‘the wholly enlightened earth [was] radiant
with triumphant calamity’.18 Having sought to establish better living
conditions for humanity, the Enlightenment project had terminated
in tragedy and catastrophe. For Adorno and Horkheimer Enlighten�
ment reason, at least in its Western, capitalistic form, could not be
trusted anymore. Yet, they state, hope has to rely on reason:
The aporia which faced us in our work thus proved to be the first mat-
ter we had to investigate: the self-destruction of enlightenment. We
have no doubt—and herein lies our petitio principii—that freedom in
society is inseparable from enlightenment thinking. We believe we have
perceived with equal clarity, however, that the very concept of that
thinking, no less than the concrete historical forms, the institutions of
society with which it is intertwined, already contains the germ of the
regression which is taking place everywhere today. If enlightenment
does not assimilate reflection on this regressive moment, it seals its
own fate.19
Horkheimer’s and Adorno’s original insights into the history of
civilisation, the Enlightenment and the human-nature relationship,
once they are re-evaluated in the light of the contemporary crisis,
16
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, xiii.
17
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, xiv.
18
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1.
19
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, xvi.
328 andré krebber
Just like any other species, humans rely on reproducing their exis-
tence in interaction with an environment that is indifferent with
respect to individual life. The first Homo sapiens faced presumably
the same difficulties in this as their ‘sister’ species and other homi-
nids. Specific to the former, however, ‘the major pattern [in primitive
humans] that emerges during the Pleistocene is one of technical
progress closely linked with biological development’.20 The regular
manufacturing of standardised stone tools ‘suggests a major advance
in intellectual capacity’.21 In line with this conclusion, Horkheimer
and Adorno consider reason—cognition, and the capability of utilis-
ing appropriated knowledge—as the human’s special feature to
reproduce their life. Correspondingly, they understand enlightenment
‘in the widest sense as the advance of thought’22 and thus distinguish
it from the Enlightenment, which denotes a specific historical epoch.23
The former is the engine of civilisation:
A philosophical interpretation of world history would have to show
how the rational domination of nature comes increasingly to win the
day, in spite of all deviations and resistance, and integrates all human
characteristics. Forms of economy, rule, and culture would also be
derived from this position.24
This concept of history traces human culture back to its relationship
with nature and is characterised by the alienation of humans from
nature by human practice, which manifests itself in the ability to
succeed at goal-oriented manipulation of nature and in longing for
its domination. As productive forces developed with the mechanistic
20
╇ John Bower, ‘The Origin and Evolution of Humankind’, Did the Devil Make
Darwin Do It? Modern Perspectives on the Creation-Evolution Controversy, eds.
David B. Wilson and Warren D. Dolphin (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1985),
123.
21
╇ Bower, ‘Origin and Evolution’, 120.
22
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1.
23
╇ The two meanings of the word are distinguished in the following by a small
letter e and a capital E and/or the.
24
╇Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (Lon-
don: Allen Lane, 1973), 235.
anthropocentrism and reason 329
25
╇ Francis Bacon and Graham Rees, The Instauratio Magna Part II: Novum Orga-
num and Associated Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), 197.
26
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 2.
27
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 4.
28
╇ Bacon and Rees, The Instauratio Magna Part II, 301.
330 andré krebber
29
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 7.
30
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 6.
31
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 7.
32
╇ Bacon and Rees, The Instauratio Magna Part II, 305.
anthropocentrism and reason 331
fall man lost both his state of innocence and his command over cre-
ated things’.33
33
╇ Bacon and Rees, The Instauratio Magna Part II, 447.
34
╇ Barbara Demick, ‘China plans to halt rain for Beijing Olympics’, L.A. Times,
Jan. 31, 2008, available at: http://travel.latimes.com/articles/la-trw-rain31jan31, ac��
cessed Dec. 24, 2009
35
╇ http://www.cma.gov.cn/en/speeial/2009special/60th/majorservice/200909/
t20090-925_46065.html, accessed: Dec. 24, 2009
36
╇ ‘Chinese government makes it snow in order to fight drought’, Telegraph,
Nov. 1, 2009, available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/
6481650/Chinese-government-makes-it-snow-in-Beijing-in-order-to-fight-drought
.html, accessed: Dec. 24, 2009
332 andré krebber
has global ecological effects that have massive implications for soci-
ety. For millennia human societies have relied on nature as a source
for reproduction. Nature appeared as inexhaustible. This basic condi-
tion is being shattered, as natural resources become scarce, and eco-
logical living conditions worsen. Human societies face an increasingly
uncertain future.
The crisis is neither unnoticed nor is it unanswered; it is com-
monly acknowledged and has its place in public awareness. Ecological
problems have been discussed for decades now and green technolo-
gies have been invented to an impressive extent. A broad and lively
discussion about the right strategies to address the problems contin-
ues today. Yet, the more importance and urgency is directed to the
problem, the more it verifies the invariable failure of those efforts.
The threat appears only to increase with succeeding attention. The
alarming calls on society have not eased over the last forty years.
There has been little improvement in the basic situation: humans are
as threatened by destruction of their living environment as before,
maybe even more. In spite of the tremendous efforts that have been
undertaken in the last decades one must ask what all the money spent
on colossal conferences and shiny publicity campaigns was worth in
the end, when the decades of work have only led to ever more urgent
calls on society and more alarming prognoses on the state of the
environment. In spite of this inefficiency, it seems ‘the global demo-
cratic system’ has already ‘failed to deliver’. COP 15 turned out to be
another missed chance for a change in human habits.
The inherent contradiction within Bacon’s utopia has been
exposed. The Enlightenment has achieved its goals and missed them
at the same time. Although Bacon’s concept has been applied to an
impressive extent, it hasn’t brought us the benefits promised. Just as
Bacon predicted, humans have appropriated the power to manipulate
nature; but this power has not given humans the hoped-for authority
over nature. In fact, the more scientific knowledge and power to
manipulate nature we gain, the worse the ecological situation seems
to get. Nature defies the Enlightenment’s hopes. At the same time,
the ‘global democratic system’, despite increasing attention, struggles
to resolve the crisis. What Horkheimer and Adorno wrote in Dialectic
of Enlightenment becomes more and more a possibility:
Anthropomorphism contains a measure of truth in that natural history
did not reckon with the play of chance which led to the development
of men. Their destructive capacity risks becoming so great that a clean
anthropocentrism and reason 333
sweep will be made if the race is ever exhausted. Either men will tear
each other to pieces or they will take all the flora and fauna of the earth
with them; and if the earth is then still young enough, the whole thing
will have to be started again at a much lower stage.37
37
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1973), 224.
38
╇ The following marks a first attempt in challenging anthropocentrism on behalf
of classical Critical Theory and from a human-animal studies perspective, to address
humanity’s contemporary crisis. Accordingly, it remains fragmented and incomplete
in both accessing the voluminous works of the Frankfurt School and in proposing
applicable conclusions. In this context, I thank an anonymous peer-reviewer for
drawing my attention to Adorno’s advocacy of objectivity and his attempt to access
the dualism through his negative dialectic as well as the purpose of critique as rigor-
ous negativity, the concept of the nonidentical, and the limitation of reason. These
areas are touched upon here, but their more substantial incorporation will be the
inevitable task of amplifying the suggested approach in the future.
39
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 18ff; Horkheimer,
Eclipse of Reason.
334 andré krebber
40
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 1.
41
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 11.
42
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, xviii.
43
╇ Cf. Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1973), 24.
anthropocentrism and reason 335
44
╇ ‘Der gesellschaftliche Prozess ist weder bloß Gesellschaft noch bloße Natur,
sondern Stoffwechsel der Menschen mit dieser, die permanente Vermittlung beider
Momente’. Theodor W. Adorno, Gesammelte Schriften 8: Soziologische Schriften 1,
ed. Rolf Tiedemann (Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp, 1990), 221 (author’s own transla-
tion).
45
╇ Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E.B. Ashton (New York:
Seabury Press, 1973).
46
╇ Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, 169.
47
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 18.
48
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1973), 24.
336 andré krebber
49
╇ Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, 169.
50
╇ Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, 176.
51
╇ Adorno, Aesthetic Theory.
52
╇ Winterfeld, Naturpatriarchen.
53
╇ Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason.
anthropocentrism and reason 337
54
╇ Horkheimer and Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 245.
55
╇ Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, 159.
56
╇Maria Sibylla Merian and Helmut Deckert, Das Insektenbuch: Metamorphosis
Insectorum Surinamensium, (Frankfurt a.M.: Insel, 1991); Kurt Wettengl, ed., Maria
Sibylla Merian, 1647–1717: Artist and Naturalist (Ostfildern-Ruit: Verlag Gerd
Hatje, 1998).
338 andré krebber
57
╇ André Krebber, ‘Bezaubernde Erkenntnis: Naturerkenntnis und -beschreiÂ�bung
bei Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717)’ (unpublished Dipl. thesis, Univ. Lueneburg,
2007).
anthropocentrism and reason 339
INDEX
Actor-network theory╇ 16, 63, 269-78 Horses╇ 16, 52-3, 103, 245-64
Adam╇ 23, 25, 140, 149, 162, 295 Insects╇ 51, 120, 150, 225, 325-6
Adorno, Theodor╇ 17, 323-34, 336-7 Lizards╇ 26, 150
Dialectic of Enlightenment╇ 17, 321, Mammals╇ 32, 119, 140, 150, 224, 234
323-30, 332-5, 337 Monkeys╇ 196-7
Advocacy, Advocates╇ 6, 8-10, 98, 107-8, Nemo (fish)╇ 267
113, 136, 225, 251, 253, 256, 258, Pigeons╇ 245
262-3, 287, 309, 314 Pigs╇ 224, 249, 292
Aeschylus╇ 41 Pterodactyls╇ 150-2
Aesthetics╇ 157, 165 Rabbits╇ 52, 170, 278, 330
Afghanistan╇ 310-13 Rodents╇ 224-5, 278
Agamben, Giorgio╇ 2, 5, 8, 180 Sheep╇ 224
Agency╇ 3, 9, 16, 47, 66-7, 75, 78-9, 93, Skippy (kangaroo)╇ 267
100, 105, 213, 215, 232, 247, 265, Animism╇ 296, 329, 334
268, 274-5, 302 Anthropocentrism (explicit references)
Aldini, Giovanni╇ 172 1-18, 25, 29, 35-6, 37-57, 59-62,
Alienation╇ 7, 15, 21, 27, 162-3, 165-6, 70-2, 75, 77-9, 81, 86-7, 89, 91-4,
177, 179, 236, 309, 326, 328-9, 335 96-8, 100-108, 114, 117-22, 124,
Analogy╇ 6, 67, 118-19, 126-37, 141, 162, 126, 131-2, 134-7, 183, 190, 203-6,
178, 181, 194, 205-6, 218-20, 224- 216, 218, 220, 223-7, 230, 235-6,
5, 231, 237-8, 241 239, 241-3, 247-8, 251, 253, 256,
Animals╇ 1-17, 21-36, 37-8, 40-3, 45-7, 263-4, 273, 287, 294-9, 305, 307-
51-4, 57, 63, 69-71, 74-9, 81-108, 319, 321-5, 333, 339
Anthropo-interpretivism╇ 265
112-14, 117, 119-20, 133, 135-7,
Anthropology╇ 110, 183, 189-90, 195,
140, 142-5, 149-53, 159, 167-9,
337, 339
172-3, 183-98, 203-206, 208, 212,
Cultural Anthropology╇ 15, 183, 188-
216-21, 223-5, 227-30, 234, 236- 99
40, 242, 245-51, 253, 255-64, Social Anthropology╇ 15, 64, 183
�265-79, 283, 303, 307, 321-4, 329, Anthropomorphism╇ 17, 31, 265-70, 272,
333-4, 336-9 276-7, 279, 318, 329, 332
Apes╇ 2, 27, 29, 197, 206, 232 Anthropos╇ 1, 23, 156, 180, 184, 266
Babe (pig)╇ 267 Antiquity╇ 13, 22, 33, 90
Bats╇ 119-20, 136, 150 Anti-Semitism╇ 224, 234-5
Birds╇ 21, 25, 52, 54-5, 143, 150, 278 Appadurai, Arjun╇ 198
Camels╇ 26, 147-8 Appiah, Kwame Anthony╇ 104-5
Cats╇ 26, 224, 227, 240-1, 245, 249, Aquinas, Thomas╇ 14, 86-7, 89, 118-19,
278 126-37, 192n, 203
Chickens╇ 21, 27, 30, 35-6, 249 Summa Contra Gentiles╇ 131
Chimpanzees╇ 26, 195-6, 267-8 Summa Theologicae╇ 132
Cows╇ 53, 149, 152, 224 Architecture╇ 139-53, 217
Dogs╇ 26, 170, 218, 224-5, 227, 249, Ontological architecture╇ 62, 70
278, Arendt, Hannah╇ 180, 247
Ducks╇ 249 Origins of Totalitarianism╇ 180
Flipper (dolphin)╇ 267 Aristotle╇ 30, 39-42, 84, 97, 121, 203
Fish╇ 25, 52, 228 De anima╇ 84
Foxes╇ 278 Politics╇ 39, 84
342 index
Art╇ 10, 16, 143-4, 174, 189, 213-18, 220 Brown, John╇ 172
Asymmetry╇ 93, 271-3 Buchez, Phillipe╇ 146
Athena╇ 24, 28 Bulliet, Richard╇ 9-10
Augustine, Saint╇ 86, 203 Bush, George W.╇ 312
Auschwitz╇ 327
Automata╇ 159, 168-9, 173-6, 186, 197, Capitalism╇ 75, 153, 156-60, 165-7, 173-
243 9, 247, 251, 275, 303, 310-11, 317,
Avatar╇ 333, 337 319, 322, 326-7, 333
Carrithers, Michael╇ 195
Bacon, Francis╇ 266, 322, 329-32 Cartesianism (see Descartes, René)
Balguy, John╇ 46 Castree, N.╇ 271-5
Balzac, Honoré de╇ 149, 250 Chauvinism╇ 1, 13
Basil, Saint╇ 86 Chesterton, G.K.╇ 135
Behaviourism╇ 266 Chevalier, Louis╇ 250
Belief╇ 17, 33, 37, 50, 84, 121, 123, 189, China Meteorological Administration
226, 234, 284-5, 305, 313, 316-7 331
Benedict, Ruth╇ 190 Chomsky, Noam╇ 30
Benhabib, Seyla╇ 105-8 Chrysostom, John╇ 86
Bennett, David╇ 226 Cicero╇ 85, 99
Bentham, Jeremy╇ 307 Citizenship╇ 10, 101, 103, 165, 180, 257
Besonnenheit (see Reflexivity) City (Polis)╇ 6, 16, 31, 149, 245-54, 258-
Beulé, Charles-Ernest╇ 144 64
Bible╇ 23-4, 294, 298, 302 Civil society╇ 81, 107
Book of Job╇ 24 Civilisation╇ 9, 31, 114, 143, 145, 246,
Book of Proverbs╇ 24 249, 325-8, 335, 337, 339
Deuteronomy╇ 298 Civility╇ 9
Genesis╇ 162, 293-5, 298 Claims╇ 3-5, 11, 106-7, 322, 325, 336
Leviticus╇ 298 Claretie, Jules╇ 259
New Testament╇ 162, 298 Cohen, Jeremy╇ 298-9
Old Testament╇ 291, 293, 297 Coleman, William╇ 297
Proverbs╇ 24, 298 Columella, Lucius Junius Moderatus
Binary opposition╇ 4, 10, 16, 109, 156, 291
184, 191, 194, 248, 269, 271-4, 277 Compassion╇ 44, 89, 257
Dichotomy╇ 2, 6, 56, 62-3, 70, 184, Consciousness╇ 12, 61, 70-1, 73, 79, 96-9,
195, 330 110, 119-20, 136, 140, 153, 194,
Dualism╇ 60-4, 67-8, 71-7, 79, 135-6, 207, 227, 317, 329, 335
271, 274, 324-5, 335-6 Constructivism╇ 77
Biocentrism╇ 17, 305 Cosmology╇ 1, 7, 37, 42, 79, 86, 141, 187,
Biology╇ 12, 67, 74, 169-71, 189-90, 198, 194
233, 273, 277 Cosmopolitanism╇ 14, 43, 81-114
Blair, Tony╇ 312 Creation╇ 24-5, 27, 86, 119, 126-32, 134,
Blakemore, Colin╇ 223, 229, 236 153, 156-63, 165, 167, 190, 205,
Blasphemy╇ 14, 122 247, 286-7, 293-4, 296, 303
Bloch, Marc╇ 288, 291 Critical Theory╇ 247, 323, 325
Boas, Franz╇ 183, 189-91 Cruelty╇ 46, 87-89, 105, 203, 229-30, 238,
Body╇ 14, 61, 73, 131, 140-2, 146-7, 150, 250, 256, 262
152-3, 162, 172-4, 176-7, 191, 251, Cullen, William╇ 172
316 Cuvier, Georges╇ 140, 148-52
Boia, Lucian╇ 26 Cyborgs╇ 153, 276
Boileau, Louis-Auguste╇ 139-41, 146-8
Bratton, Susan Power╇ 302 Daoism╇ 13, 38, 51-7, 314
Brink, David╇ 48 Zhuangzi╇ 51-7
index 343
Darwin, Charles and Darwinism╇ 66-7, Environment╇ 1-2, 5-6, 11, 31, 35, 92,
152, 184n 194, 205, 212, 230, 235, 241, 247,
Origin of Species╇ 66, 184n 251, 261, 283, 286-7, 295-7, 302-5,
Death╇ 22, 54, 94-6, 102, 148, 160, 311- 307-14, 318-19, 321-4, 328, 331-2,
12, 316 339
Deep ecology╇ 17, 302, 307-19 Climate change╇ 321
Deities (see God) Crisis╇ 303-4, 308, 321-4, 331-9
Democracy╇ 35, 42, 106-7, 259, 321, 332 Global Warming╇ 35, 308
Derrida, Jacques╇ 5, 26, 94-5, 167, 239-40 Epic of Gilgamesh╇ 24, 27, 31
Descartes, René╇ 29-30, 42, 62, 81, 97, Epimetheus╇ 24-5, 28
143-5, 186, 203, 253, 322 Epistemology╇ 1, 13, 15, 17, 37, 42, 48,
Cartesianism╇ 61, 70, 73, 191-2n, 250, 50, 59, 65, 67, 75-9, 157, 169, 198-
256, 266, 271 9, 265, 269, 272-8, 310, 339
Recherche de la vérité par la lumière Ethics╇ 1-3, 6-13, 37-9, 41-57, 89-93, 102,
naturelle╇ 144 106-13, 117, 136-7, 203, 228-30,
Descola, Philippe╇ 193-4, 198 233, 235-6, 247, 283, 287, 294,
Devall, Bill╇ 308 297-8, 305, 307, 315-16, 319
Diamond, Cora╇ 230 Ethnocentrism╇ 11, 108, 110
Dichotomies (see Binary oppositions) Ethnography╇ 194, 196, 197n
Diderot, Denis╇ 45 Animal Ethnography╇ 196
Didron, Alphonse-Nicolas╇ 139-40, 147- Ethology╇ 193, 195, 267
8 Eve╇ 25
Dignity╇ 88, 99, 102-3, 239, 322-4, 336-7 Evernden, Neil╇ 31
Diogenes Laertius╇ 41 Evolution╇ 12, 30, 60, 67, 74, 184n, 185-6,
Diogenes of Sinope╇ 21, 27, 30, 35-6 191, 193, 197, 278, 328
Distinction╇ 3, 6-8, 11-12, 16, 31, 60, 65, Exceptionalism╇ 5, 7-9, 12, 78
69-71, 74-9, 88, 156-8, 190-7, 209,
220, 236, 248, 271-6, 317 Factories╇ 31, 152, 159-60, 173-8, 181
Divinity, the Divine╇ 4, 8, 86-7, 90-91, Farming╇ 8, 215, 237, 285, 288-91
96-7, 118-9, 121-31, 135, 162, 186, Fée, A.L.A.╇ 253
219, 299 Feeling╇ 33, 178, 181, 296, 315-17
DNA╇ 34, 233 Feenberg, Andrew╇ 247-8
Domesticity╇ 9-10, 26, 31, 78, 149, 245-8, Fellenz, Marc╇ 10, 17
278, 299 Ficino, Marsilio╇ 186
Dominion╇ 7, 9-10, 91, 184, 186, 283, Field systems╇ 288-90
298, 312, 323 Filarete, Antonia Averlino╇ 141
Down’s Syndrome╇ 313 Fossey, Dian╇ 196
Dreyfus, H.L.╇ 212, 217 Foucault, Michel╇ 109, 158, 168-9, 174-5,
Du Camp, Maxime╇ 252-3, 257, 261 237-9, 273
Dualism (see Binary opposition) Security, Territory, Population╇ 168
Dunayer, Joan╇ 228 Francione, Gary╇ 228
Durkheim, Emile╇ 66, 72-7 Francis of Assisi, Saint╇ 86, 135, 287, 302-
Rules of Sociological Method╇ 72 3, 305
Duty╇ 11, 47, 87-90, 93, 96, 99 Frankfurt School╇ 247, 323, 325, 333n,
Dwelling╇ 65, 92-3, 96, 144, 152-3, 186 335
Ecology (see also Deep ecology)╇ 12, 16, Gaita, Raimond╇ 230
307 Galdikas, Biruté╇ 196
Electricity╇ 32, 172-3, 246, 259, 261 Galvani, Luigi╇ 172
Engels, Friedrich╇ 66-7, 160 Gandhi, Mohandas╇ 118, 314
Enlightenment╇ 10, 14, 17, 43-4, 46-7, 57, Gassendi, Pierre╇ 97
76, 81, 87, 109, 177, 270-1, 321-39 Geertz, Clifford╇ 183, 192-3
344 index
Genetics╇ 31, 34, 192-3, 228, 232 Dialectic of Enlightenment (see under
Giddens, Anthony╇ 76 Adorno, Theodor)
Giffard, Pierre╇ 259 Eclipse of Reason╇ 336
The End of the Horse╇ 259-60 Horse power╇ 245, 250-1, 255, 259-60
Glacken, C.J.╇ 298 Hugo, Victor╇ 147, 262
God(s)╇ 14, 23-5, 27-9, 33, 59, 82-7, Human nature╇ 42-5, 74, 93, 119, 145,
89-91, 96-99, 117-19, 121-35, 140, 186, 193, 308-10, 313, 335-6
142, 162, 203, 218-20, 266, 294-5, Human-animal relation╇ 8, 10-11, 15, 91,
303, 311-12, 317, 329 136, 153, 246-7, 262, 265, 269-71,
Goedart, Johannes╇ 338 273-8, 323, 333, 336-9
Metamorphosis Naturalis╇ 338 Humanism (see also Post-humanism)
Goodall, Jane╇ 195 14-15, 33-4, 59-62, 64-6, 68, 70-2,
Gothic╇ 141-2, 147, 152 76-7, 79, 81, 96, 111n, 159, 185-9,
Grammont Law╇ 250, 262 197, 237-9, 247
Great Chain of Being (see Scala naturae) Hume, David╇ 44-5, 50, 203
Greene, Ann Norton╇ 263 Huré╇ 250
The Zoophile╇ 250
Habermas, Jürgen╇ 112 Husserl, Edmund╇ 204, 207-8
Haller, Albrecht╇ 171-2 Ideas╇ 207
Haraway, Donna╇ 153, 272, 278, 325 Hybridity, Hybridisation╇ 149, 169, 267,
Harrison, Peter╇ 286, 290, 292-4, 296-9, 270-1, 273, 276-7, 324
302, 305
Harvey, David╇ 111, 250-1 Ideology╇ 3, 7, 42, 112, 167, 173, 273, 293,
303-4, 322, 337
Haussmann, Georges-Eugène╇ 250-2
Idolatry╇ 122, 124, 126
Haussmannisation╇ 251
Imanishi, Kinji╇ 196
Hawkins, Mike╇ 74 Immortality╇ 24, 26, 29
Heavy plough╇ 287-92 Industrial Revolution╇ 31, 158-60, 176,
Hedegaard, Connie╇ 321 178, 245, 259
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich╇ 164, Instinct╇ 28-9, 45, 69-71, 74, 78, 143, 178,
167, 171 186-7, 188n, 189-90, 193
Heidegger, Martin╇ 15-16, 84, 92-7, 111, Instrumentalisation╇ 16-17, 85, 88, 102-
152, 203-20, 314 4, 177, 245-8, 253, 256, 263-4, 322,
Being and Time╇ 204, 206, 209-11 338
Dasein╇ 92, 204-14, 216-21 Intentionality╇ 207, 274
The Fundamental Concepts of Meta- Interpretivism╇ 72, 76-7, 265
physics╇ 205
Kant and the Problem of Metaphys- Judaeo-Christian tradition╇ 163, 308,
ics╇ 205 312, 319
‘The Origin of the Work of Art’╇ 215 Justice╇ 46-7, 82-3, 86, 92-3, 97-8, 100-3,
Held, David╇ 108 105-114, 239, 242, 315
Hephaestus╇ 24, 28 Cosmic justice╇ 14, 91, 97, 114
Herder, Johann Gottfried╇ 95, 183, 188
Herodotus╇ 41 Kant, Immanuel╇ 45, 76, 81, 87-93, 97,
Hesiod╇ 24, 27n, 82, 291 101, 111, 169, 203, 205-7, 247, 307
Works and Days╇ 24 Kielmeyer, Carl Friedrich╇ 177
Hierarchy╇ 8, 83-5, 88, 219, 225, 262, 336 Killing (Slaughter)╇ 8-9, 36, 82, 86-7, 94,
Hill, Andrew╇ 312 98, 102-3, 105, 141, 149, 170, 249,
Hilton, R.H.╇ 300-1 260, 262, 311-2, 316, 327
Hobbes, Thomas╇ 43 Kinship (Oikeiosis)╇ 6, 8, 14, 97-100, 187,
Homer╇ 24 188n
Homo Sapiens (see Human) Kroeber, Alfred L.╇ 183, 189, 191-2
Horkheimer, Max╇ 17, 247, 323-8, 332-6 The Superorganic╇ 191
index 345
Laboratories╇ 160-1, 178, 267-8, 330 Mediation╇ 17-18, 34, 67-8, 71, 106, 169,
Labour╇ 67-71, 76, 147, 159-63, 165-7, 334-6, 339
173-5, 177, 250, 301 Meister Eckhart (Eckhart von Hoch-
LaCapra, Dominick╇ 3-5, 217n heim)╇ 314
Language╇ 12, 14, 22-3, 30, 33, 37, 40-1, Ménuret, Jean Joseph╇ 167
45, 47-8, 54, 61, 91, 118-19, 121-2, Merian, Maria Sibylla╇ 337-9
124-36, 193, 219 Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamen-
Latour, Bruno╇ 6-8, 65, 267, 274, 321, 324 sium╇ 337
Law, John.╇ 269-70, 274 Metaphor╇ 36n, 52, 62, 127-8, 130-2, 179,
Law, legality╇ 6-7, 11-12, 21-22, 30, 33, 185-6, 193, 246, 261, 327
39, 74, 89, 106-7, 180, 189 Metaphysics╇ 17, 37, 41, 43, 49, 61, 70,
Le Goff, Jacques╇ 301 76, 87, 94, 103, 108, 128-9, 134-5,
Legendre, George╇ 153 190, 204-7, 218-19, 287, 294-7,
Lévi-Strauss, Claude╇ 193-95 305, 307, 310, 313-15
Les structures élémentaires de la Michael, Mike╇ 73
parenté╇ 193 Middleton, Robin╇ 141, 142n
Race et Histoire, Race et Culture╇ 194 Mill, John Stuart╇ 117
Liberalism╇ 43, 103-4, 109, 111-12 Utilitarianism╇ 117
Liberty╇ 274, 277 Mimesis╇ 324
Linnaeus╇ 2 Minot, J.╇ 250-1, 255
Loeb, Jacques╇ 266 Appreciation of the Horse╇ 250
Logos (see Reason) Misanthropy╇ 35, 242
Lorenz, Konrad╇ 29 Mitchell, Timothy╇ 66
Loubat, Alphonse╇ 254 Molloy, C.╇ 276
Love╇ 78, 89, 99, 102-3n, 162-4, 166, 313, Monotheism╇ 121-2
315, 319 Monsters, Monstrosity╇ 14-15, 145, 147-
Lowie, Robert╇ 189 9, 155-67, 169, 174, 178-81, 229,
Löwith, Karl╇ 92 261
Luther, Martin╇ 42 Montaigne, Michel de╇ 203
Lyon, D.╇ 274 Moore, G.E.╇ 48
Lyotard, Jean-François╇ 273 Morality╇ 11, 36, 37-8, 43-7, 50, 56-7,
90-93, 256-7, 264, 268
Machines╇ 2, 16, 29n, 31-4, 142, 145, 166, Moral judgement╇ 38, 91
176-8, 245-7, 250-1, 253, 255-6, Moral realism╇ 37, 48-51, 56-7
261, 263-4, 276, 285, 322 Moral relativism╇ 37
Mackie, J.L.╇ 48 Moral status╇ 1, 12, 15, 41, 46, 54, 83, 87,
Maimonides, Moses╇ 14, 118-33, 136 90, 94, 97, 103, 107, 120, 136
Commentary on the Mishnah╇ 121 Moretti, Franco╇ 159-60, 166
Guide for the Perplexed╇ 118 Signs Taken for Wonders╇ 159
Mandeville, Bernard╇ 43 Morgan, Lewis Henry╇ 190-1
Marchesini, Roberto╇ 27, 36n, 193 Muntz, Achille╇ 258
Marcuse, Herbert╇ 247 Myth╇ 22-9, 36, 55, 143, 145, 149, 329,
Marey, Etienne-Jules╇ 255-6 334
Marginality╇ 61, 77, 93, 110-11, 113, 226-
34, 240 Nagel, Thomas╇ 49-50, 55-6, 119-20
Marx, Karl╇ 15, 66-72, 74, 76-7, 160-1, Nazism╇ 30, 94, 155, 327
164-5, 167, 173-6, 326 Neo-Platonism╇ 97-8
Capital╇ 160n, 161 and n, 165, 173, Normality╇ 175
175n, 177n Nussbaum, Martha╇ 101-5, 107-9
Matsuzawa, Testuro╇ 197
McShane, Clay╇ 263 Objectivity╇ 43, 48-50, 56, 76, 169, 273,
Mead, George Herbert╇ 78, 271 330, 330n
346 index