Animalia Americana: Animal Representations and Biopolitical Subjectivity
Colleen Boggs
10.7312/columbia/9780231161237.001.0001
Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
This book puts animal representation at the center of the making of the liberal American subject and argues that animals are critical to the ways in which Americans enact their humanity and regulate ... More
This book puts animal representation at the center of the making of the liberal American subject and argues that animals are critical to the ways in which Americans enact their humanity and regulate subjects in the biopolitical state. It concentrates on the formative and disruptive presence of animals in the writings of Frederick Douglass, Edgar Allan Poe, and Emily Dickinson. It argues that biopower, or a politics that extends its reach to life, thrives on the strategic ambivalence between who is considered human and what is judged as animal. It contends that biopower generates a space of indeterminacy in which animal representations intervene to define and challenge the parameters of subjectivity and explains that the renegotiation of the species line produces a tension that is never fully regulated. It highlights how, as both figures of radical alterity and the embodiment of biopolitics, animals are simultaneously exceptional and exemplary to the biopolitical state.Less
Animalia Americana : Animal Representations and Biopolitical Subjectivity
This book puts animal representation at the center of the making of the liberal American subject and argues that animals are critical to the ways in which Americans enact their humanity and regulate subjects in the biopolitical state. It concentrates on the formative and disruptive presence of animals in the writings of Frederick Douglass, Edgar Allan Poe, and Emily Dickinson. It argues that biopower, or a politics that extends its reach to life, thrives on the strategic ambivalence between who is considered human and what is judged as animal. It contends that biopower generates a space of indeterminacy in which animal representations intervene to define and challenge the parameters of subjectivity and explains that the renegotiation of the species line produces a tension that is never fully regulated. It highlights how, as both figures of radical alterity and the embodiment of biopolitics, animals are simultaneously exceptional and exemplary to the biopolitical state.
Keywords: animal representation, biopolitics, biopower, humanity, alterity, critical race theory, animals, Frederick Douglass, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson
As Wide as the World Is Wise: Reinventing Philosophical Anthropology
Philosophy and anthropology have long debated questions of difference: rationality versus irrationality, abstraction versus concreteness, modern versus premodern. What if these disciplines instead ... More
Philosophy and anthropology have long debated questions of difference: rationality versus irrationality, abstraction versus concreteness, modern versus premodern. What if these disciplines instead focused on the commonalities of human experience? Would this effort bring philosophers and anthropologists closer together? Would it lead to greater insights across historical and cultural divides? In As Wide as the World Is Wise, Michael Jackson encourages philosophers and anthropologists to mine the space between localized and globalized perspectives, to resolve empirically the distinctions between the one and the many and between life and specific forms of life. His project balances abstract epistemological practice with immanent reflection, promoting a more situated, embodied, and sensuous approach to the world and its in-between spaces. Drawing on a lifetime of ethnographic fieldwork in West Africa and Aboriginal Australia, Jackson resets the language and logic of academic thought from the standpoint of other lifeworlds. He extends Kant’s cosmopolitan ideal to include all human societies, achieving a radical break with elite ideas of the subjective and a more expansive conception of truth.Less
As Wide as the World Is Wise : Reinventing Philosophical Anthropology
Philosophy and anthropology have long debated questions of difference: rationality versus irrationality, abstraction versus concreteness, modern versus premodern. What if these disciplines instead focused on the commonalities of human experience? Would this effort bring philosophers and anthropologists closer together? Would it lead to greater insights across historical and cultural divides? In As Wide as the World Is Wise, Michael Jackson encourages philosophers and anthropologists to mine the space between localized and globalized perspectives, to resolve empirically the distinctions between the one and the many and between life and specific forms of life. His project balances abstract epistemological practice with immanent reflection, promoting a more situated, embodied, and sensuous approach to the world and its in-between spaces. Drawing on a lifetime of ethnographic fieldwork in West Africa and Aboriginal Australia, Jackson resets the language and logic of academic thought from the standpoint of other lifeworlds. He extends Kant’s cosmopolitan ideal to include all human societies, achieving a radical break with elite ideas of the subjective and a more expansive conception of truth.
Beating Hearts: Abortion and Animal Rights
Sherry F. Colb and Michael C. Dorf
How can someone who condemns hunting, animal farming, and animal experimentation also favor legal abortion, which is the deliberate destruction of a human fetus? The authors of Beating Hearts aim to ... More
How can someone who condemns hunting, animal farming, and animal experimentation also favor legal abortion, which is the deliberate destruction of a human fetus? The authors of Beating Hearts aim to reconcile this apparent conflict and examine the surprisingly similar strategic and tactical questions faced by activists in the pro-life and animal rights movements. Beating Hearts maintains that sentience, or the ability to have subjective experiences, grounds a being’s entitlement to moral concern. The authors argue that nearly all human exploitation of animals is unjustified. Early abortions do not contradict the sentience principle because they precede fetal sentience, and Beating Hearts explains why the mere potential for sentience does not create moral entitlements. Late abortions do raise serious moral questions, but forcing a woman to carry a child to term is problematic as a form of gender-based exploitation. These ethical explorations lead to a wider discussion of the strategies deployed by the pro-life and animal rights movements. Should legal reforms precede or follow attitudinal changes? Do gory images win over or alienate supporters? Is violence ever principled? By probing the connections between debates about abortion and animal rights, Beating Hearts uses each highly contested set of questions to shed light on the other.Less
Sherry F. ColbMichael C. Dorf
How can someone who condemns hunting, animal farming, and animal experimentation also favor legal abortion, which is the deliberate destruction of a human fetus? The authors of Beating Hearts aim to reconcile this apparent conflict and examine the surprisingly similar strategic and tactical questions faced by activists in the pro-life and animal rights movements. Beating Hearts maintains that sentience, or the ability to have subjective experiences, grounds a being’s entitlement to moral concern. The authors argue that nearly all human exploitation of animals is unjustified. Early abortions do not contradict the sentience principle because they precede fetal sentience, and Beating Hearts explains why the mere potential for sentience does not create moral entitlements. Late abortions do raise serious moral questions, but forcing a woman to carry a child to term is problematic as a form of gender-based exploitation. These ethical explorations lead to a wider discussion of the strategies deployed by the pro-life and animal rights movements. Should legal reforms precede or follow attitudinal changes? Do gory images win over or alienate supporters? Is violence ever principled? By probing the connections between debates about abortion and animal rights, Beating Hearts uses each highly contested set of questions to shed light on the other.
Keywords: Abortion, Animal rights, Sentience, pro-life, species
Eat This Book: A Carnivore's Manifesto
Dominique Lestel
If we want to improve the treatment of animals, Dominique Lestel argues, we must acknowledge our evolutionary impulse to eat them and we must expand our worldview to see how others consume meat ... More
If we want to improve the treatment of animals, Dominique Lestel argues, we must acknowledge our evolutionary impulse to eat them and we must expand our worldview to see how others consume meat ethically and sustainably. The position of vegans and vegetarians is unrealistic and exclusionary. Eat This Book calls at once for a renewed and vigorous defense of animal rights and a more open approach to meat eating that turns us into responsible carnivores. Lestel skillfully synthesizes Western philosophical views on the moral status of animals and holistic cosmologies that recognize human-animal reciprocity. He shows that the carnivore’s position is more coherently ethical than vegetarianism, which isolates humans from the world by treating cruelty, violence, and conflicting interests as phenomena outside of life. Describing how meat eaters assume completely—which is to say, metabolically—their animal status, Lestel opens our eyes to the vital relation between carnivores and animals and carnivores’ genuine appreciation of animals’ life-sustaining flesh. He vehemently condemns factory farming and the terrible footprint of industrial meat eating. His goal is to recreate a kinship between humans and animals that reminds us of what it means to be tied to the world.Less
Eat This Book : A Carnivore's Manifesto
If we want to improve the treatment of animals, Dominique Lestel argues, we must acknowledge our evolutionary impulse to eat them and we must expand our worldview to see how others consume meat ethically and sustainably. The position of vegans and vegetarians is unrealistic and exclusionary. Eat This Book calls at once for a renewed and vigorous defense of animal rights and a more open approach to meat eating that turns us into responsible carnivores. Lestel skillfully synthesizes Western philosophical views on the moral status of animals and holistic cosmologies that recognize human-animal reciprocity. He shows that the carnivore’s position is more coherently ethical than vegetarianism, which isolates humans from the world by treating cruelty, violence, and conflicting interests as phenomena outside of life. Describing how meat eaters assume completely—which is to say, metabolically—their animal status, Lestel opens our eyes to the vital relation between carnivores and animals and carnivores’ genuine appreciation of animals’ life-sustaining flesh. He vehemently condemns factory farming and the terrible footprint of industrial meat eating. His goal is to recreate a kinship between humans and animals that reminds us of what it means to be tied to the world.
Keywords: Carnivorism, Vegetarianism, Ethics
Ethical Loneliness: The Injustice of Not Being Heard
Ethical loneliness is the experience of being abandoned by humanity, compounded by the cruelty of wrongs not being heard. It is the result of multiple lapses on the part of human beings and political ... More
Ethical loneliness is the experience of being abandoned by humanity, compounded by the cruelty of wrongs not being heard. It is the result of multiple lapses on the part of human beings and political institutions that, in failing to listen well to survivors, deny them redress by negating their testimony and thwarting their claims for justice. Jill Stauffer examines the root causes of ethical loneliness and how those in power revise history to serve their own ends rather than the needs of the abandoned. Out of this discussion, difficult truths about the desire and potential for political forgiveness, transitional justice, and political reconciliation emerge. Moving beyond a singular focus on truth commissions and legal trials, she considers more closely what is lost in the wake of oppression and violence, how selves and worlds are built and demolished, and who is responsible for re-creating lives after they are destroyed. Stauffer boldly argues that rebuilding worlds and just institutions after violence is a broad obligation and that those who care about justice must first confront their own assumptions about autonomy, liberty, and responsibility before an effective response to violence can take place. In building her claims, Stauffer draws on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Améry, Eve Sedgwick, and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as concrete cases of justice and injustice across the world.Less
Ethical loneliness is the experience of being abandoned by humanity, compounded by the cruelty of wrongs not being heard. It is the result of multiple lapses on the part of human beings and political institutions that, in failing to listen well to survivors, deny them redress by negating their testimony and thwarting their claims for justice. Jill Stauffer examines the root causes of ethical loneliness and how those in power revise history to serve their own ends rather than the needs of the abandoned. Out of this discussion, difficult truths about the desire and potential for political forgiveness, transitional justice, and political reconciliation emerge. Moving beyond a singular focus on truth commissions and legal trials, she considers more closely what is lost in the wake of oppression and violence, how selves and worlds are built and demolished, and who is responsible for re-creating lives after they are destroyed. Stauffer boldly argues that rebuilding worlds and just institutions after violence is a broad obligation and that those who care about justice must first confront their own assumptions about autonomy, liberty, and responsibility before an effective response to violence can take place. In building her claims, Stauffer draws on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Améry, Eve Sedgwick, and Friedrich Nietzsche, as well as concrete cases of justice and injustice across the world.
Keywords: Loneliness, Forgiveness, transitional justice, political reconciliation, Restorative Justice, legalism
Families of Virtue: Confucian and Western Views on Childhood Development
Erin Cline
This book sets out the critical role of the parent–child relationship in the moral development of infants and children. It builds on the work of thinkers and scientists—from ancient Greek and Chinese ... More
This book sets out the critical role of the parent–child relationship in the moral development of infants and children. It builds on the work of thinkers and scientists—from ancient Greek and Chinese philosophers to contemporary feminist ethicists and attachment theorists—and sets out an effective approach for strengthening families and the character of children. It shows how early Confucian philosophers argued that the general ethical sensibilities we develop during infancy and early childhood form the basis for nearly every virtue and that the parent–child relationship is the primary context within which this growth occurs. Joining these views with scientific works on early childhood, the book shows how Western psychology can reinforce and renew the theoretical underpinnings of Confucian thought. It also shows how Confucian philosophers can affect positive social and political change in our time, particularly in areas such as paid parental leave, breastfeeding initiatives, marriage counselling and family therapy.Less
Families of Virtue : Confucian and Western Views on Childhood Development
This book sets out the critical role of the parent–child relationship in the moral development of infants and children. It builds on the work of thinkers and scientists—from ancient Greek and Chinese philosophers to contemporary feminist ethicists and attachment theorists—and sets out an effective approach for strengthening families and the character of children. It shows how early Confucian philosophers argued that the general ethical sensibilities we develop during infancy and early childhood form the basis for nearly every virtue and that the parent–child relationship is the primary context within which this growth occurs. Joining these views with scientific works on early childhood, the book shows how Western psychology can reinforce and renew the theoretical underpinnings of Confucian thought. It also shows how Confucian philosophers can affect positive social and political change in our time, particularly in areas such as paid parental leave, breastfeeding initiatives, marriage counselling and family therapy.
Finding Ourselves at the Movies: Philosophy for a New Generation
This book argues that philosophy must take up the fundamental concerns of love, death, justice, knowledge, and faith as they are found in contemporary culture. It demonstrates how this can be ... More
This book argues that philosophy must take up the fundamental concerns of love, death, justice, knowledge, and faith as they are found in contemporary culture. It demonstrates how this can be achieved by turning to popular film. The book discusses such well-known movies as Forrest Gump (1994), The American President (1995), The Matrix (1999), Memento (2000), The History of Violence (2005), Gran Torino (2008), The Dark Knight (2008), The Road (2009), and Avatar (2009). It explores the powerful archetypes covered in these films and assesses the hold they have upon us. The book's inquiry proceeds in two parts. First, it uses film to explore the nature of action and interpretation, arguing that narrative is the critical concept for understanding both. Second, it explores the narratives of politics, family, and faith as they appear in popular films. It engages with genres as diverse as romantic comedy, slasher film, and pornography, and explores the social imaginary through which we create and maintain a meaningful world. It finds in popular films a new setting for a philosophical inquiry into the timeless themes of sacrifice, innocence, rebirth, law, and love.Less
This book argues that philosophy must take up the fundamental concerns of love, death, justice, knowledge, and faith as they are found in contemporary culture. It demonstrates how this can be achieved by turning to popular film. The book discusses such well-known movies as Forrest Gump (1994), The American President (1995), The Matrix (1999), Memento (2000), The History of Violence (2005), Gran Torino (2008), The Dark Knight (2008), The Road (2009), and Avatar (2009). It explores the powerful archetypes covered in these films and assesses the hold they have upon us. The book's inquiry proceeds in two parts. First, it uses film to explore the nature of action and interpretation, arguing that narrative is the critical concept for understanding both. Second, it explores the narratives of politics, family, and faith as they appear in popular films. It engages with genres as diverse as romantic comedy, slasher film, and pornography, and explores the social imaginary through which we create and maintain a meaningful world. It finds in popular films a new setting for a philosophical inquiry into the timeless themes of sacrifice, innocence, rebirth, law, and love.
Keywords: philosophy, popular film, Forrest Gump, The American President, The Matrix, Memento, The History of Violence, romantic comedy, slasher films, pornography
Happiness and Goodness: Philosophical Reflections on Living Well
Steven Cahn and Christine Vitrano
How should we evaluate the success of each person's life? Countering the prevalent philosophical perspective on the subject, this book defends the view that our well-being is dependent not on ... More
How should we evaluate the success of each person's life? Countering the prevalent philosophical perspective on the subject, this book defends the view that our well-being is dependent not on particular activities, accomplishments, or awards but on finding personal satisfaction while treating others with due concern. The book suggests that moral behavior is not necessary for happiness and does not ensure it. Yet it also argues that morality and happiness are needed for living well, and together suffice to achieve that goal. The text links its position to elements within both the Hellenistic and Hebraic traditions, in particular the views of Epicurus and lessons found in the Book of Ecclesiastes.Less
Happiness and Goodness : Philosophical Reflections on Living Well
Steven CahnChristine Vitrano
How should we evaluate the success of each person's life? Countering the prevalent philosophical perspective on the subject, this book defends the view that our well-being is dependent not on particular activities, accomplishments, or awards but on finding personal satisfaction while treating others with due concern. The book suggests that moral behavior is not necessary for happiness and does not ensure it. Yet it also argues that morality and happiness are needed for living well, and together suffice to achieve that goal. The text links its position to elements within both the Hellenistic and Hebraic traditions, in particular the views of Epicurus and lessons found in the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Keywords: success, well-being, accomplishments, personal satisfaction, moral behavior, happiness, morality, Epicurus, Book of Ecclesiastes
Love and Forgiveness for a More Just World
Hent de Vries and Nils Schott (eds)
One can love and not forgive or out of love decide not to forgive. Or one can forgive but not love, or choose to forgive but not love the ones forgiven. Love and forgiveness follow parallel and largely independent paths, a truth we fail to acknowledge when we pressure others to both love and forgive. Individuals in conflict, sparring social and ethnic groups, warring religious communities, and insecure nations often do not need to pursue love and forgiveness to achieve peace of mind and heart. They need to remain attentive to the needs of others, an alertness that prompts either love or forgiveness to respond. By reorienting our perception of these enduring phenomena, the contributors to this volume inspire new applications for love and forgiveness in an increasingly globalized and no longer quite secular world. With contributions by the renowned French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, the poet Haleh Liza Gafori, and scholars of religion (Leora Batnitzky, Nils F. Schott, Hent de Vries), psychoanalysis (Albert Mason, Orna Ophir), Islamic and political philosophy (Sari Nusseibeh), and the Bible and literature (Regina Schwartz), this anthology reconstructs the historical and conceptual lineage of love and forgiveness and their fraught relationship over time. By examining how we have used—and misused—these concepts, the authors advance a better understanding of their ability to unite different individuals and emerging groups around a shared engagement for freedom and equality, peace and solidarity.Less