In the Belly of the Beast: Animality, Animal Metaphors, and the Human Animal in the text of Philosophy
Philosophy for Plebs is back after a two-month hiatus!
Classical metaphysics from the Greeks up through Christianity places humans in a distinguished middle ground between the divine, timeless, essences/forms/god on the one side, and “base” nature on the other. A bifurcated spirit, some might call it. Although these metaphysics have been roundly criticised, deconstructed, and perhaps by some dismissed (and forgotten) in both the modern and post-modern periods, we are inheritors of this thought, and, in some ways, continue to live and think unconsciously by these metaphors/metaphysics.
Ultimately, how we discursively deploy, delimit, and tame animals within a genre, such as philosophy, may betray broader trends in terms of the treatment of our fellow species on this planet.
Join us for this Philosophy for Plebs session where we will sort through philosophy’s menagerie.
Timothy Morton, “Ecologocentrism: Unworking Animals”
Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal (p. 1-12, 81-92)
Find the texts in our Google Drive:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dYFRMexww4pvHFMJ9Tb7i-yYfbVsWWl6
Additional readings:
Nicolo Machiavelli, The Prince (Ch. 18: In What Way Princes Must Keep Faith, available on project Gutenburg)
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/57037/pg57037-images.html#CHAPTER_XVIII
Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (p. 198-202, Borrowable on the Internet Archive with a free account:
https://archive.org/details/greatchainofbein0000unse_t8n6/page/198/mode/2up )
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