"I Trot Like a Horse": The Early Modern Animal Debate in Gulliver's Travels

Philosophy and Literature 48 (1):204-214 (2024)
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Abstract

Does Gulliver's apparent equiphilia (love for equines) at the conclusion of Jonathan Swift's satire signify madness or misanthropy? I say neither, and propose that the neighing narrator is a satirical figure encompassing the animal debate between Michel de Montaigne and René Descartes. Swift's satire, I argue, addresses the early-modern controversy over human-animal distinctions by dramatizing a profound skepticism toward human reason. Swift's stance is registered in a vacillation between literalization of human-animal conversations, lampooning Montaigne, and satirizing Cartesian mechanism. I conclude that the greatest paradox of _Gulliver's Travels_ is that Swift's satirization of skepticism is an endorsement of skepticism itself.

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