We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. We reject arbitrary distinctions that deny adequate protections to other animals who share with protected humans relevantly similar vulnerabilities to harms and relevantly similar interests in avoiding such harms. We strongly urge this Court, in keeping with the best philosophical standards of rational judgment and ethical standards of justice, to recognize that, as a nonhuman person, Happy (...) should be released from her current confinement and transferred to an appropriate elephant sanctuary, pursuant to habeas corpus. (shrink)

The fate of the half a million or so free-ranging elephants in Africa depends on the choices people will make. What ‘moral standing’ do elephants deserve, and thus what constraints should we impose on our behaviour towards them? To assess the state of our knowledge about ethics and elephants is no easy affair. Different views on the moral standing of elephants and thus the obligations humans owe elephants, are not really a matter of scientific knowledge, although such knowledge might deeply (...) influence our chosen ethics. At stake are human value choices that are developed through argument and discussion into ethical positions that suggest, prescribe, or legislate acceptable behaviour, and proscribe or discourage unacceptable treatment of elephants. The point of this assessment is thus to determine which ethical positions have been developed on various matters concerning the management of elephants and have been justified through reasoning. This chapter portrays the different ethical views relevant to the management of elephants that are present in some or other form in the public domain. The aim is to make readers aware of the multiplicity of ethical issues involved in elephant management, as seen from a variety of ethical viewpoints. The complexity of the benefits and harm that accompany different management options will be clarified. The chapter is divided into five sections: (1) our human responsibility towards elephants, (2) the accountability of elephant custodians, (3) the moral standing of elephants, (4) ethical theories, and (5) ethics and management options. (shrink)

The fable of the Emperor's New Clothes is a classic example of a conspiracy of silence, a situation where everyone refuses to acknowledge an obvious truth. But the denial of social realities--whether incest, alcoholism, corruption, or even genocide--is no fairy tale. In The Elephant in the Room, Eviatar Zerubavel sheds new light on the social and political underpinnings of silence and denial--the keeping of "open secrets." The author shows that conspiracies of silence exist at every level of society, ranging (...) from small groups to large corporations, from personal friendships to politics. Drawing on examples from newspapers and comedy shows to novels, children's stories, and film, the book travels back and forth across different levels of social life, and from everyday moments to large-scale historical events. At its core, The Elephant in the Room helps us understand why we ignore truths that are known to all of us. Zerubavel shows how such conspiracies evolve, illuminating the social pressures that cause people to deny what is right before their eyes. We see how each conspirator's denial is symbiotically complemented by the others', and we learn that silence is usually more intense when there are more people conspiring--and especially when there are significant power differences among them. He concludes by showing that the longer we ignore "elephants," the larger they loom in our minds, as each avoidance triggers an even greater spiral of denial. Social life in families, organizations, communities and even entire nations is full of situations where the emperor has no clothes. The Elephant in the Room illuminates the dynamics behind these situations, revealing why we ignore obvious and alarming realities. (shrink)

This paper responds to Kelly Oliver's “See Topsy ‘Ride the Lightning’: The Scopic Machinery of Death” by questioning the presuppositions and implications of her discussion of the spectacle of elephant executions and their relation to Derrida's writings about animals and the death penalty. This paper proposes to reframe the approach to Derrida's reflections on the death penalty and its problematic relation to the category of the human by focusing on the double function of the concept of the scaffold in (...) his writings. Rather than looking at it as a spectacle or as an object for visual studies, I show that the scaffold is a paradoxical concept and has a double (and duplicitous) function in the conceptual founding of human law and human rights, as it is both the architectonic philosophical principle of the rational executive function of the law and the name for the purely mechanical technological machine that carries out the death penalty. In either case, however, the scaffold serves as a nonhuman prosthetic without which the concept of a just and humane and properly “human” law is shown to be untenable. (shrink)

African (Bantu) philosophy conceptualizes morality through ubuntu, which emphasizes the role of community in producing moral agents. This community is characterized by practices that respond to and value interdependence, such as care, cooperation, and respect for elders and ancestral knowledge. While there have been attributions of morality to nonhuman animals in the interdisciplinary animal morality debate, this debate has focused on Western concepts. We argue that the ubuntu conception of morality as a communal practice applies to some nonhuman animals. African (...) elephant communities are highly cooperative and structured around elders; they alloparent, protect their communities, mourn their dead, and pass on cultural knowledge between generations. Identifying these as important moral practices, ubuntu provides a theoretical framework to expand our ethical concern for elephants to their communities. In practice, this will deepen our understanding of the wrongness of atrocities like culling for population management or trophy hunting. (shrink)

Many philosophers and scientists rightly take hallucinations to be phenomena that challenge in a most pressing way our theories of perception and cognition, and epistemology in general. However, very few challenge the received views on the hallucinatory experience and even fewer critically delve into the subject with both breadth and depth. There are all kinds of problems concerning hallucinations—including conceptual, methodological, and empirical issues—that call for a multilevel analysis and an interdisciplinary approach which in turn provide the detail and scope (...) that the subject demands. In this paper, I present and briefly discuss four interrelated problems: (1) definitions, (2) dependence on perception, (3) two views on hallucinations, and (4) methodology. Neglect or underestimation of these problems, among other things, continue to prevent a proper understanding of the concept and the corresponding experience, giving rise to misconceptions and even plain myths on the subject. Hallucinations do occur; but in order to productively investigate them (for whatever end), we first need to get clear on the concept and develop a suitable epistemological framework for their analysis. (shrink)

Culling seems to be a cruel method of human interference in the lives of elephants. The method of culling is generally used to control population numbers of highly developed mammals to protect vegetation and habitat for other less important species. Many people are against human interference in the lives of elephants. In this article aspects of this highly controversial issue are explored. Three fascinating characteristics of this ethical dilemma are discussed in the introductory part, and then the major arguments raised (...) against human interference in the lives of elephants are evaluated. These arguments are the following: First, that nature should be allowed to run its course and establish its own balance; nature will thus solve the problem of elephant overpopulation. The second argument raised by animal-rights activists as well as by animal-welfare groups either claim that animals have rights that humans must respect at all times, or that all sentient beings have interests that humans ought to respect, as those beings can experience pleasure or pain. The third argument often associates culling elephants as method for population control with the commercial use and exploitation of wilderness areas. Many people argue that it is unethical to use wildlife as a sustainable resource for fighting poverty. In conclusion it is stated that despite these arguments human intervention in the lives of elephants are ethically justified. (shrink)

Reproductive autonomy is an integral aspect of female reproduction, but this autonomy is endangered by the control and surveillance of pregnant bodies by institutional structures, laws, and cultural norms. These restrictions deprive women of the freedom to make informed choices, ranging from decisions concerning prenatal care and reproductive procedures to abortion, violating fundamental human rights and bodily autonomy. This article examines how Kalki Koechlin’s graphic memoir _The Elephant in the Womb_ (2021) advances and nuances the discourses surrounding reproductive (...) autonomy and offers insights into how graphic reproduction narratives contribute to developing reproductive rights discourse. (shrink)

Wallace, Meg The words we use in everyday language are loaded with images and emotion. Words can be used to deliberately manipulate language to 'frame' ideas to fit vested interests. When a term is used often enough in this way, the emotional connotations become part of how people conceive a particular set of facts. George Lakoff explains the politically motivated use of framing in his book 'Don't think of an Elephant'.

Much of what Ruth Faden and colleagues say squarely meshes with the ideas of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services about reforming the system for protecting research subjects. Having said that, I want to turn to a very different part of the research universe, the elephant in the room, as it were: the world of interventional randomized clinical trials. Under the current regulatory system, these research subjects receive substantial protections. Most importantly, they are generally enrolled only after (...) they give their informed consent. The rationale for this approach is that research subjects are denied the core ethical protection provided to patients: there is no requirement that everything done to them be in their best interests. Faden and colleagues appear to be proposing to eliminate this informed consent requirement for a significant range of such trials. (shrink)

We submit this brief in support of the Nonhuman Rights Project’s efforts to secure habeas corpus relief for the elephant named Happy. The Supreme Court, Bronx County, declined to grant habeas corpus relief and order Happy’s transfer to an elephant sanctuary, relying, in part, on previous decisions that denied habeas relief for the NhRP’s chimpanzee clients, Kiko and Tommy. Those decisions use incompatible conceptions of ‘person’ which, when properly understood, are either philosophically inadequate or, in fact, compatible (...) with Happy’s personhood. (shrink)

We present ethical reasons that the court should grant the Nonhuman Rights Project’s (NhRP) request for habeas corpus relief for Happy, an elephant. Happy has a basic interest in not being confined, an interest that should be legally protected just as the human interest in not being confined is legally protected. Since the decision in The Nonhuman Rights Project, Inc. v Breheny failed to weigh Happy’s interests properly, we ask this body to correct the error.

According to conservationism, scarce and precious resources should be conserved and used wisely. According to preservation ethics, we should not think of wilderness as merely a resource. Wilderness commands reverence in a way mere resources do not. Each philosophy, I argue, can fail by its own lights, because trying to put the principles of conservationism or preservationism into institutional practice can have results that are the opposite of what the respective philosophies tell us we ought to be trying to achieve. (...) For example, if the wisest use of South American rainforests is no use at all, then in that case conservationism by its own lights defers to preservationism. Analogously, if, when deprived of the option of preserving elephants as a resource, Africans respond by not preserving elephants at all, then in that case preservationism by its own lights defers to conservationism. (shrink)

Happy the elephant is intelligent, social, and self-aware--and considered a thing in the eye of the law. Led by lawyer Steven M. Wise, the Nonhuman Rights Project has filed cases on behalf of captive nonhuman animals like Happy since 2013, arguing that their autonomy entitles them to certain legal rights. In Thing: Inside the Struggle for Animal Personhood, comic artists Sam Machado and Cynthia Sousa Machado bring together Wise's groundbreaking work and their own illustrations in the first (...) graphic nonfiction book about the animal personhood movement. Beginning with Happy's story and the central ideas behind animal rights, Thing then turns to the scientists that are revolutionizing our understanding of the minds of such nonhuman animals as great apes, elephants, dolphins, and whales. Combining legal and social history, innovative science, and illustrated storytelling, Thing presents a visionary new way of relating to the nonhuman world. (shrink)

Are bacteriophage T4 and the long-nosed elephant fish valuable in their own right? Nicholas Agar defends an affirmative answer to this question by arguing that anything living is intrinsically valuable. This claim challenges received ethical wisdom according to which only human beings are valuable in themselves. The resulting biocentric or life-centered morality forms the platform for an ethic of the environment. -/- Agar builds a bridge between the biological sciences and what he calls "folk" morality to arrive at a (...) workable environmental ethic and a new spectrum--a new hierarchy--of living organisms. The book overturns common-sense moral belief as well as centuries of philosophical speculation on the exclusive moral significance of humans. Spanning several fields, including philosophy of psychology, philosophy of science, and other areas of contemporary analytic philosophy, Agar analyzes and speaks to a wide array of historic and contemporary views, from Aristotle and Kant, to E. O. Wilson, Holmes Rolston II, and Baird Callicot. The result is a challenge to prevailing definitions of value and a call for a scientifically-informed appreciation of nature. (shrink)

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." --Genesis 1:24-26 In this crucial passage from the Old Testament, God grants mankind power over animals. But with this privilege comes the grave responsibility to respect life, to treat animals with (...) simple dignity and compassion. Somewhere along the way, something has gone wrong. In Dominion , we witness the annual convention of Safari Club International, an organization whose wealthier members will pay up to $20,000 to hunt an elephant, a lion or another animal, either abroad or in American "safari ranches," where the animals are fenced in pens. We attend the annual International Whaling Commission conference, where the skewed politics of the whaling industry come to light, and the focus is on developing more lethal, but not more merciful, methods of harvesting "living marine resources." And we visit a gargantuan American "factory farm," where animals are treated as mere product and raised in conditions of mass confinement, bred for passivity and bulk, inseminated and fed with machines, kept in tightly confined stalls for the entirety of their lives, and slaughtered in a way that maximizes profits and minimizes decency. Throughout Dominion , Scully counters the hypocritical arguments that attempt to excuse animal abuse: from those who argue that the Bible's message permits mankind to use animals as it pleases, to the hunter's argument that through hunting animal populations are controlled, to the popular and "scientifically proven" notions that animals cannot feel pain, experience no emotions, and are not conscious of their own lives. The result is eye opening, painful and infuriating, insightful and rewarding. Dominion is a plea for human benevolence and mercy, a scathing attack on those who would dismiss animal activists as mere sentimentalists, and a demand for reform from the government down to the individual. Matthew Scully has created a groundbreaking work, a book of lasting power and importance for all of us. (shrink)

In 1873, within two years of the publication of The Descent of Man, Friedrich Max Mueller wrote: There is one difficulty which Mr Darwin has not sufficiently appreciated … There is between the whole animal kingdom on the one side, and man, even in his lowest state, on the other, a barrier which no animal has ever crossed, and that barrier is – Language … If anything has a right to the name of specific difference, it is language, as we (...) find it in man, and in man only … If we removed the name of specific difference from our philosophic dictionaries, I should still hold that nothing deserves the name of man except what is able to speak … a speaking elephant or an elephantine speaker could never be called an elephant.' and ‘If a pig were ever to say to me, “I am a pig” it would ipso facto cease to be a pig’. (shrink)

Anders, Rudi The articles in AH I like best are the ones with which I disagree to a greater or lesser degree, because they force me to re-think and clarify my position. One such article was by John Perkins, titled 'Let's admit that Islam is a problem'. Although the article is very well-written, and I admire John's fact-finding regarding Islam, I think he misses the elephant in the room. Namely, Christian Europe and North America killed far more people than (...) Islam ever did. Buddhist and Shinto Japan did shocking things in the last world war. Jews in Israel ignore the rights of Palestinians. The atheist communist Soviet Union was as bad as Christian Czarist Russia. There is gross injustice in Hindu India. I don't think Islam should be singled out as a problem. I agree that religion can be a problem but the many atheist dictators, for example: Napoleon Bonaparte, Mussolini and Stalin, are also a problem, so atheism as such is not a guarantee of justice. (shrink)

continent. 2.2 (2012): 76–81 Comments on Eugene Thacker’s “Cosmic Pessimism” Nicola Masciandaro Anything you look forward to will destroy you, as it already has. —Vernon Howard In pessimism, the first axiom is a long, low, funereal sigh. The cosmicity of the sigh resides in its profound negative singularity. Moving via endless auto-releasement, it achieves the remote. “ Oltre la spera che piú larga gira / passa ’l sospiro ch’esce del mio core ” [Beyond the sphere that circles widest / penetrates (...) the sigh that issues from my heart]. 1 The axiomatic sigh of the pessimist is in a way the pure word of philosophy, a thought that thinks without you, speaks where you are not. The live pneumatic form of the soul’s eventual exit from the dead body’s mouth, the sigh restores consciousness to the funeral of being, to the passing away that is existence. Pessimism speaks in piercing aphorisms because first it sighs. “Beyond the sphere passeth the arrow of our sigh. Hafiz! Silence.” 2 … pessimism is guilty of that most inexcusable of Occidental crimes—the crime of not pretending it’s for real. To the pessimist, the ‘real’ world—the world on whose behalf we are expected to wake up in the morning—is a ceaseless index of its own unreality. The pessimist’s day is not an illumined space for the advancement of experience and action, but a permanently and inescapably reflective zone, the vast interior of a mirror where each thing is only insofar as it is, at best, a false image of itself. Within this speculative situation, inside the doubleness of the mirror, pessimism splits into two paths, false and true, one that tries to fix pessimism (establish a relation with the mirror) and decides in favor of the apparent real, and another that totally falls for pessimism (enters the mirror) and communes with the greater reality of the unreal. These two paths are distinguished by their relation to pessimism’s guilt vis-à-vis the world’s reality-project. The first form, that which remains pessimism for the world and puts on a smiling face, stays guilty to itself (i.e. unconscious) and thus turns hypocritical, becoming at once the pessimism of the commoner who really just wants things to be better for himself and the pessimism of the elite who wants to critically refashion reality in his own image. The general form of this worldly, hypocritical pessimism is the impulse to ‘make the world a better place’, which is the global mask under which the world is diurnally made worse. The second form, that which follows pessimism away from the world and ceases to put on a smiling face, refuses guiltiness as itself theessential Occidental mode of pretense and turns honest, becoming at once the intelligent pessimism required of all ordinary action and the radical pessimism necessary for self-knowledge: seeing that no one is capable of doing good. The general form of this universal, honest pessimism is the impulse not to worry, to give up and embrace dereliction, which is the only real way the world is actually improved. Where worldly pessimism is the engine productive of interminably warring secular and sacred religions (good-projects), universal pessimism strives hopelessly for the paradise of a supremely instantiated pessimus: things are getting so bad that there is no longer any time for them to get worse; things are so constantly-instantly worst that this is BEST. Cosmic pessimism is the mode of universal pessimism which can yet discourse with the world, which has not chosen silence and can spread the inconceivably BAD NEWS in an orderly form ( kosmos ) that the world can understand (if it wanted to). … the result of a confusion between the world and a statement about the world. That is what the world is (the result of a confusion between the world and a statement about the world). … a generalized misanthropy without the anthropos. Pessimism crystallizes around this futility—it is its amor fati , rendered as musical form. Pessimism’s love of fate is a blind love, a love of the blindness of being human in a cosmos conceived around the human’s eclipse, a heavy levitation in the contradictory space between the inescapability of its having been and the impossibility of its will-be. Pessimism’s song of futility is a sensible way of loving fate, with a minimum of eros, by means of a kind of matrimonial love of the fatal. As music, pessimism stays open to the irreparable and the inexorable without the binding of affirmation, in the apparent absence of the radical, infinitely surplus will that absolute amor fati seems to require. Crying, laughing, sleeping—what other responses are adequate to a life that is so indifferent? “Unless a man aspires to the impossible, the possible that he achieves will scarcely be worth the trouble of his achieving it. We should aspire to the impossible, to absolute and infinite perfection [….] The apocatastasis is more than a mystical dream: it is a norm of action, it is a beacon for high deeds [….] For true charity is a species of invasion [….] It is not charity to rock and lull our fellow men to sleep in the inertia and heaviness of matter, but rather to arouse them to anguish and torment of spirit.” 3 … the impossibility of ever adequately accounting for one’s relationship to thought. “The paroxysm of interior experience leads you to regions where danger is absolute, because life which self-consciously actualizes its roots in experience can only negate itself [….] There are no arguments [….] On the heights of despair, the passion for the absurd is the only thing that can still throw a demonic light on chaos [….] I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing .” 4 It took three attempts before she was fully decapitated, all the while she continued, perhaps miraculously, to sing. According to the earliest account of Cecilia’s martyrdom, the beheading turns out worse. After not severing her head in three strokes, “the cruel executioner left her half dead” (seminecem eam cruentus carnifex dereliquit). 5 Cecilia’s effortlessly powerful endurance of the three strokes—a fitting icon for pessimism as an art of dereliction—demonstrates the “passivity and absence of effort [….] in which divine transcendence is dissolved.” 6 There’s a ghost that grows inside of me, damaged in the making, and there’s a hunt sprung from necessity, elliptical and drowned. Where the moving quiet of our insomnia offers up each thought, there’s a luminous field of grey inertia, and obsidian dreams burnt all the way down. Like words from a pre-waking dream. There is no reason to think that they are not. NOTES 1. Dante Alighieri. Vita Nuova . ed. and trans. Dino S. Cervigni and Edward Vasta. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. 1995. 41:10. 2. Hafiz of Shiraz. The Divan . trans. H. Wilberforce Clarke. London: Octagon Press. 1974. 10.9. 3. Miguel de Unamuno. The Tragic Sense of Life in Men and Nations . trans. Anthony Kerrigan. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1972. 305-6. 4. E.M. Cioran. On the Heights of Despair . trans. Ilinca Zarifopol-Johnston. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1992. 9-10. 5. Giacomo Laderchi. S. Caeciliae Virg[inis] et Mart[yris] Acta. . . Rome. 1723. 38. 6. Georges Bataille. On Nietzsche . trans. Bruce Boone. London: Continuum. 2004. 135. See Nicola Masciandaro. “ Half Dead: Parsing Cecilia .” A Commentary on Eugene Thacker’s "Cosmic Pessimism" Gary J. Shipley Pessimism is the refusal to seek distraction, the refusal to remodel failure into a platform for further (doomed) possibilities, the refusal of comfort, the acceptance of the sickness of healthy bodies, the cup of life overflowing with cold vomit. If, as Ligotti suggests when discussing Invasion of the Body Snatchers , 1 humans prefer the anxieties of their familiar human lives to the contentment of an alien one, then the pessimist, we could argue, represents some perverted combination of the two, preferring (presuming he has a choice) the defamiliarization of human life to the contentment of its unquestioned mundanity. The quasi-religious state of mind that Wittgenstein would mention on occasion, that of “feeling absolutely safe,” 2 is a state the pessimist could only imagine being approximated by death, or perhaps some annihilative opiate-induced stupor. This Wittgensteinian commingling of certainty and faith looks every bit the futile gesture, a mere rephrasing of collapse or partial collapse. The only certainty open to the pessimist is that of the toxic formula of life itself—a formula known and lacuna-free. Certainty, far from being the gateway to deliverance, becomes the definitive impediment; and the possibility of salvation, as long as it remains, becomes crucially reliant on postulations of ignorance, epistemic gaps, a perennial incompleteness: “the perfect safety of wooed death […] the warm bath of physical dissolution, the universal unknown engulfing the miniscule unknown.” 3 The height of Leibniz’s Panglossian insanity nurtured the idea that our knowing everything—via the universal calculus—could be accurately described a triumph, as opposed to a nightmare in which our every futility is laid bare. Stagnancy and boredom are perhaps two of the greatest ills of Western civilisation, and the most potent pessimism tells you that you’re stuck with both. The most we can hope for, by way of salvation, is to throw open our despair to the unknown. The fact that Schopenhauer’s pessimism stopped short of morality and allowed him to play the flute, as Nietzsche complained, highlights the predicament of a man who despite having adorned nothingness with a smiling face still found himself alive. The demand here is that it be felt: a cross-contamination of intellect and emotion. The safety net of numerous parentheses makes for a failed philosophy, rather than a philosophy of failure. Depressives make bad pessimists, because, unless they choose to die, living will always infect them with necessities of hope, forcing them to find something, anything (all the various “as ifs”) to make existence tolerable. For as Cioran observed, while “[d]epressions pay attention to life, they are the eyes of the devil, poisoned arrows which wound mortally any zest and love of life. Without them we know little, but with them, we cannot live.” 4 And even when cured of our depressions we’ll find ourselves consumed, eaten alive by the hyper-clinical (borderline autistic) mania that replaces them: a predicament captured all too clearly in the microscriptual fictions of Robert Walser, where spectral men and women stifle their depressive madness with protective comas of detail, their failed assimilations buried beneath thick crusts of remote data. Like Beckett’s Malone their stories may have ended, but cruelly their lives have not. Pessimism is an extraneous burden (a purposeless weight) that makes everything else harder to carry, while at the same time scooping it out and making it lighter. If pessimism had a sound it would be the harsh non-noise of tinnitus—the way that every person would hear themselves if they refused their distractions long enough to listen: a lungless scream from the extrasolar nothing of the self. The music of pessimism—if indeed we can imagine such a thing—is the reverberating echo of the world’s last sound, conjectured but never heard, audible only in its being listened for. The one consolation of this hollow paradox of audibility being, that “he will be least afraid of becoming nothing in death who has recognized that he is already nothing now.” 5 The pessimist suffers a derangement of the real, a labyrinthitis at the nucleus of his being: he’s the stumbling ghost relentlessly surprised that others can see him. If Cioran’s refusal is manifested in sleep (when even saying ‘no’ is too much of a commitment), then Pessoa’s resides in the dreams inside that sleep. Pessoa chooses to exploit the fact that he’s being “lived by some murmuring non-entity both shadowy and muddied” 6 by growing more voids to live him. His is a Gnostic breed of sleep, “sleeping as if the universe were a mistake,” 7 a sleep that dreams through Thacker’s cosmic pessimism (“a pessimism of the world-without-us.”, “the unhuman orientation of deep space and deep time” 8 ), through the critical error of there being anything at all when there could be nothing. The metaphysical pessimist is someone who, however well life treats them, still desires to wake from it, as from the poisonous air of a bad dream. Pessimism is a paradox of age, being simultaneously young and old; its youth residing in a refusal to accept the authority of existence (its rich history, its inherent beneficence), a refusal to “get over” the horror of what it sees with its perpetually fresh eyes, and its maturity in the unceremonious disposal of the philosophical playthings (those futile architectures) of adolescence. As Thacker remarks: “Pessimism abjures all pretenses towards system—towards the purity of analysis and the dignity of critique.” 9 A sentiment shared with Pessoa, who duly categorizes those that choose to enact this futile struggle: “The creators of metaphysical systems and of psychological explanations are still in the primary stage of suffering.” 10 If the pessimist has shared a womb with anyone, it’s with the mystic and not the philosopher. As Schopenhauer tells us: “The mystic is opposed to the philosopher by the fact that he begins from within, whereas the philosopher begins from without. […] But nothing of this is communicable except the assertions that we have to accept on his word; consequently he is unable to convince.” 11 The crucial difference between the mystic and the pessimist is not the latter’s impassivity and defeatism, but his unwillingness/inability to contain in any way the spread of his voracious analyticity, his denial of incompleteness, his exhaustive devotion to failure. The truth of our predicament, though heard, is destined to remain unprocessed. Like the revelations of B.S. Johnson’s Haakon (“We rot and there’s nothing that can stop it / Can’t you feel the shaking horror of that?” 12 ) the pessimist’s truths are somehow too obvious to listen to, as if something inside us were saying, “Of course, but haven’t we gotten over that?” Pessimism is simple and ugly, and has no desire to make itself more complex or more attractive. The true moral pessimist knows that the Utilitarian’s accounts will always be in the red. He can see that for all his computational containments, his only honest path is a negative one, and that such a path has but one logical destination: that of wholesale human oblivion. Thacker notes how at the core of pessimism lies the notion of “the worst,” through which death is demoted by the all-pervasive suffering of a life that easily eclipses its threat. And so with doom made preferable to gloom, death begins to glint with promise, “like beauty passing through a nightmare.” 13 But even among pessimists suicide is, for the most part, thought to be an error. Schopenhauer, for instance, regarded suicide a mistake grounded in some fundamentally naïve disappointment or other. Pessoa too thought suicide an onerous escape tactic: “To die is to become completely other. That’s why suicide is a cowardice: it’s to surrender ourselves completely to life.” 14 There is a call here to be accepting of and creative with the puppetry of your being, an insistence that it’s somehow a blunder to attempt to hide in death from the horrors you find inlife. 15 Tied up with this perseverance is the slippery notion of the good death, for maybe, as Blanchot warns, suicide is rarely something we can hope to get right, for the simple reason that “you cannot make of death an object of the will.” 16 “Even in cases where the entire corpus of an author is pessimistic, the project always seems incomplete,” 17 and this is not simply because the project itself belies something yet to be disclosed, but because the project itself is a thing waiting. It waits on a cure it knows will not come, but for which it cannot do anything (as long as it continues to do anything) but wait. NOTES 1. See Thomas Ligotti. The Conspiracy Against the Human Race . New York: Hippocampus Press. 2010. 91. 2. Ludwig Wittgenstein. “A Lecture on Ethics.” Philosophical Review . (74) 1. 1965. 8. 3. Vladimir Nabokov. Pale Fire . New York: Vintage. 1989. 221. 4. E. M. Cioran. The Book of Delusions . trans. Camelia Elias. Hyperion. 5.1. (2010): 75. 5. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation. vol. 2 . trans. E .F J. Payne. New York: Dover. 1966. 609. 6. Eugene Thacker. “Cosmic Pessimism.” continent. . 2.2 (2012): 67. 7. Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet . trans. Richard Zenith. London: Penguin. 2002. 35. 8. Eugene Thacker. “Cosmic Pessimism.” continent. . 2.2 (2012): 68. 9. Ibid. 73. 10. Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet . trans. Richard Zenith. London: Penguin. 2002. 341. 11. Arthur Schopenhauer. The World as Will and Representation. vol. 2 . trans. E .F J. Payne. New York: Dover. 1966. 610-11. 12. B.S Johnson. “You’re Human Like the Rest of Them.” in Jonathan Coe. Like a Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson . London: Picador. 2004. 177. 13. Fernando Pessoa. The Book of Disquiet . trans. Richard Zenith. London: Penguin. 2002. 415. 14. Ibid. 199. 15. “Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.” Anne Sexton. No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews and Prose . ed. Steven Gould Axelrod. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1985. 92. 16. Maurice Blanchot. The Space of Literature . trans. Ann Smock. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 1989. 105. 17. Eugene Thacker. “Cosmic Pessimism.” continent. . 2.2 (2012): 75. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 12.2 (2007) 124-125MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]A Few Thoughts on the Future of Environmental PhilosophyLori GruenThe potential of Environmental Philosophy to serve as an interdisciplinary bridge seems to be as strong as ever, and focusing on ways to enhance and expand philosophical engagement in multi/inter-disciplinary environmental projects is important. Continuing to develop work on environmental justice and eco-justice both theoretically and practically is one rich (...) way to promote interdisciplinary engagement and expand the possibilities for environmental thinking more broadly. For example, environmental justice inquiry often attracts students to environmental philosophy and environmental science who would not ordinarily be interested in philosophy or science. Environmental justice issues also provide significant service-learning opportunities that can encourage students and faculty to develop more sophisticated ways of integrating theory and practice while working with local communities. Integrating service-learning projects into environmental philosophy/studies classrooms inevitably encourages the development of interdisciplinary skills that will serve faculty and students and allows for greater discussions of local environmental problems to be addressed both inside and outside the classroom.As discussions of global justice, human rights, transnational feminism, and egalitarianism continue to gain prominence in philosophy, political science, feminist studies, and law, it is important that environmental philosophers continue developing ways to contribute to the dialogue. Environmental philosophers can certainly help enliven and deepen the practical as well as theoretical significance of these discussions. The new area of "cultural environmental studies" is one place this might happen, but it is certainly possible for environmental philosophers to engage in these analyses in other contexts.Environmental philosophers have a tendency to look at large systemic issues, and as climate change becomes increasing pressing it is important not to ignore the particularity of risks and potential harms for different human communities as well as non-human animals who may be disproportionately impacted. Non-human animals are facing alarming dangers from anthropogenic environmental destruction. At the end of [End Page 124] 2006, the baiji, or Chinese river dolphin, went extinct in the polluted Yangtze River; early in 2007, the UN reported an "emergency situation for the orangutan" in Borneo and Sumatra and experts predict their extinction within the next 20 years; dramatic climate events have had increasingly worrying impacts on isolated populations, from the whooping crane to the Asian elephant; unsustainable logging continues to threaten great apes and other species in Africa as more areas are opened for the trade in bushmeat; global warming is threatening the polar bear with extinction; recreational boating is decimating the manatees; and we can expect the losses to mount. Attending to the biodiversity loss as well as animal suffering must be a priority.Lori Gruen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University where she also chairs the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program and directs the Ethics in Society Project. She has published extensively on topics in ecofeminist ethics and epistemology, environmental justice, and feminist analyses of human relations to non-human animals. She is currently writing a book exploring the complex philosophical issues raised by our relations to captive chimpanzees. E-mail: lgruen@wesleyan.eduMuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContentsTop... (shrink)

Can evolutionary models explain food sharing in traditional human societies? Gurven's analysis cannot rule out any of the models (kin selection, reciprocal altruism, tolerated scrounging, costly signaling, or by-product mutualism), and quantitative partitioning of relative importance is not feasible. For now, the hypotheses seem like the proverbial blind men examining the elephant: each was partly in the right, and all were in the wrong!

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Whoa! JOHN SHOPTAW ONE A young man with gold hair in a coal-black robe and slippers was off to confront the Sun. But as he paced the hotel corridors, Ray could feel his step losing its jaunt. At this rate, he’d make it to nowhere in nothing flat. Just then, he noticed his old wall map thumbtacked over some double doors. How’d his Boys’ Life get out here? He (...) looked it over, the big fat world, cut open and stretched flat, like an elephant hide. The properties were green, purple and red, and the waters whitish blue. The Mercator-projected bottom was jagged with ice. The whole place was crawling with letters, like ants on a cake. The best part was the creatures: a long-armed squid suctioning a whale, sea lions sunning themselves. No. Seals. He bunched his brows. No. Hills. And game big as states, as nations: hippos in Africa’s watering holes, a beauty of a cheetah, its sights trained. Untacking and folding the map, Ray tucked it into his pocket and slid open the doors. He found himself in a dim cavern facing a motionless escalator. Its stairs were gold-plated, its balustrades brushed aluminum and its handrails hand-rubbed ostrich skin. He could see no end of stairs. It must be arion 27.1 spring/summer 2019 one unbroken flight to the Sun’s penthouse. But where was the down escalator? Beats him. He planted his slippers and clasped the rails. With a little lurch the escalator began its quickening glide. Now this was first-class. No huffing required. Simply the assumption of an attitude. Up ahead, the horizon gleamed ivory. 2 whoa! TWO The stairway teeth clamped shut and Ray was thrown into a hard glare. Sunblock and goggles— they’ll let you look into things—on your right, came a voice positively sunny. Ray slathered and goggled himself, and beheld by a high stone robed in emerald moss a trim figure in a sea-snail-purple sweatsuit and a broad-brimmed straw hat puttering about a humid sundial of wide-waking annuals and perennials— snowdrops, crocuses, daisies and daylilies, rice in flower and maize in silk, woozy jasmine and heady grapevines, a temperamental winter daphne, and tall in the motley midst the polar gnomon, an Indian turnsole or heliotrope, sweeping its shaft of shadow from one to the next minute marigold dot as the ambling photosynthesizer passed the fragrant hours of the zodiac. Batting away hummingbirds and honeybees, Ray waded through the flower bed toward Sol. Am I your heir? Can I have what I want? Sure, kid, name it. Ray glanced toward the honey-scented manure. A joyride? Sol sighed. It’s your funeral. Taking his time, he led Ray out to the dayport. What a letdown! Ray’d expected a futuristic heliumpowered sports coupe, or at least a souped-up solar Mustang. Not this gold-rimmed, pyrite-axled backward half-bucket with footpads! John Shoptaw 3 Dawn, meanwhile, with her practiced blush arched her horizon, and her pomegranate interiors yawned wide. The stars dispersed. Venus, her shell-blue and egg-white gauzes aswirl, gave Dawn a last long look above her handmirror’s crescent rim. Sol was watching moonshine evanesce from his glowing barndoors, which cracked in a spewing welding arc and then opened wide to reveal a dozen prompt and close-cropped Hours, coaxing a team of four mammoth pegasi yoked neck and neck and neck and neck, stoked with thick ambrosial plasma and snorting flame. As the nymphs hitched the tack to the chariot pole, the Sun, shaking his head, untied his flaring sunhat and knotted it under Ray’s chin. Lay off the whip and draw rein with a firm hand. They’ll fly by themselves with no help from you. But they’ll answer to Clover, Crocus, Peony, Sage. Steer clear of the straightaway. Bank the rig into a circumbendibus. But don’t, whatever you do... But Ray’s attention had drifted. The rampant quadrupeds hooved trails of sparks down the dayport door, their heavy fog blankets slid off, and they shook out their shoulder-wings. A pliant breeze sprang up from the East... (shrink)

When he died in 2004, Jacques Derrida left behind a vast legacy of unpublished material, much of it in the form of written lectures. With The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1, the University of Chicago Press inaugurates an ambitious series, edited by Geoffrey Bennington and Peggy Kamuf, translating these important works into English. The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1 launches the series with Derrida’s exploration of the persistent association of bestiality or animality with sovereignty. In this seminar from (...) 2001–2002, Derrida continues his deconstruction of the traditional determinations of the human. The beast and the sovereign are connected, he contends, because neither animals nor kings are subject to the law—the sovereign stands above it, while the beast falls outside the law from below. He then traces this association through an astonishing array of texts, including La Fontaine’s fable “The Wolf and the Lamb,” Hobbes’s biblical sea monster in Leviathan, D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Snake,” Machiavelli’s Prince with its elaborate comparison of princes and foxes, a historical account of Louis XIV attending an elephant autopsy, and Rousseau’s evocation of werewolves in The Social Contract. Deleuze, Lacan, and Agamben also come into critical play as Derrida focuses in on questions of force, right, justice, and philosophical interpretations of the limits between man and animal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Life in LimboM. ChiuWhen my son was 7 years old, he began complaining of headaches. They were frequent, but never seemed severe. “I have a headache!” was always followed by “Can I watch TV?” I didn’t believe the pain was real until it woke him up in the middle of the night. I knew then that something must be wrong. I approached our pediatrician, who said it sounded like (...) migraines, but we should order an MRI to rule anything out. The appointment was scheduled several months in advance, and I always had the urge to cancel it. I was pretty sure my son just wanted to watch TV. The pediatrician told me I might as well do the MRI. He told me that if we skipped it and something was wrong, I would never be able to live with the regret. We kept the Monday morning appointment, and went to the MRI expecting reassurance that nothing was wrong. Instead, we got a phone call later that day. They needed to see us on immediately, but wouldn’t tell me why. Of course, I knew something was wrong. “Is it a tumor?” I asked. “This isn’t something we can discuss on the phone” was the answer I got. An appointment was scheduled for Wednesday. Two days might be “immediately” to medical professionals, but to a parent who just heard that her child had an abnormal MRI, it was an eternity. I planned my son’s funeral in those two days.Our meeting with the Neurologist began with reviewing the MRI. “See this spot here? It shouldn’t be there”. A tumor. 1 ½ × 1 ½ × 2 ½ cm tumor, in the right thalamus. Small, they said. Looks like a Low Grade Glioma they said. The kind of tumor you want to have, if you have to have a brain tumor. A biopsy was scheduled for two weeks later. The [End Page E2] biopsy confirmed it was a Juvenile Pilocytic Astrocytoma (JPA). The neurosurgeon was confident she could remove all of the tumor. We were at one of the best Children’s Hospitals in the world. We were in good hands.A few days before the surgery, a friend who is a medical doctor suggested we get a second opinion. “It couldn’t hurt, it could help”, my husband said. Fortunately, he just sold a start–up company, and was planning to take a few months off from work before starting his next venture. He had time to research, talk to friends in the medical field and make phone calls.Our second opinion from another leading hospital reviewed the MRI’s with us. The neurosurgeon asked, “Did they say tumor? One?” Yes, they did. “See this here?” he said, pointing to a second spot on the MRI. He said it was possibly a second tumor, or more likely, an extension of the first. It was in inoperable location. Surgery wasn’t an option. Chemo would be our best choice. Why would we cut into our son’s brain to remove part of the tumor when he would need to do chemo anyway? Why not try chemo first?I would like to say that we do not fault our original neuro–oncology team for missing this second abnormality. It is hard to notice an ant in the room when there is an elephant staring at you. People make mistakes, and tumors don’t always look the same. That’s what second opinions are for. That is why doctors should encourage patients to get second opinions.We scheduled the surgery for port implantation, and got busy educating ourselves about chemo regimes. It was going to be a long journey. 18 months of transfusions with a pretty low success rate and a high rate of secondary complications. Unsure if we were doing the right thing, we got a third opinion. I am so grateful that my husband was between jobs and had time to devote to finding the best possible treatment for our son. We were financially stable and had great insurance. What do people do when they don’t have this luxury?By now, several months had passed since our first MRI. Our... (shrink)

Wallace, Max Eorge Lakoff is a professor of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California. In his best-seller, Don't Think Of An Elephant! he demonstrates how the art of 'framing' - posing an argument in seemingly impartial terms, such as 'tax relief' - is often a method for advancing a political cause by stealth. The cause can be for the left or the right.

This paper will ask whether the legal status presently afforded to nonhuman animals ought to influence regulatory debates concerning human cerebral organoids. The New York Courts recently refused to grant a writ of habeas corpus to Happy the Elephant as she was property rather than a legal person while at the same time accepting that she is a moral patient deserving of rights protection. An undesirable situation has therefore arisen in which the law holds a being with moral (...) status to be incapable of benefitting from legal redress due to their legal status as property.The author argues that this is something that we ought to avoid when designing the regulatory framework which will govern the use of human cerebral organoids. Yet, a difference exists in that, whereas the judges already accept Happy is a moral patient, there is presently no consensus around the moral status of organoids. This paper will consider whether human cerebral organoids have passed the moral threshold of sentience. If they have, or are close to doing so, regulators ought to consider their legal status in advance so as to ensure that adequate limitations are placed on this usage so as to avoid unethical practices. (shrink)

"When he died in 2004, Jacques Derrida left behind a vast legacy of unpublished material, much of it in the form of written lectures. With The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I, the University of Chicago Press launches an ambitious series of English translations of these important works based upon the meticulously established original French editions." "In this seminar from 2001 and 2002, Derrida explores the persistent association of bestiality or animality with sovereignty and continues his deconstruction of the traditional (...) determinations of the human. The beast and the sovereign are connected, he contends, because neither animals nor kings are subject to the law - the sovereign stands above it, while the beast falls outside the law from below. He then traces this association through an astonishing array of texts, including La Fontaine's fable "The Wolf and the Lamb," Hobbes's biblical sea monster in Leviathan, D. H. Lawrence's poem "Snake," Machiavelli's Prince with its elaborate comparison of princes and foxes, a historical account of Louis XIV attending an elephant autopsy, and Rousseau's evocation of werewolves in The Social Contract." "Deleuze, Lacan, and Agamben also come into critical play as Derrida focuses in on questions of force, right, justice, and philosophical interpretations of the limits between man and animal." --Book Jacket. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Ennius and the Architecture of the Annales by Jackie Elliott, and: The Annals of Quintus Ennius and the Italic Tradition by Jay Fisher, and: Shaggy Crowns: Ennius’ Annales and Virgil’s Aeneid by Nora GoldschmidtThomas BiggsJackie Elliott. Ennius and the Architecture of the Annales. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. xiv + 590. Hardcover, $110.00.Jay Fisher. The Annals of Quintus Ennius and the Italic Tradition. Baltimore: Johns (...) Hopkins University Press, 2014. x + 206. Hardcover, $69.95.Nora Goldschmidt. Shaggy Crowns: Ennius’ Annales and Virgil’s Aeneid. Oxford Classical Monographs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. x + 258. Hardcover, $125.00.According to Aulus Gellius, Ennius claimed to have three hearts, each representing a part of his hybrid cultural identity (Gel. 17.71.1: Quintus Ennius tria corda habere sese dicebat, quod loqui Graece et Osce et Latine sciret). Matching his hearts in number, the three books under review delve into the various Greek, Italic, and Latin influences on Ennius’ eighteen-book Annales, exploring the epic’s literary heritage and reception. One might rightly claim that in the wake of these important contributions (1088 pages for 623 fragments), we have firmly entered an aetas Enniana. The elephant in the room for all those interested in the poem is, of course, its highly fragmentary state of preservation. Instead of serving as an insurmountable obstacle, the scholarly process of interpreting fragmentary texts actually emerges as a shared feature of the methodologies on display in these otherwise quite different works. While Fisher and Goldschmidt push the limits of what an incomplete epic can communicate, Elliott more skeptically tackles the nature of transmission and its impact on our knowledge of the text.Ennius’ Oscan heart, representing his Italic heritage, takes center stage in Fisher’s study. Many readers will find most original and striking his arguments for the epic resonance and formulaic quality of “traditional” Latin phrases and their links with languages such as Umbrian and Oscan. Fisher relies throughout on the meaningful co-occurrence of communicative words, “traditional collocation” (3), and the use of language from various “traditional” cultural fields such as ritual, prayer, kinship, and the military (he adopts Lowell Edmunds’ concept of “system reference,” 5). According to Fisher, Ennius’ use of these culturally marked forms of language, shaped during the period of the central Italian koine\ (seventh to fourth centuries b.c.e.), allows his epic to include and enact an elevated tone appropriate to the inherited demands of his genre. While Ennius’ revolutionary turn to the hexameter may initially suggest a decision to abandon all that is old (or perhaps old-fashioned) about “native” literary culture, the pervasive presence of the Italic militates against severing Ennius from the lifeblood pumped through his Oscan heart. In fact, the dialogue between “foreign and familiar” aspects of culture is key to Fisher’s demonstration of how the Italic past emerges as a ghostly mediator and occasional replacement of superficially Greek and Homeric elements (10, 56, 85).With a presumed audience of Latinists, it is somewhat surprising that the introduction, “Ennius and the Italic Tradition,” devotes little time to outlining his rather unique methodology. But Fisher prefers to show rather than tell. On page 5 he jumps right into an analysis of Skutsch Ann. 232 (non semper vostra [End Page 713] evortit nunc Iuppiter hac stat), the language and context of Jupiter Stator in Cicero Cat. 1, and the Oscan Jupiter Versor: he convincingly connects Oscan Iovi Versori with Ennius’ evortit... Iuppiter (8). While the particulars of the argument take a winding course through various temples and texts, it is the act itself of probing seemingly commonplace language to reveal linguistic and cultural significance that highlights the best of what Fisher has to offer.Chapter 2, “The Annals and the Greek Tradition,” traces the Italic features of the epic through what one might call cross-lingual window-allusion. For example, Ann. 1 (Musae quae pedibus magnum pulsatis Olympum) contains a well-known substitution of the Greek Musae for his predecessors’ Camenae, but Fisher draws our attention to the “native Latin tradition” of the Salian priests’ tripudium behind pedibus... pulsatis: “if the collocation pedem pulsare is a traditional expression for... (shrink)

Only in the last twenty-five years have scholars begun to appreciate Samuel Pufendorf’s importance for the history of ethics. The signal element of Pufendorf’s ethics for recent commentators is his idea that morality arises when God imposes his superior will on a world that can contain no moral value of or on its own. But how, exactly, is “imposition” accomplished? According to Pufendorf, human beings do not simply defer to God in the way elephant seals do to a dominant (...) male. Rather, imposition is realized through recognition of God’s authority to direct and hold us answerable. This brings a whole battery of concepts into play—recognition, accountability, imputation, and authority—along with the capacities to operate with them in practical thought. What is brilliantly original in Pufendorf is his appreciation of these conceptual connections and his awareness of their implications for moral psychology. Authority is a kind of “moral power,” as Pufendorf calls it, which agents can exercise only within a social, moral space that is constituted by their respective obligations to and rights against one another, and whose exercise directly affects those rights and obligations. Only “sociable” beings with the capacity for mutual recognition are thus capable of moral obligation. Recent commentary has generally missed these important aspects and so, in my view, what is most fascinating and original in Pufendorf’s thought. Pufendorf was far from the first thinker to hold some version of a divine command theory of morality. But he may have been the first to attempt to work out what such a view must look like if it is to take seriously the conceptual links between authority, recognition, and accountability, as well as the psychology necessary for these to be realized in the moral life. In the end, however, this introduces an instability into Pufendorf.s view. I argue that whereas Pufendorf seeks to derive human moral powers, equal dignity, and sociability from God’s superior moral power, the very idea of moral powers, including God’s, seems already to presuppose a more basic moral power or dignity that is shared by any being who is capable of sociable relations. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:After the Future. The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian CultureDmitry KhaninAfter the Future. The Paradoxes of Postmodernism and Contemporary Russian Culture, by Mikhail Epstein; translated with an introduction by Anessa Miller-Pogacar; xvi & 394 pp. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995, $55.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.Mikhail Epstein, a renowned Soviet critic—his books in Russian include Paradoxes of the New (1988) and Faith and Image: The Religious Subconscious in (...) [End Page 508] Twentieth Century Russian Culture (1994)—emigrated to the U.S. in 1988. After the Future is the first collection of his major essays (written from 1986 to 1991) in English translation. It begins with the article “New Currents in Russian Poetry: Conceptualism, Metarealism, and Presentism,” which first introduced to the Soviet reader a group of postmodernist poets, just coming out (with the advent of glasnost) from the literary underground. Other articles (“Avant-Garde Art and Religion,” “After the Future: On the New Consciousness in Literature”), though first published in Russian literary journals, were shipped to Russia from “the other shore” (to use Alexander Herzen’s description of emigre writers’ whereabouts vis-à-vis their homeland). The latest studies (“Relativistic Patterns in Totalitarian Thinking: The Linguistic Games of Soviet Ideology,” “The Origins and Meaning of Russian Postmodernism”) were not only sent from the other shore but apparently produced for the other shore. Instead of analyzing the recent Russian literary crop and emerging aesthetic sensibilities, Epstein focuses on Russian historic experience in its entirety, which he somewhat didactically clarifies for the foreign reader.Despite its shifting perspectives, After the Future features a distinctive approach toward Russian postmodernism, its bona fide subject matter. Following Jean Baudrillard, Epstein defines postmodernism as simulation (“the production of reality as a series of plausible copies”) that engenders some new hyperreality and in so doing supplants “reality itself, which then becomes irrecoverable” (p. 189). The originality of Epstein’s position lies, however, in his claim that Russia as a historic and cultural entity is a postmodernist phenomenon in its own right that simulates and masterminds reality. Epstein’s claim that postmodernism is ingrained in Russian tradition is pitted specifically against those who doubt that Russia is ready to enjoy its own postmodernist bash since (contrary to the West) it never went through prior modernist phases. To prove that Russia foreshadowed postmodernism, Epstein draws on a number of historic illustrations. He cites the forceful adoption of Christianity under Prince Vladimir in 988, Peter the Great’s building of Petersburg in the “Finnish swamp” and Prince Potemkin’s infamous make-up villages as examples of the Russian tendency to forfeit the status quo for the sake of trumped-up, ersatz realities.However, Epstein’s arguments to the effect that Russia, and not the West, is the birthplace of postmodernism are not very convincing since (in accordance with his own premise) other countries can claim such a dubious distinction as well. (“Russia is the motherland of elephants”—the Russians joke about claims by zealous patriots that all great discoveries were known in their country before they appeared elsewhere.) Elsewhere, the building of the Chinese wall and the ensuing Chinese policies of isolationism, draconian enclosures of peasant land in England that led to a speedy transition to capitalism, drastic economic and social reforms after the French Revolution, and the racist policies of the Third Reich were just as arbitrary, and yet transformative of prior realities, as any of [End Page 509] Russia’s most foolhardy experiments. Ironically, Epstein’s claim that Russia is the motherland of postmodernism harks back to the turn-of-the-century controversy as to whether it is pertinent to apply Marxist theory to rustic Russia. Lenin argued that Russia can claim Marxism as its own because all of its long-suffering history was an anticipation of Marxism and leading toward it. Epstein analogously contends that there is a special, indigenous Russian route to postmodernism, a statement that evokes similar pronouncements ingrained in Russian philosophical tradition: Epstein’s thesis that Russia is “irreal” reminds one of Peter Chaadaev’s contention that Russia does not have a history; his idea that Russia is on the threshold of a cultural synthesis with the... (shrink)

With science now recognizing animal consciousness, intelligence, emotion and even morality, there must come an awareness of our own moral responsibilites towards other beings. But there's another reason to consider animals' well-being--because it is intertwined with our own. In Survival at Stake, leading animal rights activist Poorva Joshipura argues passionately that, evolutionarily, humans are far more like other animals than we care to believe. She examines how hunting wildlife leads to pandemics and epidemics, which, in turn, harm us; how (...) the production of meat destroys forests and causes climate change, which, in turn, destoys us; how blood sports hurt both humans and animals; how leather production damages the environment and human health; how animal experimentation is often a threat to public health; how cruelty to animals leads to violent crimes; and so on. It is Joshipura's view that if we reject speciesism--the belief in human superiority--and accept that we are animals too, irrevocably interconnected to other species, from the largest elephant to the smallest bee, and a part of, rather than holding dominance over, nature, we can take the necessary steps towards the betterment of all the planet's inhabitants." From back cover. (shrink)

La plupart des romans et des nouvelles de Murakami traitent du rapport à l’existence et de la construction de l’individu. Le corps, en conséquence, est alors mis en question, en tant que moyen d’accès au monde et comme manifestions de l’individu. Ceci entre particulièrement en résonance avec la culture japonaise en raison de sa propension à considérer l’individu comme particule du groupe. Par ailleurs, une question en particulier est suggérée par Murakami : le lien entre corps et esprit. La corporéité (...) défend alors son existence propre, sans contredire la volonté, mais pour parvenir à communiquer avec autrui et pour accéder à une forme d’universel. Dislocation entre imaginaire et réalité, conflits intimes tout autant que d’inspiration mythologique, sont les nœuds des romans étudiés : Kafka sur le rivage, La Fin des temps, L’Éléphant s’évapore. Les romans de Murakami imposent aux lecteurs d’envisager la corporéité comme un carrefour entre croyances mystique, désir et mémoire. (shrink)

Summery The 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia was another demonstration in how sports and politics mix. In protest of Russian politics, few leaders from Western countries attended. For this World Cup, public resources were misused in that half of the stadiums built in Russia were left as “white elephants” with no longterm use. The tournament in Russia marked a shift from the West to the East with sponsors from authoritarian countries having saved the business model of FIFA. The policy (...) of fining misconduct during the World Cup showed FIFA’s commitment to protect its remaining sponsors while proclaimed values, such as fighting racism, were of minor importance. The case of Iranian women using the opportunity not only to attend their national team’s games in Russia but also to advocate for the right of women to enter stadiums in Iran showed that football can also be an agent for social change. In two countries, World Cup matches hosted female commentators on television for the first time. In Belgium, players operated largely above the Flemish-Walloon divide. The article concludes by comparing the last World Cup in Russia with the next one in Qatar and identifying topics for future research. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Indian Philosophy: A Very Short IntroductionHeeraman TiwariIndian Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction. By Sue Hamilton. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. Pp. 168.In recent years there has been a renewed interest in classical Indian philosophy; it cannot be a coincidence that at least three short books on the subject were written for the lay reader between the year 2000 and 2002, and all published by Oxford University Press: one (...) by the famous Indian philosopher J. N. Mohanty, Classical Indian Philosophy, and another by a bright, young Indian philosopher Jonardon Ganeri, Philosophy in Classical India: The Proper Work of Reason. The third volume on the topic is the book under review, Sue Hamilton's Indian Philosophy, in Oxford University Press' "Very Short Introductions" series. While Mohanty and Ganeri are formidable Indian philosophers, Hamilton was originally trained as a scholar of Buddhist religion and developed an interest in the philosophical side of India much later in her career, when she began to give courses on Indian philosophy at Kings College, London.Hamilton opens her book by invoking India's past, which contains "a long, rich, and diverse tradition of philosophical thought," but hastens to remind us that the "role of philosophizing" in India is quite different from that of the West: India's is a philosophy of "personal destiny," "spiritual quest," and not a "professional intellectual pursuit." Hamilton echoes the Orientalists of the early twentieth century when she says that "what Westerners call religion and philosophy are combined in India": in other words, philosophy in India falls short of qualifying as an "academic discipline" (p. 1). Hamilton is probably right in pressing home the popular Western misconception [End Page 482] about Indian philosophy that it is nothing but a "mystical," "magical" tradition of the East, where some "poor" Indians masqueraded as philosophers by elucidating their theory of the universe in "stories about an elephant supporting the earth and a tortoise supporting the elephant."1 Although the renowned modern Indian philosopher B. K. Matilal has tried to remove such misconceptions in one of his pioneering works, the tradition still remains.2 Matilal was not only responding to the seventeenth-century philosopher John Locke (who, incidentally, had not read any text on Indian philosophy but had only heard of the philosophy of ancient India) but was also commenting on the prejudices of some twentieth-century Western philosophers, in particular one sweeping generalization about "philosophy" by Anthony Flew.3Much water has flowed under the bridge since the time when such prejudices were warmly entertained, but the reluctance to pay due attention to rationality in Indian philosophy has not fully waned. It is a tribute to Indian philosophers like J. N. Mohanty and B. K. Matilal that Western philosophers have now begun to look at Indian philosophy beyond its "mystic" and "magical" charm.4 In her postscript (p. 139), Hamilton applauds those modern Indian scholars (read: Mohanty, Matilal, and Ganeri) who, owing to "the influence of Western ways of doing things," have tried, with the help of the Naiyāyikas and the Buddhists, to overcome Western misconceptions—for example, that Indian thought is "anything but rational"—by "promoting Indian philosophy strictly in the sense of logical argument," and thus, only in the specific sense of logic and linguistic analysis, has it come to be recognized as an "academic discipline." One must applaud Hamilton, too, for her excellent effort in covering such a large number of topics in just thirty-five thousand words!The narrative of the book throughout suggests an attempt to contrast Indian philosophy with that of the West, and more often than not Western philosophy becomes a yardstick to evaluate "the role of philosophizing" in India in its "original" and "traditional" sense, that is, "religious" and "soteriological." Hamilton does acknowledge that, as in India so in the post-Greek West, too—at least until Immanuel Kant came on the scene—philosophers, namely Augustine, Aquinas, Descartes, and Hegel, mainly sought "to understand more about 'God's world'" (pp. 5-6). But the difference between the philosophy of the Christian West and that of India was that while the former tried to understand "God's world" through "rational means" the latter... (shrink)

Some philosophers think that a person can justifi ably believe that p is possible even though she has no theory according to which p is possible. They think, for example, that she can justifiably believe that there could be naturally purple elephants even though she lacks (inter alia) a theory about the factors germane to elephant pigmentation. There is a certain optimism about this view: it seems to assume that people are fairly good at ferreting out problems with proposed (...) modal claims; so, if a person doesn’t detect one, then she’s within her rights to assume that there is no problem to be found. I am suspicious of this optimism, but I do not have space to challenge it here. Instead, I want to outline the more pessimistic alternative. Suppose that a person is not justified in believing that p is possible unless she has a theory according to which p is possible. How might such an account be developed? My aim is to map out this neglected option. (shrink)

Should the law recognize an elephant’s right to be released from solitary confinement? The New York State Court of Appeals—the highest court in the State of New York—will consider this question on May 18. At issue is an Asian elephant named Happy. But happy she is not. Every human being has a right to bodily liberty because they have strong interests that this right protects. Since Happy has the same strong interests, the Court should recognize Happy’s right to (...) be freed from solitary confinement. (shrink)

When he died in 2004, Jacques Derrida left behind a vast legacy of unpublished material, much of it in the form of written lectures. With _The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1_, the University of Chicago Press inaugurates an ambitious series, edited by Geoffrey Bennington and Peggy Kamuf, translating these important works into English. _The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1_ launches the series with Derrida’s exploration of the persistent association of bestiality or animality with sovereignty. In this seminar from (...) 2001–2002, Derrida continues his deconstruction of the traditional determinations of the human. The beast and the sovereign are connected, he contends, because neither animals nor kings are subject to the law—the sovereign stands above it, while the beast falls outside the law from below. He then traces this association through an astonishing array of texts, including La Fontaine’s fable “The Wolf and the Lamb,” Hobbes’s biblical sea monster in _Leviathan_, D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Snake,” Machiavelli’s _Prince_ with its elaborate comparison of princes and foxes, a historical account of Louis XIV attending an elephant autopsy, and Rousseau’s evocation of werewolves in _The Social Contract_. Deleuze, Lacan, and Agamben also come into critical play as Derrida focuses in on questions of force, right, justice, and philosophical interpretations of the limits between man and animal. (shrink)

For much of Western history, we have been confident that human beings are persons but no other creatures have that status. These beliefs matter because personhood has often been deemed a necessary requirement for possessing moral value. Recently, an American legal activist group, the Nonhuman Rights Project, has challenged the assumption that only human beings are persons. Their approach is simple. They assume that humans possess particular features that make them persons, then ask whether there is evidence that any (...) nonhuman animals display these same qualities. The group has offered testimony from an array of experts to support the claim that chimpanzees, elephants, and dolphins do indeed possess them. They conclude that these animals should legally be considered persons. Although the Project makes claims about legal rights only, and their court suits have so far been unsuccessful, their arguments have implications for more general issues concerning the moral standing of nonhuman animals and their relations to humans. If some animals do have a standing as persons even in the narrow sense required for legal recognition, then we may be morally obliged to treat those animals very differently, by, for example, not killing them for sport or food, or using them for medical experimentation. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Amicus BriefMartha C. Nussbaumii. summary of the argumentThis brief argues that the law requires reformation to protect our modern scientific and philosophical understanding that many animals can live their own meaningful lives and that the Court should reform the law in this case.1 Modern science demonstrates that elephants are complex beings that can form a conception of the self, as observed by Judge Fahey, form strong social and emotional (...) bonds among themselves and others, and that the Zoo's conduct harms Happy in both physical and intangible ways.Furthermore, this brief argues that the lower courts in Lavery I and II applied the wrong philosophical framework to the question of whether certain non-human animals should be considered legal persons. Instead of animal rights being based on the capacity to engage in a social contract and to bear legal duties, the proper framework for animal rights is the capabilities approach, which asks how the law can help animals like Happy not only live but thrive. Accordingly, this brief explains the importance of this appeal, the Court's opportunity to reform [End Page 15] the field of animal law, and the potential to release Happy from a life of captivity, ensuring she lives the rest of her life in a manner that respects her capabilities.iii. argument1. This Case Matters Because It Is Time to Reform the Law to Protect Our Modern Scientific and Philosophical Understanding That Many Animals Are Capable of Living Their Own Meaningful LivesModern science now recognizes a very important fact about many animals, including elephants. They are not merely biological units that simply need food and a suitable environment to survive and maintain a viable population. Today, scientists view many animals as beings capable of living their own meaningful lives. Early Indian and Roman cultures understood the complexity of animal lives and the implications of this complexity surrounding the humane treatment of animals; public awareness of this fact is widespread today. Almost all ancient Greek and Roman philosophical schools attributed complex forms of cognition and numerous emotions to animals,2 a precursor to our current laws against cruel practices to animals.What philosophy and, more recently, science have understood but the law has not, is that elephants are sentient beings who can feel emotion, foster relationships, create communities, and form a conception of the self. Our current legal system fails to respect species-specific, central capabilities. Although each of the fifty states has animal cruelty laws,3 these laws protect only a small number of animals and fail to constrain, to any meaningful extent, the widespread infliction of suffering. They ban only the intentional, purposeful suffering of some animals, and fail to recognize the impact that captivity, lack of relationships, and solitude cause a creature like Happy.This Court has the opportunity to create legal precedent that provides these living creatures the legal right to thrive and survive in ways that coincide with their specific capabilities, and prevent not only the infliction of physical pain, but emotional and psychological injury as well.2. The Magical Lives of ElephantsElephants are cognitive, complex creatures with distinct societies, emotions, and lives. They form societies that foster the wellbeing of each member, in which their emotions and development from childhood through adulthood are readily apparent.4 A combat staged between humans and elephants in 55 B.C. by the Roman leader Pompey paints a prime example of these complex emotions and connections with other animals, namely humans. Surrounded in the arena, the elephants perceived that they had no hope of escape. According to Pliny, the elephants then "entreated the crowd, trying to win its compassion with indescribable [End Page 16] gestures, bewailing their plight with a sort of lamentation."5 The audience, moved to pity and anger by their plight, rose to curse Pompey—feeling, wrote Cicero, that the elephants had a relation of commonality (societas) with humans.6 However, this connection with humans cannot be substituted for true, similar companionship from other elephants, which Happy has lacked for almost two decades.Elephants' ability to connect with other elephants and animals may be attributable to their long life spans; they are the most... (shrink)

One of the issues with introducing animal rights law is whether the problem is quantitative or qualitative, whether it can be achieved by working within existing legal paradigms or whether it requires a new set of paradigms. The answer is fundamental: a quantitative problem can be solved by applying more of the same solutions, while a qualitative problem requires completely different solutions. The qualitative camp can be represented by, say, Professor Gary Francione, demanding not only rights for animals (...) but that they have personhood and are no longer considered “property.” The quantitative approach can be finely represented by Professor David Favre, who has argued for many years that we can make progress by developing existing legal principles to give some rights to some animals, and he does so eloquently in his new book. He is clear in his view that progress is, and can continue to be, made with a series of steps, as he puts it, “climbing the slippery slope toward personhood” (p. viii).His case is supported by looking backward—progress made in establishing the rules governing humans in their relationships with animals—as well as forward to developments that will support continuing improvement in the lives of animals, not least the potential for technology (for example, through cell- and plant-based meat). At the same time, he also rightly rejects the concepts of animal welfare and animal rights being at odds, let alone either of them being a panacea for better lives for animals.One aspect of animal law that Favre believes does need to change is that of property status. As he says, the status of animals as personal property is “critical to the future of animal law” (p. 25). In general, the solutions have been largely binary—that animals simply cannot be property for them to have meaningful rights or that animals can be property and still have rights. The former makes intuitive good sense (and is consistent with the objectives of the human abolitionist movements) but would have enormous effects on economic activity throughout the world. The latter is appealing because it does not change the current paradigm, so can be developed more easily.Favre's premise is that we are moving toward rights for animals, so we need to find a way of integrating animals into the current legal system rather than having to destroy and reconstruct the legal system. His ingenious solution is to propose a fourth category of property, alongside real, personal, and intellectual property: “living property.”Within this category, he envisages using the common law concept of the trust to provide equitable “self-ownership,” where an animal has equitable “ownership” while a human retains legal “ownership.” He then connects this concept to adaptations in other aspects of law that start to recognize the selfhood of animals, creating a platform onto which broader and deeper rights for animals can develop, such as the status of “animalhood” (p. 72) and the corresponding legal right of consideration before decisions are made by the state affecting an animal's fundamental interests (such as continuing to be alive). By putting animals in a separate class—rather than uncomfortably leaving them in personal property—he creates a possible route for animal rights that seems less paradigm-busting than removing them from being property altogether.Drawing on evidence from criminal law, tort law, equity (trusts), property law, and family law, he shows how in many places—with a focus on states in the United States—existing laws are being adapted (“green shoots” p. 81) to recognize that animals are more than personal property, in ways that cannot be explained simply through the growth of regulations. For example, family law is starting to recognize that in the division of matrimonial assets, companion animals cannot be treated simply like any other personal property such as a table or a car based on who paid for them. Because animals are “living property,” the courts should take account of other aspects, such as who cared for the animals and who looked after them. Similarly, the concept of extending trust law so that an animal can be the beneficiary of a trust—in the same way as a human can be but inanimate personal property cannot—shows that the law can understand that companion animals can play a large emotional role in our lives (as well as we in theirs), such that we want to ensure proper care for them after we die.The book raises important issues. First, it is intentionally about domestic animals, with their close links with humans, so the potential for laws to engage is much easier than with, say, farmed animals. The danger with solutions that focus on domestic or charismatic animals (e.g., dogs, chimpanzees, elephants) is that the arguments may be pertinent essentially only to those species and therefore hard to apply to animals of less charismatic species, say in a factory farm (but who are present in much greater numbers and generally badly treated in comparison). He “leaves for another day” (p. 32) the discussion about other animals. Hopefully that day will come, as it would be interesting to see how Favre could extend his concept to animals for whom the public has less affection and less appreciation of their capacities (and for whom the prospect of death is much more real and imminent).Secondly, public support for these ideas about living property may simply not be present. If there is not a sufficient groundswell of support for changing the status of animals, then whether one proposes changing it to not-property or “self-owned” property doesn't matter (if someone doesn't like needles, it doesn't matter whether the needle you propose to use is big or small). This may be too pessimistic, of course (people can be helped to overcome a fear of needles, and one way to start is with small needles). Perhaps the law should start with small changes to recognize at least a few animals—their sentience, their capacities for pleasure and pain, their emotions and preferences, their potential for autonomy—and build public support from there.There is also the underlying and more radical point about whether these ideas—the trust for a beloved companion set up by the human, the divorce settlement that doesn't just give the companion to the party who paid for them—are actually bringing about changes for animals as such or are simply adapting laws to help humans, recognizing human needs, and do not actually change the status of animals. The ends are still humans, and the means are still animals.This is not intended to paint a bleak picture: The more bluntand uncompromising part of the animal rights movement that has been focused on the qualitative problem has hardly been successful at getting animal rights laws passed anywhere in the world, so everything that moves us closer to a better, richer, more thoughtful view of animals will help. Favre's approach has ingenuity, shows good sense, and has the potential to bring about real animal rights. The themes and cases in this book that show how courts and legislatures are becoming more aware of the sentience of at least some animals, as well as proposing a middle path in the debate about animals as property, are important in the journey toward recognition of animal rights. Even more important, they may actually work. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Introduction to the Special SectionFranklin G. MillerHappy is a female elephant who has been confined at the Bronx Zoo for over 40 years. In 2018 the Nonhuman Rights Project sued the Wildlife Conservation Society, which manages the zoo, seeking habeas corpus for Happy in order to release her to an elephant sanctuary. Numerous amicus curiae briefs were filed in favor and against the petition on behalf (...) of Happy. The case reached the highest court in New York State, which denied the petition of the plaintiff in June 2022.This special section includes views on the case of Happy by David DeGrazia, Martha Nussbaum, and Christine Korsgaard, three distinguished moral philosophers who have made significant contributions to animal ethics. The essays by Martha Nussbaum and Christine Korsgaard are drawn from the amicus briefs that they filed in the legal proceedings, which they agreed could be published here.Professor Nussbaum applies her "capabilities approach" as a foundation for promoting wellbeing and recognizing rights to Happy and to elephants in general. She argues that Happy is a being with a meaningful life and is entitled to be treated with respect and dignity, which is incompatible with her conditions of confinement at the zoo. Professor Korsgaard applies her understanding of the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant to the case of Happy—a "cognitively sophisticated [End Page 1] animal" which, like human beings, should be treated as an end in herself and not merely as a means to the purposes of human beings. Professor DeGrazia, in an invited essay, analyzes the meanings of "person" and examines the pertinent characteristics of elephants that make them at least "borderline persons," with the moral status of possessing basic rights.While Happy remains confined at the Bronx Zoo, these three incisive contributions challenge readers to reflect on the ethical treatment of nonhuman animals, especially those with complex and rich capacities of intelligence and emotion. [End Page 2]Franklin G. MillerWeill Cornell Medical College, New YorkCopyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press... (shrink)

Drawing its strength from the UN Charter and UDHR, human rights ethics is a beacon of hope and a promise that requires continuous reaffirmation during these turbulent times. These two documents, with their unwavering faith in ‘fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small,’ have shaped our understanding of human rights as global and universal ethics. However, this faith (...) is now being severely tested by four countercurrents: extremism, exclusionism, selectivism, and populism. These countercurrents pose significant and urgent human rights threats that activists, academics, and policymakers must confront by reasserting the basic core values of the UN Charter and UDHR. (shrink)