Phenomenology and the Non-Human Animal

Phenomenology and the Non-Human Animal PDF

Author: Corinne Painter

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2007-07-26

Total Pages: 159

ISBN-13: 1402063075

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The question of the relation between human and non-human animals in theoretical, ethical and political regards has become a prominent topic within the philosophical debates of the last two decades. This volume explores in substantial ways how phenomenology can contribute to these debates. It offers specific insights into the description and interpretation of the experience of the non-human animal, the relation between phenomenology and anthropology, the relation between phenomenology and psychology, as well as ethical considerations.

The Imaginary of Animals

The Imaginary of Animals PDF

Author: Annabelle Dufourcq

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-07-30

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1000414329

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This book explores the phenomenon of animal imagination and its profound power over the human imagination. It examines the structural and ethical role that the human imagination must play to provide an interface between humans’ subjectivity and the real cognitive capacities of animals. The book offers a systematic study of the increasing importance of the metaphors, the virtual, and figures in contemporary animal studies. It explores human-animal and real-imaginary dichotomies, revealing them to be the source of oppressive cultural structures. Through an analysis of creative, playful and theatric enactments and mimicry of animal behaviors and communication, the book establishes that human imagination is based on animal imagination. This helps redefine our traditional knowledge about animals and presents new practices and ethical concerns in regard to the animals. The book strongly contends that allowing imagination to play a role in our relation to animals will lead to the development of a more empathetic approach towards them. Drawing on works in phenomenology, contemporary animal philosophy, as well as ethological evidence and biosemiotics, this book is the first to rethink the traditional philosophical concepts of imagination, images, the imaginary, and reality in the light of a zoocentric perspective. It will appeal to philosophers, scholars and students in the field of animal studies, as well as anyone interested in human and non-human imaginations.

The Nonhuman Turn

The Nonhuman Turn PDF

Author: Richard Grusin

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2015-03-09

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 1452943915

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Edited by Richard Grusin of the Center for 21st Century Studies, this is the first book to name and characterize—and therefore consolidate—a wide array of current critical, theoretical, and philosophical approaches to the humanities and social sciences under the concept of the nonhuman turn. Each of these approaches is engaged in decentering the human in favor of a concern for the nonhuman, understood by contributors in a variety of ways—in terms of animals, affectivity, bodies, materiality, technologies, and organic and geophysical systems. The nonhuman turn in twenty-first-century studies can be traced to multiple intellectual and theoretical developments from the last decades of the twentieth century: actor-network theory, affect theory, animal studies, assemblage theory, cognitive sciences, new materialism, new media theory, speculative realism, and systems theory. Such varied analytical and theoretical formations obviously diverge and disagree in many of their assumptions, objects, and methodologies. However, they all take up aspects of the nonhuman as critical to the future of twenty-first-century studies in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Unlike the posthuman turn, the nonhuman turn does not make a claim about teleology or progress in which we begin with the human and see a transformation from the human to the posthuman. Rather, the nonhuman turn insists (paraphrasing Bruno Latour) that “we have never been human,” that the human has always coevolved, coexisted, or collaborated with the nonhuman—and that the human is identified precisely by this indistinction from the nonhuman. Contributors: Jane Bennett, Johns Hopkins U; Ian Bogost, Georgia Institute of Technology; Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Brown U; Mark B. N. Hansen, Duke U; Erin Manning, Concordia U, Montreal; Brian Massumi, U of Montreal; Timothy Morton, Rice U; Steven Shaviro, Wayne State U; Rebekah Sheldon, Indiana U.

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception

The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception PDF

Author: Mohan Matthen

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2015-07-02

Total Pages: 944

ISBN-13: 0191669040

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The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception is a survey by leading philosophical thinkers of contemporary issues and new thinking in philosophy of perception. It includes sections on the history of the subject, introductions to contemporary issues in the epistemology, ontology and aesthetics of perception, treatments of the individual sense modalities and of the things we perceive by means of them, and a consideration of how perceptual information is integrated and consolidated. New analytic tools and applications to other areas of philosophy are discussed in depth. Each of the forty-five entries is written by a leading expert, some collaborating with younger figures; each seeks to introduce the reader to a broad range of issues. All contain new ideas on the topics covered; together they demonstrate the vigour and innovative zeal of a young field. The book is accessible to anybody who has an intellectual interest in issues concerning perception.

Levels of Organic Life and the Human

Levels of Organic Life and the Human PDF

Author: Helmuth Plessner

Publisher: Fordham Univ Press

Published: 2019-07-02

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 082328400X

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The groundbreaking classic of twentieth-century German philosophy now available in English—with an introduction by J.M. Bernstein. Helmuth Plessner’s Levels of Organic Life and the Human, draws on phenomenological, biological, and social scientific sources to offer a systematic account of nature, life, and human existence. The book considers non-living nature, plants, non-human animals, and human beings a sequence of increasingly complex modes of boundary dynamics—simply put, interactions between a thing’s insides and the surrounding world. Living things are classed and analyzed by their “positionality,” or orientation to and within an environment. According to Plessner’s radical view, the human form of life is excentric—that is, the relation between body and environment is something to which humans themselves are positioned and can take a position. This “excentric positionality” enables human beings to take a stand outside the boundaries of their own body, a possibility with significant implications for knowledge, culture, religion, and technology. A powerful and sophisticated account of embodiment, the Levels shows, with reference both to science and to philosophy, how life can be seen on its own terms to establish its own boundaries, and how, from the standpoint of life, the human establishes itself in relation to the nonhuman. As such, the book is not merely a historical monument but a source for invigorating a range of vital current conversations around the animal, posthumanism, the material turn, and the biology and sociology of cognition.

Phenomenology of the Object and Human Positioning

Phenomenology of the Object and Human Positioning PDF

Author: Calley A. Hornbuckle

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-06-01

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 3030664376

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This edited volume explores the intersections of the human, nonhuman, transhuman, and posthuman from a phenomenological perspective. Representing perspectives from several disciplines, these investigations take a closer look at the relationship between the phenomenology of life, creative ontopoiesis, and otherness; technology and the human; art and the question of humanity; nonhumans, animals, and intentionality; and transhumanism. Ontological positioning of the human is reconsidered with regard to the nonhuman, transhuman, and posthuman within the cosmos. Further examination of the artificial and object in the lifeworld is also explored. This volume also pays tribute to Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka and her methodical contributions to phenomenology. This text appeals to students and researchers of phenomenology worldwide.

Animal Revolution

Animal Revolution PDF

Author: Ron Broglio

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 2022-03-22

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 1452966605

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Why our failure to consider the power of animals is to our deep detriment Animals are staging a revolution—they’re just not telling us. From radioactive boar invading towns to jellyfish disarming battleships, this book threads together news accounts and more in a powerful and timely work of creative, speculative nonfiction that imagines a revolution stirring and asks how humans can be a part of it. If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, it is that we should pay attention to how we bump up against animal worlds and how animals will push back. Animal Revolution is a passionate, provocative, cogent call for us to do so. Ron Broglio reveals how fur and claw and feather and fin are jamming the gears of our social machine. We can try to frame such disruptions as environmental intervention or through the lens of philosophy or biopolitics, but regardless the animals persist beyond our comprehension in reminding us that we too are part of an animal world. Animals see our technologies and machines as invasive beings and, in a nonlinguistic but nonetheless intensive mode of communicating with us, resist our attempts to control them and diminish their habitats. In doing so, they expose the environmental injustices and vulnerabilities in our systems. A witty, informative, and captivating work—at the juncture of posthumanism, animal studies, phenomenology, and environmental studies—Broglio reminds us of our inadequacy as humans, not our exceptionalism.

Advancing Phenomenology

Advancing Phenomenology PDF

Author: Thomas Nenon

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2010-09-08

Total Pages: 517

ISBN-13: 9048192862

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Philip Blosser and Thomas Nenon The essays in the volume were assembled in honor of Lester Embree, who celebrated his 70th birthday on January 9, 2008. A preview of this volume was presented to Professor Embree at a reception sponsored by the Center for Advanced Research in Phenomenology that was held in his honor at the 2008 meeting of the Husserl Circle at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The title Advancing Phenomenology is purposely ambiguous. On the one hand, these essays document the progress that phenomenology as an ongoing and vibrant movement has made in the period of over a century since its inception. They ill- trate the advance of phenomenology both in terms of the range of topics represented in this volume and in terms of the disciplinary and geographical diversity of the scholars who have contributed to it. The topics range from scholarly appropriations of past achievements in phenomenology, to concrete phenomenological investi- tions into ethics, gender, and environmental philosophy, as well as phenomenolo- cal reflections on the foundations of disciplines outside philosophy such as psychology, history, the social sciences, and archeology. The contributors come both from philosophy departments and from a number disciplines outside of philosophy such as sociology, psychology, and archeology; and they come from all around the world – from North America, from Western and Eastern Europe, from Latin America, and from several different countries in Asia.

Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues

Ethical and Political Approaches to Nonhuman Animal Issues PDF

Author: Andrew Woodhall

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-08-28

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 3319545493

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This book offers ethical and political approaches to issues that nonhuman animals face. The recent ‘political turn’ in interspecies ethics, from ethical to political approaches, has arisen due to the apparent lack of success of the nonhuman animal movement and dissatisfaction with traditional approaches. Current works largely present general positions rather than address specific issues and principally rely on mainstream approaches. This book offers alternative positions such as cosmopolitan, libertarian, and left humanist thought, as well as applying ethical and political thought to specific issues, such as experimentation, factory farming, nonhuman political agency, and intervention. Presenting work by theorists and activists, insights are offered from both ethics and politics that impact theory and practice and offer essential considerations for those engaging in interspecies ethics within the political turn era.

Beyond Prejudice

Beyond Prejudice PDF

Author: Evelyn B. Pluhar

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 9780822316480

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In Beyond Prejudice, Evelyn B. Pluhar defends the view that any sentient conative being--one capable of caring about what happens to him or herself--is morally significant, a view that supports the moral status and rights of many nonhuman animals. Confronting traditional and contemporary philosophical arguments, she offers in clear and accessible fashion a thorough examination of theories of moral significance while decisively demonstrating the flaws in the arguments of those who would avoid attributing moral rights to nonhumans. Exposing the traditional view--which restricts the moral realm to autonomous, fully fledged "persons"--as having horrific implications for the treatment of many humans, Pluhar goes on to argue positively that sentient individuals of any species are no less morally significant than the most automomous human. Her position provides the ultimate justification that is missing from previous defenses of the moral status of nonhuman animals. In the process of advancing her position, Pluhar discusses the implications of determining moral significance for children and "abnormal" humans as well as its relevance to population policies, the raising of animals for food or product testing, decisions on hunting and euthanasia, and the treatment of companion animals. In addition, the author scrutinizes recent assertions by environmental ethicists that all living things or that natural objects and ecosystems be considered highly morally significant. This powerful book of moral theory challenges all defenders of the moral status quo--which decrees that animals decidedly do not count--to reevaluate their convictions.