History 4313
Fall 2006
Undergraduate Seminar
Animals
from Aristotle to Agamben
Wednesdays, 11 a.m.
12:50 p.m.
301M Fayerweather Hall
Samuel Moyn
Department of History
616 Fayerweather Hall
4-3009
http://www.columbia.edu/~sam2008
Office Hours: Tues., 11
am-1 pm
This class is a reading
survey about how the Western philosophical and theological tradition has
conceptualized the difference between humans and (other) animals. Are humans
animals? (What are animals, first of all?) If humans are animals, how to
conceptualize their differences? Either way, what are the consequences for how
to understand oneself and treat animals? What is the nature of human dignity,
and does it depend on some plausible distinction of humans from animals? The
course culminates in six prominent contemporary philosophers who have turned
the traditions they have inherited towards the problem of animals. (Note: this
is not a class about animal rights except indirectly, insofar as the question
of whether rights might or might not accrue to animals will depend on a prior
study of the status of the human-animal border.)
Each student is required,
first and foremost, to read the assigned materials in time for class and to
come prepared to discuss them. Additionally, each student must post on
CourseWorks a short comment about the readings each week by midnight the day
before class. It will help you to read these posts in advance of the session.
One week, in lieu of such a comment, you must write a 1-2 pp. report on a
related book (these are listed at the end of the syllabus). Together, these
reports will provide the seminar with a better sense of the field, since there
is so much either directly relevant to our subject matter or at least related
to it that there is no time to include. Finally, each student must write a 15
pp. seminar paper on a topic s/he chooses and the instructor approves.
An asterisk (*) below
means the reading is on reserve for you to photocopy in Fayerweather Hall, 6th
floor, where you can purchase the materials each week for a small fee. A cross
() means that the reading is available online via JSTOR or a similar source.
Reading:
Mitch Keller, Scandal at the Zoo, New York Times, August 6, 2006
Reading:
Aristotle, De Anima (On the Soul), plus some extracts from zoological
works; *David Brion Davis, At the Heart of Slavery
Reading:
Richard Sorabji, Animal Minds and Human Morals, with some excisions
Reading:
Genesis, i:26-28, ii:15, iii:17, ix:1-4; Exodus, xx: 10;
xxiii:5, 12; Leviticus xi (entire), xxii:28; Numbers, xxii:6-7; Deuteronomy,
xiv:3-21, xxii:1, 6, xxv:4; Psalm 148; Proverbs, xii:10; Ecclesiastes, iii:19;
Isaiah, i:11; Hosea, ii:18; Jonah, iv:11; Acts, xv:20, xxi:25; Romans, viii:21;
I Corinthians, ix:9 (any edition of the Bible is fine, making sure to
read all passages in context)
Reading:
*passages from medieval philosophy; The Animals Lawsuit against Humanity;
*Helen Waddell, ed., Beasts and Saints; *Lorraine J. Daston,
Intelligences, Angelic, Animal, Human; Lynn White, The Historic Roots of
Our Ecologic Crisis
Reading:
*Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man, excerpt;
Michel de Montaigne, Apology for Raymond Sebond, excerpt; Ren
Descartes, Discourse on Method, review; Leonora Cohen, Descartes and
More on the Beast-Machine; *Michel Foucault, Madness and Civilization,
chapter on insanity and animality
Reading:
*Jeremy Waldron, Species and the Shape of Equality; *Voltaire, Philosophical
Dictionary, s.v. Animals; *Robert Wokler, Tyson and Buffon on the
Orang-utan; G. L. Leclerc, Count
de Buffon, A Dissertation on the Nature of Animals and The Nomenclature of
Apes; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,
orangutan footnote; Robert Wokler, *Perfectible Apes in Decadent Cultures:
Rousseaus Anthropology Revisited; optional: *Robert M. and Ada W. Yerkes, The Great Apes,
Part 1
Reading:
*Jeremy Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, extract and Peter
Singer, Animal Liberation, 1st ed.
Reading:
Immanuel Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, review; *Kant, Metaphysics
of Morals, extracts; Kant, Conjectural Beginnings of Human History;
*Christine M. Korsgaard, Fellow Creatures: Kantian Ethics and Our Duties to
Animals; *Korsgaard, Morality and the Distinctiveness of Human Action
Reading:
T.H. Huxley, Mans Place in Nature, *H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr.
Moreau, chap. 15; *James Rachels, Created from Animals, a few
extracts
FILMS
(if you want): Angels and Insects (based on A.S. Byatt story) or The Island
of Lost Souls (1933) or The Island Doctor Moreau (1977 and 1996) (all
versions of H.G. Wellss novel)
Reading:
Thomas Nagel, What Is It Like to be a Bat?; Daniel Dennett, Animal
Consciousness: What Matters and Why; C.D.L. Wynne, Do Animals Think?;
Charles Siebert, The Animal Self; skim the Animal Personality Institute site
at the University of Texas: http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/group/animpersinst/APIhomepage.html
Reading:
Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent Rational Animals
Reading:
*Martha Nussbaum, Frontiers of Justice, extract
Reading:
*Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies, eighth elegy; *Jacob von Uexkll, A
Stroll through the Worlds of Animals and Men; Giorgio Agamben, The Open
FILM
(if interest): Grizzly Bear Man
Giorgio Agamben, The
Open: Man and Animal (Stanford), ISBN # 0804747385
The Animals Lawsuit
against Humanity (Fons Vitae), 1887752706
Aristotle, De Anima
(On the Soul) (Penguin), 0140444718
T.H.
Huxley, Mans Place in Nature (Dover) 0486432734
Alasdair MacIntyre, Dependent
Rational Animals (Open Court), 081269452X
Michel de Montaigne, Apology
for Raymond Sebond (Penguin), 0140444939
Peter Singer, Animal
Liberation (see note below)
Richard Sorabji, Animal
Minds and Human Morals (Cornell), 0801482984
C.D.L. Wynne, Do
Animals Think? (Princeton), 0691126364
For the Singer book, the
class will use the original version, as published by the New York Review in
1975 or as a widely-circulating (because freely distributed by PETA at that
time) trade paperback. You can buy a copy of this book most easily (and for
about $1 not including shipping) by surfing to http://www.abebooks.com.
Finally, I have ordered
these two recommended texts in case you want to read further:
Andrew Linzey, Animal
Rights: A Historical Anthology (Columbia), 0231134215
H.G. Wells, The Island
of Dr. Moreau (Penguin), 045152989
overviews of the human-animal
relationship in history
Richard Bulliet, Hunters,
Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships
Angela Creager and William C.
Jordan, eds., The Animal/Human Boundary: Historical Perspectives
Rod Preece, Animals and Nature
James Serpell, In the Company
of Animals: A Study in Human-Animal Relationships
Paul Shepard, The Others: How
Animals Made Us Human
see also scholarly journal, Society
and Animals
overviews of attitudes (esp. philosophical) towards
animals
Manuela Linemann, ed., Brder,
Bestien, Automaten: Das Tier im abendlndischen Denken
Barbara Noske, Beyond
Boundaries: Humans and Animals
John Passmore, The Treatment of
Animals, Journal of the History of Ideas 36 (1975): 195-218
Rod Preece, Awe for the Tiger,
Love for the Lamb: A Chronicle of Sensibility to Animals
, Brute Souls, Happy Beasts,
and Evolution: The Historical Status of Animals
Gary Steiner, Anthropocentrism
and Its Discontents
humanity and nature in general
(rather than animals specifically)
Clarence Glacken, Traces on
the Rhodian Shore
R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of
Nature
Pierre Hadot, The Veil of Isis
John Passmore, Mans
Responsibility for Nature
Juliet Clutton-Brock, Aristotle,
the Scale of Nature, and Modern Attitudes towards Animals, Social Research
62, 3 (Fall 1995)
Allan Gotthelf, ed., Aristotle
on Nature and Living Things
, and James G. Lennox, ed., Philosophical
Issues in Aristotles Biology
Martha Nussbaum, Aristotles
De Motu Animalium
, and Amlie Oksenberg Rorty, eds.,
Essays on Aristotles De Anima
Pierre Pellegrin, Aristotles
Classification of Animals
others
Plutarch, Moralia, parts
on animals
Porphyry, On Abstinence from
Eating Animals
in general
Keith Bradley, Animalizing the
Slave: The Truth of Fiction, Journal of Roman Studies 90 (2000): 110-25
Barbara Cassin, et al., eds., Lanimal
dans lAntiquit
Urs Dierauer, Tier und Mensch
in der Antike
John Heath, The Talking
Greeks: Speech, Animals, and the Other in Homer, Aeschylus, and Plato
Karl Jacoby, Slaves by Nature?:
Domestic Animals and Human Slaves, Slavery & Abolition 15 (1994):
89-99
G.E.R. Lloyd, Aristotelian
Explorations
, Science, Folklore, and
Ideology: Studies in the Life Sciences in Ancient Greece
Ingvild Gilhus, Animals, Gods, and Humans
Robert Grant, Early Christians and Animals
Charles Westley Hume, The Status of Animals in the
Christian Religion
Ronald H. Isaacs, Animals in Jewish Thought and
Tradition
Samuel Osgood, The Gospel among the Animals
E.J. Schochet, Animal Life in Jewish Tradition
see also sources for Week 12 below
Judith Barad, Aquinas on the Nature and Treatment of
Animals
Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the
Middle Ages
Dorothy Yamamoto, The Boundaries of the Human in
Medieval English Literature
there are a number of works on animals in medieval art
George Boas, The Happy Beast
in French Thought of the 17th Century
tienne Bonnot de Condillac, Trait
sur les animaux, ed. and intro. Franois Dagognet
Dennis Des Chene, Spirits and
Clocks: Machine and Organism in Descartes
Erica Fudge, Brutal Reasoning: Animals, Rationality,
and Humanity in Early Modern England
, Perceiving Animals: Humans and Beasts in Early
Modern English Culture
, ed., At the Borders of the Human: Bodies and
Natural Philosophy in the Early Modern Period
, Renaissance Beasts: Of Animals, Humans, and Other
Wonderful Creatures
Aaron Garrett, ed., Animal
Rights and Souls in the Eighteenth Century
Thierry Gontier, De lhomme
lanimal: Paradoxes sur la nature des animaux, Montaigne et Descartes
, ed., Lanimal et
lanimalit dans la philosophie de la Renaissance et lge Classique
Hassan Melehy, Montaignes
Ethics: The Case of Animals, LEsprit crateur 46, 1 (Spring 2006):
96-107
Leonora Cohen Rosenfeld, From
Beast Machine to Man-Machine: Animal Soul in French Letters from Descartes to
La Mettrie
Justin E. H. Smith, ed., The
Problem of Animal Generation in Early Modern Philosophy
Gary Steiner, Descartes on the
Moral Status of Animals
James Steintrager, Cruel Delight: Enlightenment
Culture and the Inhuman
Keith Thomas, Man and the
Natural World: A History of the Modern Sensibility
Nathaniel Wolloch, articles on
animals and the scientific revolution
natural history, taxonomy, and zoology (a small
sample)
Raymond Corbey and
Bert Theunissen, eds., Ape, Man, Apeman: Changing Views since 1600
James L. Larson, Interpreting
Nature
, Reason and Experience
(Linnaeus)
Lord Monboddo etc., Orang-utans
and the Origins of Human Nature (collection of primary sources)
Brian W. Ogilvie, The Science
of Describing: Natural History in Renaissance Europe
Charles E. Raven, John Ray,
Naturalist
Jacques Roger, Buffon: A Life
in Natural History
the wild man (esp. wild children, ie, raised outside civilization and perhaps bordering on animals)
Richard Bernheimer, Wild Men in the Middle Ages
Edward Dudley and Maximillian Novak, eds., The Wild
Man Within
Julia V. Douthwaite, The Wild
Girl, Natural Man, and the Monster
Richard Nash, Wild
Enlightenment: The Borders of Human Identity in the 18th Century
apes today
Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer,
eds., The Great Ape Project
Frans de Waal, Our Inner Ape
Jadran Lee, Bentham on the Moral
and Legal Status of Animals (Ph.D. diss., Chicago, 2003)
Peter Singer, Animal
Liberation, New York Review of Books, 1973
, Animal Liberation at 30, New
York Review of Books, 2003
, Practical Ethics
, Ten Years of Animal
Liberation, New York Review of Books, 1985
, Unsanctifying Human Life
, ed., In Defense of Animals
, In Defense of Animals: The
Second Wave
some primary sources
William Hamilton Drummond, The
Rights of Animals and Mans Obligation to Treat Them with Humanity (1838)
William Youatt, The Obligation
and Extent of Humanity to Brutes (1839)
William Young, An Essay on
Humanity to Animals (1798)
or other historical
considerations, many to be found (like these three) in E. Mellen Press series
some things on animals and
modern history
Virginia De John Anderson, Creatures
of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America
Animal Studies Group, Killing
Animals
Dorothee Brantz, Stunning
Bodies: Animal Slaughter, Judaism, and the Meaning of Humanity in Imperial
Germany, Central European History 35, 2 (2002): 167-94
Jon T. Coleman, Vicious:
Wolves and Men in America
Anita Guerrini, Experimenting
with Humans and Animals: From Galen to Animal Rights
Dix Harwood, Love for Animals
and How It Developed in Britain
Hilda Kean, Animals Rights:
Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800
Shepard Krech III, The
Ecological Indian
Calvin Martin, Keepers of the
Game: Indian-Animal Relations and the Fur Trade
David Perkins, Romanticism and
Animal Rights
Harriet Ritvo, The Animal
Estate: The English and Other Creatures in the Victorian Age
, Border Trouble: Shifting the
Line between Humans and Other Animals, Social Research 62, 3 (Fall
1995)
Boria Sax, Animals in the
Third Reich: Pets, Scapegoats, and the Holocaust
James Turner, Reckoning with
the Beast: Animals, Pain and Humanity in the Victorian Mind
on pets in particular
Donna Haraway, The Companion
Species Manifesto
Kathleen Kete, The Beast in
the Boudoir
Jennifer Mason, Civilized
Creatures
Anthony L. Podberczek, et al.,
eds., Companion Animals and Us
James Serpell, The Domestic
Dog
Stephen T. Asma, Stuffed
Animals and Pickled Heads: The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums
Eric Baratay and Elisabeth
Hardouin-Fougier, Zoo: A History of Zoological Gardens in the West
Vicki Croke, The Modern Ark:
The Story of Zoos, Past, Present and Future
Elizabeth Hanson, Animals
Attractions: Nature on Display in American Zoos
R.J. Hoage and William Deiss,
eds., New Worlds, New Animals
Nigel Rothfels, Savages and
Beasts: The Birth of the Modern Zoo
vegetarianism and eating animals
Timothy Morton, Shelley and the Revolution in Taste:
The Body and the Natural World
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the
American Meal
Peter Singer and Jim Mason, The Way We Eat: Why Our
Food Choices Matter
Colin Spencer, Vegetarianism, A History
etc. (you can of course find a
lot on different religious traditions and food in general and meat in
particular)
Julian Franklin, Animal Rights
Tom Regan, The Case for Animal
Rights
--, Defending Animal Rights
Janet Browne, Charles Darwin,
2 vols.
Charles Darwin, The Descent of
Man
Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin
Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin
and the Darwinian Revolution
William
Irvine, Apes, Angels, and Victorians
Peter
Kemp, H.G. Wells and the Culminating Ape
popularized science
Mark Bekoff, Minding Animals:
Awareness, Emotions, and Heart
etc.
other contemporary
Anglo-American philosophical views on animal nature and status
Peter Carruthers, The Animals
Issue: Moral Theory in Practice
Paola Cavalieri, The Animal
Question
J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of
Animals (cf. Elizabeth Costello)
David De Grazia, Taking
Animals Seriously: Mental Life and Moral Status
John Dupre, Humans and Other
Animals
John Gray, Straw Dogs:
Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals
Susan Hurley and Matthew Nudds,
eds., Rational Animals?
Dale Jamieson, Moralitys
Progress: Essays on Humans, Other Animals, and the Rest of Nature
Mary Midgley, Beast and Man
Cass Sunstein and Martha
Nussbaum, eds., Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions
Gary
Kowalski, The Bible According to Noah: Theology as If Animals Mattered
Andrew Linzey, After Noah:
Animals and the Liberation of Theology
, Animal Gospel
, Animal Theology
, Christianity and the Rights
of Animals
and Tom Regan, eds., Animals
and Christianity: A Reader
Gordon Preece, ed., Rethinking
Peter Singer: A Christian Critique
Matthew
Scully, Dominion: The Power of Man, the Suffering of Animals, and the Call
to Mercy
Paul Waldau, The Specter of
Speciesism: Buddhist and Christian Views of Animals
Stephen Webb, On God and Dogs:
A Christian Theology of Compassion for Animals
Steve Baker, Picturing the
Beast: Animals, Identity, and Representation
Jonathan Burt, Animals in Film
Matthew Calarco and Peter
Atterton, eds., Animal Philosophy
Jacques Derrida, Lanimal donc
je suis
, The Animal that I Am (More to
Follow), Critical Inquiry 28, 2 (Winter 2002): 369-418
Nigel Rothfels, ed., Representing
Animals
Eric L. Santner, On Creaturely
Life
Cary Wolfe, Animal Rites
, Zoontologies