Looking at bats Salzani, Carlo
Balthazar (Milan, Italy),
12/2022
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Thomas Nagel’s 1974 essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”1 is one of the most cited texts on the problem of consciousness, and its theses have been discussed and debated in many different fields, from ...philosophy of mind to animal cognition and animal ethics. Nagel’s argument, that it is ultimately impossible for us to know what it is like to be a bat for a bat given the extreme differences in sensory experience between humans and bats, has come under fire from very different and even opposed perspectives: if, on the one hand, science-oriented philosophers and scholars accused him of underestimating and ultimately curtailing the power of scientific inquiry, on the other researchers in the humanities and animal ethics indicted him of defeatism for dismissing the power of imagination in bridging the species gap. In what follows, I will present and contrast two such positions, the critique of Nagel by neurophilosopher2 Kathleen Akins and a very different approach to bat lives through poetry, exemplified by two poems by Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and Les Murray (1938-2019). The goal of counterposing these two different ways of looking at bats is not only or not much that of suggesting a preferable approach to bats’ otherness (though this is also what I will do), but also of emphasizing the aesthetic dimension of our relationship with the animal other and the role it plays in our ethical decision-making.
1 T. Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, in The Philosophical Review, vol. 83, n. 4, 1974, pp. 435-450.
2 Neurophilosophy is an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of philosophy and the neurosciences in which traditional philosophical problems about the nature of the mind are approached through current findings within the neurosciences.
El libro de Rosa María de la Torre Torres expone y presenta de forma clara, elegante y concisa los orígenes y fundamentos, además de los problemas filosóficos y jurídicos, relativos a la cuestión de ...los derechos de los animales. La propuesta de la autora se enmarca en el Derecho y la necesidad de replantearnos la relación entre humanos y no humanos, siendo una de las exigencias más dramáticas de nuestra época. Sin embargo, la autora es consciente de que incluir a especies no humanas implica una transformación radical del Derecho mismo y no se puede limitar simplemente a la mera extensión de las actuales categorías jurídicas. Justamente por eso es tan importante establecer fundamentos claros y sólidos, sin los cuales cualquier propuesta sería en vano. Esta reflexión confiere al libro una complejidad y profundidad filosófica que se suele echar en falta en muchos debates sobre los “derechos animales”.
En Sacudiendo la jaula Steven Wise aboga por el reconocimiento de los derechos fundamentales y el estatuto de personalidad jurídica para chimpancés y bonobos. No solamente, escribe Wise, la división ...entre seres humanos y animales no humanos se ha demostrado que es arbitraria, indefendible e injusta, sino que nuevos descubrimientos científicos demuestran que muchos animales no humanos, y en particular nuestros “primos” los primates, poseen capacidades cognitivas, emocionales y sociales tan similares a las nuestras como para darles derecho a la protección de la ley. Este libro quiere ser una guía practica para intervenciones concretas en favor de los derechos básicos de los homínidos no humanos.
El estudio de Luciano Rocha Santana ofrece un análisis detallado de la teoría de los derechos de los animales de Tom Regan. El libro sigue básicamente la estructura de la obra principal de Regan, The ...Case for Animal Rights, y analiza tanto los puntos de fuerza como las deficiencias de su teoría, examinando una gran cantidad de literatura y de posiciones filosóficas. La conclusión es que la teoría de Regan, pese a su inestimable contribución a la causa de la defensa de lo animales, es todavía insuficiente en relación a sus grandes ambiciones, pero también que, a pesar de esto, su enfoque en el derecho es el único que podría llevarnos a un cambio verdadero.
In a 1987 interview, José Saramago eloquently expressed what could be considered his political-philosophical manifesto: “Human beings should not content themselves with the role of mere observers. ...They bear a responsibility to the world; they must actively engage and intervene.” In 1998 the celebrated writer was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Literature. So Saramago did not only as a human being and a citizen, but also as an artist refuse to be a passive observer. Despite his profound and always critical pessimism, he tirelessly propelled both his public and artistic persona toward impactful actions and interventions, showcasing an unwavering dedication to reshaping the world. This volume seeks to delve into this facet of his legacy, exploring it from diverse political and philosophical perspectives.
In the past two and a half decades, Walter Benjamin's early essay 'Towards the Critique of Violence' (1921) has taken a central place in politico-philosophic debates. The complexity and perhaps even ...the occasional obscurity of Benjamin's text have undoubtedly contributed to the diversity, conflict, and richness of contemporary readings. Interest has heightened following the attention that philosophers such as Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben have devoted to it. Agamben's own interest started early in his career with his 1970 essay, 'On the Limits of Violence', and Benjamin's essay continues to be a fundamental reference in Agamben's work. Written by internationally recognized scholars, Towards the Critique of Violence is the first book to explore politico-philosophic implications of Benjamin's 'Critique of Violence' and correlative implications of Benjamin's resonance in Agamben's writings. Topics of this collection include mythic violence, the techniques of non- violent conflict resolution, ambiguity, destiny or fate, decision and nature, and the relation between justice and thinking. The volume explores Agamben's usage of certain Benjaminian themes, such as Judaism and law, bare life, sacrifice, and Kantian experience, culminating with the English translation of Agamben's 'On the Limits of Violence'.
The article analyzes the ethical and political stakes in Giorgio Agamben'sThe Coming Community. The book was first published in Italian in 1990 and was translated into English in 1993. It was then ...republished in Italian in 2001, with a short new apostil by the author that reaffirms its persistent and actual “inactuality.” In this text Agamben establishes the philosophical foundations of the long-lasting project started with the publication ofHomo sacer(1995). Its republication in 2001 seems thus to reaffirm the politics of his analysis of the past fifteen years. The argument revolves around the analysis of the “whatever singularity” (qualunquein Italian,quodlibetin Latin) as the subject of the “coming community,” a singularity that presents an “inessential commonality, a solidarity that in no way concerns an essence.”Whatevermust not be understood as “indifference” but, rather, as “being such that it always matters.” The ethical and political proposal consists in the call to adhere to this singularity without identity and representation in order to construe a community without postulates and thus also without “subjects.” The paradigm of this politics is identified in Nancy's terminoperativeness(inoperosità), a messianic “de-creation.” The inoperativewhateveris directed toward a politicsche viene,à-veniras distinct fromfutura, future: It implies in fact the renunciation of construing images of the future—“utopia is the very topicality of things.”
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Review of Lorella Bosco and Micaela Latini, eds. Animals and Humans in German Literature, 1800–2000: Exploring the Great Divide. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020. xviii + 160 ...pp. £58.99, hb.
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