scholarly journals Humans, Animals and Biopolitics: The More-than-Human Condition

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Redmalm
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Mass Noun ◽  
Health Initiatives ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The Way

<p>Edited by Kristin Asdal, Tone Druglitrö and Steve Hinchliffe (Routledge, 2017)</p><p>Michel Foucault’s concept of biopolitics captures the way a decentralized form of governing measures and mobilizes life itself through a number of technologies, such as demographics, surveillance and health initiatives, with the aim to prolong and enhance the lives of a population. According to Foucault, this biopolitical form of governing characteristic of modernity implies a detached and technical stance towards individual lives. In short, biopolitics turns individual lives into <em>life </em>as a mass noun. Interestingly, when human life is treated as a resource, human’s self-proclaimed position as the crown of creation is unsettled and humans find themselves part of the same biopolitical nexus as many other animals. The technologies and consequences of the biopolitization of humans and other animals is the subject of the volume <em>Humans, Animals and Biopolitics</em>, edited by Kristin Asdal, Tone Druglitrö and Steve Hinchliffe. It is a book that should be required reading for Foucauldian theorists and human-animal studies scholars alike.</p>

scholarly journals A Tutela do Animal Doméstico no Âmbito das Constituições Federais Brasileiras de 1824 a 1988

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 2-11
Author(s):  
Nilsen Aparecida Vieira Marcondes
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Domestic Animals ◽  
Domestic Animal ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Continuous Development ◽  
Exotic Animals ◽  
Socially Constructed ◽  
Federal Constitution ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Way

Objetiva-se discutir neste breve intróito retrospectivo de revisão de normatizações constitucionais pátrias a tutela do animal doméstico. Esta síntese reflexiva sobre a tutela do animal doméstico brasileiro no âmbito constitucional se apresenta quanto à forma de abordagem do assunto, como qualitativo, no que tange a modalidade investigativa como básico, do ponto de vista de seus objetivos, como descritivo, com relação aos procedimentos técnicos, qualifica-se como documental e bibliográfico. Conclui-se que os delineamentos, os limites, bem como os avanços na conquista da tutela animal e consequentemente do animal doméstico demonstram o quanto o reconhecimento de tal questão é socialmente construído. Além disso, a expansão, a solidificação e o desenvolvimento contínuo também da vida humana e da sociedade implicam necessariamente na preservação e na ampliação de acesso um direito fundamental nominalmente reconhecido pela Constituição Federal de 1988 como direito ao ambiente ecologicamente equilibrado no qual se insere evidentemente a fauna, ou seja, os animais domésticos, domesticados, silvestres e exóticos. Palavras-chave: Animal Doméstico. Tutela. Constituições Federais. Brasil.  AbstractThe objective of this brief retrospective introjective review of constitutional norms is to discuss the protection of domestic animals. This reflexive synthesis about the protection of the Brazilian domestic animal in the constitutional scope presents itself as to the way of approaching the subject, as qualitative, in what refers to the research modality as basic, from the point of view of its objectives, as descriptive, with respect to the procedures technicians, qualifies as documentary and bibliographical. It is concluded that the delineations, the limits, as well as the advances in the conquest of the animal guardianship and consequently of the domestic animal demonstrate how much the recognition of such question is socially constructed. In addition, the expansion, solidification and continuous development of human life and society necessarily imply the preservation and expansion of access to a fundamental right nominally recognized by the Federal Constitution of 1988 as a right to an environmentally balanced environment in which the animal, domesticated, wild and exotic animals. Keywords: Domestic Animals. Guardianship. Federal Constitutions. Brasil.

The Politics of Worldlessness

2020 ◽  
pp. 80-127
Author(s):  
Roland Végső
Keyword(s):  
Martin Heidegger ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Political ◽  
Simple Fact ◽  
Political World ◽  
Life Of The Mind ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Human Condition

The chapter examines Hannah Arendt’s critique of martin Heidegger and concentrates on the way Arendt tries to subvert the Heideggerian paradigm of worldlessness. While for Heidegger, the ontological paradigm of worldlessness was the lifeless stone, in Arendt’s book biological life itself emerges as the worldless condition of the political world of publicity. The theoretical challenge bequeathed to us by Arendt is to draw the consequences of the simple fact that life is worldless. The worldlessness of life, therefore, becomes a genuine condition of impossibility for politics: it makes politics possible, but at the same time it threatens the very existence of politics. The chapter traces the development of this argument in three of Arendt’s major works: The Origins of Totalitarianism, The Human Condition, and The Life of the Mind.

scholarly journals The Joy of Being as Anthropological Practice

2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-73
Author(s):  
Agapov Oleg D. ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Human Subjectivity ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
The Human Condition

The joy of being is connected with one’s activities aimed at responding to the challenges of the elemental forces and the boundlessness of being, which are independent of human subjectivity. In the context of rising to the challenges of being, one settles to acquire a certain power of being in themselves and in the world. Thus, the joy of being is tied to achieving the level of the “miraculous fecundity” (E. Levinas), “an internal necessity of one’s life” (F. Vasilyuk), magnanimity (M. Mamardashvili). The ontological duty of any human being is to succeed at being human. The joy of being is closely connected to experiencing one’s involvement in the endless/eternity and realizing one’s subjective temporality/finitude, which attunes him to the absolute seriousness in relation to one’s complete realization in life. Joy is a foundational anthropological phenomenon in the structure of ways of experiencing the human condition. The joy of being as an anthropological practice can appear as a constantly expanding sphere of human subjectivity where the transfiguration of the powers of being occurs under the sign of the Height (Levinas) / the Good. Without the possibility of transfiguration human beings get tired of living, immerse themselves in the dejected state of laziness and the hopelessness of vanity. The joy of being is connected to unity, gathering the multiplicity of human life under the aegis of meaning that allows us to see the other and the alien in heteronomous being, and understand the nature of co-participation and responsibility before the forces of being, and also act in synergy with them.The joy of being stands before a human being as the joy of fatherhood/ motherhood, the joy of being a witness to the world in creative acts (the subject as a means to retreat before the world and let the world shine), the joy of every day that was saved from absurdity, darkness and the impersonal existence of the total. Keywords: joy, higher reality, anthropological practices, “the height”, subject, transcendence, practice of coping

Kant and Hegel: Their Religious Philosophies Compared

1996 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
Harold E Crichlow
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Western Thought ◽  
Material Development ◽  
Religious Dimension ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The One ◽  
Immortality Of The Soul

Despite the existence of a Promethean strain in the history of western thought from the Pre-Socratics down to the time of Kant and Hegel, it is fair to say that mankind generally had some kind of belief in the Gods or the one God. Even before recorded history began, people felt surrounded on all sides by superior supernatural beings who inspired terror and who could only be placated by sacrifice – human, animal and plant – the stage of animism. Since Kant and Hegel, despite the rapid and growing secularisation of society and the decline of overt acts of religion in European societies which lead the word in freedom and material development, census figures show that a large number of people still hold some kind of religious belief. The subject of religion in Kant and Hegel is too wide to be dealt with comprehensively in a paper of this kind, and I shall be looking very briefly at three areas, viz, epistemology where God is presupposed in both systems, freedom through which the religious dimension in human life is expressed, and the possibility of an after-life traditionally treated under the title of the immortality of the soul. God, Freedom and the Immortality of the Soul have been the fundamental issues that have engaged the minds of the great system-builders in philosophy from Plato and Aristotle to Kant and Hegel.

Inner Animalities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Daryl Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Theological Anthropology ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Gregory Of Nyssa ◽  
Constructive Work ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Wolfhart Pannenberg ◽  
Critical Conversation

Inner Animalities analyses the human-animal distinction as a discursive theme running ubiquitously through Christian theological anthropology. Arguing that historically pervasive disavowals of human animality create ineradicable contradictions within accounts of human life and also install an anti-ecological impulse at the heart of Christian theology, this project constructively imagines a theological anthropology centered upon human commonality with fellow creatures. This constructive work perceives divine grace at work in human instincts, desires, and enmeshment in quotidian relations (rather than in rationality, language, and transcendence). The broadest arc of the book’s argument is that only a thickly articulated self-understanding rooted in creaturely commonality can provide an adequate basis for responding to ongoing ecological degradation. The conjunction of Critical Animal Studies with constructive theology in this study, then, aims to generate a new approach to ecological theology. The book’s analysis places ancient Christians such as Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus along with contemporary theologians such as Karl Rahner and Wolfhart Pannenberg in critical conversation with theorists of human-animal relations from Jacques Derrida and Kelly Oliver to Valerie Plumwood and Giorgio Agamben.

Pastoral Perspectivism: A View from Altai

Inner Asia ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 291-310 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ludek Broz
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Common Denominator ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Common ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Single Idea ◽  
The Way

AbstractOne of the characteristic aspects ofViveiros de Castro’s perspectivismis the relative rather than absolute character of subject/object positions. In the Altaian context, animals are not attributed with subjectivity in the way found in Amazonian cosmologies. Still, the subject position is not particular to humans: the landscape is populated by masters of a both human and nonhuman kind. The terminological division of animals into wild (a?dar-kushtar) and domesticated (mal) in Altaian language is analogical to the human/animal division in Amazonia. Wildness and domesticity thus become relative categories defined with reference to the idiom of the master. What is wild for a human master is domesticated for a nonhumanmaster. Here, the common denominator is a sort of ‘livestock-morphism’:what for the human hunters looks like a deer is a cowfrom the point of view of the forest masters. If conducted improperly, hunting is thus analogous to livestock theft – morality transcends perspectivism in Altai. Exploring this ‘pastoralist perspectivism’ leads to questions about subjectivity and agency, ethics and ownership. The discussion is finally placed ‘into perspective’ by showing thatAltaians do not operate with a single idea of the animal and human–animal relationship.

scholarly journals Aldo Rossi

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (61) ◽  
pp. 25-38
Author(s):  
Alexandra Dias Fortes
Keyword(s):  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Architectural Form ◽  
Internal Relation ◽  
New Meanings ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Georg Trakl ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Aldo Rossi offers a captivating account of the relationship between human life and material forms. Rossi says that he came to “the great questions”, and to his discovery of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Georg Trakl through Adolf Loos (Rossi 1982: 46). I will outline some connections between Loos, Trakl, and Wittgenstein that might help us to grasp the way in which Rossi’s assertive attitude concerning architecture gradually leans towards “forgetting architecture”. (The goal is not to try and justify how they might have influenced Rossi; rather the aim is to try to understand Rossi’s work with those connections as a backdrop; to outline a constellation of affinities.) The running thread being the internal relation between the object and the subject, i.e., “construction and the artist’s own life” (Lombardo 2003: 97). I will conclude by considering architectural form on the page, that is to say, in Rossi’s plans, “a graphic variation of the handwritten manuscript”, and drawings, “where a line is no longer a line, but writing” (Rossi 1981: 6), and finally by considering what he says about his architecture, namely, that it stands “mute and cold,” though it will still “creak” (Rossi 1981: 44), and give rise to “new meanings”.

scholarly journals They are Communities like You The Rationale for Animal Rights and Welfare in Islamic Civilization

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Necmettin Kızılkaya
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
Islamic Thought ◽  
Islamic Jurisprudence ◽  
Abstract Level ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Islamic Civilization ◽  
Shed Light

Animal treatment has a comprehensive connotation and far-reaching implications in Islamic civilization. The rationes leges for this broader meaning in human-animal relations are the principles laid out in the two foundational sources of Islam, i.e., the Qurʾān and the Sunnah of the Prophet Muḥammad. While dealing with the subject of animals, different disciplines carried the framework drawn in these two sources to a more abstract level,thereby becoming the very basis for practices in societies’ daily life. One of these disciplines, Islamic jurisprudence deals with how people are to preserve the God-given rights of animals while extracting benefit from in different chapters. In this article, I will first provide a brief introduction to animal welfare and protection in Islamic civilization. I will then focus on how scholars have interpreted the Qurʾānic concept of community (ummah, plural:umam) in exegetical literature. After that, I will show how the Prophet Muḥammad’s approach of gentleness (rifq) and excellence (iḥsān) manifested in his treatment of animals through several examples from the ḥadīth literature.Finally, I will attempt to demonstrate how Islamic jurisprudence embodies this theoretical framework through the concept of harm. In conclusion, I will show that there are important concepts and examples in Islamic thought that shed light on scholarship in the field of animal studies.

Epilogue

2019 ◽  
pp. 388-394
Author(s):  
Gavin Flood
Keyword(s):  
Meaning In Life ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Human Reality ◽  
Life Itself ◽  
Human Trait ◽  
The One ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
Mode Of Being

I have told a long story about the category of life itself, of the human desire for life, of human longing, of the need for repair, and of how civilizations have sought to address this need through the religions that have driven them and the philosophies that have guided them. The endpoint we have arrived at, although not the end of the story, is an ending in which life itself articulated through civilizations can be understood in terms of repair that can be envisaged as a kind of holiness of life, a bringing of human reality into an intensity of life, and a repairing of shattered communication. This intensity is human integration of life itself into modes of culture at the level of linguistic consciousness. We might say that civilization and the religion that drives it have bridged the evolutionary gap between a pre-linguistic mode of being human and the linguistic one facilitated through the neo-cortex articulated in the structures of civilization. Reflecting this distinction, I have attempted to integrate two modern accounts of human life into a coherence: on the one hand, a tradition of humanist, particularly philological, scholarship on traditions within the broad parameters of Indic, Chinese, and European/Middle Eastern civilizations, and on the other, a tradition of scientific, particularly evolutionary discourse about human life. It seems to me that we need both humanism and science to offer descriptions adequate to the complexity of life in human history and the ways in which civilizations have attempted to repair the human condition. These are distinct modes of description within which to frame both the constraints on human reality along with its freedom. Throughout this story we have seen how the human desire for life has been commonly recognized as a deep human trait and how this desire is transposed as a longing for completion, fulfilment, or even redemption. The religions directly address this desire that is related to a desire for meaning in life. But what are we to do once religions are no more? What cultural forms address the desire for life and the need for repair? What is the human future without religions?...

Do Animals Have Souls?

2019 ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
Tok Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Human Life ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Cultural Concepts ◽  
The Way

This chapter attempts to bridge the current theoretical movements in posthumanism with those in mythology, in examining how people view non-human life, and their relations to them. New developments in animal studies have revolutionized the way scholars perceive of non-hominid mental lives and abilities, which has led to challenges to traditional Western beliefs and practices. To illustrate the cultural concepts at play, this chapter utilizes to a comparative American (Native vs. non-Native) view of mythology, science, and language.

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