A Brief History of Discourse on Animals in Western Philosophy

This article was originally written and published in bahasa Indonesia on 25 January 2018.

This article aims to inquire about what is meant by the animal problem or the animal question in the discourse of western philosophy. Succinctly put, the animal problem involves two things: essence and distinction. An essential question in the animal problem is the possibility of defining the essence of animals in itself as distinct of that from humans, in addition to questioning the basis and assumptions in the human-animal distinction. In this framework, the essence of animals as animals defined in opposition to humans is problematic because the distinguishing feature is unstable, hence a weak basis for an argument. Thus, the human-animal distinction does not have a solid philosophical foundation and must be questioned.

 

Introduction

In the philosophical discourse, especially in western philosophy, animals are always opposed to humans. Animals are portrayed as beings lacking something that humans have. For example, Aristoteles opines that language distinguishes humans from animals (Bourke, 2013: 7). On the one hand, humans have language that makes them capable of differentiating between the just and unjust; the good and evil. Animals, on the other hand, only have, in Aristoteles’s words: a mere voice. This voice is no language. Sound signifies please and pain.

The aforementioned example is but one of many. Giorgio Agamben states that in (Western) philosophical discourse, the problem of living beings is never clearly defined. Agamben wrote:

“That is to say, everything happens as if, in our (Westen) culture, life (life, here, refers to the biological life, not an existential one) were what cannot be defined, yet, precisely for this reason, must be ceaselessly articulated and divided.” (Agamben, 2002: 13)

Post-Aristoteles, various philosophers continue to search for what distinguished humans and animals. This will be explored further in the next section. Long story short, after centuries of philosophical discourse taking the distinctions between humans and animals for granted, in the 20th century emerged philosophers who voiced their discontents. Namely, Peter Singer and Tom Regan. They present arguments against the anthropocentrism that is extant in Western philosophy. Their goal is to establish animal rights. Even though, when inquired further, their ideas were heavily influenced by Jeremy Bentham, a philosopher renowned for rejecting anthropocentrism with the concept of animals’ ability to suffer.

This discourse develops and contributes to the emergence of animal studies. Even though, for Calarco (2008: 1), there is no widely accepted definition. However, what is apparent is those in the animal studies circuit concerned themselves with the animal question. What is being questioned in the “animal question” is what Derrida calls the ways in which philosophers view animals in a reductive and essential way (Calarco, 2008: 4). Calarco (2008: 2) identified two significant points of inquiry in animal studies. First is the question of animality or the nature of animals. Second is the question of the distinction between humans and animals.

These problems are interrelated. Regarding animality, many philosophers have questioned the possibility of defining animals homogeneously. Is there an essence of animals in the many kinds of animals? This homogenous definition of animals impacts the concept of “animality”, which aims to demarcate or distinguish between humans and animals. Several theorists from both fields of philosophy and science, such as biology, reject this because “animals cannot be reduced to a simple or complex separation of their characteristics.” (Calarco, 2008: 3). If there is no “animality” that can be defined clearly, either philosophically or biologically, then the clear distinction between humans and animals cannot be maintained. 

Discourse on animals, as aforementioned, emerged around the 20th century. Cary Wolfe (2003: x-xi) identified two factors that led to the rise of the discourse of animals in the human sciences writ large. The first factor is the crisis of humanism in critical theory brought about by structuralism and post-structuralism with the interrogation of the constitutive human figure or the human that shapes history and society. Thinkers such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida played a vital role in developing those -isms. The second factor is the radical change in the figure of “animal” in the sciences outside of the humanities. New disciplines such as cognitive ethology and ecology have raised questions about the validity of the categories used to defend anthropocentrisms, such as language, technology, and culture. Many studies of language and cognition in giant apes and marine mammals show how thin the boundary between human and animal biological characteristics is.

The two factors above relate to what I have said about the concerns of thinkers in animal studies, namely the essence of “animal” and the human-animal distinction. From there, the animal problem can be reduced to two things:

1. Is it possible to define an animal as a general entity?
2. If so, what are the characteristics of animals that distinguish them from humans? If not, what is to be done with the distinction?

Regarding the first question, Derrida repeatedly stated that it was impossible. In Of Spirit (1989), he said that earlier philosophers often generalized animals by citing a few examples. Derrida (1989: 57):

“Thesis on animality which presupposes–this is the irreducible and I believe dogmatic hypothesis of the thesis–that there is one thing, one domain, one homogeneous type of entity, which is called animality in general, for which any example would do the job.”

In addition, in an interview with Elisabeth Rudinesco, Derrida also explained that “there are many kinds (multiplicity) of living things, many kinds of animals, some of which cannot be included in the big discourses about animals that claim to give certain attributes or recognise them.” (Derrida, 2004: 63). On another occasion, Derrida also expressed the same concern about this general concept of animals. 

“Critical anxiety…will be directed to, first of all, once again, the singular use of general concepts such as “Animals”, as if all nonhuman living things can be grouped by common sense in the commonplace.” (Derrida, 2008: 34)

According to Calarco, the first question that also worries Derrida relates to the question of the possibility of explaining animals at all. Calarco (2008: 5):

“Is the current discourse, whether drawn from science or philosophy, from an anthropocentric or non-anthropocentric point of view, able to describe the diversity of forms of living things and the perspectives found among those we call ‘animals’?”

The second question is about the distinction itself. According to Calarco (2008: 63), since its beginning in Greece, Western philosophy has based itself on a hierarchical arrangement of human-animals that privileges humans–of course, this definition of human is also problematic because, in ancient Greek culture, slaves and women were not considered truly human. This distinction is formed from human characteristics that animals do not have. As mentioned above, according to Aristoteles, what distinguishes humans from animals is language. In addition, according to Aristoteles, what distinguishes humans from animals is their rationality. As the famous phrase, perhaps readers may be familiar: rational animale. However, according to Joanna Bourke, this definition of human is volatile. Bourke (2013: 4-5): “In every period of history and culture, common sense constructs about ‘humans’ and ‘animals’ do exist, but these distinctions are always questioned and renewed.”

Many categories distinguish humans: rationality, language, consciousness, soul, technological ability, etc. From Aristoteles to Lacan, this distinction always existed. Whatever definition is given to humans, according to Bourke, always implies exclusion. Bourke (2013: 8) quotes Bertram Lloyd: 

“To deny reason from animals, and you mean to deny it from your infants: affirm the existence of an immortal soul in your infant or yourself, and you should at least give something of the same to your dog.”

What Bourke means is that the definition of man is endless. That definition will not be final. To quote Derrida once more:

“There is no characteristic that is considered possible to know what is ‘proper of man’ by even the most authoritative philosophy or culture–none of which, in all its rigor, is what belongs exclusively to what we humans call humans. Either because some animals have them, or because humans don’t have the features as claimed.” (Derrida, 2004: 66)

With this explanation, I would like to point out the human-animal distinction of what is, in Derrida’s terms, the “proper of man”. If referring to the first question, the essence of “animal”  is impossible to define in a general way because of its diversity. The definition of “humanity” is also problematic for the reasons already explained. In the next section, I will explore the thoughts of some of the most influential philosophers and scientists of every age about animals and show their problems based on the questions about animals that have been described previously. 

 

Essence

According to Oxana Timofeeva (2016: 2), what is not human or nonhuman is defined based on negativity. In other words, the nonhuman is what the human is not. Perchance, it is a “superficial” definition of the nonhuman. However, as will be explored further, this is the definition of animal in the minds of various Western philosophers. Animals are things that are not human and that do not have anything that humans have in particular.

Aristoteles distinguishes between humans and animals based on the possession of language. Humans have a language that allows them to communicate in the polis and differentiate between good and evil. This is because: 

“Aristoteles in no way defines what life (life; this sentence exists in a biological context, may also be translated as a living being) is: he limits himself to breaking it down, by isolating the nutritive function, in order to rearticulate it in a series of distinct and correlated faculties or potentialities (nutrition, sensation, thought).” (Agamben, 2002: 14)

Therefore, what Aristoteles did was find out what makes something belong to something. Aristoteles defines living things as something that has a nutritional function. That is, the creature grows and decays. Everything that does not have that ability is not a living being. This is the difference between living and nonliving things.

However, for Aristoteles, the nutritive function is what constitutes a fundamental category of living things. Various living things do not only have nutritional abilities. As he puts it, “thoughts, sensations, localized motion, and stillness, or movement in the context of nutrition, decay and growth.” (Aristoteles, 1984: 658). Speaking of plants in the same paragraph, Aristotle mentions that their nutritive function is “the only psychic potential they have.” Plants are indeed living things, but they only have nutritional abilities. Plants cannot feel or think.

The same applies to animals. “Animals” cannot think because rationality belongs to humans. Since there are many living things, Aristoteles looked for what distinguishes one thing from another. Plants are different from animals, animals are other from humans, and humans are other from God. What has been determined and separated is what forms a hierarchical unity of life-based on “functional ability and their differences.” (Agamben, 2002: 14)

This line of thought continued until Rene Descartes (1596-1650). Descartes considers that animals are like machines, an “automate”. Animals move and live by following their instincts. Descartes (1985: 73-6): “It is Nature acting in them according to the characteristics of their organs, the same as when we look at a clock,” Descartes also distinguishes between the linguistic abilities of humans and animals. Descartes (1985: 140-141):

“Men [human] born deaf and dumb, and thus deprived of their speech-organs as much as the beasts or even more so, normally invent their own signs to make themselves understood by those who, being regularly in their company, have the time to learn their language. This witnesses not merely to the fact that the beasts have less reason than men [human], but they have no reason at all…And we must not confuse speech with the natural movements which witness to passions and which can be imitated by machines as well as by animals. Nor should we think, like some of the ancients, that the beasts speak, although we do not understand their language.”

For Descartes, it is clear that only humans have reason or rationality. Only humans can doubt themselves. It was this dubious act that made them human.

In order to access the Absolute I, the self must break away from the bodily dimension the animal dimension. For Descartes, what can’t be separated from humans is thinking itself. Cogito ergo sum. Descartes (1984: 18) states, “this alone is inseparable from me. I am–I exist: for perhaps I would even happen, if I should wholly cease to think, that I should at the same time altogether cease to be. This dimension of thinking is what distinguishes humans and animals. Humans have a reflective ability, the ability to escape from their bodily desires, because it is something that is not substantial for themselves. This is different from animals that are trapped in their passion. Animals don’t have an ‘I’”. As in Derrida’s (2008: 76) interpretation of Descartes,

“The relation to itself of the soul and of thinking, that very being of the thinking substance, implied the concept of an animal-machine deprived…the ego as ego cogito, je pense. Such an automation would be deprived of a ‘me’ or ‘self’ and even more of any capacity for reflection,”

In the end, Descartes’ views were the same as those of Aristoteles. He views a huge and significant difference that distinguishes humans and animals. Humans have unique characteristics that animals don’t have, such as language and reason.

Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), one of the pioneers of modern taxonomy, rejected Descartes’ view of animals as automatons. In the Systema naturae quoted by Agamben (2002: 23), Linnaeus states: “Descartes certainly has never seen apes.” Linnaeus did like apes. For Linnaeus, distinguishing apes from humans from a scientific point of view was not easy. Linnaeus (1995: 4-5) in Agamben (2002: 24) states that there is no “one sign that distinguishes man and ape.” Linnaeus, the originator of the term Homo sapiens, gave the distinction between animals and humans not in the realm of science. For Linnaeus, humans have no specific identity other than the ability to recognize themselves. As Agamben (2002: 25) explains in his interpretation of Linnaeus: “man is an animal that must realize itself as a human being in order to become human.” Linnaeus did this because he could not find a clear difference between humans and apes biologically. Therefore, Homo sapiens is an animal that becomes a human when it realizes that it is not an animal. From a philosophical point of view, Linnaeus can be seen as not so different from Descartes who emphasizes the reflective ability of humans as differentiators from animals.

Born at the same time, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) also had similar thoughts to his predecessors. Kant still maintains the definition of man as a rational animal. He defends this definition based on “the I” (Derrida, 2008: 92). What is meant by “I” is “I who think”. Kant provides an explanation in Anthropology from a Pragmatic Points of View (2006). Humans are defined as beings who can represent “I”. According to Derrida in his interpretation of Kant’s text, “‘I’ signifies the unity of a consciousness that remains the same throughout all its modifications…the ‘I’ is the original unity of transcendental apperception that accompanies every representation” (Derrida, 2008: 92). In short, “I” is thinking itself because, in Kant’s (2006: 15) words, “for this faculty is understanding.” 

In addition, according to Bourke (2013: 8), Kant distinguishes humans from other creatures based on their ability to manipulate objects for their purposes, their pragmatic ability to use other humans for their purposes, and their moral ability to be able to treat themselves and different according to the principle of freedom in society under the law. In this way, Kant is still the same as previous thinkers who defined the difference between humans from their rational capacities that animals did not have.

On this basis, for Kant, what is not human are things. A human being has an irrational authority over animals because animals are things. Humans can use it and master it. This is because man is an entity different, either by rank or honor, from irrational animals. As explained by Kant (2006: 15)

“The fact that humans are aware of the concept of ego makes them far above all living things on earth…He is something which, by reason of his superiority and honour, is completely different from things, such as irrational animals which he can control and command as he pleases.”

From the exploration of some critical thoughts in the Western philosophical tradition, it can be seen that the strongest presupposition in defining the difference between humans and animals is in the human capacity to reason and language. From Aristoteles to Kant, language became an essential aspect that distinguished humans from animals. However, since the 18th century, as identified by Agamben (2002: 24) and Bourke (2013: 6), markers that are assumed to distinguish humans and animals have become problematic. It is becoming increasingly challenging to distinguish humans from animals. Language, one once thought of as the differentiator, was questioned because some claimed that birds could speak. According to Agamben (2002: 24), even the physical differences between humans and other species are increasingly difficult to determine.

In this situation, Ernst Haeckel tried to justify the differences between humans and animals through natural science. In Anthropogenie (1874), Haeckel reconstructs how humans evolved from fish to anthropomorphs in the Miocene era. However, according to Agamben (2002: 34), the critical hypothesis proposed by Haeckel is how he describes the movement from nonspeaking anthropoid apes to speaking humans, which he calls Pithecanthropus alalus. Later, this hypothesis was supported by the discovery of Pithecanthropus erectus on the island of Java.

Unfortunately, according to Agamben, Hackel’s efforts contain their own contradictions. Agamben (2002: 34):

“In reality, the passage from animal to man, despite the emphasis placed on comparative anatomy and paleontological findings, was produced by subtracting an element that had nothing to do with either one, and that instead was presupposed as the identifying characteristics of the human: language.” 

The search for intermediate entities from nonspeaking animals to speaking humans assumes that there are humans who do not speak. With that, the search tries to find what is human but not yet human. That is, this effort does not start from scratch but has assumed a human figure who speaks. Agamben (2002: 36) criticized this effort by stating that:

“What distinguishes man from animal is language, but this is not a natural given already inherent in the psychological structure of man; it is, rather, a historical production which, as such, can be properly assigned neither to man nor to animal. If this element is taken away, the difference between man and animal vanishes, unless we imagine a nonspeaking man–Homo alalus, precisely–who would function as a bridge that passes from the animal to the human. But all evidence suggests that this is only a shadow cast by language, a presupposition of speaking man, by which we always obtain only an animalization of man (an animal-man, like Haeckel’s ape-man) or a humanization of the animal (a man-ape). The animal-man and the man-animal are the two sides of a single fracture, which cannot be amended from either side.”

Agamben points out that defining the distinction between humans and animals through a particular characteristic is problematic. As Derrida has also said that the human-animal distinction is shaped by the definition of what is “proper of man”. Derrida (2004: 66):

“There is no characteristic that is considered possible to know what is ‘proper of man’ by even the most authoritative philosophy or culture–none of which, in all its rigor, is what belongs exclusively to what we humans call humans. Either because some animals have them, or because humans don’t have the features as claimed.” (Derrida, 2004: 66)

The explanation so far further confirms Bourke’s thesis that the definition of humans that distinguishes themselves from animals is unstable and problematic. This distinction is also supported by a category that cannot be firmly defended philosophically and scientifically.

 

Distinction

If the distinction between humans and animals, especially the definition of humans themselves, is problematic, what is the actual function of this distinction philosophically? Agamben (2002: 37) argues that the definition of humans using the oppositional method, namely by distinguishing between humans and animals, functions through exclusion and inclusion. This is what Agamben calls the anthropological machine. Agamben distinguishes two modes of working anthropological machines: the humanization of animals and the animalization of humans. The first mode, according to Agamben, worked in the pre-modern era, from Aristoteles to Linnaeus. This mode determines what is human in animals because, in essence, humans are animals. Thus, it is the human characteristics that distinguish humans from animals. The examples Agamben gives are ape-men, slaves, barbarians, and foreigners. They are seen as nonhuman animals. The second mode excludes nonhuman animals from humans themselves. That is, this mode seeks what is not human from human. This mode sets humans first, then excludes what is not yet human or nonhuman. An example is Homo Alalus, humans who do not speak. There is also a Jewish figure in the image of Nazi Germany who is seen as a sub-human. They are humans who do not have proper characteristics.

The important point conveyed by Agamben is that both modes function by creating a zone of indifference. As Agamben said, this empty zone that serves as the state of exception is completely empty. Agamben (2002: 38), “this zone is, in truth, perfectly empty, and the truly human being who should occur there is only the place of a ceaselessly updated decision.” Thus, the machine did not “exhibit truly unique human characteristics that provide a clear distinction between humans and all nonhuman animals” (Calarco, 2009: 94). This also strengthens Bourke’s thesis that the definition is never stable because it is constantly updated.

With this, the human-animal distinction, according to Calarco, lies at a very political and ethical locus. From Agamben’s argument, Calarco concludes that “determining the category of something that can be said to be ‘human’ or ‘animal’ is not just a neutral scientific and ontological issue” (Calarco, 2009: 94). Derrida talks about the same things. He said that human relations had to change. “The relationship must change, in the context of an “ontological” necessity as well as an “ethical” necessity” (Derrida, 2004: 64). For Calarco, Derrida, and Agamben, this distinction is the opening gate for exploitation/violence/biopolitics of nonhuman beings, especially animals. The ontological difference is also related to the ethical distinction.

In this way, the problem of animals moves from ontology to ethics. Derrida (2004: 64-65) states that

“The present concept of the human subject, of post-Cartesian human subjectivity, is the foundation of the concept of human rights… The cartesian heritages defines the whole of modernity… The modern concept of rights depends to a large extent on the Cartesian cogito moment, subjectivity, freedom, sovereignty, etc.”

From this, it can be summarized that animals are not legal subjects. As Derrida (1990: 951) puts it in another text: “one would not speak of injustice or violence toward an animals, even less toward a vegetable or a stone… What one confusedly calls ‘animal’, the living thing as living and nothing more, is not a subject of the law or of right.” Thus according to Cartesian and post-Cartesian assumptions, there are no ethical considerations for animals. Ethics, then, is an entirely human realism. (Derrida in the same text criticizes philosophers who want that animals should also have rights, for example with a declaration of animal rights. The reason is, what they do is put animals in the legal system that allows violence against them to appear. Moreover, the existing legal system is constructed based on the humanist concept of subjectivity. In Wolfe’s terms (2003: xii), animal rights discourse is “essentially humanist”).

The question that arises, then, is: if the definition of man carried out in an oppositional fashion cannot clearly define the distinction between humans and animals, which means that the construction of the concept of the human subject itself is problematic, is it possible to define moral considerations only for humans? Or, more radically, is it possible to determine the limits of the considerations themselves? Tomas Birch (1993: 315), as quoted by Calarco (2009: 72-73) notes that moral theory assumes:

“(1) that when it comes to moral consideralbility, ther are, and ought to be, insiders and outsiders, citizens and non-citizens (for examples, slaves, barbarians, and women), ‘members of the club’ of consideranda versus the rest; (2) that we can and ought to identify the mark, or marks, of membership; (3) that we can identify them in a rational and non-arbitrary fashion; and (4) that we ought to institute practices that enforce the marks of membership and the integrity of the club, as well, of course, as maximizing the good of its members.”

From this description, it can be seen that humans are insiders and animals are outsiders of existing moral considerations based on the modern concept of subjectivity. However, as already explained, there is no precise and rigorous definition of humans as opposed to animals. The negation or exclusion of animals forms the sign of human membership. As Derrida, Bourke, and Agamben say, what is proper for man, or “signs” for Birch, is never stable. Exactly what Agamben said, the definition is an empty zone that can be updated continuously. Birch has a similar view to Agamben. Birch (1993: 321) notes, as quoted by Calarco (2009: 72) that from a historical perspective:

“Whenever we have closed off the question [of moral consideralbility] with the institution of some practical criterion, we have later found ourselves in error, and have had to open the question up again to reform our practices in a further attempt to make them ethical.”

This quote shows that the definition is arbitrarily defined, and there are no clear boundaries. Just like what Agamben said, the definition of humanity will always be updated. In this way, the problematic human-animal distinction affects the limits of problematic moral considerations because the concept of human and nonhuman can change according to social, political, economic conditions, etc.

 

Finale

To finish this paper, the conclusion that can be drawn is that the essence of humanity, which makes it different from the essence of animality, and the human-animal distinction that is determined by the definition of essence are problematic.

1. The essence of man as distinct from animals has never been clearly defined, scientifically or philosophically. As explained above, there are always limitations to the definition of humans, either because, to quote Derrida again, “some animals have them,or because humans don’t have the traits claimed.” In addition, there are assumptions about specific human characteristics that make scientific efforts to prove human features contradictory (See Agamben’s explanation). Another problem that accompanies this is that there are many different kinds of animals and people, making it difficult to define “Human” and “Animal” in general.
2. The human-animal distinction is formed based on the problematic definition of “human” and “animal”, making the distinction itself problematic. The human-animal distinction is never “only” a neutral “ontological” or “scientific” distinction. The distinction was formed to distinguish who participates and does not participate in moral and legal considerations. This distinction is deeply rooted in the Cartesian and post-Cartesian traditions that dominate modernity discourse

 

References

Agamben, G. (2004). The Open: Man and Animal. (K. Attell, Trans.) Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Aristotle. (1984). The Complete Works of Aristotle. (J. Barnes, Ed.) Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Bourke, J. (2013). What It Means To Be Human: Reflections from 1971 to the Present. Great Britain: Virago Press.

Calarco, M. (2008). Zoographies: The Question of Animal from Heidegger to Derrida. New York: Columbia University Press.

Derrida, J., & Rudinesco, E. (2004). For What Tomorrow: A Dialogue. (J. Fort, Trans.) Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Derrida, J. (1989). Of Spirit. (G. Bennington, & R. Bowlby, Trans.) Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Derrida, J. (1990). Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority. Cardozo Law Review, 11 (919), 920-1045.

Derrida, J. (2008). The Animal That Therefore I Am. (M.-L. Mallet, Ed., & D. Wills, Trans.) Fordham: Fordham University Press.

Descartes, R. (1985). Discourses on the Method. (R. Stoothoff, Trans.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Kant, I. (2006). Anthropology from a Pragmatic Points of View. (R. B. Louden, Ed., & R. B. Louden, Trans.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Timofeeva, O. (2016). The Non-Human as Such: On Men, Animals, and Barbers. On_Culture (2), 2-14.

Wolfe, C. (2003). Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. (C. Wolfe, Ed.) Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press.

 

Author: Unies Ananda Raja
Editor: Kenny Setya Abdiel
Translator: Alfredo Putrawidjoyo