Review of Philosophy and Animal Life (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Use of Animal Imagery in Ted Hughes’s Animal Poems
Word and Image in Literature and the Visual Arts, 2016
The topic of this paper is the poet Ted Hughes and, in particular, his group of poems drawn from various publications, generally known under the name of 'animal poems'. Like the name itself suggests, the focus of these literary compositions turns around animals: crows, hawks, foxes, jaguars, pikes, otters and many others inhabit the poetry of Ted Hughes, as well as his volcanic imagination. Hughes’ beasts are generally predators (in some rare cases preys and predators at the same time) and their task is to celebrate the law of nature: only the strongest survives. Images portraying violence, brutality and ferocity dominate the scene but, totally immersed in this imaginary world, they do not disgust but fascinate the reader. The brutality of the pike – which is a cannibal, too –, or the intimidating and sinister glance of the jaguar in a cage at the zoo, for example, highlight the strength and the vital principle of the animals rather than a shocking aspect. Their celebration of the law of survival is rendered through a dry and elegant language that sometimes has even mystical reverberations. However, generally Ted Hughes’ animal poems end up fascinating the reader also for (at least) two more reasons: the first is that a clear link between animal and man is often inferred, and it is seen through the magic practice of shamanism, of which Ted Hughes was a staunch advocate. Hughes’ animals in a way or another create connections with a human subject – reminding one of the typical symbiosis between animal helper and shaman – and offer him their vital power. In this way mysticism becomes related to the world of magic. The second – but not in order of importance – is that Hughes’ poems can also be read metaphorically: the poet’s vision of the world and of human society is strongly characterized by a destructive power but, since it would be immoral to celebrate it in this perspective, the poet makes recourse to the expedient of glorifying the brutal instinctual force in animals instead. Animals, one should also stress, that have a strong anthropomorphic characterization.
Poems from the interval: violence in Ted Hughes’s animal still-lifes
Miranda, 2023
In his verbal still-lifes, Ted Hughes reverses the traditional dynamics of scopophilia by putting the human eye under the dying beast’s petrifying gaze. The poem thus entwines human and animal into an interval creature entangling human language and animal body, thriving between life and death, in a dimension akin to the bardo—in Tibetan, the “interval between two states” where the shaman is violently put to death by an animal demon to be resurrected as a new lifeform. Hence Hughes’s still-lifes are not only from the interval, but also for the interval period we are going through—the pivotal era known as the Anthropocene, and whose denouement could be self-destructive for our civilization—: they propose profound transformations in our relationship to nature before we reach the point of no return. This paper will illustrate the triple process (reversed scopophilia, human-animal entanglement, dying as a regenerating experience) through three of Ted Hughes’s most violent animal still-lifes: “Pike,” “The Jaguar” and “Second Glance at a Jaguar.”
Aesthetics and the Embodied Mind: Beyond Art Theory and the Cartesian Mind-Body Dichotomy, 2014
The American philosopher John Dewey presents a version of the individual that stands in stark contrast to the mind/body dualism of Descartes, but he goes even further by denying a sharp division between the individual and the environment. For Dewey, the mind-body problem arises when we reify aspects of what is actually an embodied "complex of events that constitute nature," thus treating mind and matter as "static structures instead of functional characters" (LW 1: 66). But Dewey's functionalism goes further, for he argues that the individual exists both within and as part of an environment. This ecological understanding of embodiment takes into account both the biological as well as cultural features of experience, for individuals exist within a dynamic web of human and non-human, as well as physical and cultural relationships. Instead of being separate and distinct, the individual appears as embedded within a network of relationships but capable of reshaping those relationships through active engagement with and within the local environment. This model situates individuals and reinforces the importance of local engagement. However, a fully developed understanding of ecological embodiment also strengthens our "tragic consciousness," as we become ever more aware of the extent of our precariousness, especially in light of global warming, mass extinctions, world-wide economic stress, and failing educational systems. Such a consciousness can undermine personal and social action, particularly when individuals suspect that their actions are insufficient to solve global problems. But if Thomas Alexander is correct when he argues that the "ultimate task of human existence is cultivation, the civilization of our natural capacities toward the fulfillment of life," (1987: 276), then we need an aesthetics of possibility and an art of living that responds to our existential realities while cultivating meaning and working to enrich our communities, the
REFLECTION ON BEAUTY, NATURE AND ART
www.iomr.art, 2020
During these days of withdrawal in ourselves due to confinement, we must not fall into a state of resignation and pessimism, but rather seek new ways of escape which may leave free scope for our minds. These are moments for enjoying calm and for arousing thoughts that may raise us up as human beings. Today, profiting from the sensations that Spring inspires in me, I would like to ponder on the timeless significance of beauty, to appraise the fleeting instant of happiness which our contemplation of it can overwhelm us and meditate on its connection with nature, art and man. A rose in its fullness, a bud outcropping, something as eternal as it is ephemeral in its periodical rebirth; two roses which reblossom every month, of a pale rose colour and winding creeper shape, which stand before me in all their haughty air, as if to declare to me that the origin of beauty lies in man's association with nature due to his capacity to contemplate, observe, feel and grant a value to what is external. These moments are the ideal backround in which our creative impulse is born. A time to spur us on to write, paint or simply to regenerate ourselves, to change the direction of our life, or continue, if possible, with greater energy along the route already chosen. Moments to recall past experiences and to allow ourselves to be drawn back to emotions which had fallen into oblivion....
Extreme Beauty: Aesthetics, Politics, Death
2002
Edited by James Swearingen and Joanne Cutting-Gray Continuum, 2002 288 pages $29.95 What does "extreme beauty" look like? Even more importantly, what does it feel like? These questions are the main themes around which James Swearingen and Joanne Cutting-Gray have constructed their anthology Extreme Beauty: Aesthetics, Politics, Death (Continuum, 2002). Such a title will no doubt call up strong associations with the work of the French critics who began writing in the late 1960's. Bataille, Blanchot, Derrida, Lacan, Kristeva, Baudrillard, and Barthes, among others, were attempting in various ways "to think otherwise"-to develop a way of thinking that did justice to the kinds of changes they were noticing in the society around them, especially as reflected in its artwork. Barthes, for example, wrote about the relation between pleasure and literature found in the experience of "difference." Beyond pleasure he discovered bliss, a feeling that overcame the difference between pleasure and pain and included boredom, pain, and unpleasantness; beyond literature he found the text, the work of art unmoored from its ideological and historical context. This is the area within which the essays of the present anthology can be found. Mario Perniola's "Feeling of Difference" is the lead article of the anthology, introducing its general thematic; it is the only article in part one. Perniola looks to Barthes' work for his guiding question: How can we release sensations, affections, and emotions from the tyranny of the "I feel" in order to find experiences that are different from and extraneous to conventional feeling? In order to answer the question, Perniola applies the phenomenological concept of the epoche to Barthes' task. He consequently shows how, if we learn to disconnect ourselves emotionally from whatever situation we are in, we will be able to gain some control over its categories. Turning for an example of this disconnection to the subject of sex, Perniola recognizes the possibility of disconnecting it from the tyranny of orgasm and from male/female distinctions and locates "the sex appeal of the inorganic." With this phrase he means to refer to how an individual might discover its body to be that of a thing, as for example a piece of clothing or an electronic device. The person thus becomes an extraneous body, deprived of subjective
Zygon(r), 2009
Almost all admit that there is beauty in the natural world. Many suspect that such beauty is more than an adornment of nature. Few in our contemporary world suggest that this beauty is an empirical principle of the natural world itself and instead relegate beauty to the eye and mind of the beholder. Guided by theological and scientific insight, the authors propose that such exclusion is no longer tenable, at least in the data of modern biology and in our view of the natural world in general. More important, we believe an empirical aesthetics exists that can help guide experimental design and development of computational models in biology. Moreover, because theology and science can both contribute toward and equally profit from such an aesthetics, we propose that this empirical aesthetics provides the foundation for a living synergy between theology and science.